The financial news continues to stink quite a bit:
Wall Street suffered its second big drop in a week Wednesday, with investors worried about spreading fallout from the credit crisis at banks and about a dollar that just keeps getting weaker. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 360 points -- just about matching its pullback of last Thursday.
All of this makes me think again about my Yertle the Turtle theory of economic collapse...
I fear that our economy has Yertle-like tendencies - we are built atop so many other countries, so many grand assumptions about continued ravenous consumption of more and more and more stuff, and worldwide greed to match ours that sometimes I just wait for Mack to raise his head for our economy and wealth to go, "Plunk! in the pond!"
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
If we don't have foreign nationals in our labs, science stops. Game over. Never mind the students. The Post Docs, the Research Associates, all that more junior level of technician and scientist: these guys are all on visas.I put an add in Science magazine. The top 40 applicants were: 39 Indians and Chinese, one American. This was in Neuroscience. I think in Physics you get more Russians in the mix. I'm talking here exclusively about Ph.D's or MD/Ph.D's. We're taking the cream of the crop out of these countries, for very modest salaries. This is a ridiculously good deal for America.
Okay. Immigrants ag workers. You want to get the crop in, you've got to have these Mexican and Central American workers. That's all there is to it. I've been through the blueberry fields in Hammonton NJ and it's all Hispanics.I've been through the seafood processing plants: all Hispanics. Sorting squid all day, about 60 degree in there. That is tough, tough work. Dopes like Limbaugh seem to think you can get college students to do that on their summer vacation, but forget about it.Today's college students would not last out the first week in blueberries or cranberries. My bother harvested cranberries in the 70s and I harvested peaches. Don't get me started about how hard that work is. Ain't no time to text your friends out there. Igloo cooler at the end of one row, porta-potty at the other end.
End of screed.
*blush* an AD...
Doug:
I can't actually put the "one thing" on David's blog, per ROCs.
But note who Dobbs is married to ...
Whoever he's married to, Larry, I'm pretty sure the answer is quesadillas.
Doug:
You think far too charitably of me ... :-)
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.