This is another cliché of protectionism. I keep adding more, here.
The logic of economics applies across borders: county, state, and national. Deny this, and you deny economics.
Conservatives deny economics. They promote tariffs and import quotas across national borders, but not state and county borders.
Ludwig von Mises had a word for this: polylogism. This means multiple systems of logic.
Conservatives usually oppose trade union restrictions on hiring. They understand vaguely that the politicians have gotten into the
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act, and they have created legal restrictions on employers who wish to hire workers who are not members of a trade union. A few conservatives may even understand that restrictions on hiring non-union members discriminates against non-union members. The law forces non-union members to seek employment from non-unionized businesses, which pay lower wages.
A very few conservatives may recognize that this form of labor discrimination is a subsidy to non-unionized businesses, which can hire non-union workers at below-market (government-protected market) wages. Usually, only libertarians are willing and able to follow the logic of unionized labor this far.
What we find, over and over, is that conservatives who reject the idea of union discrimination in the labor markets favor tariffs, import quotas, and laws against employing people who are not American citizens or green-card holders. In other words, as soon as they see an invisible line where a customs gate is located, they adopt exactly the same economic logic that is used by union members to justify discrimination that subsidizes them. This is polylogism.
It works both ways. There are liberals who favor free trade, but they also favor government-protected labor unions. The most famous liberal in this regard was Lyndon Johnson. But Teddy Kennedy was right up there. Jack Kennedy was not far behind. You may have heard of the Kennedy Round of GATT negotiations. GATT was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Wikipedia reports:
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a multilateral agreement regulating international trade. According to its preamble, its purpose was the “substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis.” It was negotiated during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment and was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization (ITO). GATT was signed in 1947, took effect in 1948, and lasted until 1994; it was replaced by the World Trade Organization in 1995.
What was the Kennedy Round? Another Wikipedia entry says:
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The Kennedy Round was the sixth session of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) trade negotiations held between 1964 and 1967 in Geneva, Switzerland. Congressional passage of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act in 1962 authorized the White House to conduct mutual tariff negotiations, ultimately leading to the Kennedy Round. Participation greatly increased over previous rounds. Sixty-six nations, representing 80% of world trade, attended the official opening on May 4, 1964, at the Palais des Nations. Despite several disagreements over details, the director general announced the round’s success on May 15, 1967, and the final agreement was signed on June 30, 1967–the very last day permitted under the Trade Expansion Act. The round was named after U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated six months before the opening negotiations.
IMMIGRANT WORKERS AND LABOR UNIONS
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Teddy Kennedy was the ramrod in the Senate for the Immigration Act of 1965. Lyndon Johnson signed it in 1968. This pried open borders, and low-wage workers by the millions streamed through. These workers were a threat to the labor union movement. Cesar Chavez organized a labor union in 1962 to keep non-union workers from lowering wages and working conditions in the fields. His first major strike was in 1965. The following Wikipedia article mentions the split in the Kennedy family.
When Filipino American farm workers initiated the Delano grape strike on September 8, 1965, to protest for higher wages, Chavez eagerly supported them. Six months later, Chavez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape pickers on the historic farmworkers march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento for similar goals. The UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted five years and attracted national attention. In March 1966, the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare’s Subcommittee on Migratory Labor held hearings in California on the strike. During the hearings, subcommittee member Robert F. Kennedy expressed his support for the striking workers.
The signing into law of the new immigration law undermined the plans of Chavez.
Chavez was beloved by liberals in the late 1960’s. But it was Teddy Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who engineered the massive influx of competing immigrant workers in the fields. Chavez’s United Farm Workers, whenever successful, forced non-union workers into the fields of non-unionized growers at lower wages. Liberal Democrats never mention this. They are polylogists, and the two related facts bother them.
Conservatives are happy to see legal union-busting. But they are unhappy to see free trade and immigrant workers extend their influence. They do not want to admit that free trade and immigrant workers were twin battering rams that smashed the union movement in the United States. They are polylogists. The two related facts bother them. They prefer to ignore the relationship
STEALING AMERICANS’ JOBS
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I received a brief note from a man named Wayne.
I used to hire wetbacks in Texas and Florida when I needed workers on my homes I was remodeling until my son who was in roofing had no jobs. Wetbacks from Texas came to Florida and stole all the roofing jobs so my son had no work. If you can pay $5 an hour for a Mojado why pay $10 for an American to do the same work. The fact they are illegal and pay no taxes or SS did not bother me until my son was starving with a kid. Now I will not allow anyone to bring a worker on my property unless he is an American. As a semi-libertarian I had to say no to cheaper costs to support my fellow Americans who need jobs. If the factories were brought back to the US then less people would be on welfare and food stamps. The CEOs don’t care about us but I do now.
At this assessment of immigrant workers who somehow steal American jobs is identical to the outlook of labor union members, who argue exactly the same thing with respect to any worker who is not a labor union member. Such workers are dismissed as “scabs.”
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Such workers are regarded as union-busting workers. Such workers are regarded as scum. In the past, union violence has been used to stop such workers.
In what way does being born in America entitle anyone to a job? In what way does joining a labor union entitle anyone to a job? In what way is a job offer from an employer anything except a temporary arrangement, which may be governed by a contract? Union members believe that they can strike a business, and legally keep out nonunion members from replacing them. This means that union members believe that they have a property right in their jobs. Under some conditions, the National Labor Relations Board agrees with them. Conservatives have always understood that the claim is preposterous, and yet conservatives make exactly the same claim with respect to jobs offered by any employer inside the geographical boundaries of the United States of America. The invisible line of a national border is believed by conservatives to confer upon all Americans exactly the same kind of protected legal status that union members claim they possess, merely because they got here first. Union members argue that they got the job at first, and now nobody who is not a union member will be allowed to offer to work for less money.
The economic logic of the two positions is identical. But conservatives don’t like to admit this, because they are polylogists. They have
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special interests. They want their jobs protected by the federal government. They want the jobs of their children protected by the federal government. In exactly the same way that labor union members (1) want their jobs protected by the federal government, and (2) want their children to become union members, so that their jobs will be protected, so do conservatives want a property right established to jobs in general inside the national borders of the United States.
If someone has been given a $20 gold piece by his grandfather, he has a property right in that $20 gold piece. The presumption is that his grandfather did not steal it. The property right is a right of ownership that can be legally transferred.
There are some rights that are not legally transferable. Men do not have the legal right to sell their wives into prostitution, or give their lives away. In Great Britain for over 200 years, there were public auctions held where men auctioned off their wives. These were not legal, but they were customary, and the civil government looked the other way. Similarly, you are not allowed to sell your church membership to the highest bidder. You are not allowed to sell your right to vote to the highest bidder. These are not commercial rights of property.
The legal right to property is conceptually, morally, and judicially different from the legal right to vote in a church election or an election of civil government. The idea of property is that it can legally be exchanged. That’s what a property right is. Men do not have legal property rights to their wives.
Therefore, the argument against immigrants’ right to vote is different from the argument against immigrants’ right to bid for employment. They are conceptually different, because the right to vote is a legal right that is inherent to citizenship, and citizenship cannot be sold. It is therefore not an aspect of the economics of property rights.
There is no more right to a job by union members than there is a right to a job by Americans. The idea of a job is that it is part of a property right, and either party has the legal right to stop cooperating with the other party. Either party to the transaction has a right to bargain with others who are willing to offer the same services. The very idea of property rights demands the right to make a bid.
Wayne and millions of conservatives just like him, who believe that simply being American entitles a worker to an exclusive right to bid on a job, do not understand the nature of property rights. They have no appreciation of the meaning of a property right, namely, the legal right to make a bid. It is the right to sell something. It is the right to buy something. It is the right to give away something. It is the right to have a bonfire, and burn the thing in full public view.
Conservatives do not believe this. They do not believe that labor union members have a legitimate right to the jobs which they presently hold, but they do believe that Americans in general, or green card holders in general, have a legal right to send in a government agent and forbid an employer to bargain with a worker who is neither an American citizen or a green card holder.
The conservative may shout: “It’s the law!” Yes, it is, and so is the Wagner Act, which set up the National Labor Relations Board, which has granted to labor union members exactly the same kind of right of exclusive bargaining, and exactly the same right of the government to send out an agent to forbid an employer to negotiate with a nonunion member.
CONCLUSION
No one has a right to a job apart from a legal contract between him and his employer. That is because the employer has a property right, namely, the right to entertain a competing bid. To deny that an employer has this right is to undermine the very concept of property rights. But conservatives who understand this principle with respect to trade union membership categorically reject this principle when it is applied to immigrant workers. The conservative says that these job-applicants must be government-licensed workers. The union member says exactly the same thing regarding government-licensed union members. the conservative rejects this line of reasoning when it is presented by a labor union economist, but he accepts it when it is provided by an economist who argues that the principle of nationalism overrides economic logic and property rights.
People hold their economic positions very often in terms of personal self-interest. A labor union member holds his view regarding his intrinsic right to a job which he already possesses, and a conservative nationalist holds his view regarding the intrinsic right to a job that is possessed by American workers in general. In both cases, the argument is motivated by economic self-interest. People hold competing views of economic reasoning in terms of this question: “Which possession better butters my bread?”
To maximize the buttering of bread over the long run, enforce property rights. A crucial property right is the right to make an offer. It is the right to bid. There is no right to work. There is no right to a job. There is only a right to make a bid, which is matched on the other side of the transaction by the right to accept the bid or reject it.
Illegal immigrants cannot steal jobs from Americans if Americans do not have a legal right to those jobs. If the right is simply granted by Congress, and not granted in terms of moral principle, then the law is an unjust law. The law is simply a grant of privilege to a special-interest group. It is not a good economic policy to set forth your economic principles when the truth or falsity of those principles is based on special-interest legislation.
There are at least 10 million of them. There may be 20 million.
It costs around $23,000 to deport one illegal alien. These are the easy cases. The courts could not handle 10 million deportations, let alone 20 million. The cost of deporting 10 million of them would be $230 billion. But it would actually be a lot more. The law of decreasing returns would raise the price far above $23,000 per deportation.
How would conservatives who say they want to balance the federal budget pay for this while balancing the budget?
All talk about excluding all illegal aliens from the labor force is fantasy talk. It cannot be done. Period.
Conservatives abandon economic logic and also the doctrine of property rights in order to defend a policy that no one in Washington will ever enforce, and which conservatives are not willing to tax themselves in order to pay for.
It is all for show. “Well, we have a right to exclude offers.” Really? Let’s see you enforce this so-called right to exclude.
If a law cannot be enforced, it isn’t a law. It’s a symbol. It’s a token.
The sons and daughter of the illegals who are born here are citizens. You cannot close the door on them. It is just a matter of time. They will vote.
It’s over. The free market won. The right to bid and accept bids is here to stay.
They are here to stay.
In short, give it a rest.
Reprinted with permission from Gary North.
