Signs from Trump rally’s and from protests of Trump’s visit to Carrier Factory; CREDIT: Diana Ofosu.
Oh, all that talk of jobs. Of making America ‘great’. The supposed reason so many people voted for the Tiny Tyrant. It’s a right pity it was only talk, one huge lump of bullshit, which too many people were eager to eat. Think Progress has an in-depth look at the job bleed out. Recommended reading.
Jobs are still leaving the country
This is the very kind of job loss Trump repeatedly promised—on the campaign trail and from the Oval Office—would come to a full stop under his watch. “We’re just shipping company after company after company is leaving the country and leaving jobs behind. And I’m going to get it stopped,” he promised in early 2016.
“Believe me. Nobody’s leaving,” he said later in the year.
Not only would he stop the losses, he claimed, but he pledged to act immediately. “We are going to stop it day one,” he said. “A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America… Promise.”
But so far, that promise is going unfulfilled. Haines and Vanacker aren’t the only ones waiting to see if their president will intervene to save their jobs.
Since Trump was sworn in on January 20, at least 11,934 American jobs have either been moved abroad or are in the process of leaving the country, according to Department of Labor data analyzed by Think Progress.
The 11,934 figure is gleaned from the DOL’s Trade Adjustment Assistance program and offers the best, most accurate baseline, though the actual number is almost certainly much higher. There is no accurate, complete dataset that tracks how many Americans are losing their jobs because they get shifted overseas. “Nobody has really been able to count the number of workers that have been affected by offshoring,” said Dan Marschall, director of the Working for America Institute at the AFL-CIO.
The lost jobs span geography and industry. Workers have been laid off from Maine to Florida, from Arizona to Wisconsin. While plenty are in industrial manufacturing, a range of other industries are represented: medicine, technology, even finance.
Think Progress has the full story, recommended reading.
And, as us reasonable people pointed out, time and time again, all those jobs good ol’ Americans refuse to do? They aren’t getting done.
Yeah, that last bit? That is extremely worrying. Alabama and Georgia tried this: https://mic.com/articles/8272/alabama-illegal-immigrant-crackdown-destroys-farm-business#.CWMJ7lvXl and it was not a pretty sight. We’ve already lost millions of dollars worth of produce… now farmers are planting less, because they know they might not get anyone to pick the crop when it’s ripe.
That will affect food prices. Rich assholes will go abroad and eat cake, I guess, but the rest of us will be facing some tough times.
The only jobs he’s “created” so far are grueling harvest jobs that don’t pay well.
Yeah, at least when the government takes our money, you know they’re reasonably likely to spend it on people working in this country. Whereas if you give the money to rich people, they’re just as likely to build a factory overseas, or maybe just buy a chateau in France.
Why can’t white people pick crops? I thought white Americans who hate immigrants also love to tell us that Americans (read white people) are hard-working, down to earth, bootstrap pullers who love to get down and dirty to get the job done and then proudly look at the results of their day’s hard work while enjoying an ice cold beer.
From the article in kestrel’s post:
Yes, we should do that but at the same time we should be asking why American born citizens aren’t working on farms. What’s going on?
Saad:
Lousy pay for backbreaking work. I’ve picked crops, and no joke, it is seriously hard, tedious, back breaking labor. White Americans, for the most part, think they’re better than picking crops, and even if they considered doing it, they wouldn’t do it for the wage immigrants get, they’d demand 25 bucks an hour, which would bankrupt just about every farm out there.
Also, it’s seasonal work, which most white Americans won’t do, either. They certainly wouldn’t consider doing what many migrants do, which is go where the work is.
They said that even offering $15.00 to $20.00 an hour did not work to lure in locals. (Not to mention, most of the farmers could not afford it anyway, but I guess they were desperate.) They also tried making prisoners do it. They found out the prisoners could literally not make it through the day. Who knew? You have to be physically active and in really good shape to do that job. Sitting in prison is not adequate, apparently.
As an American born citizen who works on a farm, I can assure you most people would not work this hard for this little money. Especially when there are other options. I think the migrant workers (who need to be treated and paid **way** better) haven’t got those types of options, and many of them did grow up on farms working that hard, so they have the edge on a lot of Americans.
Trump is effectively shooting us in the foot with his stupid and useless border wall and deportation. At least, he’s shooting America in the foot if he does not first destroy it utterly in some other horrific way.
One sad prediction about Trump regime made on this blog that is comming true. I wonder how many are going to follow.