I have a friend who is a busy
businessman from Nepal. He owns restaurants, runs an international bank and imports goods into Korea from Nepal. He is hardly home 5 days a month, but helps Nepalese.
He converts Won into Rupees without making a dime, and sits on the board of 14 organizations that work to help Nepalese workers who work and live overseas.
Nepal is spirituality-high and money-low, kind of like the Country formerly known as Tibet..
He told me 35% of the money in Nepal is earned outside the country and shipped back home. This should remind my American friends of Mexico, a country that receives $23.17 Billion of that a good hunk of the $120 Billion that gets sent home by immigrants who work in the USA.
South Korea is very much akin to the USA in the sense that a huge number of Asian “imported workers” make about $800 a month t work very hard and long hours at jobs Koreans would rather not do. However, Koreans are no pressing their government to end the migrant worker program as the country has over 83% of people under 40 years old holding a bachelor’s degree. These folks are now having to look for factory work, as their demanding education system shows amazing results. The USA stands at very close to 25% of our citizens holding a bachelor’s degree.
That’s up form 6% when I was in high school. But it sickens me that one of the main reasons so many smart Americans don’t get a college degree is the price. Then think about the student loan problems, and imagine yourself $200,000 in debt before you even find a job.
The earthquakes in Nepal are so so so so devastating because, as NPR reported today, so many rural Nepalese can’t get to their equipment to bring in the crops, can’t get to their food that they may have had before the earthquakes, and the result could be some severe food shortages.
There are hundreds of aspects about living away from family and friends that are difficult. Language is primary especially in Asia. Since 24% of the USA speaks Spanish as their first language, the barriers here are not as high as they would be for Nepalese working in Korea.
So take a moment to thank a migrant worker for help making our economy hum by providing reliable cheap labor.
Sure American labor has taking multiple kicks to the groin via “free trade” which, from its inception in NAFTA, through GATT 2 and the WTF, has been a scheme for companies to become wildly rich, by causing the value of labor to be devalued worldwide. When you can pay 14 cents an hour in Vietnam, or 52 cents an hour to millions and millions of factory workers in China, there is no way for the most productive workers in the world (again the USA is tops) to compete because OUR COST OF LIVING is so much higher, and our workers don’t get subsidized health care, a fair price for health insurance, and free university, or darn near free, that many Europeans enjoy.
But our the world’s billions to be blamed for trying to find work that provides a legitimate livelihood they can raise a family on?
Everyone but the shareholder class has gotten bitten by the greedy folks at the top. Almost every country has governments beholden to big money, so this is not going to end unless the world economy collapses, or we go back to the 1979 tax code and actually request that the rich start paying their fare share, AND MORE to make up the obscene laws that rigged the earth against the common man and to the unyielding benefit of the mega rich.
In my town I know right where to go for great yard work on a one-day basis from immigrant workers. We agree on a price, and if the job is done well I double it at the end of the day. Not much in the whole scheme of things.
Natural disasters are multiplying. Man-made economic and environmental disasters are coming along almost as quickly My goal is to be part of the team that one situation at a time, tries to balance the mess creatively and in as many ways as we can think up.
Volunteer friends, and have the time of your life.
Dougstuber's Blog 