Back in the mid-2000s, the Sand States — California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida — were booming, especially in areas with many immigrants and descendants of recent immigrants, such as California’s Inland Empire. Powerful figures such as George W. Bush and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide had repeatedly and explicitly framed the expansive mortgage lending of the mid-2000s as a bet on the credit-worthiness of minorities, especially Hispanics. Only bigots would be skeptical.
The booming economies in heavily immigrant areas were promoted by pro-immigrationists as proving that only racists had doubts.
The Sand State mortgage catastrophes of 2007-2008 led to a change of tack among immigrationist intellectuals. Rather than reassess their policy recommendations following the huge blow to their empirical case, they shifted sharply toward a moralistic argument for more immigration. Instead of saying massive immigration was good for Americans, economists began saying more vociferously: It’s evil to care about your fellow Americans. So what about the empirical questions, the important one is ethical. We must let in more poor Third Worlders because caring about your fellow citizens is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Of course, this sacralization of disloyalty as the highest morality hasn't stopped economists from aspiring to salaried positions of influence in federal and state government.
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27 comments:
A bit unfair. Their position is not that it is evil to care about your fellow Americans but that to care about any one group more than another for reasons of genetics, culture or religion is wrong, we should care about all ethnic groups equally.
It is a beautiful ideal, but while it sometimes results in idealists who love all, it can also be used by individualists who are equally cold and unattached to any ethnic group.
AKAHorace
There were two reasons for this change:
1. Because white people can easily be suckered in by sappy appeals to universalism morality.
2. Because they really didn't have any alternatives.
The moralizers here are, with great gusto, spending Other Peoples Money.
And destroying the Commons.
Future generations will wonder what we were thinking.
My personal mini-review of Margin Call, since you broach the subprime issue:
Mid-level managerial munchkin is doing some complex mathematics using pen and paper. In a split second, he sees something so horrible that it makes his eyes bulge out, as if a super giant grizzly bear is making a beeline straight toward him. Cue the ominous orchestral music, and ramp it up as he hurriedly rushes out of his office, heads toward the elevators, waits for an “up” elevator to ring like he has ants in his pants, then the music gets even louder as the elevator with him in it slowly makes its way upward to the top floor, it not getting there fast enough for him.
Munchkin finally gets to the top floor, sees the CEO in an impromptu meeting that at least to the CEO is more important business than talking to the Munchkin at the moment. Orchestral music calms down as Munchkin waits for the CEO to pay him attention. CEO finally does that, and the music stops. CEO and Munchkin walk off to the side.
Munchkin whispers to CEO, showing him his handwritten pen-and-paper math: “Did you know, sir? All our assets are built on top of the rock solid foundation of $720,000 mortgages issued to illegal alien Hispanic strawberry pickers making $14,000 a year.”
CEO whispers to Munchkin, while looking him in the eye: “Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?”
I asked my sister---who is dead nuts smart---to make an argument in favor of amnesty/legalization without using the words "justice" or "fairness."
She thought about it for a while and said, "Hmmm."
A bit unfair. Their position is not that it is evil to care about your fellow Americans but that to care about any one group more than another for reasons of genetics, culture or religion is wrong, we should care about all ethnic groups equally.
It actually is evil because they don't even consider the damage they are doing to the third world countries by taking their best and brightest. The brain drain from the third world is robbing those nations of their talent that might have been able to help more of their citizens enjoy a better life.
Anyone who supposedly cares about people in far off parts of the world should take a lesson from Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa went to Calcutta to tend to the poor. She did not bring Calcutta to Europe. If you must get involved, go to Mexico, Zimbabwe or where ever and help those poor souls. Don't bring them back here to make the rest of us participate in your dream.
"A bit unfair"
Not at all. To "care about all ethnic groups equally" is indeed the same thing, practically speaking, as not caring about your own.
What's the best comeback to an open borders loon? I simply ask them if it's acceptable to place reasonable limits on how many people can come here. Step #2 is to emphasize that 1.1 million immigrants (plus illegals) is far more than a reasonable limit, and that even half that many immigrants annually would be a shitload.
As to concerns about immigration with regards to culture/ethnicity/race, it is plain damn fascinating the degree to which Lefties switch back and forth with regards to whether culture matters or matters not at all.
Feminists/Vivek "Fraudhwa" Wadhwa: "Women are no different than men. They should be equally represented across all fields and professions. Also, they shouldn't have to compete against men in sports and should have their own separate sports leagues and Olympic events. Also, Twitter should have as many women as men among their executive board, because having a vagina matters, sometimes, when we want it to."
This same double standard exists whether the issue is race or gender: ethnicity is enormously relevant, except for when it isn't, depending on what's convenient for the present argument.
Open borders is kind of like political polygamy. First, it gets rid of all the angry young men. If they don't like the arrangement, they can leave, to the benefit of the status quo. Second, the wives are treated poorly because they are now merely one of many. In the US, the old wife is the historic American nation, in Mexico it is all the poor Mexicans safely ignored by a political leadership supported by remittances, oil revenues and tourism. The real casualty of open borders is political accountability and the reciprocity of ruler and ruled. What we're witnessing is the Canadaizaiton of the US, with Hispanics in the role of the king maker, like the Quebecois in Canada.
Of course it's obvious why polygamy would appeal to the elites, not so much to everybody else.
I found out that Ted Cruz that the Tea party worships created George W Bush's speech that family values don't end at the Rio Grande.
In 2000, Ted Cruz was known as a Texas-raised, Harvard-trained domestic policy adviser to the George W. Bush campaign. Bush was a two-term governor from a border state who was determined to fix what he saw as a broken, inhumane immigration system.
Cruz helped craft the campaign’s immigration policy, which called for speeding up the application process, increasing the number of work visas, and allowing the relatives of permanent residents to visit the U.S. while their applicants were pending. “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” Bush used to say.
cruz has nothing to do with average Americans. in fact he has always been part of the old W Bush team:
-1998, cruz served as private counsel for John Boehner
-cruz joined the Bush–Cheney campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser
-cruz assisted in 2000 Florida presidential recounts, winning twice in the U.S. Supreme Court
-cruz' wife is VP in the Private Wealth Management Group at Goldman Sachs
-cruz' wife served on the Bush 2000 Campaign as one of W. Bush's 3 economic advisor
The conservative Inc sneak Ted Cruz in and like Gingrich he is not that good on immigration and like Gingrich he did the shutdown to get the Tea Party to think he is a hero.
The Republican Party is sneaky.
Feminists/Vivek "Fraudhwa" Wadhwa: "Women are no different than men. They should be equally represented across all fields and professions. Also, they shouldn't have to compete against men in sports and should have their own separate sports leagues and Olympic events. Also, Twitter should have as many women as men among their executive board, because having a vagina matters, sometimes, when we want it to."
Well,you talk a little strange a lot of women worked for years. Pat Buchnana thinking of guys coming back from the factory while the wives take care of kids only is a fantasy, I'm not a far leftist but people here live in a fantasy. In fact its only upper middle class white women that get to stay home and rise the kids these days. I saw a upper middle class neighborhood where the wife took care of 3 or 4 kids but in the lower middle class it was more like 1 to 3. These women are married to Engineers or a top rate salesmen. In fact this place complains a lot about the upper middle class but they support Steve's thinking more in the South than the lower middle class that Vdare tries to get to vote Republican. Krugman the liberal wrote that whites in the South with more money support the Republicans more than they do in the North.
Republicans to Latinos: You're one of us. Article in the Orange County Register, Republicans are still trying to go for Mexicans.
A bit unfair. Their position is not that it is evil to care about your fellow Americans but that to care about any one group more than another for reasons of genetics, culture or religion is wrong, we should care about all ethnic groups equally.
Demanding of only one group of people that they must care equally about all people, while all other groups are allowed to pursue their own self-interest without comment, or even actively encouraged to do so (often with the expropriated resources of the first group), suggests that more is going on here than the moralizing flights of fair minds motivated by pure hearts. That leaves us to ponder whether that "more" is stupidity, cupidity, insanity, active malice, or some combination thereof.
It also raises some very important questions as to the place of 'morality' - or what the immigrationists call 'morality' in the pseudo-science thati economics.
Basically, the supposed application of 'scientific' principles to 'help understand' the economy can only have one end, namely, to improve the functioning of the said economy to the fullest extent possible, in order for example, to avoid financial catstrophes - something it has signally failed to do - and also to eradicate poverty. Whether these can be described as 'moral' is a moot point, they are more in the vein of utilitarian ie the be all and end all of the technique of economics is purely practical and maximal minded. 'Morals' and ethics in so far these are judgements relating to individual consciense have no place in such a system. It is as absurd as saying that the output of a chemical engineering plant should be based on 'moral' considerations.
"A bit unfair."
Falderal. If one were an advocate for open borders without hypocrisy and attempting to endorse some universal precept, one wouldn't advocate unilateral one-way migration into White countries.
Same thing regarding nuclear disarmament; nobody competently would argue for unilateral disarmament. Why don't the open borders advocates demand that non-White countries take in proportionate amounts of poor Whites at their taxpayers' expense.
I'd still have issues with that advocacy because I believe in ethnic homelands so that oligarchs have a harder time with ethnic cleansing and using arbitrage on human trafficking to get wealthy.
These folks who advocate unilateral open borders have an agenda that is not beyond reproach and they should be subject to obloquy.
Well, the foreign cash buyers are now causing this housing bubble a little different than the last one.
To the Anonymous poster above who made several posts about Ted Cruz:
Do you mean to tell me that he didn't go from a truck driving job straight to the United States Senate? I'm shocked, utterly shocked. Unless I'm not.
Really, Ted Cruz's immigration policy hasn't changed. All we needed him to do is vote against the Gang Bangers of Eight bill, which he did. When his relatively lethargic positions on immigration will matter is when Jeff Sessions becomes President on January 20, 2017, and openly starts pushing for real immigration restriction legislation. Until then, if Republican politicians who are questionable to poor on immigration, like Cruz and Rand Paul, do nothing but vote against bad legislation, that's all we need from them.
I'll never vote to make Ted Cruz the President of the United States because he's partially nonwhite.
That does appear to be strategy now. See Bryan Caplan:
When Is Abolitionism Justified?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Latino immigrants in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas earn an average of $26,497 a year, but this figure varies across cities and even within states. The map below shows average earnings of Latino immigrant workers age 18 and older, according to the 2008-10 American Community Survey. In only 10 metro areas do Latino immigrants make more than $30,000 on average. St. Louis boasts the highest average earnings at $35,556, followed by Poughkeepsie-Newburg-Middleton, New York, with earnings of $32,781. Latino immigrants earn less than $21,000 on average in five metro areas (Oklahoma City; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr-Mission, Texas; Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, South Carolina; and Fresno, California). If you are Latin go East young man.
Extropico,
a lot of the open borders people are naive and well meaning. Not all, but much of the rank and file. We need to accept this if our own ideas are to gain traction.
Well meaning ideas can cause far more damage that outright evil ones.
AKAHorace
Politics of Guilt intimidates and shuts up the opposition.
A rational argument can be countered with another rational argument.
A moral argument can be countered only at the risk of sounding immoral.
Why are people so afraid to discuss black problems and Jewish power?
Blacks have been sacralized through the cult of MLK and slavery, and Jews have been sacralized through the cult of the Holocaust.
If illegals are sacralized as 'undocumented immigrants', they cannot be touched. It would be 'racist' and 'xenophobic' to do so.
Similarly, even conservatives are now mute about homos as criticizing the homo agenda or power is deemed to be 'homophobic'.
Rationalism is problematic for Liberals since conservatives can always come up with counter arguments on rational grounds.
But once the Liberal position has been moralized--in association with concepts such as 'racism'--, conservatives will be too afraid to touch it.
Jews know what they are doing. They are the masters of psychology.
Rationalism is dead. Secular-sacralism is the order of the day.
Jews used to smash social taboos. Now, they are busy erecting new ones. It's like much of racial reality cannot be discussed cuz it's been tabooed.
This isn't so much open-borders moralizing as continuation of anti-white and pro-Jewish moralizing.
After all, Zionism has been moralized by the cult of Holocaust, and that has allowed Jews to close their borders to non-Jews. Jews see no problem with that.
Open borders is pushed in the West because it's bad for whites, which is good in the minds of Jews. Closed borders is pushed in Israel because it's good for Jews, which is good in the minds of Jews.
The way Jews see it, open-borders-in-the-west means preventing the next holocaust by undermining the power of white majority/unity.
And closed-borders-in-Israel means preventing the next holocaust by strengthening Jewish majority/unity.
So, it's really a moralization of 'what is good for Jews'. Open or Closed, it's good if Jews like it.
Anonymous wrote:
"In fact this place complains a lot about the upper middle class but they support Steve's thinking more in the South than the lower middle class that Vdare tries to get to vote Republican. Krugman the liberal wrote that whites in the South with more money support the Republicans more than they do in the North."
If blacks didn't exist in the US, the South would vote Democratic. Environmental issues, Gay stuff, what ever other hot button issues wouldn't be popular.
But as far as economics goes... let's just say that if blacks didn't exist you wouldn't have a Republican voting South.
And therefore no Republican Party.
Anon @ 10/8/13, 2:05 PM:
That's because St. Louis has very few Hispanics. Small sample problems.
Sunbeam:
Patterson's First Axiom is not the only reason to explain the otherwise inexplicable white Southern near bloc voting for Republicans. There is also the Sailer Correlation.
St. Louis has had a small, upscale Hispanic mercantile community since the days of the paddlewheel steamboat. It's sort of the last frontier of the Gulf of Mexico.
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