Nearly 20 years of stagnant to falling wages, threadbare social safety nets, and no returns on savings has produced a retiree class in Japan struggling to make ends meet. Good reason to worry at the sight of the US cribbing heavily from the Japanese playbook.
From Bloomberg (hat tip Ed Harrison):
More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-ageing society.
Criminal offences by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.
Theft is the most common crime of senior citizens, many of whom face declining health, low incomes and a sense of isolation, the report said. Elderly crime may increase in parallel with poverty rates as Japan enters another recession and the budget deficit makes it harder for the government to provide a safety net for people on the fringes of society.
“The elderly are turning to shoplifting as an increasing number of them lack assets and children to depend on,” Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo and an author of books on income disparity in Japan, said in an interview yesterday. “We won’t see the decline of elderly crimes as long as the income gap continues to rise.”
Crime rates among the elderly are rising as the overall rate for Japan has fallen for five consecutive years after peaking in 2002. Over 60s accounted for 18.9 percent of all crimes last year compared with 3.1 percent in 1978, with shoplifting accounting for 80 percent of the total, the report said….
“Elderly crime is a serious problem that our society must shoulder in the years to come,” the government report said. “With baby boomers becoming elderly within five years, we have reached a state where we must make a fundamental review of anti- crime measures in a fast-ageing society.”
Yves here. Note no suggestion of addressing the real problem, poverty.
About a fifth of Japanese are 65 or older, almost twice the proportion in the U.S. and three times China’s rate. That figure will double to more than 40 percent by 2050, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research….
The government aims to cut 220 billion yen ($2.3 billion) from social welfare spending in each of the five years starting 2006 as it seeks to balance the budget by 2011. As part of this plan, the government introduced a new health insurance system that would raise premiums for some elderly patients.
The initiative has stirred anxiety about pensions and health care, and Japan’s economic situation is doing little to help…
The number of households on welfare reached 1.1 million last year, an increase of 300,000 since 2001, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Japan ranks behind the U.S. at fourth-worst among 30 developed countries in terms of the number of people living on less than half the country’s median income, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last month.
“Some elderly, particularly men who lost their wives, even turn to crimes to be put in jail so they can be fed three times a day,” Yamada said.
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I remember when Japan was going to bury us, circa 1988.
Their politics are too xenophobic to let in the immigration necessary to counteract their aging population.
So our ours, lately
We are headed toward a similar problem of too few workers supporting too many retirees.
We should be letting in larger numbers of educated immigrants, but we won’t
They could fill up some of the empty houses, too.
tompain,
You guys have a good news and a bad news.
The good news is that you guys have pretty opened immigration policy, which could offset the lack of workforce.
The bad news? You guys own guns, a lot of… I guess those elder people who got really mad wouldn’t stop just shop lifting…
e*Trader from Japan
Immigration is still a short term solution though since their children show the same pattern of not producing enough replacements. You can’t draw upon a pool of poor developing world laborers forever. Unless we create a fully automated society our great-grandchildren are going to have to change how they perceive reproduction. Of course since that is generations away no one cares to address this issue.
The US still has a birthrate that is around 2, so the current population can at least be sustained. However, most countries in Europe have negative birthrates (below 2, which means the population of a nation is decreasing).
Bush destroyed much of the US immigration system, and did it in an insidious, underhanded fashion via executive memos and such procedures few are aware about. Additionally, it now costs multiple thousands of dollars to file immigration forms with the USCIS, which is simply out of the reach of many immigrants. Attorney fees add other multiple thousands (and without an attorney, one’s immigration applications are likely to be denied in order to force that person to re-file, and thus pay the fees again).
My wife is a European doctor, our daughter was born in the US, I am a US citizen, and still we had nothing but difficulties with the moronic USCIS department.
As far as foreigners coming to the US to find jobs, I think that is rapidly fading too. There aren’t many high tech jobs in this country anymore, and the Indians and the Eastern Europeans now prefer to remain closer to home. I am an experienced software engineer with a doctorate, and last summer I was unable to find a job in that field. This nation is fully de-industrialized (and de-ITized). Hello Globalization.
I think the entire world has reached its zenith and will slowly slide back into parity with its environment. Most nations are over populated and reliant on others to fill the gaps.
Here in Australia we have over 20 million living mostly on the sea coast. The interior is to unfriendly to support settlement. Now if any thing were to interrupt food coming into the country, the land could only support 8 million. You can only put so many head of cattle on an acre.
I believe the hole system is broke, not just the economic one. Study every large civilization in the last 4000 years and you’ll see my point. Now there is no more rich untapped land masses to use, to relive the pressure or make a quick buck.
Skippy
We have been given a reprieve in that oil prices returned to a affordable range. You can only imagine what happens if oil returns to its highs for whatever reasons.
This sounds remarkably like a brief vignette in a book called The Retirement Myth by Craig Karpel. Crime committing elderly were called “senior sinisters”. Unfortunately, for the very destitute, it is much easier to be in jail rather than try and scrape by–of course compounded by trouble getting any work once one has a criminal record. I could see it being really tough for elderly men, since they rarely ask for help and don’t readily communicate regarding problems.
The overall crime rate is falling, but the numbers of elderly are rising. So what’s happened to the rate of numbers of crimes per elderly person (however defined)? The article doesn’t mention that, which is the key to assessing how much the change in the elderly crime rate has been and what the causes might be. Incomplete statistics here, at least in what has been excerpted.
@tompain said …
We are headed toward a similar problem of too few workers supporting too many retirees.
We should be letting in larger numbers of educated immigrants, but we won’t…
Say what?? Umm, how about we train the already educated but unemployed American citizens instead to do those jobs that you want to hire foreigners for? Let corporations and government invest in America and its people. Sheese.
Or maybe we can make all those “educated foreigners” do ALL the work for us lazy American’s and then we can just collect welfare and Social Security payments from their work? They can be our new slaves.
to Skippy @ 2:13 am’s point above
Water will be the most critical constraint in SE Australia – and the US Southwest – within twenty years
CrocodileChuck
@CrocodileChuck,
Concur and expand your statement to the entire world especially any place that is Dependant on summer glacial flows. Can you say Colorado or Ganges rivers are dry half the year.
I am sure that there are people who, as the Titanic was sinking, needed to find some humour.
Perhaps it helped.
What Roubini is doing is simply counting the number of mammatocumulus clouds in the sky, any one of which could turn into a localized deflationary tornado.
The weather system is growing in darkness and intensity. Collapsing consumer demand corresponds to the collapsing barometric pressure that causes the formation of tornado storm systems.
People need to prepare for July of 2010. By then, most people will understand that this we are in a full-blown depression, WORSE, according to a retired head of Goldman Sachs, than the Great Depression.
We will have a FAR better snapshot of what is in store for us after the AUDITED annual corporate financial statements are released in January 2009.
It looks like the Volcker faction, which I support, is firmly in control in the Obama administration.
Any person who thinks that is an inflationary development is naive in the extreme.
Matt Dubuque
I’m a very serious student of the films of Akira Kurosawa, probably the world’s greatest director.
For a deep JAPANESE insight on the trends described here (such as seniors stealing), I would point people to any one of the films he did before 1950, all of which dealt with the consequences of economic dislocation upon Japanese moral structures.
Matt Dubuque
someone above said,
“We are headed toward a similar problem of too few workers supporting too many retirees.”
You people of the top 5% are laughable. There are NO JOBS for most people educated in the US. You assume the USA is a rocket that just needs people fuel to take off! The jobs at the top are filled by handouts to the IVY leaguer’s and the rest are given to folks on temp visas (which is now close to 500k per year, very similar to the number of new high wage jobs created in the country every year).
As long as the employment structure in this country is a two prong system of
1. Only jobs for the Ivy league.
2. Only jobs for temp visa individuals (dependent slaves who will be deported if they screw up.
Their politics are too xenophobic to let in the immigration necessary to counteract their aging population.
Sensible – In Japan there are plenty of unemployed Japanese citizens and the ones who have jobs pulls 18 hour days!
All that immigration achieves is to push down all wages and living standards!
The US is, for now, an exception in that regard but I think the US will return to trend with the ending of the free credit provided by the ability to print USD at will.
It’s not true that immigration pushes down wages and living standards. We are a nation of immigrants and we have the highest living standards in the world.
Illegal immigration does push down wages and living standards because those laborers are unskilled and easily exploited due to their illegal status.
Legal immigration of educated, hard working engineers, doctors, etc will in the long run boost our economy.
Unless you are planning to close down international trade (which no doubt some commenters here must think is a good idea), you need to realize that these workers will participate in the global economy. The Indian electrical engineer can stay in India and jobs can find him there, or he can move here, become a citizen, pay taxes, buy a house, buy a car, and go to the mall.
The question of income distribution is a valid one but not inextricably or primarily linked to immigration.
I am all in favor of training unskilled American citizens for better jobs, but let’s get real here – you are not going to make an electrical engineer or physician or high school teacher or college professor out of most autoworkers.
If you think of the US as a team that needs to compete in the global economy, wouldn’t you want to recruit as many top players as possible?
Tompain
“It’s not true that immigration pushes down wages and living standards. We are a nation of immigrants and we have the highest living standards in the world.”
You are obviously not an engineer, scientist or programmer.
Legal immigration in a contracting economy displaces existing workers.
There has never been a shortage of engineers or scientists, there in a monstrous
oversupply created by the delusional rants of New York Times columnists. They continually push this concept like a hard drug, so that their cronies in Universities can continue to import more foreigners to either pay exorbitant tuitions or work for slave wages.
Of course this suppresses wages, which big America Corp loves.
We do have an education problem in this country. It is unfortunately with the educators whose sole objective is to expand their programs without end for jobs that don’t exist
Good points above.
I am a software engineer and also a scientist with lots of experience. And, guess what?! Last summer I was unable to find a job in the software industry, and I was looking only for a mid-range level job. And, the reason is simple: because I am a US citizen. Businesses in this country prefer to hire a foreigner on a work visa they could pay half what they would pay me, knowing they cannot change jobs or ask for a raise, else he’ll get fired and the USCIS will deport the poor bastard in 7 days. This is the reality, and I have experienced it personally.
In the 90’s I owned a small software company, but I never even considered going through the trouble of hiring a foreigner to save a few bucks. I paid very competitive salaries to American people. Seeing just how skewed the business mentality has become in this nation these past 10 years, we deserve what we are getting now.
I am not against foreigners in any way. I myself was born overseas. But I paid my dues to this country, I paid tons of money in taxes, and I believed in it. The very fact I became a US citizen should speak for that.
But, it looks like my next job will be in the UK. Hopefully this new administration will change things, as I believe this country can still be a great place to be, and I’d like to at least retie here (hopefully without needing to shoplift too often…)
Actually, I am an engineer, or at least I used to be. The fact that there is not a shortage of engineers has nothing to do with anything. I am not proposing to let immigrants in to solve shortages. I am proposing to let skilled educated people of all sorts in because ultimately they contribute to economic growth and it is better to have them on our team than competing with us.
If you think there is a surplus of engineers that we need to solve by restricting supply, then I guess you would also NOT favor the idea of retraining those autoworkers into engineers, programmers, or whatever, because they will compete with you for jobs? What is it exactly that you would like to retrain them to do?
Ultimately your real complaint is income inequality. That is not to any significant degree a result of immigration of educated workers. Illegal immigration is a much greater contributor to that problem.
“Ultimately your real complaint is income inequality.”
Not so fast: Here is a nifty video that is quite an eye-opener about the mentality of tect biz in this country.
Hint: When you have a conference when lawyers explain to American businesses how to LEGALLY AVOID hiring American workers in favor of immigrants, you know that something is damn twisted in Uncle Sam land.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsp2V3ifZjM
As for re-training displaced American workers, we should all remember that we’ll need at least a 500 billion investment in fixing infrastructure in this country.
That, of course, does not even start to address the imperious need to switch to an energy economy where petroleum is reserved for strategic uses. You can easily add another 2 trillions. BTW, the 150 billions touted by Obama must be understood as being a mere down payment, not the whole invoice.
Now, one can always follow the price action of oil and decide that everything is honky-dory for the next 3 decades…but that is only if one is simple-minded enough to believe the market price forecast 3 decades in advance.
Yes, what’s twisted is that companies have to jump through ridiculous hoops to continue to employ productive workers that they already have on staff when their visas run out. Since these are valuable, educated, skilled workers, we should make it easy for them to stay, not make it so that lawyers have to come up with ridiculous justifications that they have to discuss at conferences.
Mr. Pain,
Your argument is not sound and is based upon the notion there exists a deficit of skilled professionals.
I for the life of me can’t comprehend your reasoning-
“I am proposing to let skilled educated people of all sorts in because ultimately they contribute to economic growth and it is better to have them on our team than competing with us.”
I’m not sure how they do this except by displacing existing workers (who I might add spend much time and money to acquire their skills- unlike foreigners who typically get a free education). You also fail to comprehend the near inexhaustible supply of individuals who wish to obtain a US work visa or dual citizenship. The end result is fewer US citizens in a workplace which is increasingly hostile toward US citizens and its cultural values (If you wonder why there are fewer women in the sciences this is your answer). Not to mention the signals this sends to the youth of today.
You further add
“I guess you would also NOT favor the idea of retraining those autoworkers into engineers, programmers, or whatever, because they will compete with you for jobs? What is it exactly that you would like to retrain them to do?”
No, I have no problem competing with them for AMERICAN jobs on AMERICAN soil.
Competition in a controlled fashion.
The US ecosystem is breaking down precisely because we’re allowing polar bears to compete with lions. We’re allowing camels to wander our streets, while competing with skunks for carrots.
Sound crazy? That’s what a dysfunctional, lawless, aberrant ecosystem becomes.
People make investments in their education, family, nation and future on a local and national basis. They have expectations that NEED to be fulfilled if the system is to remain stable. Get it? Cause and effect? It’s a feed-back loop, that if broken will result in the collapse of the society.
As to your general point of what should these people do? You need to restrict all immigration for several years in order that currently displaced workers may be absorbed into the general work force. Why import millions of new citizens when we’re losing jobs here? All it does is add to the workers on the unemployment line.
Just remember basic supply and demand when it comes to labor over-supply.
tompain,
I’m aware of the hoops you are talking about: I was one of those immigrant workers, and yes, the H1-B paperwork BS is a sight to behold.
That said, the video I referred too was about hiring, not retaining workers.
And the fact remains that the tech industry in the USA has a fuckhead culture when it comes to hiring and retraining. No one will make me believe there are so many productive tech workers that are immigrants while a vast proportion of American tech workers don’t cut the mustard.
This is about the money, first and foremost.
As for income inequality, suffice to read “Free Lunch” and “perfectly Legal” to know what are the root causes of it. See also the WSJ for their series about redistribution of incomes (when workers’s pensions are cut because executives were promised much more than the Corporation could afford…tell me if this is normal) and you’ll realize pretty fast that education and globalization are NOT the dominant factors behind it, but domestic policies and politics do bear a great share of the blame.
While line autoworkers might not be capable of becoming engineers, they might easily move to a blue-collar trade with proper support.
However, there are many unemployed professionals with 4-5 year degrees, particularly older people, who have been displaced by outsourcing or just companies that wanted a younger workforce but cannot easily retrain in another professional area, even if they have the aptitude and desire to do so. The problem is supporting yourself and/or your family while retraining, which requires a significant time commitment. And there is no guarantee of a position, again perhaps due to age discrimination, even if you do find a way to support yourself and are able to dedicate the time needed to retrain. What happens if your retraining doesn’t secure you work? You are back to square one and probably further in debt due tot he retraining expenses.
There aren’t any guarantees in life, but this is serious hurdle to retraining in anything. It is why large number of former professionals find themselves working in call centers, driving trucks/shuttles, becoming cable installers, etc. At least you have an income (although likely significantly reduced from where you might have been in the past) and you can put food on the table. But settling for work does not make for happy or satisfied people.
============================
Labor Retraining and Exploitation in America
March 21, 2008 by tntalk
For years, Americans have been urged to “retrain” or acquire additional skills while facing the trend of sending jobs offshore. The sad fact is that the vast majority of jobs Americans can retrain for are being sent overseas. Skill sets have nothing to do the exportation of American employment. The action of Multinational Corporate exploitation depresses job wages and threatens national productivity on a large scale. What job can an American really train for if Corporate America and Multinational Corporate America is in the process of sending that job overseas? In the meantime, many Americans are busily retraining at their own expense for less skilled employment with lower pay and diminished benefits.
The typical line of propaganda is that corporations reap huge savings by offshoring jobs. While this may be true on balance, corporate outsourcing of U.S. jobs has more to do with power and total control over workers.
…
Full article
And to complement the lawyer video on how to evade hiring laws and rules:
======================
Businessweek
Immigration October 16, 2008
It’s True: There’s Fraud in the H1-B Visa Program
A new U.S. government report confirms that companies are using the visas to hire illegally. But reforms are on the way
By Moira Herbst
For years critics have charged that the U.S. visa program for highly skilled workers is susceptible to abuse. Now the federal agency that issues the visas has confirmed some of those concerns.
The program for what are known as H-1B visas is designed to help U.S. companies bring workers with rare or specialized skills into the country. A Microsoft (MSFT) or IBM (IBM) can use the visas to hire someone from abroad if they can't find an American citizen with equivalent skills. But in a recent study, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) found that 13% of the requests for H-1B visas were fraudulent and 7% contained technical violations. In one case, when a company requested a visa for a "business development analyst," USCIS found the person would be working in a laundromat, doing laundry and maintaining washing machines.
The study marks the first time the agency has documented systematic problems in the program. It's based on a sample of 246 H-1B petitions and does not name the companies involved.
…
Full article
=========================
If becoming a US citizen makes you unemployable, then how come all H-1B immigrants are dying for green cards?
Denying that there is a shortage of educated people with strong quantitative skills in the US is delusional. It’s not a secret that Americans do not choose engineering as a career of choice.
@Max said…Denying that there is a shortage of educated people with strong quantitative skills in the US is delusional. It’s not a secret that Americans do not choose engineering as a career of choice.
“Strong qualitative skills” is something that would be open to interpretation.
As for your 2nd statement about career choices, suggest you use your friend Google before posting uninformed hearsay.
Go HERE to look at the number of science and engineering degrees awarded in the USA between 1966-2006.
The percentage of S&E degrees at the bachelors level has decline by 3% over 30 years but the amount awarded has increased by a factor of about 2.5. The number of S&E degrees has held steady at about 1/3 of all degrees over 30 years.
Francois, I watched the video. What it is about is getting an H1 visa or a green card for an employee you already know you want or who already has been working for you. The government makes you justify the visa by claiming and showing that you couldn’t find an American to do the job. Any employer will tell you that it is difficult to screen, interview, hire good people. When they have identified someone good they want them, so they do what they need to do to get the government to make it possible for them to hire the person they want to hire.
I have been involved in this process myself from an employer’s side. We interviewed a lot of kids coming out of business school for example. Well, if the kid we really liked happened to be from outside the US, we weren’t going to say “let’s take our second choice because he’s American”, not unless that second choice was a really really close second. Instead we were going to go the visa route, and it was a pain in the neck. THen once that kid was with us a couple of years, we were not going to say, well, there’s this other American and we read he resume and interviewed him and he seems pretty good so let’s replace the H1 guy now that his visa is up. Workplaces just don’t work that way.
You are making it sound as though the company is going out looking only for workers on visas and trying to avoid hiring Americans, and that is simply not what they are talking about in this video, nor is there any reason for most employers to willingly go into the H1 morass if they can avoid it. THe visa mess is a burden that the employer would happily avoid when possible but will overcome when necessary to hire or retain the person he wants.
9:57, when I was born there were about 200 million people in this country. Now there are 300 million. By your logic, 100 million of them must be unemployed. What you don't understand is that a well-paid worker is not only a supplier of labor but a consumer of it. Educated skilled workers who come here do not have to displace existing workers, they can and do add to both supply and demand for workers.
Jojo, the fact that H1 visas are being acquired fraudulently for dishwashers has little to do with my argument, which is that we should be more open to immigration of highly skilled and educated workers. Frankly I doubt that the story about the dishwasher is true, becuase if an employer is trying to pull a fast one to get low labor costs, the dishwasher position is more likely to be filled by an undocumented worker. No one is going to go to the trouble of getting an H1 for a dishwasher.
Having said that, I'm sure there is fraud, but again that has no bearing on the desirability of letting in the right type of workers.
As to the S&E degrees, half the people with really good grades who get degrees in S&E have ended up on Wall Street. Also, since 1966 if you think about how our economy has changed you can see that what needed to happen was for the percentage of S&E graduates to go way up. Instead it has declined, as you point out. I believe that the decline is even sharper if you look at advanced degrees rather than bachelors.
“You are making it sound as though the company is going out looking only for workers on visas and trying to avoid hiring Americans, and that is simply not what they are talking about in this video”
You can claim they have good and valid reasons for trying to get around the spirit of the law, but you can not claim that they are not “trying to avoid hiring Americans” when they basically stated word for word that they were trying to do exactly that.
They were trying to make sure they did not find a qualified American worker.
Also while I understand your general argument, and won’t deny there is some validity to it. I also think there is no denying that offshoring and abusing h-1b visas are very likely a contributing factor to the pressure keeping American wages down while profits were rising… and not that shocking the real wealth gap between the top 5% and everyone else was widening.
Those profits have to be going somewhere, but they aren’t going into the middle class.
@tompaine said “I have been involved in this process myself from an employer’s side. We interviewed a lot of kids coming out of business school for example. Well, if the kid we really liked happened to be from outside the US, we weren’t going to say “let’s take our second choice because he’s American”, not unless that second choice was a really really close second. Instead we were going to go the visa route, and it was a pain in the neck. Then once that kid was with us a couple of years, we were not going to say, well, there’s this other American and we read he resume and interviewed him and he seems pretty good so let’s replace the H1 guy now that his visa is up. Workplaces just don’t work that way.”
I believe American employers should endeavor to hire American citizens, not foreigners. I further believe that anyone hiring non-USA citizens should incur tax penalties equal to 2X whatever the total compensation of the foreign employee is. Putting American’s out of work destroys the economy, existing family structures and communities. If you can’t find American’s equal to foreigner’s in all aspects, then you aren’t looking hard enough or in the right places.
Tompaine, you are very passionate in your arguments in defense of hiring foreigner’s. Which leads me to suggest that if you think foreigner’s are better educated, better employee’s, have better potential and/or are smarter, then PLEASE, move your company overseas to that/those countries.
Regardless of my opinions, I think that the Democrats will be less open to allowing foreigner’s to take jobs from America’s than Republican’s. And this will be good in the long run. This is something you are going to have to learn to deal with [shrug].
As to your 2nd comment about fraud in the H1-B program – now who am I going to believe? A government study documenting such fraud by the USCIS or your pooh-poohing the results because they don’t concur with your world view? Hmmmm, tough choice there [lol]….
Jojo, have you seen the USCIS report or have you only heard what someone named Moria Herbst says it says? I still doubt its true, but as I said, even if it is true, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the advisability of letting in highly skilled workers.
The fact that I think it is good for our economy to let in skilled workers hardly translates to the belief you attribute to me, that foreigners are better educated. Obviously, some are and some aren’t. Telling me to move my company is just silly. I do have a company, by the way – and I employ 5 American workers, but I can tell you that as a small business person, if I had happened to encounter a legal immigrant who could help my company survive before I found the employees I now have, I’d have been in no position to say no to them while I kept looking, and you’d be foolish to put a tax penalty on me for it because now my company that employs 5 probably would not exist at all.
Telling me to move my company overseas is no stronger a form of argument than name-calling, and it certainly doesn’t add to your persuasive capabilities. If you are such an admirer of the Democrats you ought to heed their leader who urges everyone to disagree without being disagreeable.
@tompaine – Whatever. It doesn’t matter whether you or I believe the USCIS report. I only hope that Congress does and that they strongly limit H1-B’s in the future. And no, I don’t believe that doing so will cause the USA to be in any worse shape competitively or otherwise, than it is right now.
I am no more an “admirer” of Democrats than I am of Republicans. Most politicians are not concerned with people that voted them into office, except as these people can help them get reelected. Politicians are beholden to money in our Plutocracy and the money is controlled by corporations and their lobbyists. I am only hoping that with a Democratic president and Congress, that corporations and their lobbyists will have somewhat less influence than they did under the Republicans.
Perhaps the Democrats will even enforce business regulations on the books that have been ignored by the current administration. And if that causes business owners such as yourself to whine, stamp your feet and threaten to move out of the country, then I say, go ahead [shrug].
More than a little bit late, and not on the tangent the thread has taken, but one important factor in Japanese senior poverty is that their government can’t match up 50 million (sic) retirement accounts with the people who put money into them.
This is a very big thing there, has led (at least in part) to the fall of two prime ministers, and in the last few days the assault and murder of government bigwigs who are or were responsible for pension administration.
The accounts don’t directly map onto people, one account equals one person working at one job, but we’re still talking many millions of people; if I recall correctly, only about 10 million of the accounts have been successfully matched and are paying out.
The US is such a great country because it let millions of immigrants settle there. Over the past decade the US has started to limit legal immigration. There are not a lot of ways to immigrate to the US legally, find a job and become a citizen. The processes take years off someone’s life. If you are a skilled employee, who is going to produce $1 million in profits/work for a company, while being paid $50K/year would you choose to do it from another developed foreign country or from a country that treats you as if you are a criminal, gives you an H1B visa only after a lottery and where jobs for non-citizens are tough to find. The second country is the US. People who choose to immigrate there in the US are ones who are subject to the whim of their employer, whim of changing immigration laws and increasing hatred for foreigners.
If 100 million immigrants were to come to the US tomorrow, they will add 100 million consumers to the economy. They would rent at first and then buy millions of homes/apartments.
If you are an american citizen who thinks that foreigners in US are there to get you, then study current immigration laws and ask yourself if the current laws were in place when your great-grandparents who first immigrated to the US, whether your great-grandparents would have been eligible to come to this country.
As for educating the US population, there are millions of people who live on welfare, who are eligible to get FREE college degrees on bachelors or masters levels from state, federal other scholrships or grants. However these people are LAZY and they choose not to do anything with their lives. They just got lucky by being born in US.
The people who don’t like immigrants should also deport all american citizens who do not fit the same educational parameters that are required from foreigners to get a work authorization.
Anyways I doubt I will change anyone’s mind on immigration. I do know one thing for sure- unless the immigration reform is fixed and it is easier for companies to recruit and retain foreign born individuals, so that these companies can compete better in the global marketplace, then the US will become a 3rd world country sometime by the beginning of the 22nd century..