Morning Ed: The Americas {2019.09.20.T}
Frank A DeFilippo says that while Trump and Clinton debate what to do about immigrants, the Mexican government considers us its workplace.
This is what assimilation looks like.
Homicide rates are on the decline outside of Latin America. Unfortunately, Latin America is a big exception.
Dave Sewell argues that too many people are blaming socialism, and not capitalism, for the fall of Venezuela. Jay Jacobs of Global X, though, argues that Latin America as a whole is resurgent and explains the reasons.
Michael Brendan Dougherty has a field guide to the GOP’s complicated relationship with Putin.
Gun ownership appears to be on the rise in the US, after a steady decline.
Ugh. I have everything backed up in three places, but very little off-site. So a fire is pretty much my only vulnerability.
From the Socialist Worker Venezuela article:
Anyone arguing that Corbyn as Prime Minister or Bernie as President would lead to either the UK or the US ending up like Venezuela is obviously wrong. There are years of history (colonialism, post colonial caudillos, First and Second World interference, ill-conceived development strategies, resource curses, etc.) keeping most Western developed countries from ending up like the lesser developed Latin countries. That said, this article is pretty Simple Jack, but it is a pretty good example of my main beef with the far left. It is full of non-falsifiable statements about capitalism and socialism that only have meaning if you already buy into the foundations of socialist thought. It is catechism, not analysis.
This is a pretty good lesson in how not to do comparative public policy. Chavez did what Chavez because Chavez wanted to do what he did. If he failed to fully take on the vestiges of the old power system maybe it was because he was more interested in creating an authoritarian cult of personality than in ushering in a socialist utopia.
Make no mistake, Venezuela could have just as easily been run into a ground by a bunch of right-wing cronyist rent-seeking corrupt authoritarians, but it wasn’t. It was run into the ground by Chavez and his Bolivarian Socialist movement. That doesn’t have to deal a death blow to the idea that some country could conceivably pull of a successful socialist revolution, but when folks try to dodge and/or invert the obvious truth, it does their movement no favors.Report
Socialism can not fail, it can only be failed. Pugsly just wasn’t able to fend off the evil capitalists.Report
The critique I found most persuasive was that Chavez failed to engage in enough trade – in both directions – to develop a domestic economy resilient enough to withstand drops in oil price.Report
I was being facetious. Chavez failed because he acted like an armed spoiled brat who never believed the money would stop rolling in.Report
What did he think he was, a banker?Report
Maybe he wanted to be, but the other banker kids wouldn’t play with him, so he got mad and nationalized their assets.Report
Chavez’s warranty expired before Venezuela’s economy did. But Nicolas Maduro, who I’m sure is a perfectly excellent gentleman, but holy cow is not the right person for the job and basically everything that was weak and creaking about the Bolivarian Republic disintegrated after he was sworn in.Report
Chavez was, IMHO, a cult of personality. Maduro could never fill those shoes.Report
Mexico: No doubt. The us is paying mexico to strengthen it’s southern boarder, because they want to keep the Guatemalans, etc. out of mexico. And folk here are bitching about building a wall on our border….
Venezuela: So I’m confused. The collapsing oil prices and the draught has crippled the country, but “Neither of these problems are former bus worker Maduro’s doing.” True, but he didn’t “confront the rich” when the prices for oil were high (and were funding the anti poverty programs) But he was part of the gov’t that “decade of relying on oil revenue”. But then again, “The left government did all it could to co-opt or contain this self-organisation.” after the 2002-3 protests and “It decided early on to adapt to capitalism—and some figures grew very rich.” So the author’s point is that the leftish gov’t ISN’T LEFT ENOUGH or sold out to the wicked Capitalists?
Gun Ownership: I’m not sure how accurate these are. I know a lot of people that aren’t stupid enough to actually disclose to some random unknown 1) they own guns 2) what kind 3) how many. One does not talk about fight club or gun ownership.Report
Should be easy enough to track how many guns are being used if you track ammo purchases. And that’s just hacking walmart’s database, innit? (Serves as a decent proxy even in places where it isn’t the only store around).
I own guns. To the tune of “more than you do.” They aren’t around my house, so don’t even.Report
I don’t think ammo purchases correlates well to how many guns their are. There are people that shoot 500 rounds a year and those that shoot 50 thousand rounds. People who own more guns buy more types of ammo, but competition shooters likely shoot fewer types of ammo but more of it. And ammo sales aren’t recorded by person in my state.
You may own more than I do, assuming I do, but mine would be “cooler”. :pReport
Never, ever assume a corporation isn’t recording every single piece of data you can possibly generate. And if the information is out there — hackers got to hack.Report
QFT, but my point about ammo purchases and gun ownership still stands…Report
Damon,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/study-3-owns-50-guns-held-hostage-article-1.2798077
If you’re down to 3%, you’re well under the “likes ebola” territory (which consistently sits at around 15%). 17 guns a person isn’t too crazy for people who just like guns. Of course, that is a mobile arsenal…
And this is done using: the GfK Knowledge Panel, a nationally representative online panel
dunno if i trust it that muchReport
I don’t trust anyone who gets “PTSD” after firing a .223 a few times.
Nor do I believe anything reported by The Trace as “reliable”.Report
You’d think the well deserved ridicule he exposed himself to would have gotten him removed by his editors from the gun beat.Report
Ha Ha.
Err no. Surely you jest my good man!Report
You do realize that America’s Border with Mexico is one of the best defended in the world, right? And that Mexico’s border with Guatemala is basically non-existent.
Without speaking to the merits of beefing up the Mexico-Guatemala border, it is probably a much more cost effective way to limit undocumented immigration from central america than building a wall along our massive border.Report
Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear.
“We”, as in america, all cool with paying Mexico to beef up it’s boarder with Guatemala, at least according to Don Zeko’s theories, but doesn’t want to do anything about OUR border. Meanwhile, Mexico is totally cool and sees the need to do something about the damned illegals crossing their border, but has no interest in sealing it’s northern border. Hmmmm.Report
“Mexico is totally cool and sees the need to do something about the damned illegals crossing their border, but has no interest in sealing it’s northern border.” Countries act in their own self interest. Color me surprised.
On your first point, I got it (except for the Don Zeko part). My point is about diminishing returns. It is entirely consistent to say that spending $25 billion to build a semi-pointless wall for our incredibly well protected border (which, by any measure, it is) is a waste of money, but that spending $15 million helping Mexico manage a incredibly porous border with Guatemala is a much more cost effective way of heading off illegal immigration both in Mexico and the US. There is nothing hypocritical there.
Hell, even if securing the border isn’t your only concern, Mexico’s border with Guatemala is basically open. It is entirely consistent to think that the US spends to much on border security, while at the same time thinking the Mexico spends too little.Report
I’m curious about this well protected border that apparently lets in billions of dollars worth of drugs and tens of thousands of immigrants. Given that I can walk up to the border and hop over the cattle fence that it is in some areas, I’d strive hard to call it well protected.Report
1- Most of the illegal immigrants arrive by plane into a fancy airport, carrying a US visa, which they then overstay
2- In those places where you can walk over the cattle fence, the problem is not the fence, it is crossing the couple of hundred of miles of desert in both directions without dying a lot. In those places where you can walk up to the fence in safety, like San Diego, or El Paso, it is quite a big, secure, fence.Report
“it is crossing the couple of hundred of miles of desert in both directions without dying a lot. ”
Funny, back before the recent crash, my mom would wake up in the middle of the night several times each night as the illegals walked up her street, causing the dogs in the neighborhood to bark. They seemed to manage the miles of dessert rather well. And the trail markings and trash strew along the trails up to the border and beyond seemed to indicate a decent amount of preparation/recognition of the rigors of nighttime desert walking-they also liked to hang out under the train trestles during the day in the shade.
But to your point of “Most of the illegal immigrants arrive by plane into a fancy airport, carrying a US visa, which they then overstay” Wow, and yet above you indicated how “strong our border” was. I can’t seem to resolve these two statements.Report
The US-Mexico Border is very, very long, and is the most legally trafficked border in the world. It is also, quite possibly, the best defended border between to non-hostile nations. It’s not perfectly secure, but we spend around $12 million on it, and have more border agents, national guard, drones, and fence than almost anywhere else on earth. We probably disagree over whether that is sufficient.
But again, this discussion whether it is hypocritical to spend resources to help Mexico without building a wall on our border.Report
Mexicans want their own southern border wall but liberals don’t want the US to build one of our own. That’s the difference.Report
Evidence that Mexicans want a southern border wall? And I don’t mean a reference to the merida program.Report
Actually this is a conversation about the hypocrisy of supporting a country that has strong border/immigration lawsby a country that chooses not to enforce it’s own.Report
I don’t know if I follow. Who has strong border/immigration laws? It sounds like you are saying it’s Mexico.
If so, you seriously misunderstand the situation.Report
What do you even mean by “supporting a country”?Report
I’m more than a little disturbed by how many people are A-OK with banning gun purchases to people on the no-fly list. The problems with the no-fly list have been trumpeted over & over again in the media, and still people think it’s fine to deny a right based upon a suspicion.Report
But what if gun owners were a bowl of Skittles, and I told you that just 3 would kill you?Report
Oh @chip-daniels, you know damn well I love me some skittles.Report
Besides, those three skittles are needed to keep picking Hillary up off the ground.Report
What I’ve read on “infowars” is that those “skittles” she’s been hacking up are the eggs of our new alien overlords…Report
Sounds like “popplers” from Futurama.Report
You can’t fix stupid Oscar. Hell, the FBI, and other alphabet agencies INTENTIONAL don’t put some people on the list because they want to track their moments and get intell from them, so it’s not even a good list to use to keep “dangerous” people from flying….iReport
Of course somebody from the Socialist Worker would blame Venezuela’s ills on capitalism rather than Chavez’s particularly nutty resource based form of socialism. You can’t base a socialist economy on one particular resource and you can’t ignore some basic economic rules. Norway is a pretty good example of how to do petroleum-based social democracy right.Report
FARC based their “socialist economy” on two resources: Cocaine and Venezuela.Report
And Norway is constantly on guard against price fluctuations or the taps running dry.Report
Do they use foil, epee, or saber?Report
Overt friendliness.
(I love Norway, one of the nicest places to visit with a people who are so very warm & welcoming)Report
Isn’t socialism about ignoring most economic rules?Report
No, it is not for the most part. Socialists might not believe that economic rules are as set in stone as ardent free marketers but they don’t think they could be ignored either.Report
Or they just believe in a different set of economic rules from free marketeers. I think a description of socialism that completely excludes Marx from being a socialist leaves something to be desired.Report
Classic Marxists believe that socialism will inevitably happen because of the economic rules that they believe in.Report
Marx was a classical economist. He believed in a lot of the rules and laws that Smith and Ricardo set down. He just believed that they would lead to a very different place than Ricardo or Smith did.
The Marxists believed that the rules of Capitalism would require Capitalism to (eventually) collapse under its own weight. Lenin’s innovation was a revolution because waiting for something to happen organically sucks.
Marx is at his best when he is descriptive rather than trying to be predictive.Report
Picketty will back up the idea that Capitalism will eventually collapse under its own weight.
It’s all in the hidden premises.Report
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get at. And there’s been a fair amount of divergent evolution since Marx’s day. Still, I’m sure I’m far from alone around here in saying that I hold Marx in considerably higher regard than I hold Marxists or even “Marxism”.Report
The failure of predictive Marxism was the failure to predict Bismark
Bismark great insight was to understand that unfettered Capitalism would really crush the working classes, as Marx (more or less) predicted, and that political stability, conservatism, and keeping elites at the top of the heap required putting a floor to the working class’ impoverishment. Bismark is thus the father of the welfare state.Report
A lesson learned by the US elites as well. When the anarchists were ramping up their attacks and rhetoric against the Capitalist Machine, concessions were made to labor in the form of unions, welfare programs, worker protections, etc. Anything – ANYTHING – to save capitalism from its own self-destructive excesses.Report
The Anarchists were against the Marxists because they perceived that eventually capitalists would learn the most effective strategy would be to turn the working classes into little bourgeois like Bismark did. Bismarck’s strategy did not work in the short term because it wasn’t generous enough and the SPD continued to be popular but he got the basic idea right. It just took awhile to get the formula right. One of the distinguishing features of American conservatism is that they never really adopted the Bismarck strategy on creating a floor for the working class for a variety of reasons.
Another fatal flaw with Marxism or really most socialism is that they never managed to work out some fairly big contradictions within socialism. The entire idea of socialism was that it was supposed to lead to a more equitable economic system than capitalism and better and fairer distribution of goods and services. Many Marxists and socialists hated the bourgeois culture with a passion but increasing material well-building basically means raising more people to bourgeois living conditions and material culture. A lot of socialists really hard a hard time addressing the desire for creature comforts and fun.Report
I think this is one of the reasons socialism as practiced in Nordic countries is workable. Government isn’t playing hardcore morality police with regard to luxuries & leisure, and even structures things so as to better enable people to enjoy them.Report
The Eastern Bloc communist countries did try to provide an Anglophone/Western European consumer lifestyle to their citizens after Stalin died. Even Stalin realized that socialism is about providing the goods to people. They just ran into the usual problems of the command economy and some of the intellectual problems with it. Asian communists were more into the communal part of communism so never really struggled with this.Report
And also the various non-Communist Socialist parties in Europe had tremendous fights over consumerism and leisure and how they relate to social democracy. There is a puritanical tradition in socialism that a lot of leftists do not like to pay much attention to these days.Report
Yeah, that puritanical streak was very problematic.Report
To be fair to Lenin, Marx and his early followers also got into the entire lets start organizing the working classes now instead of waiting for things to happen. Lenin’s just accelerated the entire thing a bit and argued you could have a revolution in a mainly rural and religious country like Russia.Report
Are we talking the free marketeers using social constructs, or the ones not using social constructs?Report
I’m not sure “free marketeers” of any stripe are in a good position to avoid social constructs, and the ones who try are likely to get “free markets” that are neither “free” nor “markets”.Report
Your social construct thing makes even less sense when it comes to economics. A market or really the entire economy is a social construct because it involves multiple people interacting with each other.Report
Well I wouldn’t expect you would want it to make sense. I’ve been over the owner operator thing. I’ve been over the individual to individual interactions in the context of personal exchange. This doesn’t take The Great Society to occur. It doesn’t take Command/Control economics to function.
I’m sure you folks will figure out how to twist and distort control economics driven by social constructs to function correctly in about 500,000 years, maybe.Report
Joe, it’s pretty clear that you have some special definition for the term “social construct” that doesn’t match the typically understood meaning–and I don’t think I’m the only one who has no fishing clue what you’re trying to communicate when you use that term.
Because to the rest of us, something like a market is a textbook definition of a social construct. The free exchange of goods literally requires multiple people to share compatible ideas about how goods can be owned and their ownership can be conveyed. So it’s a bit weird for you to jump down Lee’s throat because he’s not hip to your special definition.Report
@joe-sal frequently talks about the ideal of every person providing for him or herself without the aid of anybody else. I guess that his idea of a social construct is anything that doesn’t take into account this radical individualism where a person is supposed to do it all for him or herself, food, clothing, employment, healthcare, and leisure. The thing is that nobody can do it all for him or herself and most free market economists would recognize this level of self-sufficiency as a path to poverty.
This is why I sometimes refer to Joe Sal’s ideas as home steading. The ideal seems to be as not dependent on anybody else as possible. You should grow your own food and make your own clothing.Report
Which, ironically, a lot of the hippie communes attempted.Report
Being in the anti-authoritarian right, I actually love hippies as individuals. It’s when they collect together and start making public policy I start not liking them.Report
That is a somewhat fair criticism and I appreciate you stepping up with push back. There is nothing special about the definition. Things are either constructed around groupings of people and or grouping of the greater ‘society’, or they are constructed individually.
It has taken me awhile to develop the difference, I might argue that it is because the drift of peoples mindset into socialism has been so thorough and indoctrinated for ‘reasons’.
It takes considerable thought to understand a market built around individual production and personal means of exchange. I guess it bothers me to some magnitude that I have to paint it in such strong light for people to see it, if they will. Factions of the left tend to get critical of capitalism. If you really start picking it apart, the things that they are at odds with aren’t a development of one person. It is the development of a construct taking many, many people. Other parts are something that is put together by ‘social democracy’ but is labeled capitalism.
So in effect considerable chunks of what we are calling capitalism is actually social capitalism or capitalism as a sub-construct of social democracy. The construct of social democracy as it stands is not concerned about individual agency, it is concerned about socialism in a collective sense. It is concerned about what it’s social majority wants to invest in and construct or control.
I hold no quarter for anyone pointing at socialist forms of capitalism and saying naked socialism is better, or even socialist capitalism is ‘good’. Yeah I get abrasive about it. I openly apologize to Lee if it is seen anything more than sparring of ideas. We spar often on this. I really like Lee, and think we have potential as good friends if we engaged outside our internal leanings as they are.Report
I guess I should also suggest free markets are currently viewed only as social constructs. This is an issue I have been trying to convey a position on for I guess four years now.
If personal means of exchange occurs between individuals, and as personal means of production are in effect, I claim that a free market can occur between two individuals.
The functions of demand and supply are present, therefore I see no reason why a free market couldn’t be a individual construct. Furthermore I would challenge that the only free markets that exist without outside interventions at the time of typing this are only individual constructs.Report
I have no problem with the idea that in theory, a market can exist between two individuals–but then again, in theory, those two individuals form a society.
I think the problem is that “capitalism” becomes a pretty meaningless term when you reduce things down to this level–what you’re calling “social capitalism” seems to just refer to what everyone else calls capitalism. So that leaves me struggling to understand what you mean when you say “capitalism”–because if it’s just the act of individual exchanges of goods and services that’s an odd name for it–since after all, that’s a feature of all modern economic systems, including socialism and communism. Reducing things the the level of individual exchange hides, rather than highlights, differences in economic systems. After all, both Americans and Venezuelans exchange money for bread.Report
Oh, I don’t even start at it being a theory. Individuals already practice this and have since the pre dawn of civilization. Free market in the context of personal means of exchange is just pointing out definition for clarity, not theory.
My position has been repeatedly called radical individualism. I don’t hold that as accurate. I would call my position normal individualism. I could reference (most!) everyone elses position as radical socialism, but it would give merit where none is due.
The position that is generally held today has been the slow slog of regular socialism over time, not some quick jump. So if capitalism has drifted into social capitalism without any notice from the socialists, it only looks as progress. This isn’t a movement of individualism into more radical individualism. It is a slog of chunks of society into the deeper waters of socialism.
I am going to take a moment here to clear up a definition of free market. As above most folks using this term aren’t taking at it’s definition level. One of the main requirements (by definition) for a free market, to actually be a free market is for it to exist without interventions. I make a claim of that to be truthful under my own subjective objectivity, not open to distortion from social objectivity.(just because the majority of society would want to move the meaning to what it wants, the meaning is to not drift with majority preference, in this case the continued use of the words ‘everyone else calls’)
A important implication in the differences of social capitalism and free market capitalism is where capital formation and wealth distributes. As I tried to convey in my post with I guess little illumination is that capitalism was supposed to be a way out of fuedalism. A basic parameter of free market capitalism is based on individual constructs is that both the wealth and capital formation go to/ are controlled directly by the individuals. A parameter of social capitalism is the capital formation and wealth go to/are controlled by social constructs.
If you think this is in error demonstrate how and why.Report
@joe-sal wrote a couple of guest posts explaining himself a little while back, so I would suggest reading those. I didn’t feel particularly illuminated after reading them myself, but lots of other commenters seem to have done, so YMMV.Report
One thing that helps me with Joe’s constructs are the Peelian Principles, especially number 7:
Individuals have a responsibility to maintain order (the individual construct), but as communities got larger, a social construct was needed and developed (the police). The individual construct remains, but the social construct functions to bolster the individual.Report
Assimilation: based on the one paragraph and two lines that I could read before the paywall, this is wholly unremarkable. The long-established pattern is that the first generation immigrants for the most part never become fluent in English. The second generation is fluent bilingually, and the third generation is fluent in English, with only limited use of the old language, unless they were raised by their grandmothers, in which case it is the fourth generation that loses the old language.
There is a long-standing claim that Hispanics Are Different. I remember hearing this as far back as the 1980s. Hispanics, it is claimed, refuse to assimilate, and that is why Hispanic immigration is bad in a way entirely different from that wave of immigration that brought my ancestors over. This claim has always been bullshit. Anyone who actually looked into the question discovered that Hispanic immigrants followed the same pattern as their predecessors. The claim only appeared plausible, to the extent that it did, because the Hispanic immigration wave was ongoing, and since they all look alike how are we supposed to tell the new immigrants from the grandchildren of earlier immigrants. (Hint: check their language skills.)
Hispanic immigration has, hysterical rhetoric notwithstanding, stagnated since the Great Recession. You can thank Bush for that, I guess. In any case, it is unsurprising that Spanish-language television ratings would be in decline in consequence.
On a distantly related note, you can track the history of German immigration by looking for Lutheran churches with the word “English” in their names, and checking when the congregation was founded.Report
If by stagnated you mean “all the construction workers went home” (which seriously left a friend of mine in the lurch. lost all his agents in Phoenix).Report
Well, sure. They came here for work, and when the work went away, they left. This notwithstanding the fervent claim that they came for our sweet, sweet welfare benefits. That anti-immigration hysteria rose as actual immigration reversed itself tell us, if any proof were necessary, that said hysteria is not a reasoned conclusion from the facts.Report
But the claim keeps getting repeated, as in the Frank DeFillipo article when he ends with the unsupported assertion that Hispanic immigrants today refuse to assimilate like past European arrivals. He even mentions our sweet, sweet welfare benefits.Report
Mexican immigration is greatly different than previous immigration because so many of them only intend to stay for a period of time. See the second article in the OP. That wasn’t really an option for immigrants coming from further away when transportation costs were higher.
A local city with a meatpacking plant had two waves of immigration, and when the immigrants were polled: Do you think you’ll stay in the U.S.? 42% of Mexicans said yes, compared with 75% of West-Africans (Francophones). Mexican-Americans are refusing to assimilate because being in the U.S. is just a temporary gig, and the cost of immigration and reverse immigration is very low.Report
Of course the numbers are different – There’s far less cost, distance, and social risk in coming from Mexico as opposed to West Africa, not even getting into the fact that the vast majority of people immigrating to the US from West Africa are immigrants from at least the middle class, if not even higher up on the chain.
So yes, this may be true of the Mexicans who are just coming here for work and not bringing their families, no more than say, English teachers in South Korea or Chinese factory owners in Africa aren’t assimilating in the local culture.
But, the statistics of people actually staying here generationally shows that Mexicans are assimilating at basically the same rates of every immigration wave in the past. There’ll be plenty of Hernandezes and Rogriguezes in 25 years who won’t be able to speak a lick of Spanish.Report
Lack of assimilation is a problem, and the problem starts with groups of people that don’t intend to assimilate even if for entirely rational reasons. But if you don’t consider the people who leave the country, either as always planned or because they are having difficulty . . . assimilating, then your analysis is going to be the product of survival bias. This is a border issue, but as the cost of transportation decreases and the government subsidizes immigration, it becomes larger.Report
Sicilians were doing this at the beginning of the 1900’s. You possibly saw less “we come back every spring” stuff with higher transportation costs, but…Report
Italians in the early 20th century had high rates of reverse migration, but I think that is a failure of assimilation, to which one can probably point at multiple causes. But transportation costs were still much lower than previously. My wife’s grandfather immigrated from England after WWI and they were still going back to England every few years on his working-class salary. Their last trip before WWII, Katharine Hepburn looked after my father-in-law for a short while.Report
I’m an assimilation guy (a stew if not a melting pot, but definitely not a salad), and I’m not especially worried about the ones who are only staying for a while. And for a lot of border hawks, those aren’t of special concern either (except for economic impact) as they’re more worried about the ones who stay, have birthright children, and so on.
I’m even more laid back than they are, in that I am not terribly concerned about the first generation at all even if they do stay. I’m more worried about second and third generations, which are pushing Telemundo towards more Americanized entertainment.Report
If the first generation stays, they starve. Along with the rest of us.
It’s time to worry, folks.Report
The problem with those who on a temporary basis is that they are not investing in America or the communities they live-in. In many cases, they are sending the money they make to another country, acting as a reverse stimulus to the community, while their children encumber the public school systems.Report
I can see why people who don’t stick around are unlikely to assimilate, but at the same time, if they’re not going to stick around, why is it a problem if they don’t assimilate?Report
Because we can’t afford the people we have, going forward?
That means more mouths to feed (even if they intend to go somewhere later) is a problem. (alsonote: going back to where they came from may be unexpectedly impossible or impractical)Report
Because we can’t afford the people we have, going forward?
It’s not immediately obvious to me what this has to do with whether they assimilate. It’s also not immediately obvious why having people show up, work cheaply for a few years and then head home wouldn’t make this alleged [1] problem more severe rather than less.
[1] “We can’t afford the people we have!” is one of those arguments that is supported much less frequently than it’s asserted.Report
Given how many immigrants work in jobs that native-born Americans are basically unwilling to do, the “can’t afford them” argument is even more peculiar. How do we get our cheap poultry without them?Report
The problem with this argument, it seems to me, is that focusing on the utilitarian benefit of immigration allows for stuff like “well, can we deny immigrants who do *NOT* want to work?” to be a reasonable question.
I suppose we can always jump back to deontology if someone asks that and accuse them of racism or something.Report
It might be a reasonable question, but it seems like one that is of little interest to most people arguing against immigration.
Indeed, everybody deserves endless charity except people who think racism might motivate a significant fraction of the right.Report
The local meat-packing industry cut wages across the board 25% and reached a 100% job-turnover rate that could only fill by sending recruiters to the Mexican border. These were not jobs Americans weren’t willing to do.Report
Few americans will consent to be put into sausages. yes.
few mexicans as well, but slavery.Report
Starving people get real happy to do jobs real quick. Including murder, if that’s the only job available to them.Report
We can support about a third of the current American population, given the current agricultural outlook in fifty years. (assuming relatively minimal importing of food, which is wise considering the likelihood of petro-economy going tits up).
I’m making the argument that “I’ll just go home again” is a fine argument, unless you’re from Miami or Bangladesh.Report
So, what, the Soylent Green will only be palatable if we’re making it out of people who were assimilated first?Report
Current sales indicate that people are well willing to buy meat products with detectable levels of human flesh. No word on level of assimilation of the workers (though it’s probably low).Report
I think its pretty obvious that the community w/ the meat packing plant I mentioned is better-off with the Africans than the Mexicans on the basis of intent to stay. Probably a rough stereotype would be would you like to buy a home in a neighborhood of renters or owners? Also, what is the Keynsian multiplier effect from immigrants sending a percentage of their salary home?Report
All of those things may be true–they’re all at least plausible–but the role played by assimilation is not entirely obvious, unless you’re arguing that assimilation is simply the desire to settle down and work, without entailing any interest in accommodating the culture of the country you’re immigrating to.
In any event, if that is the issue, it’s also not clear why making it harder for the Mexicans to enter the country and stick around is the appropriate policy response.Report
@pd-shaw
Really?
I have heard that many Mexican immigrants who want to be seasonal workers, end up staying in America because crossing the border is so expensive and difficult.Report
They seemed to cross our boarder to get here easily enough but somehow going back is hard? Yea right.Report
I think you missed the part were Chip said “seasonal.” As in coming for the season then going home, then returning the next season.Report
Which was the keystone of Bush immigration reform: guest workers. And would be the preferred option of most migrants. Be here six months, keep the family south, where the cost of living is much lower, and earn enough to live until next agricultural/yard maintenance/house building season.
The fact that crossing over is more and more difficult means that once here they’d rather stay put, and once they stay they bring their family over, and, voila, we have immigrant kids at schoolReport
So the US is now the gig economy for Mexicans?Report
Well that’s certainly disruptive!Report
I think the US should start taxing the remittances to help fund the wall. A 10% tax on all money sent back to Mexico would be a good start.Report
Right after we tax the offshore profits from corporations, you mean?Report
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/09/20/george_h_w_bush_will_vote_for_hillary_clinton_according_to_a_kennedy.html
If this is true, George H.W. Bush will vote for Clinton. I don’t expect this to influence any on the fence voters but I do think it signals a death knell for the Republican Party as I knew it for most of my life.Report
Another way to look at it is a death knell for the Democratic party: it’s effectively your grandpa’s conservatism.Report
“A Democratic Party that George H W Bush can endorse!”Report
Or ya’ know, @stillwater and @jaybird, H.W. can look over differences in tax or child care policy when the alternative is Trump. As PJ O’Rourke said, to sane conservatives, Hillary is wrong, but within acceptable ranges of being wrong.Report
Chris Christie is getting it from both sides now: both the defense and the prosecution assert that Christie knew about the Fort Lee lane closures as they happened.
What’s interesting is that Kelly and Baroni’s defense hinges on establishing that Christie not only knew about the closures but was behind the decision to do so. So now all parties in the current court case agree on the basic facts in play re: Christie: that he knew about it in real time. (K and B are arguing that Christie et al thru them under the bus to protect themselves.)
I’ve said it before, but my account of why Christie unexpectedly jumped onto the Trump train was because it was the best, perhaps only, way to prevent prosecution for his actions as NJ Gov. With both parties arguing that he knew, the likelihood of charges being filed against him seems to have just gone up a notch.Report
GUYS GUYS GUYS ANGELINA JOLIE AND BRAD PITT ARE DIVORCINGReport
Again? Third time this year, if the clickbait is to be believed.Report
They were together?Report
Just long enough for her to adopt more third world kids.Report
Guys. Right now. Back your stuff up. And not just to your own house.
If you do not have a lot of stuff, you can use something like Dropbox or OneDrive. Just start using those as your document and pictures directory.
Otherwise, get an online service.
If you cannot afford one of the online services, then find someone *else* who cannot afford one, and you both install Crashplan, and back up to each other’s computer.
Seriously, this isn’t the old days, where backups required complicated hardware and tape changing. Just back up. Offsite.Report
Use optical. Do not back up anything important or sensitive online.
Assume someone’s gonna see/read anything you put on there.Report
Yes, use optical, and then lose it all when your house burns down.
Good plan.Report
Of course, you put it somewhere else. *eyeroll*Report
It’s pretty easy to encrypt your data before dumping it into the cloud. Then all you have to do is back up your keys. Keys are small enough that you can keep a hard copy in a safe deposit box and type it back in if it all really hits the fan.Report
Encryption is fine… so long as you don’t have someone with tons of time and a supercomputer on their hands. And that’s for decent encryption — the stuff they use for finance and crap. Not “you picked a password” encryption, which has password crackers.Report
Yes, because someone with lots of time and all of Google’s clusters is really interested in my banking information.
And no, I don’t care if you know a person who… just, no.
If you are just backing up your photos and other crap, 128-bit encryption will keep honest men honest.Report
Kimmi is wrong anyway. You can’t crack a 128 key using Google. Cracking modern encryption via brute force is, fundamentally, impossible.
I had a nice long comment here, but screwed up some math in it, and don’t really care to fix it.
But if anyone is actually interested, if the fastest supercomputer that currently exists had started cracking a 128-key at the dawn of time, it would be about 1/100,000,000,000,000,000 of the way through the keyspace. (Good news: On average, it only will have to get halfway through it before finding the key. Bad news: The universe will probably cease to exist long before that.)
Kimmi, of course, will tell you that the NSA has much faster computers. The problem, of course, is that we’ve basically reached the point where it’s impossible to build a CPU that is much faster than current CPUs, and all we do can do is throw *more* CPUs at the problem. [EDIT: By more CPU, I really mean more CPU cores. CPUs are getting faster, but they’re getting fast because they have more cores on them.]
But the NSA is not secretly operating a septillion computers. The power requirement would be absurd, for one thing, as would the heat dissipation.
(In fact, the NSA is not secretly operating *any* super computers. They don’t tell us exactly how big their super computers are, or the architecture, but we pretty much know where they are and *roughly* their size.)Report
But… But… But… On TV they crack ‘Military Grade Encryption’ all the time! In a few minutes! With a just a beefy laptop!
*Don’t feel obligated to spend any effort explaining this inanity, I know why it’s crap, I’m just poking fun.Report
Don’t need to crack codes. You just Zoom and Enhance until you can see the password written on a post note on the bad guys computers. That’s what satellites are for.Report
I like to imagine that when they say ‘Military Grade’, they mean DES, which *was* encryption designed for the military. Back in 1977.
It’s only 56 bit.
It *still* takes a specialized computer (consisting of 128 FPGAs, which are customized CPUs) to break it in less than day, though. Or it did in 2008.
It’s not implausible that, if you put a powerful modern PC on it, you could do it in under a month-ish.Report
Keeping honest men honest is a good thing, surely.
It’s a lot harder keeping computers honest, because they’ve got a lot more time on their hands.Report
I use Crashplan and am quite happy with it. Very reasonable costs, speedy enough to be useful, and if I want to, I can encrypt everything I backup there and there isn’t an issue.Report
I use Mozy, but I’m sort of switching to a hybrid system. I’m in the process of putting together a home networked storage system, but because Mozy thinks it’s 2002, it classifies all network shares as ‘commercial’ and I’m not paying their commercial rates over a 3 TB home share.
Instead I’ll be moving the bulky, but non-critical files, to the share (media, mostly) and shrinking my Mozy footprint (and thus my monthly costs) down to critical things (photos, reciepts, tax documents, etc).
And because I’m paranoid, but not that paranoid, I’m adding a 3TB USB drive to backup the mirrored 3TB drives…..(but I won’t store them offsite. I’m more worried about disk failure than fire. I wonder how a USB drive handles a fire if it’s in a fireproof box? Bet the heat kills it….)Report