Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[laklak]

I'd imagine that a tailor costs more to hire than a toilet cleaner, so using a skilled employee to perform a non-skilled task would be inefficient and expensive. In my case I ran a catering and food production company. The people that worked in my concession trailer had to do everything including short order cooking, cleaning, setting up and breaking down the site, working the counter, etc. They had to know how to tow a trailer, change a tire, troubleshoot a balky fryer, and a host of other skills. I didn't hire a fry cook, a grill man, a driver, a roustabout, a mechanic, a counterman and a griddleman, there's no way I could afford to hire 7 people when I could hire 2 that could do multiple jobs. If I told someone to take over the fryer I expected them to do exactly that, not argue with me that it wasn't their job. Perhaps that's something unique to the business or maybe to the carney mindset, but I never had anyone complain.

When I was living the corporate life I was called a project manager. While I did manage the project, I also designed the databases, defined requirements, defined system architecture, wrote code, managed the client, tested the system, did bug fixes, etc. Maybe if I'd worked in a big corporation with rigidly defined roles it would have been different, but working for a small software house required that sort of multitasking, it was a default assumption that everyone would do whatever was necessary to make the project successful.

[JimC]

The vast majority of non-citizen, and non-legal resident aliens working in the farm industry are, in fact, legal. Only a small percentage of farmworkers are illegal. So, in no sense of the word can it be said that "illegal aliens" do work Americans "won't" do.

A quick web surf suggests that about 25% of all farm workers are here illegally:

Nearly a quarter of all farm workers are here illegally, and according to the Pew Hispanic Center, 17 percent of those cleaning the nations' offices and 12 percent preparing food in the country don't have legal work papers.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5250150

Granted NPR is not the most reliable source, but given their liberal leanings, those numbers are probably lower than the reality rather than higher. If your numbers for citizen and legal resident farm workers are correct - and I have no reason to believe otherwise - then the arithmetic says that there are more foreign farm workers here illegally than on legal H2A visas.

If we take that number, 25%, as the true number, it still means that it is flat out wrong that "illegals are doing jobs that Americans WON'T do." The remaining 75% of folks doing those jobs are either American citizens or legal aliens. Americans WILL do those jobs. I know that for a fact because Americans do, in fact, do those jobs.

The unemployed factory workers and paper-shufflers won't. The fact that some Americans will do field labor does not impugn the fact that American farmers generally cannot hire a sufficient number of American workers for the fields so they are forced to hire illegal immigrants. In Palisade, CO this year, fruit growers offer $25 per hour for orchard workers to anyone who needed a job. They found almost universally that the local American workforce that was unemployed would show up for a day, or perhaps two, and would then simply abandon the job because it's fucking hard work and they would rather take unemployment than sweat in the orchards. Orchardmen need reliable full-time workers who will stay the entire season, because you can't learn the work overnight, it takes skill and experience.

The same is true of farmers nationwide. They can offer well-paid jobs doing manual field labor to Americans, but they can't find enough of them to fill their needs, so they resort to those who are accustomed to such work, the illegal aliens, who come here precisely because they know they can find work because most Americans are pampered and lazy.

Not all, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly most of those who are currently unemployed, who could be employed if they were willing to relocate and do the sort of hard manual labor that's available, but won't. That's because the government is paying them to stay unemployed, and unemployment checks are easier to pick up than onions.

If government cuts off the checks, and people start to get *really* hungry, they will begin to take the jobs that need to be filled in order to eat.

Or they can join a union, organise, and meet the bosses from a position of strength...

Unions forever!

[Hermit]

I don't have anyone working for me any longer, because I've shut down the company. Got regulated out of business by the USDA. Guess those folks will have to go pick fruit while I live off my wife's salary.

Or they found a job with a caterer who could cope with them. By closing your business down you left an opportunity for someone else to fill the demand. The market remains.

When our unlamented leader, John Howard, introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST, essentially a Value Added Tax) in 1999, thousands of small-business operators, truck owner-drivers, corner shops, IT consultants and whatnot, failed to cope with the increased paperwork and closed down instead. Guess what happened next? No, the transport industry did not grind to a halt. There were no sudden shortages of milk bars (drug-stores to you) in the neighbourhood. Computer systems of companies did not break down for want of repair or maintenance. What did happen, was that thousands of new business people who were not daunted by the new obligations took over from the one's who shirked them. The Australian economy did not miss a beat. Neither demand nor supply of goods and services decreased at all, but we got rid of many business owners whose main occupation seemed to be to whinge about 'government interference'. They were replaced by business owners with a 'can do' approach, and competence to match.

[Hermit]

Or they can join a union, organise, and meet the bosses from a position of strength...

Unions forever!

I'm with you, brother.

United we bargain, divided we beg.

Some small businesses, among them farmers and pastoralists would be well served if they heeded the advice when dealing with the duopoly of Woolworths and Coles in Australia.

[Schneibster]

They were replaced by business owners with a 'can do' approach, and competence to match.

We used to do that here. Now the failures join the Teagaggers and they all whine about it together, and blame scary black people.

[MrJonno]

An contract between an employer and employee is not the supreme authority governing the relationship or any other relationship the law is.

One company I worked for basically have a contract with one of their suppliers which basically said if we fuck up we are in no way responsible for any costs you occur. They fucked up (and didnt deny it) and tried to invoke the contract to avoid being sued. Strangely the courts ripped up that contract.

If you have a really poor quality contract with your employer and you don't think he won't listen use your vote and lobby for a chance in the law. Only idiots/libertarians rely only on themselves for improving the quality of their life work together

[laklak]

What has happened here, particularly in the food production industry, is small producers that cannot afford the increased cost of the ludicrous new Federal regulations are forced out of business and their place taken by large corporations. The left talks a good game when it comes to supporting small business, but they are actually vehemently opposed to anyone being anything but a regulated wage slave.

[MrJonno]

If a business can't pay its staff enough to live on without killing them then its not a business society needs (even if the owners want it). Obviously you can over regulate so there is a balance.

As for pro-business it sounds like an innocent term but then so does pro-family as well which isnt really defined by what by what its pro but what its against. Interestingly pro-family to me means lots of paid holiday, maternity leave , free/subsidised child care which some people might say is anti-business.

Of course kids are vile and should be used for compulsory organ donations so I'm not pro family

[Hermit]

What has happened here, particularly in the food production industry, is small producers that cannot afford the increased cost of the ludicrous new Federal regulations are forced out of business and their place taken by large corporations. The left talks a good game when it comes to supporting small business, but they are actually vehemently opposed to anyone being anything but a regulated wage slave.

The situation is obviously different in Australia. Here it is big business, rather than the government that fucks small enterprises up the arse. I can tell you some "lovely" stories about that, if you are interested. All to do with leverage, buying power, quasi-monopoly and sheer bloody-mindedness borne of utter greed and the relentless pressure of shareholders baying for their dividends, for whom too much return on investment is not enough. Capitalism at work, in other words, where the big sharks eat the small sharks which eat medium sized fish which eat the minnows which squeeze the hapless algae for all they're worth.

[laklak]

Big business = Federal government.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Big business = Federal government.

Under the Repugnican system Big Business owns the Federal Government.

[Coito ergo sum]

Hoover was a typical Republican - "don't do anyhting to help the poor - that would reward laziness. A rugged individual will succeed if they want to." Hence they threw him out after 1 term.

You're confusing modern political alignment with the political alignment of the 1920's. The Republican Party of the 1920's to the 1960's was the "Part of Human Liberty," and was the party of northeast liberalism, tolerance, civil rights, integration, etc. The Democratic Party was the Party of the Ku Klux Klan.

[Coito ergo sum]

If we take that number, 25%, as the true number, it still means that it is flat out wrong that "illegals are doing jobs that Americans WON'T do." The remaining 75% of folks doing those jobs are either American citizens or legal aliens. Americans WILL do those jobs. I know that for a fact because Americans do, in fact, do those jobs.

I would agree that some Americans will do those jobs, because some Americans do do them. That doesn't mean there aren't other Americans too lazy to bother.

There are, likewise, Mexicans and other immigrants "too lazy to bother, too." Again - most of those jobs are filled by American citizens. Most of the balance of those jobs are filled by legal immigrants and legal nonimmigrants. A smaller percentage is filled by illegal aliens.

[laklak]

Big business = Federal government.

Under the Repugnican system Big Business owns the Federal Government.

I haven't seen any difference with the Demorats in charge. Far as I'm concerned it's sixes or two threes, the Dems just do better PR.

[Hermit]

Big business = Federal government.

Depends. In Australia the so-called Liberal Party is certainly the henchman of big business when it is in power. The Labor Party not so much.