GMOs - Continued

Willy,

Very well said. The general populations lack of understanding of Profits, Taxes, and Corporations just boggles my mind sometimes.

While the few people that hold exclusive patents or propieatary items that are in great demand are able to charge what they please for a limited time, those situations only prevail for a few percent of total busineses. Most are in very competitive situations, and for a business to survive long term they must make a profit of between about 3 and 10% on their invested Capital. Less than 3%, inflation and better run companies will eventually put them out of business.

On the top side, if times are good and they all get too greedy, raising prices to the point they are all in that group making, say, 15%, that makes it easy and attractive for new companies to enter that area, which results in increased competition, driving prices back down, and forcing some of both the New and Old companies out of business.

If anyone would take the time to read the fiinancial information, which is available for all Public Traded Corporations, they would see just how little return those Corporations are making on their Capital.

Ernie

Rick--your comment about releasing carbon every time you till a field is kind of what got me started on all this "what is the truth" stuff. The more we understand things, the less apparent it is what is actually "good". Here in SE AZ, we have a fairly famous river--the San Pedro. You being from the Pacific NW might think it's a stretch to even call it a "crick". Anyway, it's apparently the last free flowing river in the desert SW. For long sections of it, there is no visible water part of the year. Along it's stream bed are lots of big cottonwoods. Some folks think we should cut them all down because they consume water. But those trees hold carbon and house birds and...

It's complicated.

Ernie--Thanks.

Willy, a lot of farmers are turning away from GMOs - I think I even posted a link to a couple of articles about that - because they can grow more with traditional crops, they don't need to spend as much money, and there's an increasing market for them.

Here's an interesting article about effects of glyphosate on endocrine systems. It's reproduced by antiGMO people but it's a peer reviewed piece:

http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx#.UxCFoFAo7qA

GMO crops are not on the decline. GreenhouseGal you are so out of touch with the average farmer. Though there may be one or two anecdotes from anti GMO farmers...actually GMO crops are on the rise.

And they are on the rise because they are more sustainable, less expensive, more efficient.

We obviously read different sources, but you don't have to be rude.

GG, I can't make the link work and a general search hasn't worked yet either.

You know, the claim the GE crop use is diminishing will perhaps help me flesh out an thought. First, I would be pretty certain that drobarr is correct about the fact that use is not declining (rudeness aside). He works directly in the field of GE and the data is from the USDA. What seems to me to be a pretty consistent pattern is the anti-GMO websites will grab any straw to make a point. In the case of declining use of GMOs, the claim seems to be factually incorrect; most likely the source is cherry picking comments to present, quite frankly, a false case. I am seeing a fairly consistent pattern of stretching the truth, scare-mongering, and picking one-off (and generally poorly done) studies to make an anti-GMO point. I think it's significant that folks with "real" concerns, say, the Union of Concerned Scientists, don't use hype or misstate the facts when expressing their concerns. Their web sites don't feature Frankenstein caricatures or "Monsanto Kills Monarchs" banners. The anti-GMO websites seem to uniformly realize that, when the facts don't offer much help, scare people--exaggerate. I see similar things all the time on young earth creationist web sites.

I believe a GE crop can present real risks (not catastrophic like the anti claims), but so can conventionally bred crops, though very likely to a lesser degree. I trust (Jeez, I can't believe I'm saying this) government and business together to explore the risks and minimize hazards. In my own garden, I will stay mostly organic. I can't buy GMO and I suspect that if I could, I would chose not to do so. When it comes to feeding the world, one that will be 2.5 billion people larger in 35 or so years, I think that we need all the technology we can muster to increase production while minimizing land use.

If GMOs prove inadequate, farmers will reject them for newer GMOs or even for something else all together. Earlier, Rick noted that viewing agriculture as one side vs the other isn't very productive. We need to pick and choose the best techniques and keep on improving in general. Not to be corny, but this means cooperation and open minds. Just being a naysayer won't get us very far. BTW, one very promising area for GE exploration that I've heard mentioned is adding genes for nitrogen fixing to non-legume plants. That would be a huge boon in a very many positive ways, including reducing nitrogen run-off and reducing oil usage.

I appreciate reluctance about GMOs, and even share it a bit on a gut level, but I do think GE is a promising and safe technology if implemented properly. Same thing is true of electric power, no?

drobarr--Are you aware of any serious plans to do GE work as relates to fixing nitrogen?

GG,

I am sorry if that came accross as rude I was just stating a fact. At least I didn't call you a troll like you did the other day and you haven't apologized for. Saying that one is out of touch is not in insult. But again sorry if you took offense.

Saying that GMO's are on the decline is as silly as saying that some people are giving up their smart phones because they are afraid of getting cancer. Though there may be one or two people who get rid of their smart phones they are still overall growing in popularity.

You might be able to find one or two studies that show GMO crops dont perform as well as non GMO but 99% of the time they are superior in yield and quality and efficiency. Thats why they have been rapidly adopted and continue to grow.

"Feeding the troll" is internet-speak for continuing an argument with someone who doesn't want to hear what you're saying, and that's the way I felt about the way you were responding - or not responding - to my input. I know a number of people who used to have woods behind their homes and now have only dead trees and salt marsh instead because of the rise in bay level, but you simply kept arguing that I didn't know what I was talking about. That's uncalled for. And saying "you are so out of touch with the average farmer" IS rude. You might have said "I think you're out of touch with the average farmer" and I wouldn't have taken umbrage, but the way you phrased it was neither polite nor respectful, and I have tried to maintain a civil tone throughout these threads.

Willy, I don't know why that link doesn't work for you; I tried it via that post after you mentioned it and it worked for me. It's a pdf, though, so maybe that was the problem, if your browser isn't set up to access those. Here's a link that may work better -
http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/gluten-intolerance-from-roundup-herbicide-zw0z1402zkin.aspx

This message was edited Mar 1, 2014 1:02 PM

Thanks for the link, GG. The electronic world is a puzzle indeed. Rick posts a link that he can't read but I can. You post a link that you can read and I can't. Go figure

To be frank, the article is way over my head. I do note that the authors are the same folks that Rick pointed out were perhaps somewhat suspect in an earlier post on the first GMO thread. In both papers, the subject is the dangers of glyphosate. Perhaps this is the same information repackaged? I pursued it far enough to discover that the journal it was published in is also an open source journal and is Slovakian. Not that being Slovak means it isn't real science, but it is curious that the authors didn't get published in their own country.

Like I said, the article is way over my head, so no comment there.

Not peer reviewed. but what the heck: http://theprogressivecontrarian.com/2014/01/15/heads-anti-gmo-blind-people-might-see-nip-bud/. What I think is interesting here, aside from the message itself, is that the article states: "The trial was small and experimental, so no conclusive results can be gleaned at this early stage, but researchers were given enough hope to continue research." When was the last time you read a statement like that on an anti-GMO website?

And another non-peer reviewed piece: http://theprogressivecontrarian.com/2014/01/12/amy-harmon-gmo-dupe-great-journalist/.

This message was edited Mar 1, 2014 6:25 PM

The rates of glyphosate studied in that paper were much higher than are what are found in harvested corn or soybean residues. In fact nearly always no glyphosate residue is found. This is because glyphosate is used prior to the reproductive stage(60 plus days prior to harvest). It has no residual activity in the field and what enters the plant is quickly metabolized.

The interesting thing is even at much higher rates than what would ever be encountered in food the result was inconclusive.

I read that study and see nothing conclusive.

GG

We will have to just agree to disagree. I think I have been civil.

And I don't doubt about what you have seen. I just think it is from subsiding soil and storm surge or tides and nothing to do with climate change.

And I dont think you are out of touch with farmers...from what you said I know you are. But you are entitled to your opinion.

I wasnt trying to offend or be rude. I at least have some data to back up my point of view that GMO's are on the rise.

I didnt take offense when you said they were on the decline....but thought I should set the record straight.

This message was edited Mar 2, 2014 1:36 AM

I have noticed you have accused me of being rude a few times....but after reading all I have written and had a few others read what I have written...nobody can find where I have been rude. Disagreeing with an idea isn't rude. Nobody dismissed your observations. I never once said that you didn't see what you saw. I said that your observations were due to other reasons than what you attribute them to. And that is NOT rude.

Well its my observation that farmers are adopting GMO's. So I guess using your logic...you are being rude by dismissing my observations. But more importantly there is hard data to support my observations and the fact that GMO adoption by farmers is increasing. So how can it be rude then if it is my observation you are out of touch with farmers adopting GMO's...if you talk with any of them it is a technology that most are very enthused about.

I think people accuse others of being rude usually when they come to the realization that they are losing an argument...realizing that GMO use is rising when they say the opposite...or that no cities are under water due to rising oceans...but due to subsiding, storm surges, tidal waves and storms.

I was objecting to comments like

- GG wrote:"a significant rise in ocean levels. Towns have had to be abandoned because of this. Streets which once were lined with houses are now far out in the bay, covered with water." This is not true. which towns have been abandoned? Show me pictures please. -

When someone makes an assertion based on his or her own observation, I don't think it's polite to say "This is not true." Essentially it implies that the person is either lying or is too limited to be able to interpret the evidence of his own eyes correctly. I don't understand how that can be considered anything other than rude.

Willy, the examples you linked to, as you say, aren't peer-reviewed and are more opinion pieces than anything else, but the sarcastic tone is off-putting to me. The need to use sarcasm often suggests weakness in the argument, but I can understand that for someone who disagrees with the concepts being pilloried it's very satisfying to read that tongue-in-cheek approach.

Anyway, here's another article about impacts of glyphosate. After this we might need to go to a new thread, though, since this is getting very long, especially for people who are stuck with dialup access!

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/new-study-renews-roundup-weedkiller-toxicity-concern

Gg, I was asking for evidence of towns under water due to the rise in sea level as you had claimed. And the reason I said that it isn't true is because I did some extensive research and no such cases have occurred due to sea level rise.

So your observations were due to another reason...nothing to do with rise in sea level. And when you named the two towns I looked into them and again nothing to do with sea level. But you were trying to attribute what had happened there to a rise in sea level.

So again the "not true" was not attributed to your observations...rather your assessment that they were caused by a rising sea. And its not rude to say the truth.

Its still not true that there are houses in the bay due to rising seas....because the oceans have not risen enough yet. But it may be true for other reasons including subsiding, storm surges, erosion, storms, and other reasons.

Again this study looking at glyphosate proves that it is safe...but harmful it claims because of the adjuvants used in some formulations. Again the 1ppm IS MUCH MUCH HIGHER than anything ever encountered in a harvested food.

They state: "at dilutions far below agricultural applications." Again this may be true....but dilutions far below what is applied....are far higher than what is ever found in a harvested commodity.

I equate this to a study saying tylenol is harmful because they gave 50 pills to someone and it made them sick. Its just not a fair test of what people are really exposed to.

Gg...you may not know this....but glyphosate is approved in numerous crops applied as a harvest aid. For crops like rice or wheat or sunflowers or soybeans including non GMO crops it can be applied to help dry down the crop or any weeds for ease of harvest in the combine. But even at this late stage you still do not have residues approaching the 1 ppm level. It was used this way for many years before gmo crops were commercialized and is still widely used. The product used before was paraquat and was much more toxic.

I think the bunch of you should go find out about farming before you beat it into the ground.
Willy from AZ didn't even know about castrating pigs. Good grief that has been done forever.
Beef cattle & sheep also. Even chickens in some cases.
You people wouldn't leave a vegetable in the garden way past it's prime so why would you want a pig to grow forever.

Most city people don't know where things come from, let alone how it's raised.
I'm sure with all the research on the internet, you could be more intelligent on farming practices.

I'm off to eat my GMO corn squares from Aldi's.

Touché CG

In my defense, I'd like to point out that I made a comment about trusting farmer's knowledge and judgment a few days ago. As for pigs, I was very surprised to learn that slaughter is done at 20 weeks; I had assumed a decent sized pig would take a year or more, like cattle. What is the reason for castration? I gather it affects taste?

I hope you enjoyed your GMO corn squares.

Biggest reason is safety. Male animals are aggressive. A steer, castrated bull, will not chase you & try to kill you. A bull will.

A stallion is very mean. A place in Minnesota was going to have a breeding farm for horses. He would house the stallions & people would bring their mares to be bred. It only lasted a short time, as the many stallions all went into a rage when the mares were brought in. There was no way to control it.

Pigs are actually older now than a few years ago. They used to be butchered at 220 Lbs. Now they are going for larger hogs, so around 260 to 280 now days.

Chickens are ready for market at 6 to 8 weeks.

Willy,
In addition to what CG said, castration also affects the growth rate and tenderness or texture of Sheep and Cattle, so may do the same for pigs,

Taste difference will become more apparent in older animals than in the younger ones.

Ernie

There is quite a civilized discussion going on under Cooking in Garden Web about GMOs; I enjoyed reading it. They referenced this post by a mother who's concerned about GMOs in her children's food
http://www.momsacrossamerica.com/stunning_corn_comparison_gmo_versus_non_gmo

The person who started the conversation on Garden Web also said that she has allergic reactions to foods like Aldi's GMO corn squares, whereas non-GMO corn squares are fine for her. I'm glad they don't bother Bernie!

Willy, we always castrated our ram lambs unless we planned to use them for breeding, of course. Rams can be nasty critters, too. We don't keep roosters for the same reason. If you've ever eaten a capon, they are altered roosters and are tenderer, plus they put on weight more easily, than do unaltered males.

How do you know the others don't contain GMO's ? I just assume they do because most corn is GMO. Give us proof.

Just like gluten & lactose tolerance. How much of that is just in your head because you heard about how bad it is.

If it's organic it doesn't contain GMOs. That's how you know.

GG--I'm sorry to say this, but the "stunning" corn report is certainly BS (energy (!?) is 100 vs 340,000?). To put it mildly, some of the data are nonsensical. These kinds of scare reports are what have led me to conclude that the anti-GMO folks have no case at all--and I was willing to go where the data led me when I started this journey. Here are some sites that attempt to show how and why this particular report is not valid.

http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2013/05/you-asked-for-independent-replication.html?m=1

http://thephysicspolice.blogspot.com/2013/04/dont-eat-soil.html

If you just want confirmation of your opinion that GE is a bad technology, by all means keep reading stuff like Moms Across America, Meanwhile, I hope some folks in the biology field can weigh in on this.

Here's something that I hope will provide an example of why I say the anti-GMO crowd has no real evidence. The "stunning corn" report basically says that GMO corn is nutritionally void--worthless as food--yet the "pig uteri" report says, with the exception of "inflammation" and "uteri weight", the GMO pigs differed in no way, including weight or general health, from the non-GMO pigs. So, how could nutritionally useless feed produce normal weight pigs?

I agree, obviously the GMO food has nutritional value. That's a huge error.

GG, I think it's more than an "error". I am certain that, somewhere along the path from its creation to its publication on the Net, there is intent to deceive.

Examples:

1) Organic matter at 1% or 2%. I can't find a definitive statement of what percentage of a corn kernel is water, but I'm inferring that it's around 30%. This means that roughly 70% of a corn kernel should be "organic" matter. Corn that is only 2.1%, as with the "superior" non-GMO sample, organic would certainly scare me.

2) One property tabulated is "cation exchange capacity". That's a soil parameter, not a nutritional parameter.

3) pH is given. That isn't a common food or nutritional parameter, but it is of interest in a soil test.

4) Most nutritional information includes info on proteins, carbs, sugars, vitamins, etc. There's none of that in this "report".

5) Formaldehyde!!!!!??????

6) Note 5 says Brix is a measurement of "nutrition, energy, and protein". WRONG! Brix is a measure of sugar content.

7) Given that everything is a "chemical", what does it mean to say that the "chemical content" is 60 ppm?

8) What is "available energy"?

This report is a fraud and was written to deceive and scare, in my opinion. Alternatively, it could have been prepared by an uneducated fool.

I have to snidely remark that the (fictitious) non-GMO sample contains higher levels of heavy metals--selenium, molybdenum--than the (fictitious) GMO sample.

This message was edited Mar 4, 2014 2:21 PM

You're right, I didn't read it carefully enough. Sorry about that!!

Corn put in storage is 15% moisture. More than that it spoils. To low & it loses feed value.

There are entirely to many of these false reports around.
How does it go, don't believe everything you read.

A good example of rumors, etc. Our Farmers Market has to move because the mall lot we were using decided they couldn't host us any longer. When our Treasure went to pay the rent in December, she was turned away. They said road construction was going to be going on there.
Now after we found a new place & people started commenting on it both for & against, this fool in charge of the mall denies telling us we had to move. Some people just plain stink.

CG--Yep!

GG--It's easy to get fooled by "official" documents. I've been fooled plenty in my life, that's why I'm a skeptic now. I remember as a younger fellow trying to convince my Dad that a money-making chain letter just HAD to be a great idea and a sure thing. He finally talked me out of it, but I was still worried I was missing a sure thing. There have been plenty more times since then that I've been misled.

>> It's complicated.

Willy, again you said the most in the fewest words.

>> I trust (Jeez, I can't believe I'm saying this) government and business together to explore the risks and minimize hazards.

I'm also right there with you on both sides of this comment, except that I might say "I MOSTLY trust ..." and qualify it that SOME farmers, being human, will misuse or over-use any tool that might help them not go broke.

And large corporations will slant what they say, but at least they are smart enough to stay close enough to the truth that people will keep reading, unlike some anti-GMO propagandists.


>> We need to pick and choose the best techniques and keep on improving in general. Not to be corny, but this means cooperation and open minds. Just being a naysayer won't get us very far.

True, but that is a pretty difficult hurdle for us to jump, being human. Maybe overpopulation is like an IQ test combined with a wisdom test: if we can't hang together enough to promote our common interests and feed ourselves without torching the planet in the process, we don't deserve to flourish.


>> adding genes for nitrogen fixing to non-legume plants

I've been seeing that as a "someday goal" or "Holy Grail" for longer than there have been practical crop GE tools!

Hal Clement wrote a science fiction novel "The Nitrogen Fix" where something like that got out of control, and converted all the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere to nitric and nitrous oxides and nitric acid.

P.S. Genengineers are more likely to succeed in convincing corn or wheat to accept "traditional" nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the genus Rhizobium, (legumes) and Spirillum lipoferum (cereal grasses?) Then, develop "traditional" N-fixing root nodules.

Googling, I didn't find any "we are working on this right now" reports. Just the same "wouldn't it be cool" suggestions that have been around a while.

But the "second generation" GE tools Talens and Crispr ought to make it more nearly possible in the foreseeable future. Having complete gene sequences for corn, wheat and N-fixing root-invading bacteria will help, too. But it sounds like a big job to me!

Another big challenge is how to defeat plant diseases like potato blight. And dealing with higher peak temperatures and drought and saline water.

http://www.genewatch.org/sub-568864
"This idea was first proposed over thirty years ago by the US Office of Technology Assessment in its 1981 report. But it is very difficult to achieve in practice because the ability to fix nitrogen depends on a complex relationship between bacteria and the roots of plants."


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20817544
http://phys.org/news186923765.html

GreenhouseGal,

I want to plead "guilty" for not even following that link. "Peer-reviewed" is an empty word, now that I understand that Entropy and ISIS call themselves "peer-reviewed".

And the link includes the name "Seneff". Last time, I spent hours researching her, but then I found that her "big paper" reported on no research whatsoever, just words on top of words. And she has no training in biochemistry or agronomy. Her fields are Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Self Promotion Through Amphigory.

Her big self-proclaimed interest was "exogenous semiotic entropy".

I'm content to file her in my mental listing along with Mr. Yoga Flying until she repairs her credibility.

I keep reminding myself that just because there are many bozos trying to blow smoke up my skirt on the "anti-GMO side" doesn't prove that everything said against GMOs is necessarily wrong.

But in my mind, the burden of proof, and even the burden of credibility for a "paper" to be worth reading, is "show me that the author is not just another hype artist".

Heck, there are not even that many good liars among most of the links I've followed! As if they were content to preach only to the faithful.

Glad to see you back, Rick! I was worried you might either be ill...or disgusted. lol

Ernie,

I would rather discuss GMOs than tax and regulatory policy.

That said, I would mention a few factors in addition to those you've mentioned.

I think that many jobs that used to pay middle-class salaries have either disappeared or now pay less (or pay "the equivalent of less" as pensions disappear and benefits are reduced). My belief is that the biggest factor is reduced number of jobs as manufacturing is offshored and repetitive jobs are automated. I kind of thought that 2nd and 3rd generation illegals were moving up into the shrinking middle class job market, competing with residents.

(It didn't help the middle class any to have their traditional major source of investment (their homes and real estate) drop in value by a factor of what? Two or three? But that is a separate issue.)

You mentioned "control of our borders". In software and aerospace, the immigrants who are willing to work for less are mostly Indian or Asian and after that, "from everywhere". I can't think of any Mexican-descent immigrant I had to train. These are skilled "upper-middle-class" jobs.

In the case of Indian software engineers, a very clever Indian contracting agency ("HCL") bamboozled our management into training UNtrained workers on the job while paying them salaries.

Then at the end of the first year's contract, they swapped in all new untrained people! We had to train AND pay THEM.

That was really a classic blunder on our part, enforced by a contract we made with Boeing to offshore a certain % of the work "to reduce costs". We finally managed to organize them into tasks where they did less damage that we needed to correct, and by the 3rd or 4th year we got some useful work at last.

(I guess that is also a digression from the off-topic digression. But it is amazing how stupid big corporations can be, especially when distracted by a high-pressure contract. I think the people in them are just like us and make no more blunders than we do , but they LOOK dumber than us when the decimal place in the cost of their blunders moves 4, 5 or 6 places to the right!)

I think our only uncontrolled border is with Mexico. You are probably right that most UNskilled labor comes overland across that border, and most illegal immigration comes that way. Is the first generation of illegals taking middle-class jobs, or taking lower-class jobs that most Americans now would rather get onto Welfare than take?

>> 15%, that makes it easy and attractive for new companies to enter that area, which results in increased competition, driving prices back down,

I think that was more true 50 or 100 years ago. Now it is mostly only true for smallish businesses in relatively unregulated industries. I think there are plenty of industries where technology, economies of scale, specialized expertise and regulations make "breaking in to the industry" a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar exercise.

For example, developing more efficient solar cells - including their effective manufacturing - is not for start-ups. Inventing the production process and facilities alone (let alone more efficient solar cells) is a multi-billion-dollar task).

"Competition" is very different when you're talking about a Mom-and-Pop-shop, a supermarket chain, a software startup, or Boeing.

When developing software for aviation, the regulatory burden is something somewhere around 3-4 times harder than making the darn airplane itself. A legal/business/technical arcane specialty. Even the purely technical people spend 90% of their time (literally) meeting regulatory requirements that only theoretically contribute to safety. (What they really do is prove that things were done "the official way" to prevent anyone from suing anyone. The safety gets shoehorned in with other technical concerns, in the other 10% of our time. )

It used to be a joke that no new plane could take its first flight until the weight of paperwork is greater than the weight of the plane. Now, it is NO JOKE. And that's just the tiny subset of all the electronic docs that some oldster printed out on paper because they're old-fashioned.

>> I was worried you might either be ill

Naah, just offline. Thanks for asking.

P.S.

No matter how lame some websites get in protesting that the sky is falling, we SHOULD keep watching closely for cracks. As we add new gene complexes and more ambitious metabolic changes to crops, we should keep testing them rigorously.

Hopefully really intense studies like the long-term pig-feeding stomach-inflamation enlarged-uterii study will set a standard for future GMO testing. If more studies were done like that one, we would probably learn a lot about long-term feeding studies and subtle pig health issues.

Maybe repeating and varying the study that found some changes in protein expression would tell us something about the significance of that, or how to do the test in ways that made it more meaningful.

We should especially maintain seed banks with old varieties, traditional landraces and wild varieties.

"Make new genes but keep the old.
One is silver and the other gold."

rrr I would rather discuss GMOs than tax and regulatory policy.

eeeThat is because you know more about GMOs, and i would prefer to discuss the huge effect that Taxes and Regulations have on GMOs and every thing else, because that is the part i am most familiar with.

rrr I kind of thought that 2nd and 3rd generation illegals were moving up into the shrinking middle class job market, competing with residents.

eeeWhile illegals coming across the Southern border are rarely scientists, many of the smarter ones either brting skills or are smart enough to learn quickly and compete for high paying jobs in the construction and manufacturing areas, Over half of our heavy equipment operators, making 75 to 100,000 a year are Green card migrants and 1st generation Mexicans. That is well into middle class and forty years ago, Equipment operators were almost all caucasian US citizens.

rrrYou mentioned "control of our borders". In software and aerospace, the immigrants who are willing to work for less are mostly Indian or Asian and after that, "from everywhere". I can't think of any Mexican-descent immigrant I had to train. These are skilled "upper-middle-class" jobs.

eee We do not see any Indians or Asians in skilled trades in construction work.


rrr Is the first generation of illegals taking middle-class jobs, or taking lower-class jobs that most Americans now would rather get onto Welfare than take?

eee Green card migrants and 1st generation are taking both middle and lower class jobs, but most have enough ambition to work their way up the ladder. Many also become owners of Trucking Companies, and other small businesses. Owning a few trucks that cost 200,000.00 each is not a Mom and Pop operation.

>> 15%, that makes it easy and attractive for new companies to enter that area, which results in increased competition, driving prices back down,

rrr I think that was more true 50 or 100 years ago. Now it is mostly only true for smallish businesses in relatively unregulated industries. I think there are plenty of industries where technology, economies of scale, specialized expertise and regulations make "breaking in to the industry" a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar exercise.

eeeThe huge majority of businesses have less than 50 or 100 employees and that is the size of business i was referring to. Huge businesses like Monsanto or Boeing are the result of many decades of growth and mergerrs, and are seldom started on that scale you refer tol

rrrr"Competition" is very different when you're talking about a Mom-and-Pop-shop, a supermarket chain, a software startup, or Boeing.

eee I disagree. Competition with Boeing has eliminated Douglas, North American, and countless other Airplane companies. Competition either bankrupted them or forced them into mergers. Competition is Competition, regardless of size.


Ernie



This message was edited Mar 4, 2014 9:27 PM

But Ernie, the topic is GMOs. :«)

Willy, who lives ten miles from the border.

"But Ernie, the topic is GMOs. :«)"

Yeh, but we rather talk about other things..heh, heh.

Speaking of first generation illegals.....There is a saying: "The first generation builds it; The second generation uses it; The third generation looses it."

I think that it works like that a lot. The founders fought and built it. They knew the price that was paid. The next generation prospers and appreciates it. The third generation INHERITS it and fails to appreciate it and begins to look around and sluffs off.