Following on my Op-Ed from yesterday, one loyal MR reader asks me, in an email, a few questions about immigration. Here is my first cut at answers:
–Is there no amount of unskilled immigration that is too high? In other words, do you advocate open borders?
I don’t believe in open borders for today’s America. I would increase current immigration quotas for all groups and allow illegals to move back and forth more readily. Many current illegals would prefer to spend more time in their home country than is currently possible. I don’t know exactly how much we can boost immigration and of course I don’t expect political progress on the issue. But we should start with a twenty percent boost in the yearly quotas. And how about another twenty percent increase two years later?
–Why do you have faith that federal policy can address the regionalized problems [with immigration] when you don’t trust federal policy to correctly judge which immigrant skills we ought to give priority?
I think the federal government is capable of giving more money to subsidize emergency rooms near the border. This is an easier task than judging what professions we will need thirty years down the road.
–You mention the success of second-generation offspring of most immigrant groups, but let’s get real, this whole issue is about Mexicans, mostly, not Canadian economists. How have their offspring done? Of course, it might not even matter; if you’re right that a growing supply of unskilled labor isn’t bad, then does it make any difference if the second generation is also unskilled?
David Card and others have plenty of data on how well the second and third generations of Latinos do in assimilating and entering the mainstream of American life. I find the overall portrait a reassuring one. I will look for data on Mexicans per se and let you all know if I find anything useful.
N.B.: If the quality of current Mexican immigration is "lower than you would like," keep in mind the current mix is partly an artifact of current immigration law, which encourages the least rooted and the most desperate to cross the border. Young male teenagers are those who least mind being cut off from returning home. Allowing immigrants to come and go would raise the quality of the pool.
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As the Mayor of Los Angeles pointed out yesterday, the staggering high school dropout problem in that city is a _2nd_ and _3rd_ generation immigrant problem. Nation wide the hispanic dropout rate is more than 50%. So much for “assimilation.”
I wonder how much of this open borders stuff among “libertarian” economists is simply a left-over from the Rothbard-cult youth of so many of them — i.e. at heart they are still wild anarchists who don’t believe in governments, nations — and national borders.
Well boys, what’s the truth?
I’m sure very few of you economists appriciate such an argument but I’m pretty sure sociologists would argue that class structures have something to do with the lack of assimilation. (I belong to neither one of these two categories; hell: I’m not even American so the issue is not affectual to me, but it is an interesting debate.)
For instance, there are studies of working class britons – of the alledgedly high IQ variety: whites – that developed a distinct culture where formal eduction and upwards striving were frowned upon (I could look up sources if someone is genuinly interested), probably as a defense mechanism because the chance of actually ending up somewhere else than at the local factory was so small.
A strong reason for this was that they carried so many typical working-class traits, such as a distinct accent, that they were very unlikely to be accepted anywhere else (because of predjudice, rigid habits, parents that could not afford them to go to university or whatever). Perhaps skin colour is one such marker. I know that the US is ‘the land of opportunities’ and that skin colour is not suppose to matter, but the argument that some appear to be making is that ‘the less white, the less successful’ (asians excepted).
Could that argument have some bearing?
Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small. . . While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices
What a Rawlsian trainwreck, Alex. Low-skilled American workers are precisely the people we have the highest ethical duty to lift up. Furthermore, by allowing Mexico’s white elite to shift a substantial portion of their poverty burden over to America, we hamper their incentive to make the necessary economic reforms in Mexico.
Nationally harmful Immigration may be altruistic in the global sense, and there are utopian ethical arguments that can be made here, but even on that I believe maintaining America’s domestic and global strength and values are in the world’s best interest in the long run. Economic inequality will damage America’s might and erode its superior (democratic and capitalist, etc) values, which otherwise promise to lift all boats if we can maintain them and transmit them to the world.
Mark:
I have yet to see anyone provide data to show that resources would be better spent on border enforcement and illegal immigrant round-ups rather than trying to improve the quality of education.
Then I seriously doubt you have bothered looking into the issue of education expenditures or the cost of illegal immigration to the public sector.
You can check out Steve Sailer’s site, V-Dare or this guy:
http://www.parapundit.com/
Here is a section of ParaPundit’s education articles:
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_education.html
There are a few articles there pertinent to race, standards, and spending in education that should be revealing.
Mark:
Please. Schooling has a very high payoff for young smart people (which is why so many go to school†¦), and close to zero economic payoff for adult unskilled workers. Read Heckmans debate with Krueger on this subject.
“But to say that education cannot solve the problems of low skilled Americans would be equally misleading“
Really? If the problems of the adult low skilled poor could be solved by schooling WHY HAVE THEY NOT ALREADY BEEN SOLVED after 40 years and trillions upon trillions of spending? Let me guess,
* Racism
* Alesina hypotheis: Dumb biggoted americans don’t spend enough on welfare (you know, like Italy and France, where povery has been succefully eradicated)
* Public Teachers only earn 65.000 dollars per year with benefits, if we would only listen to unions†¦
* It’s just a matter of time, anyday now the billions spent on the underclass will pay off, and government will solve povery.
“What is the marginal effect on unskilled wages from a dollar spent on immigration enforcement instead of education?†
Do a back of en envelope calculation yourself. You need say 20.000 aditional guards to secure the border, say 100.000 $ per guard. That’s 2 billion dollars. This is solely a political question, the economic cost of enforcing immigration are miniscule.
8% reduction in the wage of those with no high school diploma is equivalent to 32 billion dollars in losses to those with no high school diploma. The social spending of the US on the poor is something in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Mark, At the best schools, underperforming minorities still underperform.
See this article:
Addressing Racial Disparities in High-Achieving Suburban Schools
[This paper concerns racial and ethnic achievement disparities in places where schools are reputedly excellent. All racial and ethnic groups in these districts are represented throughout the achievement distribution—at the top and the bottom. However, blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented at the top and heavily overrepresented at the bottom.]
http://www.ncrel.org/policy/pubs/html/pivol13/dec2002b.htm
“In my post above (way way above) I would like to drop the “quasi” from the “quasi racist”. In retrospect, it’s become clear that that particular word was a mistake.”
Just to summarize your participation in this discussion:
Invective: 100 %
Reasoning: 0 %
Impressive!
“Which direction is prudent? Suppose we put the kind of controls into place to make sure that each immigrant isn’t costing us more in services than he pays into the system.”
This is impossible. The immigrants are poor and will remain poor. How do we permanently block them from receiving entitlements? You can’t short of constitutional amendment. Moreoever, their children are likely to remain burdens, do we exempt them too?
“waves of immigration in the past sparked genunie concerns that the immigrants would never assimilate, would change the character of the country, would drag down our economy because they were all unskilled and apparently pretty stupid Irishmen or Italians, or Russian Jews with all kinds of weird cultural baggage, not speaking English, and not even Christian, etc.”
How much did we spend on public education then? Did we have Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare? How demanding was the economy in terms of education and skill level? How much of GDP was spent on medical care; did we have a medical inflation problem? Did the Italians or Irish think they were resettingly some mythical ancestral land? STOP COMPARING THE PAST WITH THE PRESENT. We live in a completely different world and face a completely different immigration pattern; today immigrants are increasingly monolithic and there is no end in sight, compared to the past when immigration was diverse and cylical (it ended).
Hans:
Do you always tell people to ignore the past when making predictions about the future? It seems like pretty silly advice to me.
If you note, I’m not saying the likely outcomes of the immigrants are parallel (that Mexicans are going to assimilate the same way Irish did). I’m saying that the value of long-term predictions of doom driving big policy changes depends a lot of whether those long-term predictions are accurate, and historically, they haven’t been. Many of you who are arguing against this comment right now will find yourselves agreeing with me next week, when we start talking about radically restructuring industrial society to decrease greenhouse gasses.
Pat
If Say’s Law was true there would never be any unemployment. Supply doesn’t create demand, look up “Great Depression.”
For Christ’s say Says law has nothing to do with it.
Immigration by increasing the SIZE of the labour force will not change wages (in steady state).
Immigration that changes the COMPOSITION of the labour force (by increasing the share of unskilled workers) will change wages, in this case reducing low skill and raising high skill. Stop babbling about Say (which is generally true, on the long run).
Radek let me raise your status from “not idiot† to “genius”. Your careful counterarguments have deeply impressed us all. Clearly UC-Davis is producing some great intellectual minds these days!
Tyler Cowen:
“Bryan offers evidence that living near many immigrants is more likely to make you pro-immigration.†
No, he doesn’t.
Caplan significant relationship between share of immigrants and being positively disposed to immigrants (corrected for what immigrants think) DISAPEARS if you control for per capita state income, which I did (p 0.24, i.e not significant). R-square 0.16-0.27 increases if you include income. Per capita state income is a strong explanatory factor of the share that are positive to immigration, share of immigrants is not.
The pro-immigration crowd will use any argument, however weak. When emotions rule logic takes a back seat.
Brent:
Swizerland, though contonization. California, through geographical and socially segmented society and large transaction cots.
Dog:
I don’t think the present immigration policy will be so negative that it will force people to move out of the US. What will happen is that more people will move out of the areas with lot’s of immigrants. Crime will go up, income inequality, ethnic fragmentation and ethnic conflict will go up, taxes will be increase and the government will expand.
Bush and the Democrats are creating a new permanent underclass of Hispanics. Cowens own “reassuring† data shows that after 3 generations Mexicans are earning slightly more than 80% of the White income.
Some comparisons:
Full time working African American men 69% of white mean
All African Americans 72% of white mean.
African American women 90% of white mean.
So (as a comparison) it seems that with the most positive data out there that Cowen gave us you will end up with a situation where tens of millions of Mexican immigrants will permanently be in a economic (and probably social) level somewhere above African American men and somewhat below African American Women. Yes, that sure sounds like complete assimilation to me†¦
African Americans were mostly taken to the US by force from Africa, and subject to centuries of oppression. They have massive economic and social problems, but are nevertheless American, with rights that follow. History of slavery and segregation cannot be changed. But now that you have a choice, why would you voluntarily like to double or triple the American Underclass?
For the Democrats this is purely positive, since it will strengthen their power. The success of the American middle class has been the greatest threat to the left, now they will have plenty of new voters that demand populism, regulations and big government.
Shortly the US will move towards what California looks like today.
Now I don’t think California is some sort of hell, it is still a reasonably good place to live. But the development is not an improvement for most Americans. It doest not bring economic gains, as some economist are claiming.
Poor Americans will se their wages pressed downward.
Middle class Americans will have to pay higher taxes, and be subject of more crime, and have a harder time getting their children into good school because of affirmative action.
Higher income Americans will get cheaper services, but also pay substantially higher taxes, and be forces to isolate themselves geographically and socially even more than they are doing today.
Great plan, thank you Bush, Marginal Revolution, President Fox and Democratic party.
Of course libertarians are digging their own political grave. The political and philosophical support for limited government among Hispanics is and will be non-existent. They are however socially conservative on many issues, which libertarians of course appreciate.
The US will move toward more central planning and more infringements on individual liberty (remember by 2045 a quarter of voters will be Hispanic).
I don’t live in the US. The effect on me will be that the US will move to the left, and have more social problems, which makes it less of a positive example for Europe (“see? They have high poverty, low taxes lead to poverty!†)
In this debate on immigration, I have to say that Steve Sailor and “Teller” have the most compelling arguments. Jason Malloy’s posting is particularly compelling. Steve Sailor, Randall parker, and others have compiled considerable amounts of impirical data to back up their arguments. The pro-immigration people like Christopher Rasch and “radec” prefer to counter this argument not with impirical data of their own but, rather, with handwaving with lotfy moral cries of of “racism” and “immorality”. This is not the basis of rational discussion. The only pro-immigration person here who is making any kind of rational arguments is Tyler Cowen. The rest of you who are pro-immigration, if you feel that Steve Sailor and others are presenting wrong data or not backing up their arguments with enough objective data, present your own data to show how they are wrong. Argue on the basis of facts and reason, not emotions and subjective value judgements.
Handwaving with lofty moral statements only serves to convince those of us who are undecided on the issue that you have no imperical data to back up your arguments and that your opponents are correct.
Thomas Malloy has a particularly cogent point here. If he is wrong, America looses little. However, if he is correct, America could end up loosing alot.
In medicine, the basic principle is to “first, do no harm”. Applying this basic priciple
Cs Caplan did control for the share of immigrants, in his second graph (perhaps even overly strongly, assuming all immigrants are positive to immigration). The effect is weakened but remains.
But if you also control for state income the effect goes away. Rich feel-good states can afford to be mentally generous to immigrants, while poorer states feel more squeezed.
Regarding the cost of family formation:
I put more weight into Sailers and Huntington’s argument that immigration from Latin nations threatens the foundation of limited government that has made the US rich.
It is amazing to me that Caplan of all people doesn’t not get it. The greatest “natural† resource of the US is the individualist and pro-market Anglo-Saxon ethos of its population. They are less rationally irrational than other nations (ideological consumption of socialism is smaller), have withstood the forces that demand expanded government better, and are now therefore the richest nation on earth.
Free enterprise Classical Liberalism is a Anglo-Saxon invention, and has never gained any strong ideological foothold among the majority anywhere else. The most free economies of the world are ALL culturally Anglo-Saxon (USA, UK, Hong-Kong, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland). The only exception really is Singapore, and until a few years ago Switzerland, that is now quickly converging to the rest of Europe.
Leftwing populist Latinos are not assimilating in this regard. They may oppose abortion, but they love big government. By making the US increasingly less WASP, culturally and NOT racially, you are digging the grave of libertarianism.
Less rational voters = bad.
Patrick Sullivan, the Black Plague sent wages skyrocketing because it increased the ratio of land (and high-quality land) to labor, driving up marginal labor productivity in agriculture, the primary industry at the time.
Modern information economies are not constrained by land or capital supplies to the same extent, so instantly losing a random 1/3rd of the population would not raise wages by anything like the same amount.
Immigration is a human rights issue. Do immigrants descendants from native American Indians (Aztecs and Mayans etc.) have lower average IQs than Caucasians in general, probably. Are they less diligent in regards to schooling and education probably? Do they lower the wages of low skilled low IQ Americans, yes by a buck or two. Do they vote more socialist yes. Is the welfare state a big mistake that makes all these things worse and exacerbate all of the above, Yes. But†¦
But still where do we get off using force to keep individuals from crossing the boarder to work for our fellow Americans who are willing employers who are willing renters etc. It is a human rights issue.
Now lest we all become depressed, because the government won’t stop the flow of people any better than it stops that flow of drugs no matter how many laws you pass, I will say why the bad points above are not as bad as you think.
1. On IQ:
An average IQ of 90 is not all that low and in the future in America their offspring will have higher IQs due to the Flynn affect (better nutrition) (maybe 93 or 94) and American blacks who are growing in number relative to Caucasians have an average IQ of only 85 and that with USA nutrition.
2. They vote socialist
If you think that most white Americans do not want and vote for socialism you are kidding yourself. By the time new immigrants get to vote we will have long since become a socialist country.
3. American means less to them
The Roman catholic immigration already changed this. To protestants America meant freedom from oppression to Roman Catholics it meant prosperity. To this day Roman Catholics are more likely to vote democrat (socialist ant-economic freedom.). (Where I grew up in Roman Catholic Providence RI protestant evangelicals where persecuted to a small degree.)
4. They lower wages.
Poor Americans have intractable problem that are not solvable by higher wages. In fact middle class Americans with brains and diligence can live well on minimum wage. Poor Americans cannot. Poor Americans poverty is unsolvable the poverty of some Mexicans can be solved by a green card. For example two more dollars an hour to a drunk will just allow him to drink more.
5. Welfare is having a negative effect on Americans not just immigrants but maybe the American voter will slow their march to more and more welfare if they see it going to Mexican immigrants. The USA has less generous welfare than most of Europe Maybe because American votes see it going o blacks. The southern states are less generous with welfare than the other states perhaps for the same reason. So maybe the American people with not continue to make welfare more generous with a lot of Mexican immigration. Perhaps Mexican immigration will inspire a move against the absurdity of affirmative action. It is easy to the absurdity of affirmative action in regard to Mexican they do not have the excuse that blacks have of slavery.
Kurt (and Teller),
Actually the situation in SA was not altogether that much different from what is happening in the US. The homelands which were granted independence under apartheid largely corresponded to the areas traditionally occupied by blacks. The objective was to keep them from flooding the white cities and towns so as to avoid racial conflict. As is happening now in the US it was mainly the short-sighted and unsatiable demand for cheap labour which undermined the only rational and humane response to a very complex and volatile situation. The relative calm we are experiencing now will not last for ever. As soon as the ANC have done stripping the country of all of its assets they will surely blame whitey for their followers’ unmitigated misery, hanging us out to dry.
Yeah, and I stand by it.
“This data was provided to me by Stefan Thernstrom of Harvard”
should read
“THESE data WERE provided to me by Stefan Thernstrom of Harvard”
For Chrissakes, learn some ENGLISH!
LOL! Actually, you Philistine, Sailer’s use was correct and yours incorrect.
Or, do you say “THESE rice WERE provided to me by my English teacher”?
A great story that highlights the lack of honesty in the immigration debate:
http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2006/05/18/yeah-right-pull-the-other-one/
Now what you really need to understand with the total hand-over of this so called government of our nation to mexico city and the drug dealers where will you! live in 5 to 20 years when this nation has 400 or 500 million hispanics who don’t like living with Americans? SEE: AZTLAN FOR MORE INFO, Bush is the enemy of all free people.
Will,
I’m not surprised about that – however my point was the MEXICO more resembles the RSA during apartheid. I wonder why we aren’t hearing more about the “white racist elite” whose policies and corruption are a significant factor in why we are facing this problem now (and why useful idiots like Bush, McCain, Kennedy, Durbin et. al seem to think its not a problem at all).
The electric fences on RSA’s northern border to keep poorer nations’ citizens out of their “racist hellhole” is similar to the Mexican crackdown on “illegals” from Guatemala and other nations to their south.
It gets even worse than that, Will: the US is failing to learn the lessons of two very troubled countries, South Africa and Israel. In both cases, European populations established settlements in largely empty land. (Unlike the case of the Spaniards and Porteguese in South America, who mainly established plantation economies dependent on native labor) The success of these settlements attracted the surrounding native populations, and the settlements gradually converted themselves into plantations. The natives who flocked to the settlements were enriched thereby – but they inevitaby came to resent their benefactors. The US was for centuries the epitome of the “settlement” model (with the notable exception of the South), but now seems determined to follow the path of SA and Israel to a seething plantation.
The issues raised by Teller, Steve Sailor, and myself have yet to be addressed by our opponents. The statement by Floccine makes it clear that he or she does not understand what is at stake here. When I was living in Malaysia, I read a book by Amy Chua called “World on Fire”. This book depicts the various peoples of the world of being in roughly two catagories: “market minorities” and “sons of the soil”. The market minorities tend to have work ethic, pro-education, and are natural-born entreprenuers. The “sons of the soil” tend to be pretty much the opposite.
America was built by “market minorities”. As is any successful technological society.
Having spent much time in Malaysia and the rest of SE Asia I can tell you: her book is spot on. The central thesis of her book was that societies composed of both market minorities and sons of the soil are not peaceful prosperous societies, but tend to have considerable political stability. Of all of the countries in the world that mix both groups, Malaysia is probably the most sucessful at doing so. It also has many problems and it is debatable if Malaysia will be the Bosnia of 2020.
There are Chinese, Indian, and Malays. The Chinese are pretty much what you expect them to be: hard working, entreprenuerial, and given to seek education. They are, in short, the urbane merchant class of Malaysia, concentrated mostly in Penang (which is 50% Chinese), Ipoh, and KL. The Malays are generally the opposite of the Chinese. Many of them are from the country side and tend not to get educated. They are definitely not entreprenueral in nature. Now, of course there are exceptions. I know of several tremendously sucessful Malay entreprenuers in both KL and Penang, who easily hold their weight against the Chinese. However, they are the exception to the rule and readily admit such. They even tend to hire Chinese or Indians, in favor to their “own” Malay people. Talent hires talent, regardless of ethnic identity. This is the reality.
The differences between Chinese (market minority) and Malay (sons of the soil) is something that Dr. M used to talk about all of the time, when he was PM. He even wrote a book about it sometime in the 70′s, shortly after becoming PM.
The reality is that many Malays resent the success of the Chinese, even with the affirmative action and priveleges the Malays get from the government. It is this resentment that the more Islamic political elements are exploiting to whip up support for their policies (which includes sharia law in Kelantan state). Even though it is illegal to talk about it publicly, everyone here admits that if Malaysia was mostly Chinese (like Singapore) it would be as successful as Singapore (basically like Japan or the U.S.) If Malaysia was 90% Malay, it would be as poor as Indonesia (which is pretty bad, but not as bad as most of India). This is reality.
It is not clear to me what Malaysia will be like in 10-15 years. The politics is becoming increasingly ugly. As goes Malaysia, will America follow?
I consider Malaysia to be a perfect case study on these issues. Few Americans have visited Malaysia. They also do not read history. Hence, they do not understand the issues and what is at stake.
Malaysia is just one example cited in Amy’s book. It is the one I am most familiar with. The historical and current events evidence suggests that societies that have a majority of “market minority” people become successful, technologically and economically speaking. Societies composed of “sons of the soil” largely do not. A society composed in initially of “market minorities” that allows large numbers of the “sons of the soil” immigrants in endangers its future technological and economic prosperity. This is reality.
Floccine, I suggest you visit Malaysia. If your situation permits, you should spend significant time there (2-3 months). Spend time among the Chinese and Malays. You will come to appreciate what I am saying here. There is no substitute for direct personal experience.
I think we can also mostly agree on at least a few points:
a. The current handling of immigration is a disaster. We have 10+ million people living and working here illegally, which makes them natural targets for all kinds of crime and exploitation, and also which makes them natural customers of document fraud operations. Whatever the endpoint for fixing the immigration system, it must not leave this situation as it is.
b. There are tremendous incentives for people to come here from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc., because the wages are much higher here, and there are many more jobs. Similarly, there are tremendous incentives to hire people who will work at half the wages of citizens, who will never sue you for discrimination or anything, and who will be happy to work off the books if that’s what you want. It’s not going to be easy to get in between those two groups and prevent those transactions.
c. Whether illegal immigrants as a group make the country richer or poorer is an empirical question, and one that I think a lot of people here are much more qualified to answer than I. But it’s clear that many local services, like schools and hospitals, are getting clobbered by the added costs of illegal immigrants. We need to address this in some way, so that we don’t have illegal immigration mean that nobody in immigrant-heavy states even tries to go to an emergency room, because he knows it will be a six hour wait.
Yes, Brent. If Mexico does indeed resemble South Africa during apartheid it is because they are both societies where whites are in the minority. The “racism” of whites are directly proportional to their sense of threat. If you allow America to become a “seething plantation” (thanks Jimbo), there will be very little to distinguish white Americans from them retarded racists in Mexico and South Africa.
As an English lurker I don’t know whether to sigh or cheer at the immigration debate in the States as exemplified here.
OTOH, you get self-styled conservatives and patriots so pussywhipped by fear of being ‘racist’ that they reproduce all the tired, exploded early-1970s marxoid colour-blindness crap from the likes of Gould and Lewontin, and throw in utterly irrelevant analogies with South African apartheid as if that clinched things. They can do nothing but parrot the liberal melting-pot pieties of 40 years ago. There might have been some excuse for them then, before we knew how America was going to pan out in the era of Civil Rights and open-borders immigration. There is no excuse now. The so-called conservative president Bush II is smiling on the CIRA proposals which one Heritage Foundation analyst has estimated will add 70-100m mostly low-quality incomers to the population in 20 years. This is national suicide, no less, and those who abet it warrant impeachment.
But the way these pseudo-conservative internalisers of liberal b.s. have been shredded by the barrage of sound stats and reasoning from Sailer, Dobeln and Teller gives hope. Immigration is making race realism and the modern science on which it rests respectable again. There is a chance that even at the eleventh hour America can be spared from becoming Greater Mexico or Brazil; that the bogus conservative masks can be torn from the faces of the NWO globalisers who have captured the upper echelons of the Republican Party; and that not one but a hundred Tancredos and Ron Pauls will arise in Congress to rally the vast majority of Americans who want to restore the integrity of their frontiers and halt the continuous capitulation to scofflaw peons and their cheap-labour employers.
Tino quotes Alex on education:
3. “Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.†
To quote from a blog post of my own on the big increase in education spending that has failed to lift the Hispanics and blacks up to white levels of performance – let alone Ashkenazi Jews levels:
Libertarians are fond of advocating educational vouchers. They’ve been tried in some places and appear to provide a small benefit. But they also do not raise up blacks to white levels of edcuation and economic success. So money doesn’t fix the problem of lower performing minorities and vouchers won’t either.
A lot of the greater life success attributed to education is a function of the higher average IQs of people who go to school more years. It is the higher IQs and not the time in school that produces the greater successes in many cases. Teachers and college professors greatly exaggerate the benefits of their services.
The teachers are able to get away with their deceit because IQ as a cause of differences in outcomes has been made taboo by people on the Left in mainstream discussions. They just jump all over people who bring up IQ differnces, calling them racists and Nazis (see above) to stifle discussion of empirical evidence produced by the psychometricians.
Imagine that a group of physicists decided that the strong nuclear force was a taboo subject and that only the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity could be discussed as fundamental forces. They’d be derided as quacks. Well, the social scientists have done something in their own field – making IQ taboo – that would be considered quackery if such an important factor was ruled out of bounds in physics. Lynn and Vanhanen, in their IQ and the Wealth of Nations, showed that most social scientists are acting like quacks by ignoring IQ and evolution when trying to understand human nature.
The social scientists do not have to engage on IQ when debating immigration because the taboo allows them to frame all their arguments without reference to a very important determinant of economic outcomes. Even the social scientists who know the taboo hides important truths make lots of mistakes in their reasoning because they don’t get corrected for not factoring IQ into their mental and mathematical models.
A lot of the truth about human nature is ugly. I understand why people shrink from it. But shrinking from the truth does real harm. Stop doing it. Study and debate the evidence. You are making really big mental errors if you fail to do so.
Cheap DNA sequencing is going to put an end to the era of taboos about human differences in IQ and other aspects of cognitive function. I figure we are 5 to 10 years away such cheap DNA sequencing costs that the evidence will extend all the way down to the molecular level with so much detail that the Left will no longer be able to enforce the taboo. The cracks in the taboo are already showing. For example, see the recent paper A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome. God did not hold out his hand 50,000 years ago and stop all local selective pressures for genetic differences in cognitive function. Brains evolved to fit local conditions just like other body parts did. The brain does not stand above selective pressures. We have not not escaped the forces of natural selection.
Brad DeLong’s somewhat more left-leaning readership is in revolt over at his blog too.
Unsurprisingly, not many facts flowing in from the other side over there either. Isn’t it telling how conspicuously this so-called “consensus statement” is unable to marshal any real facts or references in its favor? How flimsy the arguments of its supporters?
Kurt what you forget here is that research flows over borders. If Japan develops more autoimmunization technology US firms can buy the robots and reap the same benefits.
However immigration will reduce US economical growth in a much more simple way, by substantially lowering the average quality of the workforce.
The per capita money income of the US 2001 was 22.850 dollars. But this is hiding a lot of information. In fact the US is two parts, 69% non-hispanic whites, 31% everyone else.
The per capita income of the former market dominant majority was 26.100,
the (mainly African American, Hispanic) minority 15.500. This despite the fact that the Asian group does as well as whites.
Let’s assume, as seams reasonable, that this is proportional to GDP.
Today the US has a GDP per capita that is 34% higher than Japan (Japan has slightly higher GDP per capita than Euro-15). But if you only look at the non-Hispanic white population the US has a GDP per capita that is 53.4% higher than Japan!
By 2050 non-Hispanic whites will be 50.1% the population. Let’s say the same income distribution applies 2050 that it does now (in reality the share of more successful Asians will go up, but the relative income of Hispanics is likely to be further reduced).
Even assuming the higher Hispanic share has no downward effect on white earnings through higher taxes the demographic transition itself will reduce measured US GDP per capita by 9%.
This about this. The “true† advantage of the American system over Europe how much more American of European decent earn in this more free-market system, which is a staggering 58% more (or 16.600 dollars per person).
But because of the downward pressure by lower skilled groups the GDP advantage only looks like 38%.
But with 2050 demographics, assuming the Muslim demographic shock to Europe will not be very strong (it won’t, Americans tend to forget that most European immigrants are from other European countries) the US advantage will only look like 26%, though having imported millions of unskilled workers from the third world.
True advantage of American economic system to Europe 58%
Measures advantage ignoring demographic factors 26%.
Unfair, isn’t it?
Than you will get some idiot socialist like Krugman writing in the 2050 edition of the NY-times that the conservatives overstate how good capitalism works, Europe and Japan don’t do that much worse than the US. Who is going to write in and complain?
Kurt,
I wouldn’t pass off the bulk of the ‘viva amnestia’ rhetoric entirely on the liberal-left. I know quite a few progressives who realize exactly how bad the future may look for the things they care about – personal freedom, workers rights, the environment – if CIRA or something equally bad becomes law. The pro-business ‘the more short-term profits the better’ wing of the GOP seems perfectly content with the “invade the world, invite the world” strategy ($1 to Sailer). Its the panderers on the Democratic side that are willing to “compromise” with the cheap-labor robber barons across the aisle, because they’re shrewd enough to realize that the vast majority of these “future Americans” will vote for them. As always, follow the money/power.
pro-immigration,
Thanks, I was beginning to worry. . .invective and irrelevancies are NEVER in short supply, I’m sure you’ll get the mix right in due time. . .si se puede!!!!
Will,
Will the US workforce be able to produce what American consumers demand in 2050? Will we be able to pay for what China produces? Will the Chinese still be holding the same percentage of US Treasuries as they do today?
To our heavy artillery, Tyler and Alex: while we’re coming up with our snappy comeback, it would be awfully nice if you could provide some cover for awhile.
Seriously: I look forward to reading your responses. Maybe I don’t get out enough, but his has been the most instructive series of exchanges about immigration I’ve ever encountered. Thank you, one and all.
Kurt,
Sailer has this all wrong. It’s not “invade the world, invite the world”, it’s really “invade the world, invite the world, indebt to the world”. The United States isn’t just importing poverty on a heroic scale, we also importing debt at rates unheard for a major power. Sadly, America has become the poster boy for globalization gone bad.
kurt, stop being thick, “pro-immigration” is clearly being sarcastic. The other side doesn’t usually brag about using nothing but invective or irrelevancies or argue that externalities and supply and demand are discredited!
eddied:
No.
Economical growth though higher per capita productivity (source of most growth) will raise the income of workers, and increase demand along with supply. this is Say’s law, and has been true almost always historically. When it has not (for example depression) the reasons have been specifically disturbance, not general lack of population growth.
Schaeffer and other: don’t mix the issues here. Foreign debt is not a problem at all. One reason some economist are pro-immigration is that the anti-immigration camp mixes bad and good arguments.
The high-skill parts of the US economy are growing extremely fast, it is completely reasonable to borrow a little from future income when interests rates are so low. Remember the federal debt/GDP ratio has only gone up by less than 10% since 2000.
“Insufficient consumption” is Keynesian idiocy. Satisfaction is never achieved. That’s why one common definition of economics is the study of the allocation of finite resources to appease infinite wants. Increasing the productivity of an economy will permit greater investment and consumption.
“Obvious”,
I guess I’m thick in accepting “Pro-immigration” at face value. Nonetheless, I felt the need to clarify myself, less my position be interpeted as “racist”.
The rest of you: I can tell you that many Asia immigrants (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese) share many of the same attitudes as the immigration restrictionist express on this board. I can also say that they do not have much respect for the “PC liberal-left” as it manifests itself in this country and Europe, and thats putting it mildly. My wife thinks that people who are politically left-wing (and they have them in Japan, too) are like little children who have not grown up to accept reality. She doesn’t think much of christian right people, either, although she thinks that they are slightly more in touch with reality than the PC left. Slightly is the operative word here.
You do not want to know what most Asian people think about what Fred Reed calls “the unassimulatible minorities” in the U.S.
i have no problem with immigrants they are fine. what harm are they doing coming here besides populating the country? they are just trying to have a better life that they can share with their friends and families. Its really what we all want. Just put yourself in there place.
American-born Hispanics still trail non-Hispanic whites by three to four grade levels (that 67% of the white-black gap).
This data was provided to me by Stefan Thernstrom of Harvard.
________
“Still trail.” That’s hard to believe and smells decidedly fishy, simply given my own story which admittedly starts in the 1950s. Where can we find this “data”?
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