Category: Uncategorized

Immigrants and the economy

It is becoming increasingly clear that immigrants are not good for the economy, except in the pure Keynesian sense of requiring an increase in G:

Immigrants lag behind native-born Americans on most measures of economic well-being — even those who have been in the U.S. the longest, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which argues that full assimilation is a more complex task than overcoming language or cultural differences.

The study, which covers all immigrants, legal and illegal, and their U.S.-born children younger than 18, found that immigrants tend to make economic progress by most measures the longer they live in the U.S. but lag well behind native-born Americans on factors such as poverty, health insurance coverage and homeownership.

The study, based on 2010 and 2011 census data, found that 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the U.S. at least 20 years were using welfare benefits, a rate that is nearly twice as high as native-born Americans and nearly 50 percent higher than recent immigrants.

The report was released at a time when both major presidential candidates have backed policies that would make it easier to immigrate legally and would boost the numbers of people coming to the U.S.

The same pattern has been seen in Europe. Second generation immigrants are actually less inclined to work and more inclined to be radical about their home countries and cultures than the first-generation ones. While there is nothing about it in the linked article, they are also much more likely to commit criminal acts. Notice that the conclusion is something I have been pointing out for some time now: “full assimilation is a more complex task than overcoming language or cultural differences”.

It is, in fact, close to impossible even over three or four generations. As I have also previously noted, it takes hundreds of years to civilize an uncivilized people; this is why blacks are still behaving in social patterns that are clearly distinct from both native whites and immigrant whites, and if history is a reliable guide, they will for at least another 800 years even if there are no absolute genetic bars to it.

Most non-Anglo Americans have a very retarded and romantic attitude about immigration because their grandparents or great-grandparents were immigrants. First, they don’t understand how those nineteenth and early twentieth waves of immigration harmed the USA for the obvious reason that they don’t understand the Constitution or the English Common Law any better than their immigrant forebears from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia did. They may have the emotional attachment to the flag and the pledge of allegiance – the latter only created in 1892 – but they are not genuine Americans in the sense of having been born in a tradition of sovereign rebellion.

Second, they fail to understand the qualitative differences between the various waves of immigration. Immigrants from civilized European cultures were always going to be fundamentally different than those from semi-civilized and uncivilized societies.

Spanking is child abuse

But apparently chemical lobotomies are nothing more than good parenting:

The researchers found that doctor visits between 1993-1998 and 2005-2009 that involved a prescription of antipsychotic medication for children jumped sevenfold — from 0.24 to 1.83 per 100 people. For teens, 14 to 20 years old, the rate rose from 0.78 to 3.76 per 100 people, and for adults, it just about doubled, from 3.25 to 6.18 per 100 people….

Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist from Ithaca, N.Y., and an outspoken critic of widespread antipsychotic use in children, said these drugs damage developing brains

“We have a national catastrophe,” said Breggin. “This is a situation where we have ruined the brains of millions of children.” In controlling behavior, antipsychotics act on the frontal lobes of the brain — the same area of the brain targeted by a lobotomy, Breggin said. “These are lobotomizing drugs,” he added. “Of course, they will reduce all behavior, including irritability,” he said….

Between 2005 and 2009, controlling “disruptive behavior” accounted for 63 percent of the reason antipsychotics were given to children and almost 34 percent for adolescents, the researchers found.

To say nothing of what they do to long-term cognitive capacity. Between widespread chemical lobotomies and ubiquitous vaccines, I’m amazed that anyone still believes that medical “science” is genuinely focused on attempting to help children grow up to live healthy and productive lives.

It would be informative to know how these children on antipsychotics do on IQ tests before and after their brains are bathed in chemicals for years.

South African science

Lightning is raciss!

Following a spate of deaths from lightning in the province of Natal, Nomsa Dube of the Provincial Executive Council promptly called on the National Department of Science and Technology to investigate what causes lightning:

We will do an investigation and talk to the department of science and technology on what is the cause of the lightning, and if it only happened to the previously disadvantaged, as I have never seen any white people being struck by lightning.

At least Americans and Europeans will have the benefit of a nice object lesson in what happens when a civilized nation hands over the keys of government to the previously disadvantaged in South Africa. Certainly no one appears to have learned anything from the fate of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.

Send the Sikhs to safety

It seems that the Onion’s parody of Michele Bachmann’s fake response to the Wisconsin shootings wasn’t actually all that far off. Two-thirds of those killed weren’t Americans, which is why the savages are now attempting to attack the U.S. Constitution.

Top State Department officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been working behind the scenes to assuage Indian anger following the attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin over the weekend by an Army veteran and alleged former white supremacist.

Indian government officials and Sikh leaders across India were outraged by the attack that left 6 dead, including 4 Indian nationals, at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee and called on the U.S. to do more to protect Sikhs living in the United Sates. Clinton called Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna from her stop in South Africa Monday after Krishna criticized the U.S. for failed policies and a growing trend of violent incidents against religious minorities….

Protests broke out in several Indian cities in response to the news of the attack, some calling for stricter U.S. gun laws. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal wrote to India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to urge the Indian government to press the Obama administration to do more to protect Sikhs living in the U.S.

First of all, the Secretary of State’s message to the Indians should be a very short and succinct one. “Fuck you, fuck your emigrants, and if they don’t like our gun rights, then they can go home to live in unarmed filth and fear among your rabid, feral dogs.”

No country has as many stray dogs as India, and no country suffers as much from them. Free-roaming dogs number in the tens of millions and bite millions of people annually, including vast numbers of children. An estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a third of the global rabies toll.

If the Indians were willing to fight for their own freedom to carry guns, they could save tens of thousand of lives by simply shooting the feral dogs that attack them. But they’d rather run their mouths trying to interfere with how Americans live in the USA than do anything about the squalor, filth, and tyranny of their own country. The Obama administration should agree to protect the Sikhs by putting them on a plane back to India.

Mailvox: why Romney is better

MM explains why Romney would be preferable as president to Obama:

Romney must have some principals because despite theological differences Mormons tend to be law abiding and dedicated to their theology. Whereas Obama is a Muslim, Black Supremacy, Progressive. Liberal Buffoon. Romney has had success with Capitalism, Obama has never had a success with anything except politics. And unfortunately we have to defeat Obama so a “fifteenth choice” candidate like Romney is the only option. You have the right to prognosticate what evils Romney may bring into office with him. No doubt being human he will screw a few things up. Yet he will:

Not apologize to the haters of America that we deserve their hatred

Not admire the most virulent of Jihadists while angering our most important allies

Not block our chances of energy independence as drastically

Not allow amnesty for voter menacing or voter fraud

This is just a short list of some of the most obvious ways Romney will be so much less harmful than Obama.

Yes, because it is all the apologizing that is the real crisis facing America today. This isn’t damning with faint praise, this is underlining my case against Romney by defending with the very faintest of attempted justifications. As I said, if you’re still buying the “we must defeat Evil X with Evil Y” after the debacle of the George W. Bush years, you’re not merely wrong, you’re observably stupid.

The final survey:

Romney: 174 comments, 125 Likes
Obama: 106 comments, 82 Likes
Keen: 10 comments, 11 Likes

Conclusion: WND readers vastly prefer reading about politics to economics. Which is probably true of most readers on the nominal right side of the political spectrum, as their propensity for producing endless permutations of Team Red good! Team Blue bad! explains why Coulter, Breitbart, Me So Michelle, and the Mommyblogger are so popular.

Guess the title of next week’s column….

A pattern emerges

The Sikh temple shooter is nominally identified:

Authorities tell CBS News that the shooter behind the deadly massacre at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin Sunday has been identified as 40-year-old Wade Michael Page. Page previously served in the U.S. military, but was no longer on active duty, sources tell CBS News.

CBS News reports that Page enlisted in the Army in April 1992 and was given a less-than-honorable discharge in October 1998. He was last stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C., serving in the psychological operations unit.

Another shooting, another link to military psychology. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. I wonder how many more it will take before the Obama administration realizes that it doesn’t matter how many shootings take place, the American public isn’t going to accept gun control.

WND column

Willard is Even Worse

There is no question that Barack Obama, assuming that is his real name, is a bad president, a bad American and a bad man. Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons to believe that as bad as Obama has been, the Republican alternative being offered in November, Mitt Romney, will actually be a good deal worse.

It’s a mystery!

Massachusetts can’t figure out why its health care costs are growing:

Give Massachusetts credit for setting audacious health care goals. It took the lead in guaranteeing near-universal health insurance coverage for its residents, providing a template for the federal reforms to follow…. But when it comes to controlling health care costs, Massachusetts has no advantage, and in fact is starting behind most other states. Its costs are among the highest in the nation, and they have been growing in recent years at 6 percent to 7 percent while the economy has been growing at less than 4 percent.

The amusing thing about America’s left-liberals is that they are so “thoughtful” and “nuanced” and “complex” that they can’t see blatant causation when it is right in front of them. These are the sort of people who stare at a light, wonder what is meant by the red color, and then conclude that it must mean they are supposed to drive ahead. The subsequent car accident, of course, is nothing more than sheer happenstance and bad fortune.

Can you imagine if these jokers tried to run a restaurant?

“Bill, I’m confused. We’re serving more people, but for some inexplicable reason, we suddenly don’t seem to have enough food anymore.”

Mailvox: Why I am not a Libertarian

This is only one of the many reasons. The Libertarian Party is the only one that can make the Republican Party look smart. With a number of massive issues where both major parties diverge from the mainstream consensus, such as the banks, health care, and immigration, naturally the Libertarian Party ticket is determined to commit suicide on the issue of “gay marriage” according to the email I received from the Johnson-Gray campaign.

Gray said, “Unlike Mitt Romney or President Obama, Governor Johnson and I believe the right to marry who we choose is a constitutionally protected right. People of different faiths and different beliefs are free to follow those beliefs when it comes to embracing or opposing same-sex marriage within those faiths and beliefs. However, it should not be the purview of government to impose one set of beliefs over another. And government absolutely should not sanction discrimination against gay Americans who choose to marry.

This is a Libertarian Party that can’t even win the support of influential libertarians. And that is a sign of a party that is going absolutely nowhere. Where, I wonder, is the right to marriage found in the Constitution? And how could it be in there given that the Constitution predates marriage licenses?

Economics advances

In a modification of Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, it would appear that political economy advances one character assassination at a time. In this case, Mike Shedlock finishes off what I started in putting Gary North out of his intellectual misery:

Obvious Falsehoods

Gary North does not speak for any deflationist, nor does he speak for all the inflationists. He acts as if he does. Sustained price deflation is certainly not inevitable, nor is price deflation inevitable in the short-term either. Since I am a staunch deflationist, and since Gary North is aware of my writing, it appears he is purposely making preposterous straw-man arguments just to be able to shoot them down….

Credibility Issues

People really get into serious trouble using phrases like “no inflationist” and “every deflationist” when they clearly do not speak for everyone, especially when they also need a lecture about changing attitudes and time-preference as well. Finally, it’s easy to setup a straw-man debate that you can win. It’s also easy to lose credibility doing just that.

Unlike athletes, intellectuals seldom seem to recognize when they are done. This is as true of scientists and economists as novelists; while there are the occasional rare exceptions, for the most part very few intellectuals have anything coherent or substantive to say beyond the age of 65. I suspect this has as much to do with a lack of energy as it does with an inability to focus or the mental ossification of age. It’s always alarming, whether one is reading a novel or a polemic, to realize that while the writer may not have lost the plot entirely, the intellectual equivalent of his fifth gear, his burst, his vertical, or his fastball, is gone.

One can be sympathetic, to an extent, in understanding why North is so skeptical about deflation. After all, he’s been hearing warnings about it for some 40 years now and it simply hasn’t ever arrived. But – and here is where his age appears to have become a handicap – the fact that something hasn’t happened in 40 years is totally irrelevant when viewed from the perspective of recorded history rather than one’s own lifetime. Every central bank has eventually failed. Every currency has eventually gone out of circulation. The future failure of the Fed and the collapse in the value of its notes, paper or digital, is not a question of if, but when. At 99 years and counting, the Fed has actually had a pretty good run by historical standards.

Even with more than 20 years of potential intellectual activity in front of me by my own rough metric, I’ve noticed an increasing inclination to take a “been there done that” approach to challenges based on my own experience and familiarity with the same old failed arguments presented time and time again. It is both amazing and irritating how often people continue to keep presenting the same futile arguments again and again and again. But it is important to resist the urge to dismiss challenges without first at least glancing over them and determining whether or not one’s previously successful rebuttals necessarily apply to them. After complacent laziness comes intellectual torpor and then complete stagnation.

But if we can understand Gary North’s failure to rise to the challenge posed by the following generation of right-wing economists, we cannot excuse it. No one is forcing him to remain in the ring contesting these issues, after all. Mish and I would be similarly to blame if we simply ignored the challenges to conventional and Austrian economic theory posed by the likes of Ian Fletcher and Steve Keen. I am perfectly aware that the more ideological Austrians are deeply affronted by my willingness to go off the reservation, but as I have noted in the past, I am not a joiner. Lacking all the benefits of the various intellectual establishments, even the lesser ones, I also lack the ideological restrictions that come with them and so I am free to follow the logic and the evidence wherever it goes. Mises was brilliant, but keep in mind that he did some of his best work nearly 90 years ago. Even if I lack his exceptional brilliance, I have the benefit of considerably more information at my disposal.

To a certain extent, my decision to begin writing the monster epic series on which I’m currently working was partly the result of realizing that if I don’t tackle these sorts of projects now, I am far less likely to do so in the future as I grow older. This realization has also influenced my next non-fiction project, which is going to be even more ambitious in its way than a mere one million word epic fantasy series.

The failure of North’s attempt to rebut the current deflationist arguments does not mean that Mish and I are necessarily correct in predicting the eventual failure of the Federal Reserve to continue its 99-year program of methodically expanding the money supplies through the continuous increase of debt. I freely admit that I didn’t expect The Helicopter to be able to maintain the substitution of federal debt for household and financial sector debt for four solid years. But can the Fed maintain this indefinitely? The history of socialized economies strongly suggests otherwise. Can they maintain it long enough to relaunch the private debt sectors? The inability of the current generation of college graduates, already saddled with heavy student loan debt, to find jobs or finance cars and homes, also suggests the likely failure of this strategy.