Barack Obama has been re-elected President of the United States.
For starters, Gary Johnson was not a spoiler.
While the results are still coming in, as of 11:30pm Pacific, there was
not a single state won by Obama where Romney would have won even if every Johnson voter had voted for Romney instead.
Second, there is no mandate.
While Obama won, he won with a far narrower lead in both the popular
vote and the electoral college than he had in 2008. While Democrats
increased their lead in the Senate, Republicans increased their lead in
governorships, and the House is on track to be more or less the same as
it was. This was very much a status quo election.
On the whole, will we be better or worse with Obama as president?
First of all, expect the fiscal cliff to stay in place. After all, we just re-elected most of the people who put it there to begin with. While I haven't spent too much time learning about the fiscal cliff, Wikipedia claims a 19.63% increase in revenue and a 0.25% decrease in spending, or a nearly 80-to-1 ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts. This will not end well-- and even if our new old government leaders manage to avoid the cliff, the re-elected Obama is in a prime position to extract concessions he was unable to before the election. Any compromise will include more tax hikes than spending cuts, if spending is actually cut at all.
Second, Obamacare will be implemented fully over the next few years. Expect the nation's health, freedom and balance sheet to all suffer. Although to be honest, I don't believe Romney would have done any better.
The national debt will continue to grow. If the fiscal cliff causes a second recession, expect more stimulus and bailouts, probably for Europe too. We may look back at $1.5 trillion deficits and laugh about how small they were. On the other hand, the same probably would've happened under Romney, considering his plan to index military spending to 4% of GDP.
On other long-term important issues, I don't expect Obama to do much of anything. He'll keep ignoring space (mercifully), Social Security will continue to stumble forward without reform, trade deals will be forgotten, immigration won't change. We'll mostly withdraw from Afghanistan on schedule, although the lack of attention the war gets these days means we'll probably keep troops there for the long haul, same as we've still got troops in Germany, Japan and Korea. On trade and Afghanistan, at least, Romney would have been even worse. While Romney may have avoided the fiscal cliff, his insistence to go after China on trade might have been just as bad for the economy.
The main difference between the two candidates in terms of our long-term welfare is this: With Obama's victory, 2016 will see another wide-open primary for Republicans, where we'll have another shot at nominating a true spokesperson for liberty. Had Romney won, we wouldn't get that chance until 2020. So hold onto your hats. It's gonna be a rough four years for liberty, but we made it through the last four. We'll make it this time, too.
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Gary Johnson on the Issues
Last Sunday, I wrapped up my series of posts on Mitt Romney's positions in the debates. Now it's time to look at Gary Johnson, who initially ran as a Republican but has now secured the nomination for the Libertarian Party. Since Johnson was only in two debates, the first and the sixth, there's simply not as much material as there was for Romney, who was in 19 debates. While Romney got five entries, Johnson only gets this one.
National Security
In the first debate, he said he would withdraw from Afghanistan "tomorrow," was against the war in Iraq from the beginning, and was also opposed to intervention in Libya (Syria was not yet an issue at the time). He is solidly against war, saying in the 6th debate, "The biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we're bankrupt." As part of his promise to balance the budget, he supports a 43% cut to military spending.
Immigration and Trade
He said in the first debate that there was "very little, if any benefit" to securing the border, and that freer immigration would create "tens of millions of jobs." On trade, he said, "I'm a free market guy... I don't favor tariffs of any kind, whatsoever." In the two debates, he was only able to address trade with one country, Cuba, which he supports, because he believes that trade encourages friendship.
Taxes and Spending
He supports the Fair Tax, a national sales tax that would replace the corporate and personal income taxes. On spending, he would balance the budget in his first year in office. Since he says current spending outpaces revenue by 43%, that's how much he wants to cut from all federal spending, including 43% each from the military, Medicare and Medicaid. To get it done, he would turn Medicare and Medicaid into block grants, veto any bill where expenditures exceeded revenue, completely eliminate the Department of Education and subject federal programs to cost-benefit analyses, then get rid of the ones that don't measure up.
The Economy
To get the economy growing again, he would restructure the tax code and greatly reduce federal spending as described above. He also sees freer immigration as a way to encourage "tens of millions" of new jobs. He would eliminate the federal minimum wage, and stop extending unemployment benefits.
Social Issues
He declined to describe himself as "pro-life," and said in the first debate that he supports abortion "up until viability." (While viability lacks a precise definition, that would allow abortions at least into the fifth month of pregnancy, and possibly later.) However, he opposes public funds for abortion, and favors parental notification and counseling. On drugs, he admits to having smoked marijuana, and supports legalization along with regulation and taxation of marijuana. While gay marriage didn't come up in the debates, on Twitter he often sells himself as the only candidate supporting "marriage equality" (at least, prior to Obama's recent conversion).
Ron Paul
When directly asked in the sixth debate what made him a better choice for libertarian Republicans than Ron Paul, Johnson said, "I'm not going to presume to make that assumption." When asked who his running mate would be if it had to be someone at the sixth debate, he said Ron Paul. On Twitter, many of his public tweets are also directed towards Ron Paul. While I haven't seen anything explicitly laying this out, I suspect he looks at Paul's age and wants to be the next Ron Paul once Paul himself leaves public life. It will be very interesting to see how much support Johnson gets from Paulites once Paul eventually quits the race.
National Security
In the first debate, he said he would withdraw from Afghanistan "tomorrow," was against the war in Iraq from the beginning, and was also opposed to intervention in Libya (Syria was not yet an issue at the time). He is solidly against war, saying in the 6th debate, "The biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we're bankrupt." As part of his promise to balance the budget, he supports a 43% cut to military spending.
Immigration and Trade
He said in the first debate that there was "very little, if any benefit" to securing the border, and that freer immigration would create "tens of millions of jobs." On trade, he said, "I'm a free market guy... I don't favor tariffs of any kind, whatsoever." In the two debates, he was only able to address trade with one country, Cuba, which he supports, because he believes that trade encourages friendship.
Taxes and Spending
He supports the Fair Tax, a national sales tax that would replace the corporate and personal income taxes. On spending, he would balance the budget in his first year in office. Since he says current spending outpaces revenue by 43%, that's how much he wants to cut from all federal spending, including 43% each from the military, Medicare and Medicaid. To get it done, he would turn Medicare and Medicaid into block grants, veto any bill where expenditures exceeded revenue, completely eliminate the Department of Education and subject federal programs to cost-benefit analyses, then get rid of the ones that don't measure up.
The Economy
To get the economy growing again, he would restructure the tax code and greatly reduce federal spending as described above. He also sees freer immigration as a way to encourage "tens of millions" of new jobs. He would eliminate the federal minimum wage, and stop extending unemployment benefits.
Social Issues
He declined to describe himself as "pro-life," and said in the first debate that he supports abortion "up until viability." (While viability lacks a precise definition, that would allow abortions at least into the fifth month of pregnancy, and possibly later.) However, he opposes public funds for abortion, and favors parental notification and counseling. On drugs, he admits to having smoked marijuana, and supports legalization along with regulation and taxation of marijuana. While gay marriage didn't come up in the debates, on Twitter he often sells himself as the only candidate supporting "marriage equality" (at least, prior to Obama's recent conversion).
Ron Paul
When directly asked in the sixth debate what made him a better choice for libertarian Republicans than Ron Paul, Johnson said, "I'm not going to presume to make that assumption." When asked who his running mate would be if it had to be someone at the sixth debate, he said Ron Paul. On Twitter, many of his public tweets are also directed towards Ron Paul. While I haven't seen anything explicitly laying this out, I suspect he looks at Paul's age and wants to be the next Ron Paul once Paul himself leaves public life. It will be very interesting to see how much support Johnson gets from Paulites once Paul eventually quits the race.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Mitt Romney on Foreign Policy
Now that Newt Gingrich has officially dropped out of the race, only
Mitt Romney and Ron Paul remain. Paul up to this point has only gotten
about 80-90 delegates depending on who's counting, while Romney has some
840. For all that I dislike Mitt Romney, the Republican nomination is
now pretty much settled.
Now that we're entering the general election phase of the campaign, with Romney as the Republican standard-bearer, I think it would be useful to revisit the positions he took during the primary debates. My vote, at this point, is far from certain, and just as I used this blog to decide my vote in the primary, I will also be using it to decide my vote in the general election. While it's possible some or all of Romney's positions in the primary will be Etch-a-Sketched away soon, I think this is a good enough place to start.
My original coverage of the debates can be found under the debate tag and the 2012 primaries tag. Romney attended most of the debates, with the exception of the first, the Thanksgiving Family Forum and of course the one-on-one Gingrich debates with Cain and Huntsman. All my coverage of Mitt Romney himself, which is mostly just the debates so far, can be found under the Mitt Romney tag.
Over the 19 debates, Romney took lots of positions on lots of different issues, so I'm splitting this up into multiple entries. This one covers foreign policy, including immigration, trade, defense and policies toward some specific countries and regions.
Immigration
In the 3rd debate, he said, "We are a nation of immigrants. We love legal immigration." In the 8th debate, he said, "I think every single person here loves legal immigration." But only twice in 19 debates did he talk about encouraging legal immigration, once in the 3rd debate and later in the 11th, both in the context of high-skilled immigrants. For the most part, when Romney talks about immigration, he talks about discouraging illegal immigration. Unfortunately, discouraging illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He focuses entirely on securing the border with a fence and lots of federal agents, and making it harder to hire illegal immigrants.
As for illegal immigrants who are already here, he says in the 19th debate, "Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants, would like to have." In early debates he held that any kind of path to legality, never mind citizenship, amounts to amnesty; later, in the 18th debate, he supported allowing illegal immigrant children to gain citizenship through military service. He would encourage self-deportation by requiring immigrants to present legal-status cards to be hired (and, since the absence of such a card would imply you're an illegal immigrant, the requirement for such a card would also necessarily extend to citizens). He mentions this card multiple times, in the 13th, 17th, 18th and 19th debates.
Trade
Mitt's trade policy leaves a lot to be desired. In the 3rd debate, he called our trade partners our "opponents," and I wasn't the only one to notice. In the 5th and later debates, he substituted "the other guys" for "opponents," but the sentiment still clearly remained. His primary trade policy is to "crack down on cheaters like China," which he mentioned, often with those exact words, in the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 19th debates.
He did talk about expanding trade, but far less often than cracking down on China, and always in the context of "open[ing] up markets for our goods," as he said in the 14th debate. He seems to hold a typical mercantilist philosophy, where exports are good but imports are bad. Anything China or other countries do to encourage American imports should be punished, and the only goal of free trade agreements is to encourage American exports.
Defense
He opposes all cuts to defense spending, preferring cuts to entitlements and Obamacare. In fact, he wants to increase military spending, in particular by building more ships for the Navy (which he mentioned in the 13th, 18th and 20th debates) and recruiting an extra 100,000 troops (which he mentioned only once, in the 13th debate).
Specific Countries/Regions
China: Most of Romney's policy towards China focuses on trade, particularly "cracking down" on them for cheating. He promised in the 7th debate to issue an executive order on "day one" labelling China a currency manipulator, and to initiate action against China at the WTO.
Afghanistan: His Afghanistan policy is most charitably described as continually evolving. In the 2nd and 3rd debates, he preferred a timetable for withdrawal established by the generals in Afghanistan. In the 10th, he was fine with Obama's 2014 timetable for the general withdrawal, but not the September 2012 withdrawal of the surge troops. In the 11th, he said he wanted to keep the surge troops in Afghanistan until December 2012, and keep "ten thousand or so" troops in Afghanistan after 2014. In the 14th debate, he said he didn't yet have enough information to say when he would withdraw the troops from Afghanistan.
Iran: He is absolutely opposed to Iran getting nuclear weapons, going so far as to say in the 20th debate that re-electing Obama would lead to Iranian nukes being used against Americans, and that a Romney Presidency was the only way to prevent that. He said he would "of course" go to war "if all else fails" (in the 10th debate) and that Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would "of course" be an act of war (in the 18th debate). He also wanted "crippling sanctions" against Iran in the 10th and 11th debates, and in the 14th criticized Obama for not supporting the Iranian protestors in 2009.
Iraq: Before going back into Iraq, he would want to "require significant, dramatic American interests" to be at stake, and said he would outline a specific endgame in terms of what would qualify as success.
Syria: In the 10th debate, he said, "Of course, it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end," but in the 11th said, "This is not the time for a no-fly zone over Syria."
Israel and Palestine: In the 19th debate, responding to a question from a self-identified Palestinian-American Republican, Romney said, "The best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel."
Europe: In the 7th, 9th and 16th debates, he opposed a direct bailout to Europe, saying they are big enough to solve their own problems. He would, however, be willing to provide assistance through the IMF and World Bank, and hinted he would bail out American companies affected by Europe's problems.
Canada: In 19 debates, Romney mentioned our largest trading partner and the country with which we share the world's largest land border once, and even that was indirectly through his support for the Keystone XL pipeline in the 17th debate.
Now that we're entering the general election phase of the campaign, with Romney as the Republican standard-bearer, I think it would be useful to revisit the positions he took during the primary debates. My vote, at this point, is far from certain, and just as I used this blog to decide my vote in the primary, I will also be using it to decide my vote in the general election. While it's possible some or all of Romney's positions in the primary will be Etch-a-Sketched away soon, I think this is a good enough place to start.
My original coverage of the debates can be found under the debate tag and the 2012 primaries tag. Romney attended most of the debates, with the exception of the first, the Thanksgiving Family Forum and of course the one-on-one Gingrich debates with Cain and Huntsman. All my coverage of Mitt Romney himself, which is mostly just the debates so far, can be found under the Mitt Romney tag.
Over the 19 debates, Romney took lots of positions on lots of different issues, so I'm splitting this up into multiple entries. This one covers foreign policy, including immigration, trade, defense and policies toward some specific countries and regions.
Immigration
In the 3rd debate, he said, "We are a nation of immigrants. We love legal immigration." In the 8th debate, he said, "I think every single person here loves legal immigration." But only twice in 19 debates did he talk about encouraging legal immigration, once in the 3rd debate and later in the 11th, both in the context of high-skilled immigrants. For the most part, when Romney talks about immigration, he talks about discouraging illegal immigration. Unfortunately, discouraging illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He focuses entirely on securing the border with a fence and lots of federal agents, and making it harder to hire illegal immigrants.
As for illegal immigrants who are already here, he says in the 19th debate, "Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants, would like to have." In early debates he held that any kind of path to legality, never mind citizenship, amounts to amnesty; later, in the 18th debate, he supported allowing illegal immigrant children to gain citizenship through military service. He would encourage self-deportation by requiring immigrants to present legal-status cards to be hired (and, since the absence of such a card would imply you're an illegal immigrant, the requirement for such a card would also necessarily extend to citizens). He mentions this card multiple times, in the 13th, 17th, 18th and 19th debates.
Trade
Mitt's trade policy leaves a lot to be desired. In the 3rd debate, he called our trade partners our "opponents," and I wasn't the only one to notice. In the 5th and later debates, he substituted "the other guys" for "opponents," but the sentiment still clearly remained. His primary trade policy is to "crack down on cheaters like China," which he mentioned, often with those exact words, in the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 19th debates.
He did talk about expanding trade, but far less often than cracking down on China, and always in the context of "open[ing] up markets for our goods," as he said in the 14th debate. He seems to hold a typical mercantilist philosophy, where exports are good but imports are bad. Anything China or other countries do to encourage American imports should be punished, and the only goal of free trade agreements is to encourage American exports.
Defense
He opposes all cuts to defense spending, preferring cuts to entitlements and Obamacare. In fact, he wants to increase military spending, in particular by building more ships for the Navy (which he mentioned in the 13th, 18th and 20th debates) and recruiting an extra 100,000 troops (which he mentioned only once, in the 13th debate).
Specific Countries/Regions
China: Most of Romney's policy towards China focuses on trade, particularly "cracking down" on them for cheating. He promised in the 7th debate to issue an executive order on "day one" labelling China a currency manipulator, and to initiate action against China at the WTO.
Afghanistan: His Afghanistan policy is most charitably described as continually evolving. In the 2nd and 3rd debates, he preferred a timetable for withdrawal established by the generals in Afghanistan. In the 10th, he was fine with Obama's 2014 timetable for the general withdrawal, but not the September 2012 withdrawal of the surge troops. In the 11th, he said he wanted to keep the surge troops in Afghanistan until December 2012, and keep "ten thousand or so" troops in Afghanistan after 2014. In the 14th debate, he said he didn't yet have enough information to say when he would withdraw the troops from Afghanistan.
Iran: He is absolutely opposed to Iran getting nuclear weapons, going so far as to say in the 20th debate that re-electing Obama would lead to Iranian nukes being used against Americans, and that a Romney Presidency was the only way to prevent that. He said he would "of course" go to war "if all else fails" (in the 10th debate) and that Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz would "of course" be an act of war (in the 18th debate). He also wanted "crippling sanctions" against Iran in the 10th and 11th debates, and in the 14th criticized Obama for not supporting the Iranian protestors in 2009.
Iraq: Before going back into Iraq, he would want to "require significant, dramatic American interests" to be at stake, and said he would outline a specific endgame in terms of what would qualify as success.
Syria: In the 10th debate, he said, "Of course, it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end," but in the 11th said, "This is not the time for a no-fly zone over Syria."
Israel and Palestine: In the 19th debate, responding to a question from a self-identified Palestinian-American Republican, Romney said, "The best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel."
Europe: In the 7th, 9th and 16th debates, he opposed a direct bailout to Europe, saying they are big enough to solve their own problems. He would, however, be willing to provide assistance through the IMF and World Bank, and hinted he would bail out American companies affected by Europe's problems.
Canada: In 19 debates, Romney mentioned our largest trading partner and the country with which we share the world's largest land border once, and even that was indirectly through his support for the Keystone XL pipeline in the 17th debate.
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Myth of Border Security
There is no such thing as border security, not in the United States. Most people who talk about border security focus on the southern border, but the northern one counts too. We could spend hundreds of billions of dollars securing the Mexican border, and the terrorists would just cross the much longer, much more open Canadian border.
Last week, Saeton Kevin Grant showed just how easy it would be. Admittedly, Grant was travelling into Canada, out of the United States. But crossing the border in either direction is easy, so long as you avoid the legal crossings, as Grant did. From The Province:
Ultimately, this guy actually was caught, but what would he have had to do differently in order to succeed? Not much:
The fact is, border patrol only stops two kinds of people-- the law-abiding and the unlucky idiots. Every single person who crosses legally is stopped by the border patrol, no matter who they are or their reason for crossing. Criminals are only stopped when they make stupid mistakes like Grant did. The border patrol is going to catch the rookies and the ill-prepared, but a well-funded, trained terrorist isn't going to have any problem crossing the border if they really want to.
People who say we can solve this by simply securing the border a) don't have any idea just how costly that would be and b) usually ignore the Canadian border anyway. We could spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building the highest double fence ever conceived across the 1,969 miles of the Mexican border, and it would do jack squat to secure the 5,525-mile Canadian border. If your goal is merely to restrict trade and immigration with Mexico but not Canada, that's fine. If your goal is to stop terrorists, you're kidding yourself and wasting the taxpayer's money.
Those who want more border security need to admit that it's not going to do a thing to stop terrorists. If they want to justify a fence, they need to do so on the grounds of restricting trade and immigration with Mexico, without resorting to the specter of terrorism.
*His daughter is about a year-and-a-half old. I could write a whole separate post on the ethics of breaking up this family again, but I won't. At least not right now.
Last week, Saeton Kevin Grant showed just how easy it would be. Admittedly, Grant was travelling into Canada, out of the United States. But crossing the border in either direction is easy, so long as you avoid the legal crossings, as Grant did. From The Province:
Grant, who rode a bicycle across the Manitoba-North Dakota border near Boissevain, Man., just after dark on Saturday, had been deported from Canada twice before — the last time in the summer of 2010.Grant was found in Boissevain, but ran away from the mounties and ended up in Winnipeg, where local police found him several days later. No word yet on where he'll be deported to (it's not clear from the news reports whether Grant, a Jamaican, was legally in the US in the first place). But the real story here is the complete lack of border security. Border patrol only realized this man had illegally crossed the border when an eagle-eyed (get it?) citizen told them he had. Even then, he still got away, and was only found days later at his girlfriend's house in Winnipeg-- the same girlfriend who had impersonated an immigration officer in order to prevent his previous deportation. (In other words, any good movie character would dismiss her house as "the first place they'd look.")
A Canadian resident heading home spotted Grant on the North Dakota side of the border around 8 p.m., Saturday, [RCMP] Sgt. Line Karpish said. She said the resident saw the man again on the Manitoba side of the border, still riding his bike.
"It didn't seem right and they contacted us," Karpish said, adding a check with the Canada Border Services Agency at the Boissevain crossing revealed they hadn't cleared anyone through riding a bike.
Ultimately, this guy actually was caught, but what would he have had to do differently in order to succeed? Not much:
- Travel in an inconspicuous car instead of on a bike so Eagle Eyes didn't notice.
- Make the crossing in the middle of the night after Eagle Eyes had gone to bed.
- Not cross at a highway where he could be seen. Carry the bike through a field if necessary.
- Not leave his ID behind when he ran from the mounties.
- Once across, figure out the first place they'd look for him, and go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The fact is, border patrol only stops two kinds of people-- the law-abiding and the unlucky idiots. Every single person who crosses legally is stopped by the border patrol, no matter who they are or their reason for crossing. Criminals are only stopped when they make stupid mistakes like Grant did. The border patrol is going to catch the rookies and the ill-prepared, but a well-funded, trained terrorist isn't going to have any problem crossing the border if they really want to.
People who say we can solve this by simply securing the border a) don't have any idea just how costly that would be and b) usually ignore the Canadian border anyway. We could spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building the highest double fence ever conceived across the 1,969 miles of the Mexican border, and it would do jack squat to secure the 5,525-mile Canadian border. If your goal is merely to restrict trade and immigration with Mexico but not Canada, that's fine. If your goal is to stop terrorists, you're kidding yourself and wasting the taxpayer's money.
Those who want more border security need to admit that it's not going to do a thing to stop terrorists. If they want to justify a fence, they need to do so on the grounds of restricting trade and immigration with Mexico, without resorting to the specter of terrorism.
*His daughter is about a year-and-a-half old. I could write a whole separate post on the ethics of breaking up this family again, but I won't. At least not right now.
Friday, April 6, 2012
New Open Borders Website
A new website, Open Borders: The Case, started up a few weeks ago (ht Bryan Caplan). The site, run by one Vipul Naik, gathers many of the arguments for and against open borders in one place. Naik's viewpoint is clear-- he supports open borders, and much of the site is dedicated to various arguments for that position. The pages featuring arguments against open borders sometimes include counter-arguments, though not always. Despite his viewpoint, Naik seems to take a special interest in overcoming his own bias, even including a specific feedback form to let him know whether he's treating the other side fairly.
Some highlights:
The case presented is explicitly based on libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian reasons to support open borders. Those with strong objections to one or more of those philosophies might not find the site as interesting as I did. Either way, the site certainly has the potential to become a valuable resource to anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on it as it grows.
Some highlights:
- Doubling world GDP: Various studies have found that removing barriers to labor mobility would increase world GDP by at least 67% and possibly as much as 147%. [For comparison, world GDP increased about 67% from 2003-2010, and about 147% from 1993-2010. In other words, with open borders we could see an extra decade's worth of economic growth, bringing new meaning to the term "lost decade."]
- Competitive government: Free movement between US states allows Americans to "vote with their feet," putting a check on state and local government power. Open borders would do the same to national governments.
- The Gumball Video: Since I wrote my own response to Roy Beck's gumball video last year, I found it interesting to read Naik's response, which is somewhat more kind to Dr. Beck than I was.
- Interesting analogies: In making the moral case for open borders, Naik raises some interesting thought exercises, such as Starving Marvin, which asks whether it's right to use force to keep a starving man out of a grocery store; John and Julio, which asks what level of force is appropriate to keep a competitor out of a job interview; and the Drowning Child, which asks whether we can use force to prevent someone else from saving a drowning child.
The case presented is explicitly based on libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian reasons to support open borders. Those with strong objections to one or more of those philosophies might not find the site as interesting as I did. Either way, the site certainly has the potential to become a valuable resource to anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on it as it grows.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Online Polls from Sixth Debate
In the sixth Republican debate, held in Orlando, Florida, Fox News polled online viewers on a number of questions and then reported on three of the results during the debate. Those questions, the results and my own answers are below. The questions and results are based on the video of the debate here and the transcript here.
I define rich as someone having an annual income higher than:
I was surprised at the result here, with a full 44% of respondents saying someone with an annual income of $999,000 would not be rich. My answer was the lowest available, $100,000, and only 13% agreed with me. My reasoning is that US median individual income for 2010 was $26,197 (table P-7 here). Someone making $100,000 a year makes almost four times more than the median American. If that's not rich, I don't know what is.
If we're talking about households rather than individuals (as I assumed), I might have chosen $250,000, even though I think that's a bit high. For households, an income of $100,000 puts you in the second-highest quintile; the upper cut-off for the second-highest quintile is $100,065 (table H-1 here). I think being in the top-fifth of American households probably qualifies as being rich, so maybe the right answer is slightly higher than $100,000. Even so, the lower cut-off for the top 5% of American households is $180,810, so an annual income of $250,000 puts someone solidly into the top 5%. If that's not rich, once again, I don't know what is.
If you had to cut a government department, what would you cut?
This result wasn't surprising at all. The Department of Education is a huge target for both conservatives and libertarians. I think it could certainly use reform, but I'm not convinced that eliminating the Department entirely is the best way to reform education policy in this country. The same goes for the EPA. They've definitely overstepped their bounds of late, but regulating externalities like pollution is one of the core functions of government.
The Department of Labor could probably be recombined with Commerce, and I'm sure many of the regulations it enforces could be streamlined or eliminated with no ill effects. At the same time, a lot of its agencies perform necessary government functions, like the BLS and OSHA. I think at least some of the opposition to the Department of Labor comes from its name, which some see as synonymous with unions. I didn't realize this until writing this entry, but in fact, the National Labor Relations Board (which does probably deserve to be eliminated) is an independent agency, separate from the Department of Labor.
I voted to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As the Department responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, HUD has been possibly the most abject failure of any federal department over the last two decades. Even if it hadn't overseen the housing bubble, there's simply no reason that I can see that we need a federal housing policy, or a federal urban development policy. I don't know of anything the federal government does that is more local in nature than urban development. Even the name begs for the department to be localized.
What is the best way to fix immigration in the US?
The third answer read out loud during the debate was "deport all immigrants," which received 22% of the vote and was the second-place answer. I don't remember the exact wording of the options that night, but I hope that either the actual option read "deport all illegal immigrants" or that these 22% of people interpreted it that way. Conflating the illegal/legal immigration issues is something I expect from liberals, not conservatives.
My answer was to "create a path to citizenship," and 35% agreed with me, more than any other answer. However, a stronger fence and more border patrol agents go hand-in-hand, and it's hard to see someone supporting one of those while opposing the other. Combined, the "stronger border" options get 39% of the vote.
I support a path to citizenship out of practicality, although I would prefer to call it a "path to legality." Not everyone who comes to the US wants to stay permanently, and not everyone who stays permanently wants to become a citizen. Our immigration policy has to recognize that fact. But I do support some kind of path to legality for illegal immigrants already here because the other two options are simply impractical. With upwards of ten million illegals in the country, it is practically and fiscally impossible to deport them all. But leaving them alone and maintaining the status quo, where ten million people are in open disobedience of the law, is also impractical. It breeds contempt for the law and for America as a country, as evidenced by the 2006 protests. The only way forward is through some kind of path to legality.
The stronger fence and border patrol also won't work for practical reasons. The border is so porous already that sealing it would cost tens of billions of dollars at a time when we're already borrowing more than 40% of what we spend. Keeping the border sealed would cost tens of billions more. The only reason people immigrate illegally is because we've made it so difficult to immigrate legally. Get rid of the quotas and the waiting lists, and simplify the immigration process, and illegal immigration will fall dramatically overnight.
I define rich as someone having an annual income higher than:
If we're talking about households rather than individuals (as I assumed), I might have chosen $250,000, even though I think that's a bit high. For households, an income of $100,000 puts you in the second-highest quintile; the upper cut-off for the second-highest quintile is $100,065 (table H-1 here). I think being in the top-fifth of American households probably qualifies as being rich, so maybe the right answer is slightly higher than $100,000. Even so, the lower cut-off for the top 5% of American households is $180,810, so an annual income of $250,000 puts someone solidly into the top 5%. If that's not rich, once again, I don't know what is.
If you had to cut a government department, what would you cut?
The Department of Labor could probably be recombined with Commerce, and I'm sure many of the regulations it enforces could be streamlined or eliminated with no ill effects. At the same time, a lot of its agencies perform necessary government functions, like the BLS and OSHA. I think at least some of the opposition to the Department of Labor comes from its name, which some see as synonymous with unions. I didn't realize this until writing this entry, but in fact, the National Labor Relations Board (which does probably deserve to be eliminated) is an independent agency, separate from the Department of Labor.
I voted to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As the Department responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, HUD has been possibly the most abject failure of any federal department over the last two decades. Even if it hadn't overseen the housing bubble, there's simply no reason that I can see that we need a federal housing policy, or a federal urban development policy. I don't know of anything the federal government does that is more local in nature than urban development. Even the name begs for the department to be localized.
What is the best way to fix immigration in the US?
My answer was to "create a path to citizenship," and 35% agreed with me, more than any other answer. However, a stronger fence and more border patrol agents go hand-in-hand, and it's hard to see someone supporting one of those while opposing the other. Combined, the "stronger border" options get 39% of the vote.
I support a path to citizenship out of practicality, although I would prefer to call it a "path to legality." Not everyone who comes to the US wants to stay permanently, and not everyone who stays permanently wants to become a citizen. Our immigration policy has to recognize that fact. But I do support some kind of path to legality for illegal immigrants already here because the other two options are simply impractical. With upwards of ten million illegals in the country, it is practically and fiscally impossible to deport them all. But leaving them alone and maintaining the status quo, where ten million people are in open disobedience of the law, is also impractical. It breeds contempt for the law and for America as a country, as evidenced by the 2006 protests. The only way forward is through some kind of path to legality.
The stronger fence and border patrol also won't work for practical reasons. The border is so porous already that sealing it would cost tens of billions of dollars at a time when we're already borrowing more than 40% of what we spend. Keeping the border sealed would cost tens of billions more. The only reason people immigrate illegally is because we've made it so difficult to immigrate legally. Get rid of the quotas and the waiting lists, and simplify the immigration process, and illegal immigration will fall dramatically overnight.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
The Train They Call the City of New Orleans
Bryan Caplan links to some sobering statistics from DHS. When it comes to deporting people, the US government distinguishes between "removals" and "returns." Removals are compulsory, while returns are voluntary. Caplan notes that "'voluntary returns' are about as voluntary as the payment of taxes." (More here.)
I, for one, am amazed at the level of deportations. Maybe I just haven't paid enough attention before now, but the numbers are truly sobering. The number of people we deport every single year is staggering. Caplan reproduces the data going back to 1980; the DHS has data going back to 1892. Here, I've decided to show the last 15 years, plus a state or city (MSA, actually) of comparable size to the number of people deported that year.
Now I'm aware that these people are by definition illegals, and many of them illegal for good reason. At the same time, many are not. Many of these people are business owners who would be employing Americans right now if we hadn't kicked them out of the country. Even those that aren't business owners would be creating jobs by increasing demand.
If there is anyone reading this who believes we really are better for having deported more than 20 million people over the last 15 years, answer me this. Why stop there? If deporting 863,000 people in 2010 was good for our economy and our country, why not also deport the 862,000 in New Haven? If deporting almost a million immigrants creates jobs for Americans, wouldn't deporting almost a million Connecticuters have the same effect?
| Year | Removed | Returned | Total | Comparison |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 387,242 | 476,405 | 863,647 | New Haven, CT (862,477) |
| 2009 | 395,165 | 586,164 | 981,329 | Tucson, AZ (980,263) |
| 2008 | 359,795 | 811,263 | 1,171,058 | New Orleans, LA (1,167,764) |
| 2007 | 319,382 | 891,390 | 1,210,772 | Hartford, CT (1,212,381) |
| 2006 | 280,974 | 1,043,381 | 1,324,355 | Maine (1,328,361) |
| 2005 | 246,431 | 1,096,920 | 1,343,351 | Jacksonville, FL (1,345,596) |
| 2004 | 240,665 | 1,166,576 | 1,407,241 | Hawaii (1,360,301) |
| 2003 | 211,098 | 945,294 | 1,156,392 | Buffalo, NY (1,135,509) |
| 2002 | 165,168 | 1,012,116 | 1,177,284 | Raleigh, NC (1,130,490) |
| 2001 | 189,026 | 1,349,371 | 1,538,397 | Milwaukee, WI (1,555,908) |
| 2000 | 188,467 | 1,675,876 | 1,864,343 | West Virginia (1,852,994) |
| 1999 | 183,114 | 1,574,863 | 1,757,977 | Charlotte, NC (1,758,038) |
| 1998 | 174,813 | 1,570,127 | 1,744,940 | Indianapolis, IN (1,756,241) |
| 1997 | 114,432 | 1,440,684 | 1,555,116 | Idaho (1,567,582) |
| 1996 | 69,680 | 1,573,428 | 1,643,108 | Virginia Beach, VA (1,671,683) |
Now I'm aware that these people are by definition illegals, and many of them illegal for good reason. At the same time, many are not. Many of these people are business owners who would be employing Americans right now if we hadn't kicked them out of the country. Even those that aren't business owners would be creating jobs by increasing demand.
If there is anyone reading this who believes we really are better for having deported more than 20 million people over the last 15 years, answer me this. Why stop there? If deporting 863,000 people in 2010 was good for our economy and our country, why not also deport the 862,000 in New Haven? If deporting almost a million immigrants creates jobs for Americans, wouldn't deporting almost a million Connecticuters have the same effect?
Friday, June 24, 2011
Responding to The Gumball Video
Yesterday, I tweeted the following:
The embedded video on that site is tiny, so I've embedded a larger version above. If my embedding doesn't work for you, the Youtube page is here.
In the video, Roy Beck uses gumballs to argue against increasing immigration. The thrust of his argument is that the people who are allowed to immigrate to the US (about a million per year) are so very few compared to the three billion "desperately poor" that it doesn't make enough of a difference. Therefore, he is against allowing even more people to immigrate. Wait, what?
Beck says that there's too little immigration to make a difference, therefore there should be even less immigration. He makes this argument with a straight face, so either he's a better actor than me, or he honestly believes this nonsense (or both-- I'm really bad at acting). Either way, I don't support immigration just because I think it will help other countries (even though it does, however small the effect might be). I support (legal) immigration because I think it will help my country, the good ol' U.S. of A. Maybe that's selfish, but it's true.
There are undeniable benefits to increased immigration. The greatest natural resource available to the United States (or any other country) is the human mind. Only people can innovate, and we need innovation if we want to grow. The more legal immigrants who come to the US, who go to our schools, who work for our companies, the better off we will be. They will bring their own ideas, or improve on American ideas, or work with Americans to develop totally new ideas. Think of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, I.M. Pei, Joseph Pulitzer, Irving Berling, Andrew Carnegie, Levi Strauss or Muhammad Yunus, all of them immigrants. (Never mind the children of immigrants, or their children!) We would be a far poorer society, both economically and culturally, without the steady influence of immigrants throughout American history.
What about the downsides? Roy Beck makes some vague and unsubstantiated references to the effect of legal immigration "on our unemployed, the working poor, the most vulnerable members of our society," and "on our natural resources." It is true that immigration increases labor supply, and when supply increases, the price falls, if everything else is kept constant. But everything else is not kept constant, because all these immigrants want to eat and buy homes and go on vacations and find other ways to spend the money they're earning. This means businesses have to expand to serve them, which means they have to hire new employees. This increases labor demand, and when labor demand increases, wages rise. Since immigration increases both labor supply and labor demand, there is very little to no net effect on wages or native employment. The downsides that Beck is afraid of simply don't exist, which might be why he spends so little time talking about them.
What this boils down to is the freedom of individuals to act in their own best interests without the government getting in the way. Immigration is one of those bizarre issues where many people who otherwise recognize the power and beauty of the free market beg for government control. As in so many other areas, the best thing the government can do is get out of the way. If people want to move to America, I say let them in.
Worldwide, 145 million adults want to move to the US & 43 million to Canada: http://bit.ly/mEEVRy Let them in! #tcot #tlot #uspoli #cdnpoliFellow twit Winghunter responded with this:
@planstoprosper The Gumball Video (5 min) bit.ly/bQxRRZ It's always better to have a clue.
The embedded video on that site is tiny, so I've embedded a larger version above. If my embedding doesn't work for you, the Youtube page is here.
In the video, Roy Beck uses gumballs to argue against increasing immigration. The thrust of his argument is that the people who are allowed to immigrate to the US (about a million per year) are so very few compared to the three billion "desperately poor" that it doesn't make enough of a difference. Therefore, he is against allowing even more people to immigrate. Wait, what?
Beck says that there's too little immigration to make a difference, therefore there should be even less immigration. He makes this argument with a straight face, so either he's a better actor than me, or he honestly believes this nonsense (or both-- I'm really bad at acting). Either way, I don't support immigration just because I think it will help other countries (even though it does, however small the effect might be). I support (legal) immigration because I think it will help my country, the good ol' U.S. of A. Maybe that's selfish, but it's true.
There are undeniable benefits to increased immigration. The greatest natural resource available to the United States (or any other country) is the human mind. Only people can innovate, and we need innovation if we want to grow. The more legal immigrants who come to the US, who go to our schools, who work for our companies, the better off we will be. They will bring their own ideas, or improve on American ideas, or work with Americans to develop totally new ideas. Think of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, I.M. Pei, Joseph Pulitzer, Irving Berling, Andrew Carnegie, Levi Strauss or Muhammad Yunus, all of them immigrants. (Never mind the children of immigrants, or their children!) We would be a far poorer society, both economically and culturally, without the steady influence of immigrants throughout American history.
What about the downsides? Roy Beck makes some vague and unsubstantiated references to the effect of legal immigration "on our unemployed, the working poor, the most vulnerable members of our society," and "on our natural resources." It is true that immigration increases labor supply, and when supply increases, the price falls, if everything else is kept constant. But everything else is not kept constant, because all these immigrants want to eat and buy homes and go on vacations and find other ways to spend the money they're earning. This means businesses have to expand to serve them, which means they have to hire new employees. This increases labor demand, and when labor demand increases, wages rise. Since immigration increases both labor supply and labor demand, there is very little to no net effect on wages or native employment. The downsides that Beck is afraid of simply don't exist, which might be why he spends so little time talking about them.
What this boils down to is the freedom of individuals to act in their own best interests without the government getting in the way. Immigration is one of those bizarre issues where many people who otherwise recognize the power and beauty of the free market beg for government control. As in so many other areas, the best thing the government can do is get out of the way. If people want to move to America, I say let them in.
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