Mike Row: wrote:“For every five tradespeople that retire this year, two replace them.”
“It’s been that way for 12 years.”
“I don’t need to be a mathematician, this is bad arithmetic.”
“7.2 million able-bodied men today, in their prime working years, are not only unemployed … they’re not even looking.”
“What are they doing?”
“2,000 hours a year, on average, on screens.”
“I got a call from a company called BlueForge Alliance … in charge of something called the maritime industrial base.”
“The maritime industrial base consists of 15,000 individual companies, all of whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear-powered submarines to the US Navy—three a year, two Virginia-class, one Columbia.”
“BlueForge Alliance calls me and they say, we need to hire some tradespeople, and we were wondering if you and your foundation could help.”
“I said, I’ll try, as you probably learned, it’s pretty skinny out there … how many do you need?”
“They said 100,000.”
“100,000 tradespeople for one industry that most people don’t even think about.”
“They said, we’ve looked everywhere … do you know where they are?”
“I said, yeah I do, they’re in the eighth grade.”
“That’s 100,000 building submarines. There’s 80,000 in the automotive industry alone for technicians. Right now … 80,000 openings.”
“You start to go down the list and you begin to realize our workforce is wildly out of balance.”
Corporations like to say that they can't find workers. Can't find workers, or can't find anyone willing to work for what they're paying? Because this is the excuse they use to justify using visa workers (who work for less & are less likely to object to workpalce violations/unfair treatment).
“Left Seater” wrote:So charges are around the corner?
Diego in Seattle wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 2:44 pm
Corporations like to say that they can't find workers. Can't find workers, or can't find anyone willing to work for what they're paying? Because this is the excuse they use to justify using visa workers (who work for less & are less likely to object to workpalce violations/unfair treatment).
I’m trying to parse what you blithered and need a follow up response…
If I get your take, you are asserting that corporations are to blame because they pay too little and want to hire foreign workers who will accept lower than fair market pay and dangerous/unfair work conditions. Right?
Then you should be in favor of tight border security and reduced amounts of work visas. However, you have bitched vociferously here about any efforts to tack in that direction.
How do you square your first take with your many other takes? Or are you just a progtard windup toy that spews whatever your masters tell you to say without thinking about how stupid it makes you look?
And how many foreign workers on visas are you aware of that have trade skills? Where are they coming from?
Mike Row: wrote:“For every five tradespeople that retire this year, two replace them.”
“It’s been that way for 12 years.”
“I don’t need to be a mathematician, this is bad arithmetic.”
“7.2 million able-bodied men today, in their prime working years, are not only unemployed … they’re not even looking.”
“What are they doing?”
“2,000 hours a year, on average, on screens.”
“I got a call from a company called BlueForge Alliance … in charge of something called the maritime industrial base.”
“The maritime industrial base consists of 15,000 individual companies, all of whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear-powered submarines to the US Navy—three a year, two Virginia-class, one Columbia.”
“BlueForge Alliance calls me and they say, we need to hire some tradespeople, and we were wondering if you and your foundation could help.”
“I said, I’ll try, as you probably learned, it’s pretty skinny out there … how many do you need?”
“They said 100,000.”
“100,000 tradespeople for one industry that most people don’t even think about.”
“They said, we’ve looked everywhere … do you know where they are?”
“I said, yeah I do, they’re in the eighth grade.”
“That’s 100,000 building submarines. There’s 80,000 in the automotive industry alone for technicians. Right now … 80,000 openings.”
“You start to go down the list and you begin to realize our workforce is wildly out of balance.”
This is absolutely spot on.
Tradesmen are the new affluent class. Some bring home more cheddar than heart surgeons.
And they aren't infected with all this DEI bullshit.
If you are a solid electrician or plumber, you'll get work. Purely merit and skills-based, as it should be.
Diego in Seattle wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 2:44 pm
Corporations like to say that they can't find workers. Can't find workers, or can't find anyone willing to work for what they're paying? Because this is the excuse they use to justify using visa workers (who work for less & are less likely to object to workpalce violations/unfair treatment).
I’m trying to parse what you blithered and need a follow up response…
If I get your take, you are asserting that corporations are to blame because they pay too little and want to hire foreign workers who will accept lower than fair market pay and dangerous/unfair work conditions. Right?
Then you should be in favor of tight border security and reduced amounts of work visas. However, you have bitched vociferously here about any efforts to tack in that direction.
How do you square your first take with your many other takes? Or are you just a progtard windup toy that spews whatever your masters tell you to say without thinking about how stupid it makes you look?
And how many foreign workers on visas are you aware of that have trade skills? Where are they coming from?
I don't know if I've advocated for reducing the # of work visas on here before but I'm in favor of it. Two or three decades ago Qualcomm was whining that they couldn't find enough people to work for them, especially engineers. So the local fish wrap interviewed several American workers who were unemployed wireless phone engineers who said that they were ready to work. But go ahead & swallow the loads from your corporate overlords.
As far as immigration, I've long advocated (I'm sure I have said something in this sordid joint somewhere along the line that what I'm in favor of is much greater workplace enforcement. Dry up the job market for illegal immigrants & you'll see the flow at border dry up (excepting the Tijuana River). But Republicans don't want that because the farmers who vote for them don't want their cheap labor to go away (although Republicans use the illegal immigrants for labor themselves as well. See the Devin Nunes article in Esquire Magazine.
And a question for you...
Since you want to advocate for there to be no way to enter the US w/o legal status why don't you want anyone to be able to apply for asylum here?
“Left Seater” wrote:So charges are around the corner?
Hate to break it to you, Slappy in Seattle, but I have no corporate overlords. I am self-employed. Most of my work comes from other lawyers who do not handle the type of work I do. Some of their clients are corporations, for sure. And I do have several corporate clients, a few of which are large and you would recognize. But most are small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Qualcomm's engineers are not the type of skilled tradesmen Mike Rowe is talking about. But you knew that and decided to post that non-responsive drivel anyway. The visa problem is mostly for software engineers and other tech engineers. Foreign techies are willing to work cheaper than home grown engineers and both parties have handed out visas to them like they are candy.
I'm all for increased workplace enforcement. If you knowingly or recklessly hire a person without U.S. citizenship or work authorization, you should get your ass fined very substantially. Dry that up, and some of the illegal immigration problem would wind down. But not the majority of it. Many of the illegals that come here go straight to the cities (not to the fields or the meat processing plants or the factories etc.) and get on public assistance. As long as that incentive exists, nothing will change appreciably.
I would really love to answer your question. But it is incoherent. I'll do my best.
I do advocate for there to be no way to enter the U.S. without legal status. And if you do advocate for that, then you have to advocate for asylum seekers to do so from their home countries. You can't let them in, hand them a court date 7 years from now, and then issue a removal order that they will not receive or give two shits about when they do not appear for their hearing, 90% of which they lose on the merits. What is wrong with making people who believe they are permitted to enter the country ahead of all other applicants waiting in line on the basis of an asylum claim remain in their home country until their claim can be fully adjudicated?
88BuckeyeGrad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 9:09 pm
What is wrong with making people who believe they are permitted to enter the country ahead of all other applicants waiting in line on the basis of an asylum claim remain in their home country until their claim can be fully adjudicated?
Because for some of them, remaining in their home country is a death sentence. Such as this Honduran family that I know. I wish we had 300 million citizens like them, wonderful and hard working people. But they had to escape their country to escape the gangs, and if they return, they will be killed.
88BuckeyeGrad wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 9:09 pm
What is wrong with making people who believe they are permitted to enter the country ahead of all other applicants waiting in line on the basis of an asylum claim remain in their home country until their claim can be fully adjudicated?
Because for some of them, remaining in their home country is a death sentence. Such as this Honduran family that I know. I wish we had 300 million citizens like them, wonderful and hard working people. But they had to escape their country to escape the gangs, and if they return, they will be killed.
If your assertions are true, then it should have been a slam dunk for them to obtain a favorable asylum ruling, even if they were in Honduras. They didn’t need to physically be here to press their claim.
You are substituting sympathy for judgment. What if the floodgates you open to save a Honduran family let in violent MS-13 gang members and others who then proceed to kill Americans. Got any sympathy for them?
I do not claim to have all the answers, nor am I an expert on immigration policy or procedure. I have never handled an immigration case.
But I do know this family. They probably are the exception rather than the rule. Antonio was walking home with a coworker on pay day. Gang members came up to them, knowing it was pay day, demanded their money. Antonio's coworker said no. Gang shot him on the spot, right next to Antonio. Antonio gave him his money. This was just the last event like this, he had been robbed several times before. So the next day he left. It took months for him to reach the United States. I don't know his exact legal status, but he's not fully legal but he's definitely trying. I connected him with some immigration attorneys who do know what they're doing, and again he's trying to become fully legal. He has a job, pays taxes, takes care of his family, and he's a great guy.
We need to welcome the Antonios, and reserve the deportations for MS-13 gang members and other serious criminals.
I suspect that the vast majority of people who enter our country illegally are good people. But that cannot be permitted, or even a criteria. We have legal immigration pathways. There are options aside from breaking our laws. You should never condone illegal conduct because you find the criminal to be wonderful.
You are a great person. How do you think your personal wonderfulness would play out in Swiss immigration court? What about Canada? You’d get tossed like last week’s garbage.
Mike Rowe is just your typical ultra right-wing fascist who believes in trickle down economics and has a hate/jealousy complex with the college degree, especially that of the liberal arts and women’s studies vernacular. He has no empathy for the growing gender pay gap in this country, and has no viable solutions to that problem. He's a more sexist and misogynistic version of Tim Allen.
The fact that he preaches the Henry Hazlitt school of economics tells you everything you need to know. He’s another Nazi of the Third/Fourth Reich. Speaking of Reich, Robert Reich, the brilliant and logically sound economic genius of our time would absolutely paste a chump like Rowe in any reasonable debate. Just like economics geniuses Diego and Screwy paste fools in here, with non-emotional logic and foolproof reasoning.
“My dentist, that’s another beauty, my dentist, you kiddin’ me. It cost me five thousand dollars to have all new teeth put in. Now he tells me I need braces!” —Rodney Dangerfield
While I’m on the topic, Rowe and his hillbilly racist followers also have ZERO solution to a new phenomenon and soon to be epidemic in this country and Europe:
The increasing and destructive transgender pay gap.
In other words, there is a growing salary disparity between cis males and transwomen and it is based solely on discriminatory laws on the books and unchecked sexist hiring behaviors in the corporate world. It has reared its ugly head in exactly the same manner as the “legacy” gender pay gap, as argued beautifully in the 1970s by Harriet Pilpil and other notable feminist activists of that time.
An ongoing use case study on the hiring practices at Starbucks on tech and engineering specific college campuses will bring light to this disgusting and inhumane situation.
“My dentist, that’s another beauty, my dentist, you kiddin’ me. It cost me five thousand dollars to have all new teeth put in. Now he tells me I need braces!” —Rodney Dangerfield
L45B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 03, 2025 3:15 pm
While I’m on the topic, Rowe and his hillbilly racist followers also have ZERO solution to a new phenomenon and soon to be epidemic in this country and Europe:
The increasing and destructive transgender pay gap.
In other words, there is a growing salary disparity between cis males and transwomen and it is based solely on discriminatory laws on the books and unchecked sexist hiring behaviors in the corporate world. It has reared its ugly head in exactly the same manner as the “legacy” gender pay gap, as argued beautifully in the 1970s by Harriet Pilpil and other notable feminist activists of that time.
An ongoing use case study on the hiring practices at Starbucks on tech and engineering specific college campuses will bring light to this disgusting and inhumane situation.
Why do you think I’m out in the meatpacking district on weekends burning Teslas peacefully protesting??
70% of the electorate is morally yet peacefully outraged and are joining these peaceful protests as an act of solidarity. We will also be burning down some solar and wind farms in Rhode Island next month, given the capitalistic and thus, fascist, elements at play.
“My dentist, that’s another beauty, my dentist, you kiddin’ me. It cost me five thousand dollars to have all new teeth put in. Now he tells me I need braces!” —Rodney Dangerfield
L45B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 03, 2025 3:52 pm
You think I don’t know that Sam???!!!
Why do you think I’m out in the meatpacking district on weekends burning Teslas peacefully protesting??
70% of the electorate is morally yet peacefully outraged and are joining these peaceful protests as an act of solidarity. We will also be burning down some solar and wind farms in Rhode Island next month, given the capitalistic and thus, fascist, elements at play.
Text me a date and time on the wind farm attack. I’ll try to join you.
