child care

America Needs Immigrants

America Needs Immigrants

                        Robert A. Levine

If America is going to continue to be an economic colossus, we need more workers. The “great resignation,” Covid retirements and low birth rates have all contributed to a need to fill open jobs. That can only be accomplished by increasing immigration. Throughout American history, immigrants have always played a large role in America's workforce.

Population growth has been declining in America as birth rates have become lower, a trend that will only be exacerbated in the future. In the 1970s and 1980s, population growth of people in their prime working years-25-54, in the United States was over 2 percent, fostered by both elevated birth rates and immigration. Currently, population growth in these prime working years has slipped to 0.2 percent. With birth rates continuing to decrease and immigration being restricted, a further dearth of prime age workers can be expected in the future. Recent surveys have noted that over 20 percent of young women want to remain childless and never have children.

Even in this age of automation and increased use of robotics, our economy cannot continue to operate efficiently and grow without the availability of more workers. This includes both unskilled laborers and highly skilled and educated high tech workers. The most recent unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, an extremely low level. And job openings are going unfilled as there are not enough workers to take these positions.

It is true that the pandemic of Covid 19 has played a role in the increased number of job openings, with large numbers of workers resigning from their jobs, looking for higher pay, better working conditions, or just retiring. But an insufficient number of workers are returning to work and there are not enough men and women stepping into the work force to replace them. And this will only get worse given the nation’s low birth rate. It is not only the United States that is having lower birth rates in recent years. This trend has been present in virtually every advanced nation.

Reasons for lower birth rates include more women who are career oriented and people marrying at later ages. In addition, America does not provide enough affordable child day care options for mothers who want to work and does not sufficiently subsidize the cost of raising children. This includes the costs of education, particularly for parents who expect their children to pursue higher education.

While it is possible that the nation’s birth rate could increase if government provided a sufficient supporting role for parents and children, those who were born in the next few years would not be ready to enter the work force for at least two decades. We need workers now. The only way to immediately augment the number of workers would be through allowing more legal immigration.

Lower skilled workers are needed for agricultural jobs, butchering and meat packing work, construction jobs, positions in the hospitality industry which is now growing again, truck driving and so forth. High-tech workers are also required. And workers in health care are in great demand. This includes physicians, nurses, and health aides. Shortages of primary care physicians and nurses are particularly acute in many areas of the country.

It should be remembered that high-tech immigrants are responsible for large numbers of America’s patents as well as producing start-up companies. The latter provide jobs for many American workers and help the growth of our economy.

Though there are white nationalists who would like to restrict the number of non-white immigrants and worry about changing demographics, a strong economy is what makes America exceptional and allows it to play an important role on the international stage. In addition to raising immigration quotas, the government should also do whatever is possible to increase domestic birth rates by putting better child care and financial subsidies in place.

www.robertlevinebooks.com

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Pro-Life Hypocrisy

Pro-Life Hypocrisy

            Robert A. Levine

There seems to be a pattern of beliefs associated with those who are so-called pro-lifers. They are against abortion as they believe the procedure takes a life even if it is done prior to the fetus’ viability. Yet once a child is born they do not mind if it is killed by a crazed gunman or someone seeking publicity or attention by killing children. The same people who are pro-life are also pro-guns and want gun rights in this country to be expanded even though gun deaths in America are higher than in any other nation in the world. For the most part, those who are vehemently against abortion are vehemently pro-guns.

They do not see any reason why the possession of assault weapons by civilians should be curtailed, even though these weapons were designed primarily for maximal killing on the battlefield. Their mantra has been “guns don’t kill, people do.” Of course, if people did not have guns, they couldn’t use them to kill innocents. The pro-life adherents generally don’t want enhanced background checks for people buying guns, age limits on the purchasing of guns, or licensing of guns. They see no reason why laws should prohibit the carrying of guns in public and it appears as if the conservative Supreme Court may go along with this idea.

Why should America be such an outlier among all the developed nations in the world, with more guns than people and more gun deaths and mass killings than all the European nations and Japan combined? Countries that are most similar to America like Australia and Canada have strict gun regulations. Common sense and rationality should show Americans that our gun laws need to be more restrictive. And the majority of Americans and perhaps even gun owners agree with this. But not the most ardent pro-lifers.

But aside from guns, pro-lifers in general do not want to help families properly care for children after they are born. They do not want to increase the availability of health care for poor families, including post-partum care for mothers and babies. They do not want federally subsidized day care to allow mothers to work. They are against food assistance for poor families. They are against spending more money on education, both K-12 and college. In fact, they are usually against any increased social spending by the federal or state governments, as increased spending can lead to increased taxes.

These interconnected ideas- pro-life, pro gun, decreased social spending, decreased taxes- are all part of the conservative agenda in America. Conservatives claim to favor individual rights over government regulation, but make an exception for pregnant women. As far as women who become pregnant and do not want the child for various reasons, the conservatives expect state and federal governments and the courts to force women to carry their pregnancies to term. They refuse to acknowledge the contradiction between their views regarding individual rights and government laws and regulations where women’s bodies are concerned. If one was truly pro-life, gun control and government assistance for poor children would be part of conservative policy prescriptions. Life does not begin and end in the womb.

www.robertlevinebooks.com

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