Goodbye
To The City Upon A Hill
And To Its Fabled Economy
By Paul Craig Roberts
26 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“We shall be as
a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
— John Winthrop
America
is being destroyed. Many Americans are unaware, others are indifferent,
and some intend it. The destruction is across the board: the political
and constitutional system, the economy, social institutions including
the family itself, citizenship, and the character and morality of the
American people.
Those who rely on the Internet
for information are aware that the Bush regime has successfully assaulted
the separation of powers and civil liberty. Both Bush and Cheney claim
that they are not bound by laws that impinge on their freedom of action
or that interfere with their ideas of the power of their offices. Bush
has issued presidential directives that permit him to make himself a
dictator by declaring a national emergency. Cheney asserts that his
handling of secret documents is not subject to oversight or investigation
or bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified
information.
The foundation of social
organization — marriage, family, and parental control over children
— is disintegrating.
Mass unassimilated and illegal
immigration has destroyed the meaning of American citizenship and forced
large numbers of Americans into unemployment. For example, Steve Camarota
at the Center for Immigration Studies reported on June 20 that state
employment data show that in the first six years of the 21st century
218,000 high school graduates in the state of Georgia have been employment-
displaced by immigrants. [Employment Down Among Natives In Georgia]
Moreover, wages have stagnated, putting the lie to the claim that there
is a shortage of workers. If there were a labor shortage, wages would
be bid up and rising.
Many Americans are unconcerned
that the US government in behalf of an undeclared agenda has invaded
two countries, killed hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians, produced
4 million Iraqi refugees, rejected the Geneva Conventions and reverted
to medieval torture dungeons. It does not trouble them that their government
blocked ceasefires and UN resolutions so that Israel could bomb and
murder Lebanese civilians and destroy the country’s infrastructure.
Americans, whose ethical
behavior toward others was once reinforced by having to look oneself
in the mirror, now have a different ethos. Many cannot look themselves
in the mirror unless they have pulled a fast one and advanced themselves
at someone else’s expense. It is not only crooked prosecutors,
such as Michael Nifong, who get their jollies from destroying their
fellow citizens.
A Google search will call
up enough information to make the case for these points many times over.
However, the destruction of the US economy, though far advanced, is
still largely unknown. It is to this subject that we turn.
For a number of years Charles
McMillion of MBG Information Services and I have documented from BLS
nonfarm payroll jobs data that the US economy in the 21st century no
longer creates net new jobs in tradable goods and services. In the 21st
century, job growth in “the world’s only superpower”
has a definite third world flavor. US job growth has been limited to
domestic services that cannot be moved offshore, such as waitresses
and bartenders and health and social services.
These are not jobs that comprise
ladders of upward mobility. Income inequality is worsening, and education
is no longer the answer.
The problem is that middle
class jobs, both in manufacturing and in professional occupations such
as engineering, are being offshored as corporations replace their American
workforces with foreigners. I have called jobs offshoring “virtual
immigration.”
The latest bombshell is that
even those professional jobs that remain located in America are not
safe. There is a vast industry of immigration law firms that enable
American corporations to replace their American workers with foreigners
brought in on work visas.
For years Americans have
been told that work visas are only issued in cases where there are no
Americans with the necessary skills to fill the jobs. Americans have
been reassured that safeguards are in place to prevent US companies
from using the work visas to replace their American employees with foreigners
paid below the prevailing US wage. Now, thanks to a video placed on
“YouTube” by a US law firm, Cohen & Grigsby, marketing
its services, we now know that it is easy for US companies to legally
evade the “safeguards” and to replace their American employees
with lower paid foreigners.
The video shows Lawrence
Lebowitz, [send him mail] vice president for Marketing for the law firm
of Cohen & Grigsby, together with a panel of the law firm’s
attorneys, explaining to an audience of employers how to use loopholes
in the laws governing the work visas to hire foreign workers in place
of Americans. Lebowitz says, “our goal is clearly, not to find
a qualified and interested US worker.”
Cohen & Grigsby’s
legal experts describe the strategy for ensuring that no American firm
has to hire an American. The advertising requirements can be met by
advertising the job in obscure or ethnic newspapers in locations where
there are no likely job candidates. If a qualified American candidate
turns up, “have the manager of that specific position step in
and . . . go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify
them for this position — in most cases there doesn’t seem
to be a problem.”
The “prevailing wage”
requirement is evaded, for example, by making the offered salary and
raises contingent on receipt of the green card, usually three or four
years away, or by disguising the job by understating the job requirements.
For example, a job requiring an advanced degree can be listed as requiring
a bachelor’s degree, but filled with a foreigner with a higher
degree. As the higher degree is not listed as a job requirement, the
employer is able to secure the foreign employee below the prevailing
wage.
University of California
computer science professor Norman Matloff has an excellent presentation
available at his online site about the lack of impediments to the ability
of US firms to replace their American employees with foreigners. Matloff
says to keep in mind that Cohen & Grigsby “is NOT a rogue
law firm.” The advice provided by Cohen & Grigsby is the standard
advice given by the hoards of immigration attorneys who are personally
cleaning up by putting Americans out of work.
Except for Lou Dobbs on CNN,
the US TV and print media have so far ignored the astounding story.
Where are the headlines: “US Jobs: No American Need Apply”?
Chances are high that economists
will ignore the story also. Economists have made fools of themselves
with their hyped claims that jobs offshoring is a great benefit to America
and that any attempt to stop it would bring hardship, failed companies,
and lost American jobs. When a profession gets egg all over its face,
it closes ranks and goes into denial.
Unlike the post-depression
generation of US economists, recent generations of economists have been
indoctrinated with confidence in business. They believe that business
knows best and that the free market will prevent or correct any mistakes.
Many economists today are well-paid shills for special interests. Others,
simply careless, have assumed that statistical measures of high rates
of US productivity and GDP growth were indications of the benefits that
offshoring was bringing to Americans.
Only a few economists, such
as myself and Charles McMillion, noticed the inconsistency between alleged
high rates of productivity and GDP growth on one hand and stagnant real
median incomes and rising income inequality on the other. Somehow the
US economy was having GDP and productivity growth that was not showing
up in growth in the incomes of Americans.
Thanks to economist Susan
N. Houseman and the March 22 issue of Business Week, we now know, as
I reported in the print edition of CounterPunch (June 1-15, 2007) and
online at VDARE.com and Online Journal, that much of the growth in US
productivity and GDP was an illusion created by statistics that mistakenly
attributed productivity gains achieved abroad to the US economy.
With the ladders of upward
mobility for Americans dismantled by offshoring and work visas, with
the very real problems in mortgage and housing markets, with the very
real stress put on the US dollar’s reserve currency role by Bush’s
trillion dollar war that is financed by foreigners, with the downward
revisions in US GDP and productivity growth that are now mandatory,
and with a variety of other problems that I haven’t the space
to deal with, the fabled US economy is a thing of the past.
Just like America’s
prestige. Just like the world’s goodwill toward America. Just
like American liberty.
The eyes of all peoples are
still upon us, only for different reasons. Whom will we attack next?
When will we be bankrupt? What good is the American consumer market
when the mass of the people are employed in third world jobs? How much
longer will those trillions of dollars held by foreign governments be
worth anything? How long before Americans will be knocking on European
doors claiming political asylum?
Dr. Roberts
is an economist who has held numerous university appointments and served
as Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury.
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