Just read in the newspapers that the H2B Visa situation needs tweaking in order to provide labor for businesses on the Cape & Islands because the wealthy class wants cheaper labor and since the “free market” will not meet their needs, they want “the government” to intervene.
Excuse me but…..WHY?
Massachusetts citizens can drop a few hundred grand – or millions – on a vacation home, but can’t afford to pay the citizens of Massachusetts a wage that is bargained for in fairness between working class citizens and the elite of The Commonwealth? Senator John Kerry (D) is selling his old digs on Nantucket for $25 MILLION and buying a place on the Vineyard….but our working class citizens must compete with “shipped in” labor to serve him and his ilk?
WHY
Why can’t the wealthy and well-to-do simply PAY a fairly and freely negotiated wage with the labor class of the commonwealth so that our wide and widening wealth disparity can be addressed honestly and in fairly?
And Justice for All?
“What ever happened to free markets?”
Free markets tend to do exactly what we don’t like.
An unregulated free market tends to cause wealth to concentrate in a handful of very wealthy participants. The network dynamics of a wealth distribution network are very similar to those of the web. It is literally true that “the rich get richer”.
Think about how connections form from one site to another. A site that already has many attachments/references (google.com, amazon.com, etc) tends to accumulate more new links as new sites join the network. A wealth distribution network behaves the same way.
The already-wealthy are more likely to hear about and have access to new sources of wealth.
The premise that removing regulation will help the situation is exactly backwards. What is needed instead is strong and effective government intervention in and regulation of the economy so that wealth is taken away from the top 0.1%-1.0% and returned to the bottom 99%-99.9%. That wealth will come back to the very wealthy — it is inevitable.
The tax policies that are most effective at controlling this dynamic are exactly the tax policies most opposed by the GOP and, to a much lesser extend, wealthy Democrats.
To wit:
– Very high tax rates on generational transfer taxes (gift/estate) for estates in excess of some floor ($5M?)
– Very high marginal tax rates on capital gains and similar unearned income
A steeply progressive tax rate on regular income is actually not very effective. It tends to make it harder to become wealthy, and has little or no effect on the already wealthy.
While Mr. Kerry is perhaps an appealing target to those who want to further the lie that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, he is not a member of the very rarified club that truly deserves our focus.
Consider for example. the 2016 Forbes 400. Six of them live in MA, as follows:
#29: Abigail Johnson: $13.2 B, Milton, MA
#68 Edward Johnson, III, $7.1 B, Boston MA
#94 Jim Davis, $5.2 B, Newton MA
#102 Robert Kraft, $5.1 B, Brookline MA
#214 Amos Hostetter, Jr, $3.1 B, Boston MA
#374 Phillip Ragon, $1,8 B, Boston, MA
Note that Mr. Kerry is not on the list.
I leave the question of party affiliation of the above as an exercise to the reader.
Massachusetts, like the USA, is an oligarchy and Mr. Kerry is part of that oligarchy. To say he and his ilk are fighting for the working class is a joke.
If he was fighting for the working class, he would tell his neighbors on the Islands that they simply have to pay a sustainable wage for the people that they need labor from and that wage needs to be enough for those people to support a family, live on the Islands or near the ferries (in a comfortable lifestyle) and make enough to support themselves in the off season…….but he does not, and they do not….that simply use “their” government (bought & paid for by them) to import workers they can more easily exploit.
The problem with these temporary summer jobs is that no matter how fair the wage is, the job goes away when the season ends along with the departure of the tourists. Places like Cape Cod and the Islands have very little choice but to import labor. The question is whether they could import it from elsewhere in the US rather than abroad.
I believe that the current H2B rules require employers to advertise in the same state, but not to look elsewhere in the US. Really you would like the Federal government to step in here and find a way to hook up workers from other parts of the country with these jobs, but that is not going to happen anytime soon. Perhaps MA could team up with states that need more Winter workers to provide a common labor recruitment pool.
All the more reason to pay them MORE, not less.
There is the choice to pay a sustaining wage, but that would mean that the people desiring that labor would have to pay more. How than could they afford their million dollar vacation homes, pricey tee fees, and expensive boat slip rentals?
Or there is this: Keep raising wages until someone who lives in Massachusetts says “yes, I’ll take that!”. Isn’t that how “markets” are supposed to operate? If I want a few guys to re-roof my house, do I get to set the wage? Do they? Or do we do so together? With labor on the Cape and Islands (where, by the way the poverty rate is very high), the local laborers get their legs cut out from under by US labor policy.
I am all for having a livable wage for workers, but like it or not, I don’t think the market will bear paying summer labor what it would cost for them to live for an entire year on the Cape and Islands. There aren’t enough jobs for waiters and cooks and cleaners and landscapers in the Winter. Do you expect to have a large base of workers who are unemployed for half the year? Perhaps for the more exclusive locations like Nantucket you could imagine people being rich enough to pay for that, but that would price out everyone else. Not everyone who visits the Cape can afford a million dollar home and a boat.
Where did I say that Mr. Kerry was “fighting for the working class”?
Other than being a prominent Democrat who has retired from public life, why do you choose to attack Mr. Kerry?
Do you oppose the H2B program? Why do you hate immigrants?
The point of my comment is that the “free market” that you apparently long for will make matter worse rather than better.
In this comment, you:
– Attack a prominent Massachusetts Democrat who has retired from public life
– Attack immigrants
– Advocate for a “free market”
Are you SURE you’re not a Republican?
To be fair, I think JTM is trying to tweak free-market advocacy on the part of the 1%. In other words, why do you preach free markets like a religion until it hurts you, and then become a bunch of hypocritical heretics about it? I think what he is saying is that a truly free market in this particular case would raise wages, so why not let it work in favor of workers for once. I agree that attacking Kerry is a cheap shot. I’m sure when he was in the Senate his record was as solid as any Dem’s on these matters.
The premise regarding immigrants is also a cheap shot. I’m not sure what’s “free” about restricting a program that has been in place for years. Is it “free market” for the government to disallow these foreign temporary workers?
The lie in the first paragraph is this: “[The wealthy class wants] the government” to intervene.” It’s a lie because the government already HAS intervened — to reduce the program. The owners of the restaurants, bars, hotels, and so forth on the Cape and the Islands aren’t “The wealthy class” — most of them are struggling middle-class men and women.
Some sources say that the H2B program increases employment (emphasis mine):
It seems to me that this post attempts to glom together several disconnected rants, each of them tenuous at best.
I read this as just another smear on Democrats.
I’m attacking the .1% that Mr. Kerry is part of. Why do you defend him? Oh, never mind, we know. As you say, “The money HAS to come from somewhere…”
In the irony-of-irony departments, I just had to mention this afternoon’s NPR story that Donald Trump’s private clubs in Florida (Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Golf Club) are requesting special H-2B visas for foreign workers:
Trump and the wealthy liberals on the island are both being hypocrites. Trump by pretending to put America First when he puts his own profits ahead of American workers in his own companies. The wealthy liberals by pretending they want fair wages and worker protections but hire foreign workers who lack OSHA, SSI, or labor protections, let alone, living wages.
When millions of able bodied Americans are out of work, it is time we really ask ourselves if immigrants really do the jobs “nobody else wants to do” or if they simply do the jobs lacking the wages and protections that Americans have become accustomed do thanks in large part to the labor movement the Democratic Party has done little to defend. Sure, we aren’t outlawing it like the GOP, but I saw very little activity on the part of elected Democratic officials when MI and WI, Trump states now, passed right to work laws. Had Obama walked the line in Madison or Detroit, as every elected Republican does with the Right to Life March, maybe those states would’ve stayed in our column. Unions turning against Kasich in 2012 are a big reason Obama and Brown won in that state.
It’s time we put Main Street before Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and it starts by ending the sweetheart immigration deals corporations are using to avoid paying American workers their fair share. This is the kind of new triangulation the party has to start doing. Where are immigrants doing well? Nevada where they have strong unions, and it’s the only state where Latinos bothered to vote against Trump in the levels expected. Because the unions registered them. This is all the same fight-it’s not non-white or non-native born vs white and native born. It’s ordinary people vs. connected insiders. The sooner we grasp that, the sooner we can rebuild the Roosevelt coalition and govern for this century too.
John has to remember that immigrants are part of the working class too, Tom and other liberals need to remember that immigration liberalization only advances social and economic justice if wages go up instead of an internal race to the bottom akin to the global race to the bottom our trade policies have unleashed.
Pitting one faction of the working class against another has been the winning playbook of the Republicans, and unknowingly, many Democrats. If one believes in a “middle class”, one believes in a “lower class”……meaning a divided “working class”.
“Pitting one faction of the working class against another has been the winning playbook of the Republicans…” — indeed.
On a thread where you attempt to pit immigrants against whomever it is you think they’re taking the jobs away from.
Whether you admit it or not, you’re advancing a Trumpist argument.
At a Christmas party last year, held by a local Democratic committee, I asked a table of Democrats if the people working at Dunkin, Walmart, Jiffy Lube and so on deserved a sustaining wage, meaning a wage that will provide for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, recreation, and retirement….and not one person said “yes”, They all agreed with one person, an MIT professor, who told me that “those people” need to improve their education and skill sets to advance their economic level.
A lot of “those people” voted for Trump in 2016. It’s up to us if we want them to vote for us in 2018 & 2020 and it won’t happen if WE do not change.
Are you sure you were talking to Dems? Oh, wait, I know DINO Town Committees – never mind!:(
Oh the horrrors — somebody advocated education and skills training.
Funny how as the GOP turns against college, you join them.
If the “wealthy liberals” are doing what you say they are doing then why are we calling them liberals at all? It’s the same confusion I feel when I hear talk of white liberal racism. I want to say wait a second – if you are at all racist you don’t get to call yourself liberal! This is when actions speak louder than words is the appropriate guide, or to put it Biblically – by their fruits ye shall know them.