In case you’ve missed my recent posts at Absolute Rights, here is a summary of them. And you won’t want to miss my next one there, which reveals how totally I am in touch with the young people of America today and even features an up-to-date pop cultural reference to the rock star Kate Perry.
Kill Immigration Reform or Kill America
The problem is that immigrants and Americans alike want to live in
the America that was the result of 1950s America, but most immigrants
and many Americans have proven themselves completely incapable of doing
so without destroying it. If passed, Obama’s immigration reform will
transform the entire nation in much the same way that his health care
reform has transformed the health care industry. In other words, it will
prove to be an expensive and poorly-managed blunder that will destroy
what it purports to be saving without benefitting the very people it was
supposed to help.
It is long past time for Americans to grow up and realize that there
is nothing magical about American geography. It will not transform
peasants into productive middle-class businessmen and it will not
convert barbarians into civilized men and women.
The Civil Rights Movement has failed. Forced integration has failed.
Martin Luther King’s dream has become a nightmare, in which men are
neither judged by the content of their character or the color of their
skin. And where there is no judgment, no civilization is possible.
It’s Still the Economy, Stupid
It might seem strange to the non-economist that it never occurs to the professional economists that household debt, relative to income, might be a root cause of the problem rather than a symptom. After all, it’s hard to buy more consumer goods when most of your income is already going to paying off your mortage, your credit card, your student loan, and your manufacturer-financed car.
But the obvious is the impossible to the mainstream economists, because their Neo-Keynesian economic models consider debt exogenous to the system and therefore ruled out as a potential cause by definition.
The stagflation of the 1970s blew up conventional Keynesian economy theory. It is now looking increasingly likely that the debt disinflation of the 2010s will destroy the Neo-Keynesian theory that resulted from that previous failure.
Economics needs new and better models.