From ThinkProgress.org:
Dirk Nowitzki And The Virtues Of Immigration
By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 13, 2011 at 10:04 am
What’s more, Nowitzki’s skills are to a considerable extent complementary to the skills of other workers employed by the Mavericks. ... And Nowitzki, in particular, offered a extremely unusual skillset — a seven-foot-tall player who can shoot accurately with range.
So, therefore, because uniquely talented immigrants are useful, the logical implication is that the U.S. must continue to take in tens of millions of unskilled short guys with grade school educations. Got it!
America Needs More Demand For Goods And Services, Not More Labor Supply
By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 13, 2011 at 11:45 am
But at the moment we’re suffering from a huge shortfall in aggregate demand due largely to the huge gap in personal consumption. Lots of different kinds of policies could close that gap or substitute for closing it, but increasing the supply of labor won’t.
Nothing Yglesias's recommendation of a 165,000,000 more immigrants won't cure.
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45 comments:
What is the secret to Yglesias' success?
Being smart and sounding authoritative and morally superior?
His policy prescriptions are disastrous. How does he get away with it?
Again, he's smart, right? People keep saying it!
I'm loving the weekly Yglesias-baiting.
I think I agree with Foolio Yglesias. One time, I was hungry and thirsty and feeling very weak. So, I had a steak, a potato, salad, and lemonade and felt much better. Ah, I thought!!!
The lesson to be learned from this: EATING IS GOOD. So, for even better health, I should consume 3 gallons of ice cream, 10 bags of potato chips, 20 bags of beef jerkies, 6 pizzas, two dozen eggs, five whole cakes, 7 differnt kinds of pies, and wash it all down with a barrel of beer and ten 2 lt bottles of sodiepop.
It's like if the government cannot fix all the problems, just make the government even bigger. Let's make all of America into a TAJ MAHAL SCHOOL.
How about we remake the Statue of Liberty into a big fat woman(or gender neutral person). MORE IS GOOD. "Me America, me consume more immigrants. Good for my tummy, good for my health."
Why does NOT ONE SINGLE political figure make the point that it makes no sense to continue to admit nearly a million immigrants a year--and that's only the legal ones--when we have over nine percent unemployment. I keep hearing that our economy's ability to create new jobs is not keeping up with the number of workers entering the workforce. Okay, so why not limit the number of workers entering the workforce with an immigration moratorium?
Expressed as an employment issue rather than a demographic issue, I am positive it would resonate with about 80 percent of the voters and Obama would have no answer to it.
Though a large majority of Americans tell pollsters they want less immigration, somehow this is another Third Rail.
Or turn Statue of Liberty into a big fat Jewish transsexual.
"I'm starving. Give us your huddled masses to fatten our asses."
America Needs More Demand For Goods And Services, Not More Labor Supply
I keep telling people that this is the real motivation of the open borders business community. There is no labor shortage at all. But businessmen will always love the idea of more customers for their services.
One upon a time America would have responded to this need for customers by selling goods overseas. American businessmen cannot do that anymore, for a variety of reasons. The "solution" is to import foreigners into America, where they have no choice but to buy stuff from American businessmen.
Off topic but very important. Homeless, alcoholic, illegal-alien soccer celebrated at the WashPo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/soccer-team-a-refuge-for-homeless-men/2011/06/11/AGl1jESH_story.html
Great, let's maximize the population of the US! Already the streets and sidewalks and parks are crowded. Let's let in half a billion more so that we can sell more food and toilet paper.
The people who run the US are gonna suffocate us. Don't they know about the experiment with the petrie dish colony? How did that work out?
The jungle is moving closer and closer to me. Soon I'll have to get my FOID card so that I can feel safer!
I know nothing about the sport, but I can hope that the immigrant chappy helped beat a team which was all American in origin. That would be an amusing metaphor.
No one ever got into any serious trouble by saying something that was politically correct but illogical. But plenty of people have gotten into trouble saying something logical that was not politically correct.
OT
More than $6 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds lost
The Iraqi and U.S. governments have been unable to account for a substantial chunk of the billions of dollars in reconstruction aid the Bush administration literally airlifted into the country. If the cash proves to have been stolen, the heist could represent "the largest theft of funds in national history," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
The much more fundamental issue is that Mathew Yglesia wants to reduce the White Majority to a racial minority. And he is making an economic case for reducing the White Majority to a racial Minority. But how could there ever be an economic argument for racially transforming America? Exactly how are White Americans better off if they are made into a racial minority in America? Of course, it is compete nonesense.
Another fundamental point:Why do you Steve, want to engage in this king of debate with Yglesia? Is it preferable to you to race replace White Americans with Asians? This is where the economic argument leads...every time. I agree with Thomas Flemming that the economic argument about immigration is trivial and beside the point.
How eactly is it better for the White Majority to have Asian immigrants to enter America? Among other things, Asian legal immigration has resulted in a transfer of White American territory-and the scare resources that come with this territory-to several Asian nations.
To the Asians thinking about responding to my comments:White Americans did quite well when your people weren't here..and since your people have been flooding into my country, the economic status of White Americans has declined significantly. Its not a coincidence...and it is not up to you decide what's in the "best" interests of millions of White Americans.
And yes, Mathew Iglesias is waging ethnic warfare against the White Majority. Nowitzki is a European immigrant. Yglesia is "arguing" Nowitzki...therefore flood America with more Chinese,Hindus,Pakistanis and Koreans...his intent is obviously race-replacement.
"Expressed as an employment issue rather than a demographic issue, I am positive it would resonate with about 80 percent of the voters and Obama would have no answer to it."
Oh, hooey.
Their answer would be the same as it ever was: "You evil, irrational, racist, (gasp) NATIVIST fools always going off about immigrants supposedly taking your jobs, shame on you!
Immigration is good. Get it now?
You don't?
Okay, I'll explain it to you: shut up."
His policy prescriptions are disastrous. How does he get away with it?
disastrous for who? beneficial for whom?
Why does NOT ONE SINGLE political figure make the point that it makes no sense to continue to admit nearly a million immigrants a year--and that's only the legal ones--when we have over nine percent unemployment.
Electing a new people, and thus dissolving the nation state, is the number one goal of our elite, particularly the jewish elite who have a beyond-rational fear of a homogeneous european population anywhere.
When you're that neurotic, Matthew Y. sounds rational.
Unemployment was mentioned as was homelessness.
How does importing millions of immigrants help the problem of homelessness? Im being simplistic here but clearly if one is in any way exercised by the issue of homelessness, then adding more people cannot possibly help can it.
Unless the incomers are, on average, vastly more productive than the existing population. But they arent as we well know.
Is it possible to comment on that article?
(Michael Farris)
I remember when Yglesias had a sharp, smart, often funny (if unfinished) take on things.
But how have the mighty fallen. He could be the poster boy for PC makes you stupid and his immigration posts make him seem like he's trying for the Douglas Feith Memorial "Dumbest Fucking Guy on the Planet" award.
"I keep hearing that our economy's ability to create new jobs is not keeping up with the number of workers entering the workforce."
I read an article by Mark Steyn a day or so ago that quoted a Labor Dept. report saying the US economy created 54,000 jobs in a recent month. However half the jobs were created by McDonald's and 100,000 immigrants entered the United States that month.
"Though a large majority of Americans tell pollsters they want less immigration, somehow this is another Third Rail."
My fellow Americans need to man up and walk the walk. We say we want less immigration. Then the media runs their sob stories about how La Migra drove Jose Blow back to his shack in Mexico or some illegal daddy was separated from his US born kid and people lose their nerve.
We (rightfully) damn our politicians for their dereliction of duty on the immigration issue. But we also need to stiffen our spines.
Jobs emigrate to over there and workers immigrate to over here. Yep, makes sense.
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Why run on a trivial issue like immigration, when the real issue is how best to attack Iran's nuclear facility? As an American, I think what goes on between Iran and Israel is much more relevant to me than our southern border. Bomb, bomb, bomb....... bomb, bomb Iran.
I also think Republicans should go for swing voters. Latinos, as always, are going to be in play. So let's not alienate them by doing anything about immigration. Jews might vote Republican too, because Obama disagreed with Netanyahu one time. I'd say we should go for the black vote too.
Frankly, the obsession you guys have with America's borders is a little scary. On the other hand, the endless attention that our president, congress, and punditry devote to Israel's borders is clearly what's relevant to the American public.
Though a large majority of Americans tell pollsters they want less immigration, somehow this is another Third Rail.
Obama, Congress, the media, the UN, AIPAC, the Mexican government, the Kennedys, and minority activists don't want less immigration. Since they all count for more than you, immigration must continue. Forever.
I personally trust Obama a lot. He spent a bunch of years agitating for asbestos to be removed from community housing projects in the southside of Chicago - and if that doesn't make him an expert on the important issues of our time, I don't know what would. You, on the other hand, work and pay taxes. So what would you know?
To the Asians thinking about responding to my comments:White Americans did quite well when your people weren't here..and since your people have been flooding into my country, the economic status of White Americans has declined significantly. Its not a coincidence...and it is not up to you decide what's in the "best" interests of millions of White Americans.
I'll protect the future of my white grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Don't you worry, I am handsome, athletic, can do physics and am a good public speaker.
I am a rare Asian, to be sure, however. And still sleep deprived
We (rightfully) damn our politicians for their dereliction of duty on the immigration issue. But we also need to stiffen our spines.
Mike Huckabee and Dick Armey have called for the mass deportation of...... Palestinians. Seriously, they want Palestinians deported out Israel.
In other news, Mike Huckabee believes in in-state tutition for illegal aliens. He believes by treating Hispanics the righr way, we've been given a chance to atone for what we did to blacks (not making this up).
Mr. Armey thinks the GOP must appeal to the Hispanic vote and has claimed that, as a Congressional Republican leader, he used his power to "shut up" Tom Tancredo, who is racist.
I'm glad to see my leaders have their priorities in order.
The Huckster thinks it our Christian duty to have open borders and anyone who doesn't agree is a racist. In fact, anyone who hires an illegal alien at a sub-minimum wage is just like Jesus.
Of course, the "Good Samaritan" quote doesn't apply to Jews, so Israel can protect their borders.
So sayeth Pat Robertson and the Huckster.
Steve, most white americans reject the values of "soros and sandler land"
But you need to understand that among high IQ whites living on the East and West Coasts, the values of "soros and sandler land" are quite popular
It seems to me that there should be true Federalism in which certain political units are run according to the social rules of 1950s America and certain other political units are run according to the social rules of the elites.
This sorting has already happened, to some extent. If you want to live a more traditional lifestyle, places like Delta, Utah, or Provo, Utah, or Colorado Springs offer this traditional lifestyle. These places should be able to maintain their own unique traditional lifestyle without encroachment from the elites.
At the same time, it is perfectly appropriate for the elites to dominate places like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The majority of the people in those cities want to live by the cultural rules of the elites.
As has been commented upon many times here, the elites seem to have fertility levels far below replacement levels. While non elites, whether the non elite are Mormon, or Evangelical Christian seem to have above replacement fertility.
It seems that both should be able to coexist well.
Don't forget that the current arrangement of society in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, in Cambridge works well for the elite. The elite prefers to bring high IQ people like Yan Shen to live in their communities and work in their companies as opposed to non elite Americans.
Fundamentally, the elite created Google, they created apple, they created facebook. They should be allowed to staff up their companies with whoever they want.
It is clear that the elites would rather associate with high IQ Brahmins and with high IQ Korean immigrants instead of with low IQ redneck prole Americans. Who are we to force the elite to associate with the redneck proles?
At the same time, the proles in places like West Virginia should be free to propogate their culture their own way.
It seems to me that a general rule in our society is that the super high IQ super productive whites, the whites that create special things like Google or high technology or Hollywood movies that entertain the whole world want to live with high IQ people of all races. And also want to live with a good smattering of homosexual high IQ people.
It seems to me that the low IQ whites generally don't enjoy being around those with high IQ. Low IQ whites EITHER want to become super religious and associate with other super religious people, or they want to do prole things like Nascar and hunting. It seems to me that low IQ whites and high IQ whites naturally want to segregate out from each other.
That is fine with me, isn't America big enough for the low IQ whites to go live in totally separate cities from the high IQ whites?
"More than $6 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds lost"
I want to say unfvckingbelievable but unfortunately it is not that difficult to believe... For comparison: $6B is a total annual budget of the State of Maine. Or another: $2.3B is 2011 budget of Food and Drug Administration, a huge and influential federal agency.
Anyone wants to bet that no one will serve time for letting this happen?
I'm having trouble clicking through to Yglesias's article. I presume he uses the example to of Nowitzki to make the case for increasing immigration of blonde northern Europeans to the USA.
OT, I notice that everyone's favourite Scots-Irishman constantly misspells Nowitzki's surname, as he does Patrick Buchanan's. Is this how rowdy red-headed Appalachian backwoodsmen such as he mark out enemies of their tribe?
Don't you understand? Open borders are good for the Jews. That's why Matt was attacking Kaus - for being a "bad Jew".
Rubin, the new WaPo conservative, also thinks open borders are good for the Jews. 150 million more Americans from Nigeria? A-OK by Jennifer.
Like Bill Kristol once said, illegal immigration hasn't hurt him, so what's the beef?
@Anonymous of 6/13/11 7:57 PM
You, sir, are an ignorant bigot. California is not Google, and the Golden State was not built by the current elite of silicon valley; it was built by middle-class whites, many of them who were in fact rednecks. Go find your own damned country in which to indulge your desire for social engineering experiments.
"Don't you understand? Open borders are good for the Jews."
I don't. How?
Hey, here's some of that diversity that Yglesias likes so much:
http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/Man-dies-while-raping-elderly-South-Texas-woman-123777409.html
I've yet to read anything from Yglesias that suggests he's smart.
After all, holding to assinine policy positions that fly in the face of all research data suggests he's someone who doesn't care to employ logic.
Anytime any immigrant, such as Nowitzki, does something good, we then hear this same argument.
And when someone brings up, say, Obama's uninvited, undeportable, state-dependant Aunt, the speaker counters with Sergei Brin or whoever... They probably have bots to write these articles now.
What I really cannoy stand Steve is people such as Yglesias and other so-called 'economists' arguing out their politically motivated immigrationist position by recourse to stupid, silly little anecdotes (usually about sports teams, but in this case giant German ball players), rather than arguing on the basis of hard, analytical theoretical evidennce.
Really it is the logic of the school-yard or of the grocery store butter counter than serious analysis.
'Freaks' (not they I have anything against the worthy gentleman) like Nowitzki occur sporadically throughout the globe due to random chance.They happen to make effective basketball players that give their team the edge.So what.What's the big deal - I can just as well point out that white elephants naturally occur in Thailand from time to time and they are supposed to confer great fortune on their beneficiaries.It's just a bit of trivia - and in no way can be construed as rational, reasoned analytical argument.
Anyway as you point out Steve, the typical modern immigrant to the USA is distinguished by inteelectual and moral mediocrity.
Once again it should be pointed out: the "overpopulation" meme - very popular in the 70s and 80s - is no longer in service. Curious, no?
Once again it should be pointed out: the "overpopulation" meme - very popular in the 70s and 80s - is no longer in service. Curious, no?
The WSJ had a big whine about the reappearance of overpopulation "fearmongering" just today.
It's hard to tell who the bigger jokers are: the lying assholes like Matt Y, for whom defending ongoing immigration is him defending his own hide (as he sees it), or the fat, rich assholes who plan on getting even fatter and richer by having more morons to sell their shitty wares to.
Anytime any immigrant, such as Nowitzki, does something good, we then hear this same argument.
Or the story will be played up. Here's an example:
CNN: Marines showed extraordinary bravery 'when the world became fire'
I don't believe every medal winner gets front page treatment on CNN (when this story was current, the text of the link on CNN's main webpage highlighted the fact these two are immigrants).
BTW, AFAIK Nowitzki is not really an immigrant -- he is still a German national, who in the recent past has played for Germany's national basketball team. I do not know what his immigration status is.
Of course the $6 billion in Iraq cash was stolen, that was part of the plan. There's a standard operating procedure for issuing currency in a war zone, but nobody gets rich stealing military scrip so that wasn't an option...
Military personnel deployed abroad (protective or occupation) are generally paid in military scrip, which prevents legal tender from going into the black market, plus it is an excellent way of keeping tabs on military payments and spending... Military occupying powers have also been known to issue occupation scrip for local civilian use as a means of controlling the local economies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip#Military_scrip
It seems to me that the low IQ whites generally don't enjoy being around those with high IQ. Low IQ whites EITHER want to become super religious and associate with other super religious people, or they want to do prole things like Nascar and hunting. It seems to me that low IQ whites and high IQ whites naturally want to segregate out from each other.
Look, it's Yan Shen!
Kato's "cognitive elite" thing is a great idea. Yes, let's divide the white population into two halves (divide and conquer) and pit them against one another. Convince one half to sit by patiently while China devours the other half, so they'll get eaten last.
Brilliant strategy. Very much in white Americans' interest. Israel, China, or India will probably beat us to it, though, being so much more "cognitively elite" than we are.
Right?
And Japan and Korea! Mustn't forget them. They're probably all burning the midnight oil for their own "cognitively elite," multiracial immigration policies. Coming soon, you read it here first!
The USA's core experience is one of luck. Not achievement, or justice, or beauty, or education. Just luck.
Protected by oceans, never seriously invaded or subjugated for centuries, never massacred, the American ( I studiously exclude native Americans of course ) lack of experience of slaughter, most especially in the twentieth century, leaves us dangerously naive. Our government at certain levels is aware of it, and is aware that other countries' intelligence agencies are aware of it.
How we make it through this mental bottleneck is a good question. I do know that many of us are feeling the squeeze as our capacity to absorb continuous assault by parasitic (that is to say normal) immigrant humans is tested.
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