Solution to Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a problem. There will be an estimated 406,000 US jobs outsourced in 2004.

Let me float a possible solution: Let everyone in, give everyone a tax ID card, and eliminate the minimum wage. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and let them work and pay taxes like everyone else. They would not be citizens yet, but they could live and work here legally.

These legal aliens would not be citizens, but should be offered some of the minimal public social services and protections, reserving the highest level for citizens. If they are in good standing after some number of years, then they would be eligible to become citizens.

Right now, illegal workers in America are willing to take unfair pay, receive no benefits, and tolerate unsafe conditions because they don’t pay taxes and they are afraid of being deported. Given legitimacy, they would demand reasonable pay, reasonable benefits, and reasonable working conditions, finally putting them on a fair playing field with the rest of us. And there is very likely a huge pent-up demand in this population to join organized labor.

With the increase in newly recognized labor tax revenues would increase substantially. And with this reorganization of immigration and the elimination of the minimum wage, businesses would rapidly grow and hire right here in the United States.

Elimination of the minimum wage would mean that employment would go WAY up. There would no longer be this structural unemployment at the bottom of the economic scale where a person is not yet worth more than a few dollars per hour, and so they can’t get a job and the experience they need to advance.

The standard of living for Americans would increase substantially. The fall in unemployment would reduce homelessness and poverty. Rapid business growth and the rise in domestic consumer spending would continue the cycle of increasing domestic labor force growth. Stocks and bonds would increase in value with the growth in businesses and business credit. Inflation would be pushed up by the increasing growth in businesses, employment, and immigration, but these are good reasons for inflation (easily controlled with the Federal Reserve overnight lending rate).