Lower Your Standard of Living

I’m so fucking pissed.

I was reading a forum¹ and a lady there mentioned that she’s angry that Georgia’s new immigration law separates American-born children from their immigrant parents. I haven’t really considered that part of the immigration equation, but I’m thinking I would take my child back with me were she really young or give her a choice to say if she were old enough to decide for herself. I’m not sure that the fact that these parents put their children in the custody of family friends is so heinous, because the kids are citizens and the parents aren’t. So, I don’t really have an opinion on that right now².

Anyway, the discussion devolved into that same “arrest all illegals” shit and somehow the “illegals” were stealing American heritage from legal citizens.

How the fuck is it possible for them to steal someone’s heritage, by the way? The only thing I can figure is that they’re having children with American citizens and somehow contaminating our gene pool. Still, which heritage? I want the exact heritage they’re stealing, because it varies by area of the country, right? Here the primary heritage is Scots-Irish and German. Are they going to take our traditional Pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes on New Year’s Eve? Bah!

Now, I get fired up thinking of how American companies exploit these folks in their homeland and basically force them to seek better living conditions far, far away. If their lives were livable in their own country, would they risk so much to cross the desert? Really? No. I refuse to believe they would. I get pissed off at my state legislature, but I can tell you that it’s not so bad here that I’d swim across Lake Erie to get into Canada. No fucking way.

Then this dumbass says that Americans expect to much money and we should, basically, lower our standard of living to compete globally. Lower it. Further? It’s so unfair to these companies that they have to pay their employees wages and follow labor laws and make sure their workplace is safe. We are fucking behind the curve here, people. Behind it! There are not enough poor people in this country. And if more people would be voluntarily poor, then our country could compete in a global marketplace. Those motherfuckers expecting decent wages are all holding us back! Don’t you see it? Sure, a guy making $25 an hour is going to spend more money on stuff, buy a home, buy a nice car and be able to afford health insurance. But he’s bringing the rest of us down. It’s that selfish motherfucker’s fault our manufacturing industry moved out of our borders. If he’d have been fine living in a hut, making less than minimum wage³ and not caring about his teeth, then we’d still have jobs. It’s the guy wanting to have a good life causing our economic woes, bitches!

Instead of saying “Well, maybe the poor saps in Guatamala would do better with wages more in line with ours, allowing them to have a decent life, then they wouldn’t want to leave everything they know and come here” this guy thinks we should all just lower our standard of living, which would, I don’t know, make coming here less appealing? Instead of allowing our own people the opportunity to flourish and do better, we should be happy with the part-time minimum wage shit offered by companies like WalMart. And then those dirty fucking South and Central Americans wouldn’t want to come here. Or something.

I’m going to say again: Why should we lower our standard of living so that corporations can make bigger profits? If more people make more money, they’re going to spend more money. They’re going to have pride of workmanship because they get to fucking build stuff. They’re going to be able to own their homes and raise their families and then spread the fucking wealth. Poverty will probably always be here, but I know that the area where I live now did a whole lot better when we had factories and steel mills. We’d congratulate people for getting into Republic Steel or the Hoover Company. Because those were good jobs. Those people didn’t get food stamps or need the medical card or have to go to food banks. They could pay their fucking gas bills every goddamned month. They didn’t have to worry about losing their homes. Back in the day, Hoover vacuums were the shit. People got paid good money to put them together and they took pride in that. Not anymore. Nope. Gotta look at that bottom line so these fucking CEOs can have their fleet of jets.

People want to point at the immigrants as the problem. They don’t want to look at why the immigrants are flocking here. Look at this article about WalMart’s jewelry (5 pages long). Think about what kind of fucking life the people in that factory have compared to the life they could have picking vegetables here. It’s no wonder that they want to come here. Our corporations go there and rape their land, barely pay their people (they’d try to get free labor if they could– believe that) and leave a mess. Then we buy the shit they make. Of course they want to come here. They want to buy the shit they make too. I know I don’t blame them. If I had a life like that I’d do what I could to improve it. In fact, my own heritage originates from people who fled horrible conditions to come here.

There’s an argument that we’re making the lives of those people better by offering them employment opportunities, but I don’t buy that. If we cared about making their lives better, our corporations would be required to pay them decent wages and follow strict labor and environmental laws. They lived decently before we came in and built our factories and shoved our own culture down their throats. If we insist on doing that then we should insist that they be afforded the same labor protections that we enjoy.

The problem isn’t that we’re giving them such a wonderful life (obviously we’re not) but that Americans don’t want to pay the price for people making a livable wage. This argument extends to the crap about “illegals” picking our crops. Georgia’s having a problem with that right now and Americans aren’t stepping up to do the job. They don’t like the work. But even worse is they don’t like the idea of paying a higher price for otherwise cheap food. Instead of eating food in season, as the case historically has been, we want it year round, but we want it cheap. So the huge commercial farms need workers to harvest these crops from hot climates– workers who are grateful for less than minimum wage and who won’t bitch about unfair treatment. My side argues for immigrants using the argument that we’re going to have to pay more for food. Why the fuck shouldn’t we? If we paid fair wages to everyone we exploit– here and abroad — shit would get extremely expensive but more people would be able to afford it. And companies would be less likely to look elsewhere to build their manufacturing facilities. We’d all benefit from fair treatment of the immigrants before they decide to leave their homes.

I get very frustrated that people think that those suffering are the ones who should be punished. When Park Farms ships in workers, they get a fine, but other than that they’re free from prosecution. Some dude complains about his treatment in that chicken plant gets called a criminal. The root cause of the immigration “problem” isn’t even examined because corporations enjoy special benefits for…job creation?

Just imagine if these folks didn’t have a reason to leave their homes. Would they bother you then? Imagine if their standard of living was on par with ours. They’d visit here and then go home. Home, to their families and their own way of life. They leave home for a reason and that reason is our own fucking greed and apathy.

So endeth the rant.

Updated:
I added the link to the article about the effect of the Georgia immigration law. I’d like to point out that the point of that article, to me, isn’t that the current workers are probationers. It’s that these jobs are available and in such an economy, the government has to encourage “legals” to take them. Consider that and then consider the pay.

Also, we’ve already been forced to lower our standard of living in this country. I know 4 families who have had their gas turned off because the rates are so high and their incomes are so low. Our environmental standards are going to have to get lower too, thanks to the need of these same gas companies. They’re raising their rates for us while their polluting our ground water. Makes perfect economic sense.

1. Sorry, folks, it’s private, so it makes no sense to link to it. [↩]
2. I’m all over the place because I really do think there could be some benefit in these children going to their parents’ homeland and coming back here later as citizens, but I don’t know for sure. [↩]
3. Which is wrong! Holding us down! [↩]

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