07/10/2011
In Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible [June 9, 2011], The New York Times' Catherine Rampell (email her) asks:
What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?
The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up.
But unless you're one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem. The budget deficit, not jobs, has been dominating the conversation in Washington.
Rampell offers a number of weak theories, but doesn’t notice that she’s stumbled on the answer:
"There’s an illusion that grass-roots activity just begins spontaneously, that people get mad and suddenly say, 'I’m not going to take it anymore!' " says Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University. "But that’s not how it happens.
Intellectuals used to play a big role in organizing labor. In the 1930s, Communists and socialists were a major force. Later, labor unions stepped in.
VDARE.com’s explanation: The plain fact is that a significant section of American intellectuals (including the semi-skilled sort who now staff labor unions) have simply lost interest in the working class, or more precisely in the working class as a path to power and ethnic dominance. Their current plan: elect a new people through non-traditional immigration.
This in turn is why, although tax cuts and increased spending have both failed to reduce unemployment and an immigration moratorium is clearly the only option, it cannot be mentioned, even apparently by Michele Bachmann, in public discourse — and why labor unions have totally failed to follow Samuel Gompers' example during the last great wave and campaign for immigration reduction to protect their (American) members' wages and jobs.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.