March 20, 2013

The Harry Dexter White Award for Economists' Ethics

There should be an award given each year to the taxpayer-supported American economist who most lives up to the high standards of cosmopolitan morality established by economist Harry Dexter White (1892-1948).

From the New York Times:
A Profession With an Egalitarian Core 
By TYLER COWEN 
ECONOMICS is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated. And that core may guide us in some surprising directions. ...
Economic analysis is itself value-free, but in practice it encourages a cosmopolitan interest in natural equality. Many economic models, of course, assume that all individuals are motivated by rational self-interest or some variant thereof; even the so-called behavioral theories tweak only the fringes of a basically common, rational understanding of people. The crucial implication is this: If you treat all individuals as fundamentally the same in your theoretical constructs, it would be odd to insist that the law should suddenly start treating them differently. ... 
Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives — common around the globe — that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom. Economists too often forget that we are part of this broader battle of ideas, and that we are winning some enduring victories.
So where will a cosmopolitan perspective take us today? 
One enormous issue is international migration. A distressingly large portion of the debate in many countries analyzes the effects of higher immigration on domestic citizens alone and seeks to restrict immigration to protect a national culture or existing economic interests. The obvious but too-often-underemphasized reality is that immigration is a significant gain for most people who move to a new country. 
Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, quantified these gains in a 2011 paper, “Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” He found that unrestricted immigration could create tens of trillions of dollars in economic value, as captured by the migrants themselves in the form of higher wages in their new countries and by those who hire the migrants or consume the products of their labor. For a profession concerned with precision, it is remarkable how infrequently we economists talk about those rather large numbers. 
Truly open borders might prove unworkable, especially in countries with welfare states, and kill the goose laying the proverbial golden eggs; in this regard Mr. Clemens’s analysis may require some modification. Still, we should be obsessing over how many of those trillions can actually be realized. 
IN any case, there is an overriding moral issue. Imagine that it is your professional duty to report a cost-benefit analysis of liberalizing immigration policy. You wouldn’t dream of producing a study that counted “men only” or “whites only,” at least not without specific, clearly stated reasons for dividing the data.

I constantly read studies about how policies are good or bad for blacks or women or immigrants or gays or Jews. The fact that I don't see many studies about how policies affect men or whites has more to do with Who? Whom?.
So why report cost-benefit results only for United States citizens or residents, as is sometimes done in analyses of both international trade and migration? The nation-state is a good practical institution, but it does not provide the final moral delineation of which people count and which do not. So commentators on trade and immigration should stress the cosmopolitan perspective, knowing that the practical imperatives of the nation-state will not be underrepresented in the ensuing debate. 
Economics evolved as a more moral and more egalitarian approach to policy than prevailed in its surrounding milieu. Let’s cherish and extend that heritage. The real contributions of economics to human welfare might turn out to be very different from what most people — even most economists — expect. 
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

As time goes by, the brighter sort of economists are less often promising that mass immigration is good for Americans and have turned instead to insisting that submitting to mass immigration is Americans' moral duty to Mexicans. Otherwise, they'd starve!

69 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/wEG2cP3r6zE

Anonymous said...

We should start considering all those poor 3rd world economists who would be much happier in the USA teaching at the local university for half the current salary. Get rid of tenure and lets let the free market and open borders work its magic. Its the moral thing to do.

Anonymous said...

I never could tell if your attitude toward Cowen was more in the mold of condescension crossed with grudging curiosity, or visceral contempt. This would support the latter

Anonymous said...

The 'analysis' that Tyler Cowen is trying to foist on America (he and his kind have actually succeeded in doing so with the political fools, but that's another story), is a complete load of crap and should be dismissed as such. In fact, it all it is a blatantly political 'one world' ideological position masquerading as economic theory, which has managed to con the political boobs.
Firstly it is is analytically impossible - no matter waht bullpoopy Tyler Cowen spews - that the immigration of low productivity individuals can possibly raise productivity per capita in the host (as in bed bug host)nation. It is simply mathematically impossible, violates basic axioms of arithmetic rather like trying dvide one by zero or finding the square root of negative one. No doubt Bertrand Russell could talk about this at length.
Secondly, there has been a horrible, horrible tendency in recent years of trying to conflate free trade theory - based on the idea of comparative advantage - with uncontrolled immigration - which ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT HAVE THE SAME THEORETICAL UNDERPINNING. RICARDO AND SMITH NEVER, EVER RECOMMENDED IT. Sorry about the capitals, but these disgusting liars make feel sick to the pit of my stomach. The whole idea behind 'free trade' was to substitute the movement of goods for the movement of persons, believe it or not. I don't need to move to Saudi to burn gas. A Saudi doesn't need to move here to watch Bruce Willis dicking about and being chased by a huge fireball.

Anonymous said...

Nah, Steve's para-aggressions against Tyler aren't yet numerous enough to collect in a Tumblr.

4th-worlder said...

How'd they wind up with the backing music in that USSR anthem-infomercial? Sounds like 19th century Anglo stuff, something they'd play to kick off that week's Royal Navy exercises.

Anonymous said...

'The nation state is finished blah, blah, blah'
'The nation state is irrational and incompatible with modern, free-wheeling rational economics blah, blah, blah'.

Yup. Just look at how well the attempt to abolish 'nation states' is working out in the Euro zone area.

Anonymous said...

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
- as they say in England.

England, as it happens, has experienced its most massive, sustained and overwhelming immigration wave in he 1500 years or so of its recorded history.
It has also put in, contemperoraneously with the immigration deluge, the worst ever economic performance since such statistics were gathered - which in England is a long time ago indeed.

Anonymous said...

impossible - no matter waht bullpoopy Tyler Cowen spews - that the immigration of low productivity individuals can possibly raise productivity per capita

Right--immigration only directly affects labor supply in this or that rubric of skills, or lack thereof. "Productivity" is whole other kettle of fish; they haven't nailed down the mechanics of the productivity contraption yet, much as they never seem to shut up 1 minute about it (good lord...)

Or perhaps it is just another entry in the ever-increasing American lexicon of important-sounding words that seem to have a big official definition but in practice mean whatever the speaker wants them to.

Anonymous said...

The irony is that using Cowen's economic reductionist logic, we can conclude that the only reason Cowen supports immigration is because he enjoys relatively stable employment and income by holding a position at a public institution that is not very sensitive to market conditions. Immigration can lower the prices of things he consumes - such as restaurant meals, which he's know for consuming a lot as a foodie - while leaving his income and employment relatively unscathed.

His own economic reductionism would predict that if didn't hold this relatively stable position, his position on immigration would change.

If he had any intellectual honesty, he would admit and explicitly state this.

Anonymous said...

The definition of 'productivity' as applied to workers is very simple, one would think.
Purely and simply the market value of output produced - as reflected in wage rates.
If a worker is low paid, it's obvious that the market is saying that his efforts aren't really worth much, by contrast high pay reflects the fact that work is highly valued by the market.
Just what is difficult about this to understand?

Anonymous said...

Why isn't he considering the cost in human resources to the countries the immigrants are emigrating from? Don't the emigrants have a certain moral obligation to remain in, and preserve the value of, their homeland.

rightsaidfred said...

I wish Cowan would show me a real world example of a productive immigrant. I sure don't see any around here.

So when a country is colonized by a group of people who consume as many resources but produce less stuff than the natives, it is called Libertarianism. Got it.

Anonymous said...

studying heterosexual white christian males is the prerogative of the Justice Department and Homeland Security.

bjdubbs said...

WaPo just ran story about lazy and stupid veterans who can't find jobs:

"Shorter’s résumé said she worked for Wal-Mart for 14 years and left the company in 2010 shortly after returning from Iraq. Her commanders said she was a good soldier who never missed weekend drill.

But every interview Bolton sent her on had been a disaster.

“Disconnected and very distracted” were the words a telemarketing company used to describe her."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-decade-of-war-troops-still-struggling-to-find-work/2013/03/19/f064a0ba-8810-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story_2.html

Hard to imagine a benighted illegal alien getting the same treatment.

The real predicate for mass immigration was laid by eliminating the draft. The draft was the last connection between citizenship and service. Without the draft, their is no good argument to favor citizens over non-citizens, or to force politicians to pay attention. They can launch wars with or without the citizenry's consent.

Rob said...

Is Cowen Jewish?

Anonymous said...

As I read the comments here, my girlfriend is reading a story in the Boston Globe headlined "High-Skill Immigrants Could Double Under Senate Plan".

Anonymous said...

Adam Smith, whom I'm obliged here to grant the customary honorific 'the father of economics' wrote his great and seminal work and entitled it 'The Wealth of Nations'. This was done for good reason, Smith wanted to fathom out why some nations were rich and others poor. His conclusions were largely that government policy as reagring the granting of monopolies etc was to blame.
Anyway, my point is that Smith only really cared about maximizing wealth for his *own nation*, he didn't give a damn about foreign nations, unless their trade helped his own to grow via trade in a mutual arrangement.
Basically, this has always been the siutation until the wankers took over economics.

Anonymous said...

Steve we get Oil from Mexico, the Mexican government is mainly behind why we have to take their people in. Besides, the illegals and legal immirgant Mexicans send back 23 billion hone. So, Mexican politicans favor their citzens being in the US for money. The Obama adminstration team up with Mexico to get illegals to go more on welfare programs not just for their kids but for themselves more. The Mexican government is a strong influence which isn't mention here much.

Cail Corishev said...

The whole idea behind 'free trade' was to substitute the movement of goods for the movement of persons, believe it or not.

Yeah, the fear about NAFTA was that Mexicans would grow tomatoes really cheap and put American tomato growers out of business. So what happened? Why aren't Mexicans growing tomatoes and shipping them up here, beating the prices of American companies that hire Mexicans while dealing with the USA's higher taxes and regulations?

Alden said...

He found that unrestricted immigration could create tens of trillions of dollars in economic value, as captured by the migrants themselves in the form of higher wages in their new countries and by those who hire the migrants or consume the products of their labor.

One would think that being a smart guy and a professional analyst Cowen would be skeptical of get-rich-quick schemes.

One would be wrong.

Anonymous said...

Harry Dexter White was a jewish communist traitor.

Rohan Swee said...

Ho hum. Another day, another economist sperg-out. What percent of these high-IQ guys are actually aware that they are shills? Yup, we're all about making sure that those "trillions of dollars in economic value" are "being captured in...higher wages", lol. I think Cowen is an honest guy. Does that make it sadder or funnier?

anony-mouse said...

If you believe your field of study is a mathematically-oriented 'science' you are bound to talk and write in more universal terms. Physical laws, for example, in the US are the same as in Mexico.

Economists love thinking of their field as a math-oriented one, as opposed to those artsy other ones.

Anonymous said...

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/20/1748851/arizona-lawmaker-introduces-bill-to-prosecute-transgender-people-who-use-the-wrong-bathroom/

Gay privilege over women's rights.
Progressives now more concerned about the 'right' of men in dresses using the women's washroom than in protecting the right of women's privacy in the John(or Jane as the case may be).

Just like the South African guy was allowed to compete in women's tracks.
Gays over women. Microagg?

An idea for cons. Dress up as women and get special 'rights' in everything.
Time for Steve Sailer to be Stevie.

Anonymous said...

Jewish horniness, neurosis, and paranoia the real governing ideology and religion of America in the last 50 yrs.

Its great prophet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81I52y7W7P0

Mr. Anon said...

"The nation-state is a good practical institution, but it does not provide the final moral delineation of which people count and which do not."

....and economics does?

Anonymous said...

For example, Orange Cunty is known for skateboard and surfer cloths, a lot of the sewing is done by illegal Mexican women or lower skilled legal Vietnamise. So some industries which appear cool are not that cool.

Mr. Anon said...

Anonymous said...

His own economic reductionism would predict that if didn't hold this relatively stable position, his position on immigration would change."

That's a nice way of saying that Cowen is a liar and a hypocrite. I prefer the not-nice way of saying it: Cowen is a liar and a hypocrite.

Anonymous said...

I think it is a good idea to point out how so many of these globalist whackjobs are sucking the taxpayer-titty. It should be pointed out in every article or post that mentions them.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Tyler was more circumspect on his site so I just noticed this:

He found that unrestricted immigration could create tens of trillions of dollars in economic value, as captured by the migrants themselves in the form of higher wages in their new countries and by those who hire the migrants or consume the products of their labor. For a profession concerned with precision, it is remarkable how infrequently we economists talk about those rather large numbers.

Wow. Tens of trillions? Let's cancel the income tax, write off the national debt, loll about in our hammocks being fanned by cabana boys. Then he goes on to berate himself for his lack of precision. ("How did we miss that tens of trillions?!")

This isn't just blind optimism, it's bipolar delusion. Manic. Insane people with insane ideas. Tens of trillions? Nobody but a bipolar in manic phase uses that kind of language.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of the benefits of immigration, was the near shooter at the University of Central Florida an immigrant with the last name of Seevakumaran? Or was he just another disgruntled minority?

It sure fell off the radar fast.

Anonymous said...

ALL economics is based on the premise of self-interest. That's waht the whole subject is about. Adam Smith said something along the lines that it is not out of benefience that the butcher and baker provide us with our daily repast, but self-interest alone.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft purely out of his self-interest. Microsoft exists solely and wholly to serve the self-interest of its stockholders. *Every* other consideration is an also-ran. Money trucks carrying Microsoft cash to the bank regularly pass by starving beggars in the street. Now, nobody but nobody at Microsoft ever suggests that the money trucks should ever stop by a beggar and give him an infinitessimal sum of cash (in Microsoft terms)to literally save the beggar's life.
You note that Cowen is as silent as stone about the reality of the world - incidents like this fictitious beggar/Microsoft incident occur every single second of every single day the world over, but he'll spout off non-stop about an entirely non existent 'right' of the third world to move en masse to America, a 'right' with absolutely no basis in precedent, history or morality.

Anonymous said...

The fallacy reigns.

If massive, unlimited third world immigration is the 'magic' ingredient that will grow the USA by '$x trillions', then how come these third worlders, in situ, aren't performing their magic at home?, I mean it's much easier to move capital -especially where the big growth opportunities are in undeveloped markets -, than it is to move people.

Anonymous said...

there is an overriding moral issue


Irving Kristol once said about John Kenneth Galbraith that he "is not really an economist at all, he can more accurately be described as a reluctant rabbi". And that quip applies in spades to libertarian economists in general. When people who in other contexts would scoff at the notion that some people should impose their morality on others (who would express strong doubts whether morality even exists) suddenly start talking like the priests, parsons, and rabbis, you know that what they are proposing makes zero economic sense.

It would likewise benefit more people than it would hurt if the state confiscated the wealth of all the rich people in the US and distributed it among the poor. But don't hold your breath waiting for any of these "libertarian economists" to follow their temporary interest in morality in that direction.

Anonymous said...

Can we just call economics "Applied Asperger's" now?

Anonymous said...

Ever since libertarians waged a scorched earth campaign to defeat Prop 187 and then to get it overturned in courts, it has been obvious exactly what libertarians are - whores to the rich and powerful, and with no more sense of principle than any other whores.

Libertarians will tell any lie, embrace any notion, fight any fight, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order that the current billionaires of the United States of America might increase their wealth. That is the ONLY principle which guides them. If embracing many of the tenets of Marxism is to the advantage of their wealthy patrons, then embrace many of the tenets of Marxism our "libertarian economists" will eagerly do.

Anonymous said...

A side note, but how did the term "cosmopolitan" ever come to be applied to the single most insular and parochial people in the world? Maybe in the same ironic sense as the use of "Scotch-Irish" on this site?

Anonymous said...

Economists love thinking of their field as a math-oriented one, as opposed to those artsy other ones.


If Cowen really thought that his field was math-oriented, he would not be telling us that we must open the borders because it is the moral thing to do.

Anonymous said...

Rob said...

Is Cowen Jewish?


From his wiki writeup, here are some excerpts:

At the age of 15, Cowen became the youngest ever New Jersey state chess champion
...
Cowen endorsed bailouts in a March 2, 2009 column in the New York Times. He was a supporter of the Iraq War.

It doesn't say whether or not he is Jewish, but I'd say there are strong indications he is.

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute: he says we can't have open borders because of welfare, but isn't getting on welfare an economic gain for the immigrants he's championing?

If economists shouldn't care about citizenship per se, Cowen should be in favor of unlimited immigration to strip mine welfare states of their resources, i.e., exactly what is happening now.

Anonymous said...

So commentators on trade and immigration should stress the cosmopolitan perspective, knowing that the practical imperatives of the nation-state will not be underrepresented in the ensuing debate.

The word cosmopolitan showed up frequently in that article. When I hear that word, I am reminded of Stalin's use of the term 'rootless cosmopolitans' to denote those supposedly not loyal to their country.

After reading this guy's piece and seeing his lack of advocacy for his fellow countryman, I'd say Professor Cowen is a rootless cosmopolitan, and should be dismissed as such.

Anonymous said...

Read"Kickig away the Ladder" and everything else writen by this Korean Economists.

It has long been known that econometric multiregression analysis is mathematical garbage. Go do a google. Econometricians go stuck years ago on the specification problem. And believe me, that's not the only technical issue

Elite mainstream economists have endowed chairs funded by bilionaires and other enemies of the Working Class.

The most important data points:the real life experiences of White Workers...and this has nothing to do with all the thousands of theorems in economic jurnals about economic equilibrium.

Question:Why does Microsoft employ so many elite neo-liberal economists in its think tank division. Oh right,because they are going to reveal some deep insight into the American economy.

Anonymous said...

"Harry Dexter White was a jewish communist traitor."

I don't think he was Jewish.

Lots of lib anglos were enamored of the USSR. Alger Hiss was another one.

Paul Mendez said...

Tyler Cowen's stuff always reminds me of this old, old joke:

Two economists were walking down the street one day when they passed two large piles of dog shit.

The first economist said to the other, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat one of those piles of shit." The second one agrees and chooses one of the piles and eats it. The first economist pays him his $20,000.

Then the second economist says, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat the other pile of shit." The first one says okay, and eats the shit. The second economist pays him the $20,000.

They resume walking down the street.

After a while, the second economist says, "You know, I don't feel very good. We both have the same amount of money as when we started. The only difference is we've both eaten shit."

The first economist says: "Ah, but you're ignoring the fact that together we increased the GNP by $40,000"

Anononymous said...

The Anti-Gnostic:
"How did we miss that tens of trillions?!"
Insane people with insane ideas. Tens of trillions?


He may have a point.

In third world countries, wages are very low, but prices are lower also, so it is possible to live on those lower wages. When they immigrate, their wages increase, but they are also buying everything at a much higher price. So their is more money, but everything costs more.

You could pass a law that doubles everyone's income and as a side-effect doubles prices, and then there you have more money in the economy.

Anononymous said...

"University of Central Florida an immigrant with the last name of Seevakumaran
Or was he just another disgruntled minority?

He was frustrated because he couldn't find the Hobbits.

C. Van Carter said...

He's such a nonentity it “distresses” him a nation might want to protect its culture.

C. Van Carter said...

He ignores externalities, trade-offs, and the social capital and institutions necessary for a system of property rights to properly function. But other than that, he's an economist.

Marc B said...

"'rootless cosmopolitans' to denote those supposedly not loyal to their country".

When I read his article I thought he was transparently using Cosmopolitan in the same context others would use the term globalist, the difference being the writer thinks it's a complimentary term.

ben tillman said...

"Harry Dexter White was a jewish communist traitor."

I don't think he was Jewish.


Steve just mentioned this fact right here on his blog a few posts ago. If you won't take his word for it, maybe you'll listen to Wikpedia:

"Harry Dexter White was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the seventh and youngest child of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, Joseph Weit and Sarah Magilewski...."

dirk said...

I'm going to play God's advocate for a moment. The stunning part of this piece is the frank acknowledgment that immigration is good *if* you count the fortunes of the immigrants. He doesn't make the usual argument that immigration is great for Americans. On that count, he breaks ranks with other open borders economists regarding what you are supposed to say in public. He lays his cards on the table and says" "No, this might not be good for current Americans." As Cowen might ask: Is this Straussian?

As a political football, this piece looks to me like a punt.

Steve Sailer said...

Until I looked White up on Wikipedia to write this, I assumed he was another Alger Hiss-like WASP. White was a huge figure in his day, but he doesn't get talked about much since.

Although Wikipedia says he died of a heart attack 3 days after having to testify about his Communist contacts in 1948, it later says he died of an overdose of heart medicine -- i.e., it sounds like suicide.

Steve Sailer said...

"As a political football, this piece looks to me like a punt."

Cowen has lost, badly, many an empirical argument over immigration with his commenters, so now he's falling back to pure abstract moralizing for his failures over the years as an empiricist.

Silver said...

It has also put in, contemperoraneously with the immigration deluge, the worst ever economic performance since such statistics were gathered - which in England is a long time ago indeed.

Well that's just not true. The immigration deluge didn't just begin five years ago. It began decades ago, and England put up the best economic performance since statistics were gathered in that time.

The last five years hasn't been the worst economic performance since data were gathered either, fyi.

Restrictionists have so many good arguments I don't get why you have to make things up. Let the other side resort to BS (which is all they do).

Silver said...

Cowen has lost, badly, many an empirical argument over immigration with his commenters, so now he's falling back to pure abstract moralizing for his failures over the years as an empiricist.

Yeah, but look at it from Cowen's point of view. A few noble souls like him are all that stand between liberty and an inevitable, imminent nazi takeover. (Cos what else could restriction possibly be about?)

Edo Lasani said...

The immigration moralists seem to be invoking some kind of "lifeboat" morality of immigration. I fail to see why people who live in very large lands (Africa is 20.4% of the entire land surface of the earth), need to come to our "lifeboat" which is sinking rapidly.

Nod Nistram said...

"In third world countries, wages are very low, but prices are lower also, so it is possible to live on those lower wages. When they immigrate, their wages increase, but they are also buying everything at a much higher price. So their is more money, but everything costs more."

That is a very good point. It is very expensive to live a decent and dignified life in the US (and getting worse).

Anonymous said...

Look, Silver, I actually live in the UK.

The current depression (which was sparked off by the MMM in 2007, has been the longest and deepest, in terms of potential output lost in modern recorded British economic history).
The previous worst depression started in the 1920s, but output recovered faster and less wealth was lost.
Actually, before Labour got in in 1997, immigration into Britain was under control due to the Thatcher and Major governments. It amounted to around 50,000 net per yera (still to high). It really, really sky-rocketed under the Blair regime around about year 2000, when those bastards were feeling their oats. In fact, the UK population was in slow decline up to around 2000, and since then it has put in its largest actual growth increment, in absolute terms, ever. This is entirely due to immigration.
The era of mass, uncontrolled Blairite immigration to the UK and the economic disaster more or less coincide.

Rob said...

So, by the same logic, if a family comes and squats in your house, you need to take into account the benefits to the squatters - don't be narrow-minded and and think only about what it means for you.

It's time citizens were guaranteed some kind of ownership over the nation state they and their ancestors built up.

Anonymous said...

I'll listen to Cowen about where to get some obscure foreign cuisine. About economics, not so much.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

In third world countries, wages are very low, but prices are lower also, so it is possible to live on those lower wages. When they immigrate, their wages increase, but they are also buying everything at a much higher price. So their is more money, but everything costs more.

You could pass a law that doubles everyone's income and as a side-effect doubles prices, and then there you have more money in the economy.


And that's the fundamental Keynesian delusion Cowen operates under, even though NYT has made him its house libertarian.

You haven't increased the size of the pie, you've just cut more slices. That's why the working class hasn't gotten a raise in almost 40 years. So, they send their wives out to work, shop at Walmart, move to the exurbs, constantly roll over credit debt.

All legedermain obscuring a basic reality: we aren't getting any richer.

Anonymous said...

Is this true?


"Harry Dexter White was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the seventh and youngest child of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. He was appointed assistant to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, to act as liaison between the Treasury and the State Department on all matters bearing on foreign relations. White eventually came to be in charge of international matters for the Treasury, with access to extensive confidential information about the economic situation of the USA and its wartime allies.
According to Henry Morgenthau's son, White was the principal architect behind the Morgenthau (postwar) Plan which, as authored by White, was to take all industry out of Germany, eliminate its armed forces, and convert the country into an agricultural community, in the process eliminating most of Germany's economy and its ability to defend itself if attacked. Someone in White's department with access to details of the plan leaked it to the press, and White himself provided an advance copy to Soviet intelligence. Wikipedia."

Silver said...

Look, Silver, I actually live in the UK.

I have access to the same statistics you do so I don't see that this makes any real difference.

You used the phrase "economic performance." In terms of economic performance, there have been periods of stagnation much longer than five or six years in Britain in the last 200 or so years (since reliable records have been available). 1900 to 1910 saw essentially no (per capita) growth, for example. In terms of unemployment, the recent recession (silly emotionalism to call it a "depression") has been much less harmful than the what occurred during the early Thatcher years.

Immigration leaped up tremendously the past decade, true, but it was an illusion that it was "controlled" prior to this. A higher rate will cause displacement sooner, but a lower immigration rate will eventually achieve the very same effect. "Control," if it's to mean anything, would surely require the ability to prevent such displacement, but the authorities have been adamant throughout that the British simply must be ethnically displaced thus immigration must continue.

Attempting to tie this displacement immigration to economic woes is tricky, however, since other countries who have had similar (or greater) inflows/displacement, such as Australia or Sweden, haven't experienced anywhere near the same economic turmoil.

Lastly, I don't anything about the UK's population having been in a "slight decline" at any point the last fifty years. Really, when you overstate your case like this you have the opposite of the desired effect on any interlocutors. Even if they're concerned about similar goings on, overstatement simply turns them off (as they reflect on just what sort of loons or kooks they're associating themselves with).

Anonymous said...

Silver.
You simply do not know what you are talking about. All you are doing is making a fool of yourself by trying to defend untrue statements.
The current 2008 depression is the worst in recorded British history in terms of lost output. If you don't believe me look at any number of online sources.And it is a depression and not a recession, since it's gone on for so damned long.
The English have had sub-replacement fertility since at least 1972. It is safe to say that ALL population growth in the UK is down to immigration and edscendants of immigrants. The last decade saw the biggest absolute increase in UK population ever recorded.

Anonymous said...

"Is this true?"

The source of that text is the 3rd paragraph of the Treasury Department section on White, so apparently, yes. This section is based on a couple of books, see the citations in the article. Also:

"The Nazis and Joseph Goebbels were ecstatic at the revelations, using the Morgenthau Plan as a propaganda coup to encourage their troops and citizens to fight on and to nullify emerging German criticism of the war and arguments for a separate peace with Western governments."

"... Morgenthau still did manage to influence the resulting occupation... which forbade activities designed for economic reconstruction..."

Anonymous said...

Project Venona, the crypto project so secret it wasn't even known to American presidents Roosevelt and Truman, nailed White:

"The code cracking took place over decades, and the first Venona cable identifying White as a Soviet mole was not known to the FBI until late 1950. In total, 18 deciphered cables refer to White, by various code names, all dated between March 16, 1944, and January 8, 1946."

See also the Venona section in the wikipedia artile on White.

Anonymous said...

Here's a backgrounder on the Morgenthau plan and Henry White's (large) role:

"The Morgenthau Plan and the Problem of Policy Perversion", Anthony Kubek.

From the conclusion:

"The concentration of Communist sympathizers in the Treasury Department is now a matter of public record. ...

Never before in American history had an unelected bureaucracy of faceless, "fourth floor" officials exercised such arbitrary power over the future of nations as did Harry Dexter White and his associates in the Department of the Treasury under Henry Morgenthau, Jr. What they attempted to do in their curious twisting of American ideals, and how close they came to complete success, is demonstrated in the Morgenthau Diaries, which I had the privilege of examining and which were published by the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, in 1967."

Anonymous said...

""The Morgenthau Plan and the Problem of Policy Perversion", Anthony Kubek.

...

Never before in American history had an unelected bureaucracy of faceless, "fourth floor" officials exercised such arbitrary power over the future of nations..."



Perhaps the Office of Special Plans, a like-minded group in the Pentagon that stovepiped the intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, comes close.