The era of reduced expectations

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I know that you are silly enough to think that the US has a welfare state, and that Mexican immigrants would come to the Us to exploit it, rather than the low paid jobs that happen to pay better than the equivalent jobs in Mexico.

Since eliminating the feeble approximation to a welfare state that you do have wouldn't change the number of Mexican immigrants or what they'd end up doing, your claim that you would then welcome them is unlikely to be true, though you may not know enough to realise this.

They were a menace in Burnie, Tasmania. Happily they went to the Catholic schools, while the rest of us went to the regular government- funded primary schools, and found other reasons for dividing ourselves up into tribes.

Harking back to a non-existent imagined history to make an unconvincing argument.

Since it seems that you didn't actually have a surplus in 1998, what's the fuss about?

suggests that Clinton did manage to get the budget into better shape while increasing productive spending for "dramatically increased funding in critical areas, such as education and training, children, the environment, health care, and research and development." which makes a nice contrast with Dubbya, who spent hugely on vanity projects like invading Irak.

You don't know that because I don't think it. If you send all the Mexicans from the southwest to NY, as Jim said, then there wouldn't be enough local jobs. It was in that context. Without social programs they'd have to head back. In spite of the inadequacy you percieve in our national social programs, NY City and NY State have their own as well.

Some conservatives have advocated a negative income tax since Nixon. Milton Friedman always believed in it. As long as the graph of take-home pay as a function of gross income has a positive slope then there is always an incentive to earn. The problem with our ~1000 Federal social programs and the innumerable state and local programs is that they make the slope negative in places.

I can see what they do, and it's mostly productive. Since a growing percentage of the population works in unproductive government jobs or contracts, the Latins have a larger percentage doing useful work than the nation as a whole. That's why I said in the first place that without the income tax there'd be no reason to keep them from working. I cited progressivism because it's responsible for the income tax and social programs. And no matter what you think of the TV metaphor, it wasn't a problem for people in that time if they wanted to hire immigrants.

So if they think there was a cause and effect relationship with a 7 year interval, is that more sensible than believing in cause and effect with a 5 year interval?

Many things in economics have a delayed effect, but not that. If taxes produce revenue it only takes one year, but our Democrats think they see cause and effect there.

And it's Congress that actually controls the budget, and it was Gingrich who made that budget what it was. Clinton wanted to add health care to the budget as well.

Then you haven't expressed yourself particularly clearly.

Nobody "sent" them to Arizona, and if the US could "send" them to NY, they could equally send them back to Mexico, which is what the legal system would say they ought to do. It's the kind of though experiment that Jim-out-of-touch-with=reality-Thompson can come up with because he doesn't think for himself at all.

At the moment is the free market in labour that drives them around the country, not the welfare system.

Who care. Carrying on as if Jim's idiotic thought experiment might really happen and worrying about it's hypothetical consequences is only a slightly less silly waste of bandwidth than my wasting more of it to castigate you.

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It used tro be a real problem in the UK, recognised under the name of "the poverty trap". It got sorted out by a bit of fine tuning of the benefits rather than a negative income tax.

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Granting that the immigrants they might have hired would have had to have been exceptionally imaginative people to conceive of migrating at all, and exceptionally tenacious to make happen, employers should have snapped them up. Modern migrants are still a self-selected group, but the obstacle course isn't as demanding as it used to be.

If you want to discuss cause and effect relationships, you have to identify the causes and trace the effects.

Do you think people all over the world watched that show, or even remember that fact?

Clearly they were okay with illegals and indentured laborers- consider Hop Sing... prohibited entry under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

In reality, Ben Cartright was played by a Canadian and they reportedly grossly underpaid the Chinese-American actor who played Hop Sing.

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So, Professor Sloman's contention is that illegals flock overwhelmingly to the US because they prefer and seek America's illegally low wages, abusive conditions--and lack of benefits--over those offered by Canada?

Genius.

New York already has such a problem. When I was doing that project last year on Long Island, EVERY maid in the hotel (*) was Mexican.

(*) Extended Stay America, Melville. ...Jim Thompson

Yes. The most hilarious thing I've ever seen was 'The Ponderosa' with dubbed Japanese... and I've also seen those re-runs in Germany, and Australia. ...Jim Thompson

These folks estimate 71% of households with children headed by illegal aliens are on our dole:

There goes our safety net. And, it's not from unwillingness to work generally, but is used by low-skill, low-education workers to supplement their wages. The subsidies actually drive wages down-- subsidized workers can work for less.

Not only do subsidies make it possible to work for less, lowering wages, but it becomes progressively impossible to compete for work without subsidy. That progressively sucks more and more people into welfare's net, trapped.

Our federal dependency programs' glass ceiling present implied marginal tax rates >100%, thwarting poverty escape-attempts. (If they try working, they pay more in income taxes and lost subsidies than they gain in additional earnings.)

More readable explanation here:

Can't let those O votes off that federal plantation...

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Hi James, CIS is most likely a partisan organization.

At one time I heard a report that said immigrants were a net win for the economy. (paid more in taxes than took out in benefits.) But you can find whatever you are looking for on the web. (Everyone?s got a hat in the ring.)

Here?s wiki?s take,

If you scroll down to the bottom there is a section titled,

Weighing Benefits against Costs

The CBO?s take is a bit negative.... But at the moment that?s true for (almost) all groups of Americans. (sigh.)

Personally I think we should let ?em all in. (And keep wages low.) One easy (short term) way to grow the economy is to grow the population. They all have to buy house?s and hamburgers. :^)

George H.

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This is one of those corner cases where the subsidy and the cost benefits balance out, from what I have read. It's analogous to corn subsidies in that way - keeps the prices stable and down.

I know; that's not the reason to be offended ( I am not offended, the historical path dependence on Hispanic immigration causes me not to be able to take a strong position one way or the other; read about Hearst's ranch in Chihuahua province some time ).

But it all comes out in the wash.

I don't agree. There's a pretty bright line in reality. I do suspect that a motel chain could possibly *advertise* "we are illegal free" and get a small bump in price for it. I see "ethanol free" gasoline; I suppose the mechanism is the same.

So it goes. Why is this a problem? If the marginal product in the marketplace is less than what it costs to do it...

It's very politically hard to eliminate programs that appear to make things cheaper ( or actually do make them cheaper ).

O barely tries to get them....

it is my fondest wish that Wm. Randolph Hearst is being tortured for all eternity in Hades for that one.

Wouldn't be surprised. The guest actors usually got scale.

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There aren't any non-partisan figures I know of. Officially, the people don't exist (unless being counted for electoral votes in the Census), but just try strolling through Santa Ana, CA.

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Well of course such an effort is well under way, and decades old. Is it working?

As a California refugee, whose SIL teaches classrooms packed with the kids of illegal aliens--who receive a public education that costs California taxpayers >$12.5k a year each--it's just hard to see who ever repays anything close to that. Sure they pay state income taxes (we hope), but not anything close to $25k a year for two kids, or (easily) $100k per kid.

Under the progressive tax system, they're likely to pay virtually nothing. In addition, they receive housing subsidies, free medical care, food, and other support. And, there are other costs, such as criminality, etc.

Another social cost: my SO's teenagers couldn't get jobs--couldn't get that initial work training and experience--because regulations made them much less employable, more expensive, more burdensome than (subsidized) illegal aliens. Their classmates weren't getting jobs either.

Is there any other country that deliberately lures the world's least- skilled and poor with benefits, and expects a return? Shall we import all of India's poor?

On the other hand, America gets the benefit of illegals' production, whatever that is, and they get to send money home. (It's the same as exporting jobs to Mexico etc., but more convenient for the employer).

So, here's my proposal: a lot of the controversy and ill-effects are because the true costs of everything are hidden by the welfare state. Strip those away, put all costs out in the open, then decide what's in America's interest.

I've certainly no objection to hard-working people wanting to contribute.

Well then, let's import all the world's poor people and subsidize them. Or better, why not send the subsidies directly to them? That surely will make them work harder, and more productive.

That just causes people to use corn instead of more suitable products, and reduces the supply of everything that isn't corn. We then have an oversupply of corn, which we correct by artificially demanding it be used for ethanol, driving the price back up.

Wrt jobs, it distorts the job market, displaces youth, and replaces our population with people of completely different values and history.

Rwanda had a genocide not long ago--would millions of Rwandans fit in here, understand capitalism, a republican form of government, due process, and civil rights?

It has nothing to do with advertising. If you're an indigenous worker without subsidy, how can you compete with an illegal one who is subsidized? How can you possibly work for as little as he can, when he doesn't have your same expenses?

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You don't think removing all rewards for working harder--trapping people in poverty--is bad? How is that good for them, or society?

James Arthur

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Yeah, I guess I tend to trust the CBO more than other sources.

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Sure, I'm just doing the numbers for my kids in my head... I think our school taxes are ~$2.5-3k/ year. I've got two... don't know what the cost per is, but $10k/ year may be close. So I 'get' ~ $200k, if I pay $3k/yr that's ~66 years to barely break even. And I'm an above average tax payer in my school district. There's some families living in what are close to 'tar paper shacks'. (tyvek paper shacks :^)

Yup, I agree with you more than I disagree. I'm particulary PO'ed at the HSA's at the moment. I went and had all this 'somewhat unneeded' health stuff done at the end year to fill out my HSA. We were mostly healthy this year, and guessed wrong. Next year my daugther may start braces... how should I guess?

I guess that's my basic premise, I assume people want to work for a living.

George H.