On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:19:23 -0600, rw
wrote:

notbob wrote:
On 2008-03-24, rw wrote:


....even skilled construction or an array of other things.


In case you haven't noticed, housing prices have increased to the point of
unaffordable insanity, while construction labor pay is roughly the same as
it was 30 yrs ago or even lower. This is not by accident.

I get ****ed off when I hear people say that illegal immigrants "are
only doing the jobs that Americans won't do." The reason that Americans
won't do these jobs is that the cheap labor pool of illegals has
depressed wages.

And if them damned illegals don't stop working for less than it takes to
survive and just dying on any ol' street corner that they happen to
starve on, we're gonna have a whole nuther problem - who we gonna get to
bury all these dead folks? I mean, if "Americans" don't wanna work for
what others do in construction, why the hell do you expect they are
gonna work to bury dead bodies when...HEY! wait a minute! Problem
solved! Ya can just go down to the Home Depot and get some of them
Norweg...well, ****...who is gonna bury all them starved Norwegians?
AHA! Chinks or ragheads or whatever them sumbitches on the customer
service lines are. There's lots them little SOBs running around and
maybe it can be outsourced offshore....

And think about it - give 'em jobs and maybe they won't all want to be
going around blowing up Starbuckses and Gaps and Abercrombie and
F...well, wait...on second thought, maybe that wouldn't be so bad... So
OK, they'll have jobs and ****, and before you know it, they'll be just
like normal Americans, with new cars and overpriced fishing gear and
plasma TVs and ToothRay DVD PodPhones and MP3 iPlayer GPSes and
Frappamochachin...um, well, so scratch the last one 'cause they blew up
all the Starbuckses, but they can still have Ralph Hillfigger
underdrawers showing above their Polo pants, 15 sizes too big, of
course, and put 28 inch wheels and 12 bizillion watt stereos on their
Mitsulexus SUVs and...

This isn't true only in agriculture, but also in
skilled areas like construction.

Spoken like two folks who have no _real_ knowledge of construction labor
costs, wages, or anything else related to the construction industry in
much of the country. I readily admit that I have no working knowledge
of the "industry" such as it might exist in Ketchum, Jr. or the mind of
little puppies who should stay on the porch...OTOH, I do have a fair
amount of knowledge regarding some of the major construction areas in US
and outside, and to claim that a construction laborer, skilled or
unskilled, is paid the same or less as they were in 1978 is simply
ridiculous.

R