How simple can it be? - Part 2

Yesterday's post engendered a comment from someone named ChamberPost:

You can quote Baker, but he is wrong.

http://www.chamberpost.com/2008/04/its-workers-not.html

The link is to a post titled, "It's Workers, Not Wages: H-1B Visas." The writer is Kelly Krieger Hunt, Senior Manager, Immigration Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it's a fairly standard recitation of how American companies are hurting for workers, how U.S. software workers are fully employed, and how workers and employers will be caught "in a dilemma until Congress acts."

I entertained the possibility that ChamberPost's comment was auto-generated; I can see why the C of C would need to respond quickly to any mention of doubts about the wisdom of expanding a program that keeps corporate profits high. It's probably true, given that there was a similar terse comment left about the same time in response to Dean Baker's post:

Some good comments. More facts refuting Baker's arguement at:

http://www.chamberpost.com/2008/04/its-workers-not.html

(The "some good comments" refer to the two people out of 30 or so who believe that we need to bring in as many people from other countries as possible.)

One note to the Chamber of Commerce: you may want to do some hiring yourself, maybe find someone who knows how to spell "arguement."

I figured, though, that, even if I'm responding to a bot, the points made in the Chamber's post are the same ones we hear and will hear, so I'll provide some input. I started to write it as a comment on the original post, then decided that it deserved a post of its own.

Looked at your post and can tell you that you're wrong. I understand that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has some pretty strong incentives to support legislation that is good for business, so I'm not surprised.

Even if I were to concede that "raising wages will not solve the problem if there still are simply not enough workers," basic economic theory would still tell you that there would be upward pressure on wages as companies compete for the scarce resource. And we haven't seen that happen. You see, people don't have to stay at one company, so employers can fill their gaps by vying for skilled people...unless they can find a new source of cheap labor.

I won't get into the well-known problems with the unemployment rate; suffice it to say that a relevant number would be the percentage of fully-utilized technical degree holders who are employed in their field of study, and I doubt you have that number.

As for citing the number of job openings, that is an invalid number. Again, look at the incentives to pad that number - mainly the ability to dodge heat over this very issue. If intelligent profit-maximizing companies had that many openings, they would provide incentives for students to go into those fields, fund scholarships and the like, but we don't see that.

The study by Jacob Funk Kirkegaard that is cited, I'm not going to pay $18.95 for it. But the abstract to which you linked is not very convincing. Essentially, the argument is that, since there is full employment in the technology sector, we should drop virtually all restrictions on immigration, an extreme view indeed. We should abolish the cap on visas (the only restriction being that a single business entity should be limited to a "sensible level of maybe 50 percent"), create a new visa category just for India (and, curiously, "strike a bilateral immigration agreement with India" - does that mean our students would have open access to the $750 per year education offered at Tom Friedman's favorite, the Indian Institute of Technology?), and publish "detailed data on the characteristics of all high-skilled immigrants" (wow, look how good they are - I'm glad we let them come).

The issue, of course, is not that one post from a biased group is full of misinformation. It is that it comes out under the imprimatur of a group that most people think of as a genial bunch of back-slappers, exchanging business cards at luncheons. But the Chamber of Commerce has become a major force in Republican politics. They spent $72 million in 2006 on lobbying in favor of so-called pro-business laws.

The sad thing is that many of their members will be hurt by these initiatives. Oh, not the big companies that provide most of their funding today, but the little Main Street stores that are owned by the folks who do go to those luncheons and dutifully pay their C of C dues every year. Because the downward spiral of wages started by the big companies that increasingly find America irrelevant will hurt Mom and Pop first, as the towns and suburbs lose jobs and income.

So, little Chamber of Commerce bot, you can cross this blog off your list. Your flawed studies are never going to convince me (if you wanted to throw some of that $72 million my way, however...).