BreakfastSurreal
Well-Known Member
But it is my baby. It represents a third of my grade in TWO classes. I really hope this gets an A. Not even done with it...but here is the first half..
The United States of America was once known as the land of opportunity. Anyone in this country could work hard to earn an honest living and expect to be treated equally, regardless of race, class, or religion. In recent years, however, many Americans have not benefited from equal opportunity, and the people of our nation have repeatedly fought for class equality. The United States’ efforts to globalize business and the economy have crippled our middle class. This destruction has been slowly festering in the United States for years, but has picked up significant speed since the current Bush administration. Major catalysts that have led to this deterioration include illegal immigration, the degeneration of our public school system, outsourcing, free trade, and special interest groups.
Legal immigration is very important to our country. CNN anchor and writer Lou Dobbs says, “Every year, more than a million people from other countries come to work in the United States, bringing valuable expertise and skills to our nation,” (135). Legal immigrants, unlike those who illegally enter our country, have written consent from the government to reside and work here. Illegal immigrants, however, show that they have no regard for the law of the land by coming here unauthorized, and by adding to our already abundant social welfare expenses. These people do not pay taxes, and are offered free schooling, yet they do not contribute to our economy in any way. Our government “wants to offer them benefits that are not given to many middle-class tax payers, such as amnesty on taxes owed and protection from prosecution,” (Dobbs, 134). Illegal immigration has affected our economy in many other ways as well. Many opportunistic companies would much rather pay illegal immigrants lower wages, so they can gain more capital, rather than support our workers and our economy. “They do it for the simple reasons that these people will not only work for less than a fair wage but won’t demand any benefits,” (Dobbs, 139). Many illegal aliens who enter the U.S. are fleeing from poverty, unemployment, and government corruption. The United States is not benefiting from this influx in humanity, but, “Human smugglers bringing illegals into America make $7 billion annually,” (Wooldridge). The majority of these immigrants are from Mexico. “Nearly ten thousand people enter the US illegally every single day. And the number has been rising ever since President Bush started talking about his guest-worker amnesty plans,” (Dobbs, 131). Frosty Wooldridge, who has written hundreds of editorials for newspapers and magazines around the world, says that on top of this astounding number, “Our congress upped the H1-B visas by another 20,000 again this year,” (Wooldridge). Currently, there is no incentive for businesses to stop hiring illegal aliens due to inaction from the government and a dismissal of the growing illegal alien problem in the United States. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “The direct net cost of illegal immigration to our economy, including social services, is now roughly $45 billion annually,” (Dobbs, 134). While we are spending this large sum of money on illegal aliens, the state of our public school system is deteriorating.
The current state of the U.S. public education system leaves much to be desired. Jill Parish, a nationally syndicated columnist and author, divulges, “America ranks near or at the bottom on international test scores despite the fact that America spends more money on education that any other nation in the world,” (Parish). Not only are our test scores low, but we also have schools that have been standing for generations, in dire need of repair (Parish). These problems pose not only a threat to maintaining a positive learning environment, but also a threat to the safety of many students and teachers. High school dropout rates have been steadily rising since 1969 (Dobbs, 157). “Nearly 1 in 3 public high school students won’t graduate. Nearly half of all dropouts ages 16-24 are unemployed,” (Parish). Education is a stepping-stone for every individual in our nation, and it puts everyone on an even playing field. When funding for public education is cut, it starts a domino effect throughout the economy. The truth is, most politicians do not have children that are in public schools. They normally put their children in private schools, which do not have these problems because they are not funded at the state or federal level (Parish). In other words, there is isolation between those in power and the average middle class citizen. Another facet of our education problem is that schools no longer seem to care about teaching students to think critically or to be creative. “Perhaps it’s because politicians have decided that they don’t need to educate American citizens anymore as they want people to work at McDonalds,” (Parish). Manufacturing jobs in this country have been expunged over the past two decades due to outsourcing to cheaper labor markets overseas, and working at McDonald’s or doing other service-related jobs doesn’t require the type of analytical expertise that students could once expect to gain from their schools. This reduces the middle class because our education system is producing unqualified laborers, who will in the future be shifted into the lower class income bracket.
Profits for corporate America are the highest they have been in years. Conversely, the amount of national income going into the pockets of hard working laborers is at its lowest in forty years (Dobbs, 110). Companies would now rather outsource to cheaper labor overseas than employ American workers who expect higher wages and health benefits. The pretext for this course of action being, “Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade…it’s something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run,” (Dobbs quotes Gregory Mankiw, 110-111). The value of outsourcing is also regularly overestimated by businesses and the government; they want to believe that they are getting a better deal because the workers are cheaper to pay elsewhere. Dun & Bradstreet conducted a survey in 2000 denoting that 20% of all outsourcing relationships failed in the first two years, and 50% failed within the first five years (Dobbs, 129). Training, even for cheap foreign laborers, is still expensive for American companies. Aside from these numbers, there are many other often-overlooked details that make outsourcing fallible. One disturbing case in point is that many countries do not have mandates for drug testing or background checks when hiring employees. This is a particularly unsettling practice in the U.S. airline industry, which has outsourced thousands of mechanical jobs to places like Hong Kong and Singapore (Dobbs, 116). Steve Macfarlane, of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, said it best when he told Lou Dobbs: “All of us fly on our own airplanes, our families do, our friends do. When you outsource an airplane, these people have no real connection to the aircraft,” (Dobbs, 116). Outsourcing is detrimental answer for America’s economic problems, and because of it, we are now addicted to foreign goods.
It is because of our free trade practice that outsourcing is even possible. Free trade, in theory, is the elimination of taxes and tariffs on goods that enter another country. In practice, however, this free trade is not given to the U.S. in return.........
