FRANKLIN — Near the end of our conversation, Lance Clark delivered an illuminating truth.
Clark is vice president of administration and general counsel at KYB Americas Corporation. He was part of a panel discussion I was moderating for Aspire Johnson County.
I’d asked a question about the labor shortage with which the world, the United States and Indiana now must deal.
Clark gave a small snort of exasperation.
He said finding enough good workers was perhaps the biggest challenge now facing KYB, an auto parts manufacturer. He said he didn’t understand why there was talk about building a wall along the United States’ southern border to prevent people who wanted to come here to work from entering the country.
“They should build a bus terminal,” Clark said.
The crowd laughed with appreciation, because, without meaning to — his remarks were determinedly non-partisan — Clark had given voice to one of the primary reasons people are frustrated with our political system.
And that is: It’s too often completely divorced from reality and the real problems people are trying to solve.
As if to illustrate that point, not long before I headed over to the Aspire event, I received a press release from the office of U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana.
It touted Young’s support for a measure that would crack down on “illegal immigrants”— a more accurate term would be “undocumented”— by denying them taxpayer payments.
“Instead of discouraging illegal entry into the United States, if left unchecked the Biden-Harris Administration could hand illegal immigrants a winning lottery ticket. This half-baked scheme is an insult to hard-working Americans who will never see a check that large and the servicemen and women who put their lives on the line for far less,” the release quoted Young as saying.
Before I go any further, I need to say that I respect Todd Young. I don’t always agree with him, but I’ve always found him to be a thoughtful guy, one who is both earnest and diligent in his search for conservative approaches to sound governance.
But I’m also aware that he’s about to enter an election year, and the Republican Party’s political crosscurrents these days can be tricky to navigate — particularly for a guy who is perceived as being both reasonable and thoughtful. Some members of the Donald Trump cult have considered Young’s support for their idol to be less than slavish. There have been murmurings about a primary challenge.
To head off that possibility, Young must throw some occasional red meat every now and then in the direction of Trump’s rabid base. This bit of immigrant-baiting is just that.
Young is savvy enough to know that study after study has shown that undocumented immigrants pay twice as much in taxes as they consume in government benefits and payments. In effect, these undocumented workers provide subsidies to the rest of us that keep our taxes lower than they otherwise would be to provide the same level of service.
One can make an argument that it’s morally wrong to exploit other human beings that way, but we’ll reserve another discussion for another day.
Instead, we’ll focus on the foolhardiness of discouraging people from coming to this country when we desperately need workers. This bit of political theater was mean-spirited from its opening act, but it soon will be tragic.
We are only at the start of what is going to be a challenging time in human history. Economists have been warning us for at least a decade that a massive labor shortage was coming.
We’re just at the start of it now. It will peak in 2030. Between now and then, the current aggravations — delays in supply and service, rising prices, etc. — only will multiply, regardless of who is in power.
That is, unless our elected officials decide to stop playing games and start telling the truth about the challenges facing us. They should educate, not pander.
They should, for a change, be real.
Because Lance Clark is right.
Building walls and seeking out ways to discourage people from coming and working here doesn’t make sense.
Instead, we should build bus terminals for them.
A lot of them.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
