From my new column in Taki's Magazine:
In the immigration debate, the conventional wisdom is that the solution to millions of “undocumented workers” is for the government to print up documents for them. ...
Unfortunately, while people can learn from painful experiences, we’re not very good at drawing analogies. It ought to be readily apparent that Marco Rubio’s push to print up documents for millions of undocumented illegal aliens and tens of millions of new immigrants is similar to the discredited Juan Peron / Salvador Allende / Robert Mugabe school of economic management by printing up more money.
Read the whole thing there.
By the way, on a related immigration note:
ReplyDeletehttp://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/indian-it-firm-accused-of-discrimination-against-stupid-americans/
Turns out Infosys attacked a way more qualified American employee as 'stupid' for having the temerity for not working for slave wages & not being a brown-skinned South Asian worker. Instead they hired a person from Bangladesh.
Most of these visas are just scams that are used by companies like Infosys that want to take the know-how and transplant it to India.
Also, a note on the 'transformational' Indian IT sector:
http://www.slideshare.net/RajeshRajVarma/whats-wrong-with-indian-it-industry
TL;DR:
It's mostly low-level grunt work. Chinese IT companies like Baidu, Tencent, Lenovo, Huawei and so on are truly challenging the Silicon Valley behemoths (and will surpass them).
India? Not so much.
You mean the Arthur Burns/Alan Greenspan/Ben Bernanke/Richard Nixon/George W. Bush/Barack Obama school of printing more money?
ReplyDeletesailer wrote:
ReplyDeleteMoreover, Americans don’t like to admit that the chief advantage of being an American is that our forefathers carved out for us a big, empty country where the short supply of labor and the ample supply of land would make a middle-class existence broadly affordable.
======================
The supply and demand of labor. I don't think it's really that americans don't like to admit that supply and demand applies to labor as well as any other commodity. But instead it is that those who buy labor do not want that issue to be in the public eye. And the public "debate", such as it is, flows from the media. And the media is supported by corporate advertising. So the media does not spend much time on supply and demand of labor. So, because the media does not bring up the issue, the issue does not come up.
People only discuss what the media discusses, in general.
sailer wrote:
That’s what the Senate is trying to give away with the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill. To them, Franklin’s vision of self-ruling Americans is annoying. In contrast, a nation of Latin American-style debt peonage, keeping citizens single and servile, is the Promised Land.
================
In order to really understand the immigration issue we need to understand that the corporations have differing interests from the average citizen, opposing interests. Corporations want cheap labor and plentiful consumers. The average citizen wants high wages and cheap property. Mass immigration drives up property values and drives down wages. Bad for citizens, but good for the corps.
If this perspective ever became commonly discussed on TV, the immigration 'debate' would be over, toot suite.
But it won't ever be discussed from that perspective.
Detroit was not enough for us to destroy....
ReplyDeleteOT but since Steve mentioned Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and OHehir figured out us (sic) White racist strategy to destroy Detroit and other US cities that were Jazz centers, let me also confess that we also plotted behind the scenes to destroy Rhodesia in order to destroy Rhodesian Jazz...yup we got international capitalists, SWPLs and other usual suspects to perform the destruction of White Rhodesia
http://www.amazon.com/Bulawayo-Jazz-Southern-Rhodesia-Zimbabwe/dp/B000GTJSX0/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
Nice article.
ReplyDelete"This willful ignorance isn’t surprising because politicians love giving big handouts to small numbers of people by nicking a small amount from big numbers of people."
In Economics terminology/buzz words: politicians love doling out 'concentrated benefits with diffuse costs.' The low cost incurred by any single individual creates a 'collective action problem.'
The same predicament was addressed in tort law by allowing class action lawsuits.
Something something Rome something something Gracchae something something Samnites something something Latins something something Caesar something something Vandals something something Stilicho something something Theodoric something something Lombards something something Dark Ages...
ReplyDeleteOr something like that. But it's nothing we need pay attention to, of course, because we all know that history is linear, leading us inevitably towards a high-tech Transhumanist socialist utopia, and because we are the Indispensable, 5000-Year-Leap, Shining-City-On-A-Hill nation that has a divine mandate to benevolently guide mankind forever and ever.
There is also a moral issue involved.
ReplyDeleteBy rewarding open, explicit, intentful and apparently unrepentant law-breakers with a prize for the 'achievement' of evading justice and showing criminal contempt to the laws and constitution of the USA, a terrible message is being give. Apparently in certain, political circumstances, (what about the 'separation of powers'?), violating the laws of the land is 'good' and 'virtuous' In other words a corrupt mockery of a civil state is prostituted by political dictators. 'Prostituted' is the right word to use here - the law of the land has been 'prostituted' by politicians selling civic virtue to the highest bidder.
In the retail world a certain base-line level of shop-lifting occurs everyday. Despite counter measures, his is damn nigh ineradicable. Does this mean that all shoplifters should be 'amnestied' because it is 'inevtable' and 'unavoidable' and as such should be 'tolerated' to give the forces of law an easy life?
Great article. I had no idea you had such a fantastic grip on economics and money.
ReplyDeleteThe current so-caled "low inflation" era is a mirage, by the way. The "official CPI" is a completely dubious statistic that now bears little relation to real increases in the cost of living. If the US Government used the same methods to calculate the CPI as it did in the 1970s, the inflation rate would be three times what the government says it is (if not more).
AND, we are likely to get an orgy of inflation fairly soon because the government has totally lost control of its finances and various Fed Chairmen/women are more than happy to finance this profligacy by monetising debt. Hey if the Fed buys all the bonds, why cut any spending anywhere? This will have consequences.
It is interesting that the US is becoming more and more a Latin American country - and not just in terms of its actual population.
Steve, great parallel, except this concept is by no means in our rear view mirror.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at this graph. Obama, Bernanke, and Krugman do indeed believe that prosperity comes from printing money.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE
If the population continues to grow, and Obama keeps driving up gas prices, we'll all be driving rinky-dink little Fiats like the Euros.
ReplyDeleteThat's the idea: diminishing the real value of citizenship for non-elites. Disenfranchising ordinary citizens while taxing them blind. Win-win.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz89CS1MCxw
ReplyDeleteCrossTalk: Rising Latinos
But I thought people aren't fungible?
ReplyDelete> "Fiat Citizenship"
ReplyDeleteThis might be your best insight in, like, forever.
I'd only ask that you be a little more precise concerning just whom you're talking about here.
Something like, "Charles Schumer's puppet, Marco Boobeeoe".
Or, "Jekyll Island Stooge, MarKKKo BooBeeOe".
And work in a play on words involving Jekyll Island -vs- Ellis Island.
In fact, the whole Jekyll Island / Ellis Island analogy could be milked for a friggin multi-volume "200 Years Together" masterpiece.
And our new slogan needs to work the concept of "Jekyll Island" into a phrase like "Remember the Alamo!"
PS: Monty over at AoSHQ has an absolute masterpiece on the lunacy of abstract contracts involving title and ownership of "abstract economic widgets" which didn't even yet exist [at the time of the "abstract signings" of the "abstract contracts"]:
City of Broken Promises
It's part and parcel of the same general constellation of phenomena which are at work in your essay here: Fiat Currencies; Fiat Populations; Abstract Contractual Promises Made by Abstract Entities to be Paid at Some Future Date, in Fiat Electrons, as Guaranteed by Fiat Tax Payers [who may or may not still be on the scene when the bill finally comes due].
It's all insanity.
Every "economist" who ever "argued" in favor of "short contracts" or "futures contracts" or "derivatives contracts" or "short contracts on futures contracts on derivatives contracts" - or any other bizarre abstraction and perversion of contract law - should be lined up against a wall and shot.
Especially the ones who "earned" Nobel Prizes for their "arguments".
We're at the point where this entire God-damned abstraction of a Ponzi Scheme is getting way out beyond the surrealistic.
And when it all collapses, you won't be laughing at the "Preppers" anymore.
You'll be face-palming yourself, and saying, "Why didn't I think to Prepare?!?"
Retail price inflation, which was a major economic curse of my young manhood, has been reasonably under control in much of the world in recent years.
ReplyDeleteKept under control by depressing the value of labor through mass immigration and the cost of goods through outsourcing to Third World suppliers. No wage-price spiral for us (except in the areas of government, medical care, and higher education).
OT, but any thoughts on Neill Blomkamp's allegedly socialist, pro-open borders flick "Elysium"?
ReplyDeleteBlomkamp's movie depicts a future First World set in space while earth has become Third World, with immigration agents vigorously working to keep the Third Worlders out. He denies the film has a political message. If it is pro-open borders it's a bit ironic: Blomkamp's family left South Africa in 1997, not long after his socialist, integrationist paradise began to be realized. The Elysium scenes are set in his adopted hometown of Vancouver.
Is it a leftist film, or a conservative film masquerading as leftist?
Future historians will teach that passage of the Constitutio Rubii of 2013 marked the dividing line between the end of the First American Republic and the beginning of the North American Empire.
ReplyDeleteMany of the people who are eager to distribute American citizenship to all the people of the globe are actually globalists.
ReplyDeleteIn the words of John Lennon's song, Imagine:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
I used to think that life will not be very peaceful for those who criticize the global state. But today I realize that a re-education camp can be peaceful, and that a grave can be very peaceful.
Bad citizens drive out good.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteOT, but any thoughts on Neill Blomkamp's allegedly socialist, pro-open borders flick "Elysium"?
..........
Is it a leftist film, or a conservative film masquerading as leftist?"
And the film's star, Matt Damon - passionate and tireless advocate of public education - opted to send his children to private school, rather than to an LAUSD school.
Steve
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, we do not want to reduce the immigration debate to a an economic deabte. I mean think about it. How could there ever be a an economic case for race-replacing the Native Born White American Majority? To even debate the issue on these terms gives legitimacy to the economic case for race-replacing the Native Born White American Majority. Do you think a future nonwhite majority post-America would even contemplate debating the economic case for race-replacing themselves with a new massive wave of European immigrants-not gonna happen. I reckon about a snowballs-chance-in-hell-probability.
On the other hand, it obvious that post-1965 immigration policy is driven by the low wage labor policy of the Republican and Democratic Parties. So, at a fundamental level, post-1965 immgration policy has an economic dimension to it.
Labor scarcities are wonderfull things. I never met one I didn't like. They are a very strong barrier against any possibility of returning to the psychopath Henry Ford's Rouge River Hell-on-Earth.
A severe labor scarcity should never never never be used as an excuse to increase the importation of non-white scab labor under any circumstance.
If Noam Chomsky ever got his way-complete wiping away of America's borders not just with Mexico but with China also-the very next day would see the overnight hyperracialization of the Native Born White American population and the overthrow of the "US" Goverment. Chomsky must truly hate the Native Born White American Working Class.
Larger point:the only viable game in town for millions of Ordinary Native Born White Americans is some form of anarcho-syndicalism.Across-the-board Libertarianism-anarcho capitalism-is a fate worse than hell itself. To get to anarcho-syndicalism-and something even more radical-we will have to pass through the type of populist revolts that took place in the American South and American Midwest in years past.
Steve
If you have never read Reverend Ball's sermon,go google it, and read it-possibly even post it here. Then go google Samuel Gompers' congressional testimony urging the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Post them together. This is how I would fight the battle.
Bill Blizzard and his Men
"Blomkamp's movie depicts a future First World set in space while earth has become Third World, with immigration agents vigorously working to keep the Third Worlders out."
ReplyDeleteIt could be seen as rich first world vs poor third world, but it could also be seen as rich 'creative' cities and rest of the nation that isn't so lucky, like 'coming apart' scenario by Charles Murray or HUNGER GAMES scenario by whoosits.
It's like NY uses stop-and-frisk to control the blacks, and DC has used all sorts of section 8 and gentric cleansing policies to lower the number of blacks in the city.
These movies could be 'read' in so many ways.
I realized early on that the Number 1 gift my father and mother gave me was US citizenship.
ReplyDeleteAn Adonis physique and a genius level IQ are Numbers 2 and 3, BTW.
Of course my ancestors EARNED that citizenship - fighting with Washington at Trenton, 2 years in Andersonville. jungle rot in the Solomons as a SeaBee in WWII.
I think it US citizenship is PRICELESS and I intend to transmit it to my children un-depreciated at full value.
"Of course my ancestors EARNED that citizenship - fighting with Washington at Trenton, 2 years in Andersonville. jungle rot in the Solomons as a SeaBee in WWII."
ReplyDeleteMy great-great-grandpa (and namesake) was imprisoned & survived Andersonville. Quite the place & another story disappearing down the memory hole - when I was young, Andersonville was familiar to many Americans, now I'd be surprised if 1 in 200 has heard of the place.
I don't have any doubts about your forebears, but you might want to tighten up your details. Andersonville was only in operation for about 14-15 months, so nobody did two years there.
Bottom line American citizenship is already worthless. Its not worth the birth certificate paper it is printed on.
ReplyDeleteAmerican governments no longer protect citizens abroad. Americans are no longer favored over foreigners in any area.
And lets be honest, birth-right citizenship guarantees a non-White majority rapidly, basically twenty years from now.
So the idea that American citizenship means something is laughable as holding Cypriot Euros (just try sending them off the island) or other debased currencies.
And the reason for that is emotional. For guys like Blomkamp, White guys are "evil" because they lack charisma and dominance, being too intelligent while lacking the clannish values of NE Asians. Except of course for the few "noble" ones played by Matt Damon. It is "evil" to have borders, nations, a White majority place (run by Jodie Foster) and all that. Instead we ought to have a Third World dysfunction and hell-hole. That is the model.
Overt Christians want this because it is one step from all men are equally loved and equal under God to being fungible widgets in the temporal world. Easier to think about, like an Earth-centric universe and Apollo's fiery chariot being the Sun, revolving around the Earth every day.
Women don't like White guys because they are too nerdy, White-knightish, beta male, supplicating. End of story. Elites don't like nations and borders and citizenship and White ethno states because they limit their global aristocracies and power.
Therefore rational behavior should be: invest nothing in even the idea of America, it's dead and will remain so. Be mobile as possible, keep as much assets in various places. Have zero attachments. Care only about yourself, knowing that no one else outside your family will care about you. Learn other languages, have a passport. Have a plan to move as much assets and yourself out of the country into a place unlikely to be over-run with the Third World, particularly cold places with little appeal to people from the tropics (low welfare state, distance, poor economies offering few jobs/handouts).
OR: go Mountain Man, survivalist, self-sufficient in a great empty state in a plot of land high up in the mountains with few resources worth grabbing by greedy global oligarchs or the Third World masses.
But lets face reality. America is dead, dead, dead. Because most White Americans wanted it so. Too "boring," too "White bread," not sexy/violent/dominant enough for its women, too much a dutiful check on oligarchs, too "dull" by guys like Blomkamp and Damon.
In the spirit of Blomkamp and Damon and Fiat Citizenship, it is worth noting the weakness of Fiat Citizenship and the unstoppable fact of much of the Third World moving to America and Europe and Canada and Australia.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is where they move. London is a majority non-White city. Celebrated by the global elite as a no-go area for ordinary Whites. Not even the Minister of Silly Walks himself, John Cleese will live there, not English enough.
But cities are vulnerable. They require massive amounts of electricity, water, food, sewage, etc. They also in the Third World version require massive wealth transfers. The history of the fall of the Roman Empire is instructive.
Cities became a shadow of themselves or vanished. The countryside is where food, and safety, are found. It was where Western Civilization was refounded, as Feudalism, as cities became just too vulnerable and unsafe. As the legions vanished with the Romans in the West.
My guess is that the Whiter suburbs and rural areas will band together in new Feudalism as the center collapses under late Roman degeneracy.
Good article.
ReplyDeleteI think the economic aspect of mass immigration can be characterized as a "demographic deficit" to go along with the budget and trade deficits.
In all three cases, we're undermining our long-run welfare in return for (putative) material benefits today. We're pulling every lever we can to avoid paying for our policies in the short run.
And in all three cases, we ought to be ashamed: ashamed of charging future generations for our current expenditures, ashamed of borrowing from Chinese peasants to fund our consumerism, and ashamed of giving away the birthright of American posterity to random foreigners in exchange for cheap labor.
I'd like to think a sane immigration policy would be attainable and sufficient to rectify the situation, but it may be neither: the rot has set in systematically.
A more decisive break may be necessary and desirable.
Dear Ex Submarine Officer,
ReplyDeleteFor one of those fellas the government held underwater too long, you're pretty sharp.
I'll bring up this detail with the family historian next chance. I think he was captured at Chickamauga.
Thanks.
Anon 12:45am:
ReplyDeleteI'm less concerned with the moral message than with the incentives. The large number of long-term illegal immigrants in the US really is a hard problem to solve. Many have kids, own property, and have long-term jobs, and uprooting them and deporting them will be ugly. I definitely see the appeal of just giving them green cards. That wouldn't even make the employment situation much worse--they're already here, we're just legally recognizing it. It all sounds sensible, until you think about what comes next.
Once the existing pool of illegal immigrants gets amnesty and a path to citizenship, the effects don't stop with them. Millions of people in Mexico or El Salvador or wherever else hear of this, and correctly reason that if they come here and stay under the radar long enough, they can probably make a decent life here. Nothing wrong with that--it's an understandable desire. But it leads inevitably to more people coming here illegally, so that we eventually recreate our pool of 10 million illegal immigrants, and so we see no benefit to the nation from giving the previous set amnesty.
Amnesty is one or those humanitarian policies that seems really good at first glance, but turns out to have lousy effects when you look more deeply at it. It's like ensuring that every single mother gets subsidized housing and food and daycare, or buying slaves in the slave markets to free them as a way to fight slavery, or requiring that schools close the black/white performance gap or their administrators will lose their jobs, or imposing a maximum price on bread below its cost of production. It *feels* compassionate and helpful, but does more harm than good.