Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Re: Rove   [John Podhoretz]

Let me see if I have the logic straight here. If we imported fewer immigrants, we would have to pay those who perform manual labor more money because there would be fewer takers for the jobs. Fine. So when costs at hotels and restaurants rise stratospherically to take account of the increase in labor costs, Mark Krikorian and all his e-mailers will surely be delighted to pay those new prices. For if they don't, you see, then the restaurants and hotels will cut back their staffs, causing Mark and his e-mailers to receive poorer service at still-high prices. Which will lead them to stay home more often. Which will, in turn, lead to many restaurants and hotels closing. Which will eliminate many of those wonderfully high-paying jobs, and cause renewed competition for the others. Which will drive labor costs down, making those jobs less attractive to those middle-class teenagers who, Mark Krikorian believes, desperately need the moral education that can only be derived from manual labor.

Is this a caricature of an economic process? Perhaps. But no worse of one than the notion that all our problems will be solved by ejecting millions of illegals from the workforce and then magically paying people at the lower end of the scale oodles more money. 

02/13 10:06 AMShare