Bryan Caplan: What's His Problem?

Economist George Borjas, somebody who goes against the pro-immigration tide among economists, has a new blog. This leads economist Bryan Caplan to ask about Borjas: "what's his problem?" Steve Sailer then accuses Caplan of suffering from "Immigration Derangment Syndrome." I think I know what Caplan's problem is. This post is an example:

George Borjas, the most academically reputable critic of immigration in economics, is now blogging. To be frank, I just don't get him. There isn't a decent economist alive who would oppose free trade in textiles by pointing out that it hurts American textile workers. But Borjas has made a career out of pointing out that unskilled immigration hurts unskilled natives. (The only surprising thing is how small an effect he finds). A major point of economic reasoning, as far as I'm concerned, is going beyond the obvious losers of trade to all of the less-obvious - but equally human - winners.

For Caplan, immigration is just another form of trade. It's trade in labor rather than trade in goods, but, to him, it's all the same thing. He wouldn't care if, instead of illegal immigrants, we imported remote-controlled robots to do the work, with the controllers living comfortably in Mexico.

The problem is, as I pointed out in my post about changes in political culture, when we import immigrants, we aren't just importing economic inputs. We are importing people, people who have beliefs and practices, people who vote in our elections and shape our culture. I'm totally down with free trade -- if we could import remote-controlled robots to mow our lawns and pick our vegetables, I'd be all for it. But the fact is, we can't. and we have to consider the long-run impact on our social, economic, and political culture. And one glance at Mexico and Latin America tells you that it can't be good.

But now, thanks to James Miller over at Tech Central Station, I get the joy of finding out that Caplan's own work supports my argument. As Miller explains:

Although very pro-immigration himself, economist Bryan Caplan provides a powerful argument against allowing millions of new uneducated illegal immigrants to become citizens. As he explains in The Myth of the Rational Voter, the lower a person's level of education, the less likely he is to politically support intelligent economic policies. So providing a path to citizenship for millions of uneducated illegals may eventually provide millions of votes for harmful economic policies.

In other words, while opening up the borders may well be a more libertarian thing to do, it is likely to lead to a far less libertarian society in the long term, because the poorer, less-educated immigrants are likely to vote for bad economic policies. Well, I understand why Democrats want legalization. It's still not clear why President George W. Bush wants to do it.

And Miller makes another point as well, one that seems pretty obvious. Low-wage immigrants end up using government services which cost us all money:

Much of the cost of new immigrants comes from the government services they consume. In 1900 the U.S. provided relatively few government benefits to anyone, so poorly paid immigrants couldn't become too much of a burden on the economy. Today, however, government spending is about five times larger (as a percentage of the economy) than it was in 1900. And legal immigrants today have the right to consume considerable government services. Indeed, according to the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, in 1994 the average low-skilled immigrant household received $30,160 in direct governmental benefits. But this same average family paid only $10,573 in taxes. As a result, low skilled immigrants are net tax eaters. (But read this for a contrary view.) The difference between the taxes paid by unskilled immigrants and the government benefits these immigrants receive is mostly made up by taxes imposed on U.S. citizens. Such additional taxes slow our economy.

It's a classic example of the theory of the second best. Sure, we'd be better off if we had no welfare state. But we aren't the sink-or-swim country we were in 1900, and one of the prices we pay for this relatively more-lavish welfare state is that poor immigrants end up getting the benefits. Note that I'm not saying that they're lazy and shiftless people who come here to get welfare. I'm sure they work very hard, for low pay. But these social services are available, and they would be idiots not to take advantage of them.

For whatever reason, Caplan seems to have this blind spot where immigration is concerned. Sure, the principle of comparative advantage tells us there are gains from trade. But there are also some pretty hefty externalities, which he doesn't seem to want to consider.

And let me add this, something else that is wrong with him. Read this other passage from Caplan:

Borjas' latest post just reinforces my puzzlement. He blogs his research showing that immigration increases black crime by reducing black wages. In other words, "The immigrants made me do it." I'm not surprised by the result, but I'd think the obvious solution (drug legalization aside) is harsher punishments for a few thousand murderers, not exile for millions of hard-working immigrants.

"Exile"? "Exile"? Dude, they're illegal immigrants. They have no legal right to be here in the first place. If I am kicked out of France it's hardly an "exile." Exile is being kicked out of your home. Sending them back home isn't "exile."

Might I suggest that this particularly bad turn of phrase is revealing indeed. As an economist, Bryan Caplan is trained to think about everybody's welfare equally. To him, a unit of social utility is a unit of social utility -- if illegal immigration makes (current) Mexicans better off and worsens the life of (current) Americans, well, it's good if the benefits to the Mexicans are greater than the costs to us. In this sense, Caplan's loyalties are to humanity, and not to the United States and his fellow citizens.

He's entitled to take that view if he pleases. But surely the rest of us are entitled to weigh the costs to ourselves and our fellow Americans above those to current Mexicans. And surely we have the right to expect the President of the United States to act as our agent in this matter. I just castigated the Foreign Minister of Mexico for his arrogance. But, even so, I expect him to put his loyalty to his own country first. I expect the same of our President, George W. Bush.

What Arrogance!

Steve Sailer comments on this New York Times Op-Ed by former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Casteneda. This is a former Mexican foreign minister writing in an American newspaper telling us what our immigration policy ought to be. What arrogant presumption.

At first, I read Sailer's excerpts from the Op-Ed, and it is basically a list of demands. Now, when I read the excerpts over at Sailer's I assumed there had to be more -- Castenada had to make some argument as to why these demands would be good for the United States, why we should accept them. Nope. He just says what Mexico wants, and give us no indication as to why we should, you know, care.

His list of objections to the bill is particularly arrogant:

First, it has unduly harsh enforcement provisions at the border and the workplace, which will undoubtedly generate abuses and mistreatment. Still, if every Mexican in the United States who arrived before Jan. 1, 2007, is legalized, enforcement inside the United States, including discriminatory raids, will become redundant. And if nearly everyone who wants to go north can obtain a guest-worker visa, there will be no need to cross illegally and face rough treatment at the border.

A second objectionable feature is the steep fines
and fees in the Senate bill: up to $5,000. While this is not cheap, it’s also not much more than the “coyote” charges to smuggle a migrant across the border.

The last objection is more substantive; it is, in fact, a potential deal breaker. The Senate voted last week to cut the number of guest worker slots to 200,000 from 400,000. The earlier figure would have allowed roughly the same number of workers who now cross illegally to obtain guest status. But if the final law has too few slots, it will not end illegal immigration, but simply perpetuate the status quo.

Deal Breaker? DEAL BREAKER? Listen Mr. Foreign Minister, this isn't a treaty, it's a law passed by the United States Congress dealing with a purely domestic matter. You aren't a party to the deal. If we want to close the border, we have that right to do that. And if you're worried about the "rough treatment" your citizens receive at the borders, well, you can try to stop them from coming here illegally yourself, rather than aiding and abetting them. Or you could actually try to fix the problems of your own country, so that illegals don't want to come here.

But leave aside his arrogance for a moment, and look at what he wants. He doesn't want any sort of tough enforcement. He doesn't want illegals to have to pay any fines or suffer any consequences. And he wants a guest-worker program that lets in the same number who come her illegally anyway. In other words, he wants us to legalize all past illegal immigrants, and to prevent future illegal immigrants by just letting everybody in who wants to come.

And he says this bill gives him nearly everything he wants.

Mexicans Show Their Class

Powerline, the folks at Pajamas Media and Michelle Malkin have all covered the disgraceful incident at the Miss Universe Pageant in Mexico City. Anxious to make excuses for this classless behavior, Julian Sanchez suggests it's because the average Mexican is "acutely aware of" and "vehemently opposed" to American policy -- presumably immigration policy.

As Ms. Malkin observed, this isn't the first time Mexicans have been inexcusably rude to Americans competing in their country -- in 2004 boos drowned out the Star Spangled Banner, and some Mexicans even chanted "Osama! Osama!" at our soccer team.

I suspect, contra Sanchez, that they just don't like us. Probably because we are, you know, a far more successful and prosperous country than them.

And even if it's true -- what the hell right do they have to be pissed about OUR immigration policy? We can let in as many Mexicans as we want. It is our country, after all.

With Friends Like This . . .

Is this guy serious? I particularly love this post -- explaining that heliocentrism is an atheist plot.

It has to be a parody, right?

Iconoclast Confused. Please Explain.

The House of Representatives just passed a bill which would ban "price gouging." According to the L.A. Times summary:

The legislation would give federal authorities the power during presidentially declared energy emergencies to investigate and prosecute anyone selling fuel at a price that is "unconscionably excessive" or "indicates the seller is taking unfair advantage unusual market conditions."

Forget for a second the absurdity of trying to define "unconscionably excessive," or what it means to take "unfair advantage of unusual market conditions." There was a country that tried this experiment in having the government, rather than markets, set prices. It was called The Soviet Union, and it collapsed in disarray. And, oh yeah, we tried having the government limit gas prices -- the result was long gas lines, back in the seventies.

This is four star populist economic idiocy of the worst sort. It's the kind of thing that makes you scratch your head and say "have they learned NOTHING?" And hey, my lefty blogger friends, call out your own party in this one. I challenge you. Worse, in the long run, it's political idiocy as well -- the folks who fall hardest for this sort of populist business-bashing are already Democrats. Right now, the Republicans have done everything in their power to alienate libertarians and small-government conservatives. So, shouldn't the Democrats be trying to convince this group -- a group that is seriously in play -- that, while they might regulate a little more and provide a few more goodies, they won't, you know. do anything massively stupid?

But forget all that.

Here's my question: aren't the Democrats the ones constantly telling us about Greenhouse effect, and how we have to consume much, much less in the fossil fuel department? One rather obvious way to reduce fossil fuel use is to raise prices. So, shouldn't price-gouging be a GOOD thing? Don't we want to encourage it, so as to give consumers to use less gasoline?

As greens, they ought to be cheering the price-gouging on, demanding more of it. "Go Big Oil, Raise those prices!" ought to be their cheer.

Meanwhile, as the Democrats make populist noises about Big Oil and price-gouging, a dozen states, including such right-wing havens as Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York and Michigan have minimum gas prices. Wisconsin's minimum price law, which requires that gas station owners sell gasoline for 9.2% over the wholesale price, has recently gotten a fair amount of attention because of a noteworthy case: Raj Bhandari, a Wisconsin gas station owner, was notified by state authorities that his two-cent-a-gallon gasoline discount for the elderly and those who support youth sports was illegal under Wisconsin law. Now, personally I don't hold with senior-citizen discounts -- I think that seniors should pay more -- but I also think that businesses ought to be able to charge whatever they want.

In these twelve states, you have laws requiring price-gouging. So, if the Democrats are all hot-and-bothered about price-gouging and want to do something to really help, why not pass a federal law preempting state minimum-price laws? Then they could go home and brag about how they had helped people -- and also get rid of a pernicious bit of government regulation at the state level.

How many Democrats have opposed such laws anyway?

Torture and Evangelicals

All of the Republican candidates, with the exception of John McCain and Ron Paul, seem to have taken the pro-torture position, using the euphemism of "enhanced interrogation" or some such. Presumably this is designed to appeal to the Republican "base," which includes a lot of Evangelical Christians.

There's something about this that I just don't get. Now, I am an atheist, and I don't want to mischaracterize other people's beliefs. Maybe I've been wrong all these years, but, as I understand it, when Christians read about the crucifixion, they're supposed to identify with Jesus Christ, and not the Romans, right? There's a bit in the movie A Clockwork Orange where Alex (played by Malcom McDowell in his finest role) is being indoctrinated in religion, and we see him imagining himself as one of the Roman soldiers whipping Jesus. That's supposed to be funny (in a dark way) because it's clear to the audience that Alex just doesn't get the point. Right? When Christians saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, they were supposed to feel empathy and compassion for the guy being tortured, not get off on it. Right?

Evangelical Christians consider Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior, somebody with whom they have a personal relationship with. And their Lord and Savior was tortured to death by the Roman state. They think this was capital-E Evil.

For Evangelical Christians, shouldn't this translate into a moral imperative to avoid torture? Or even something close to torture? Shouldn't they be particularly offended by the notion of their own country engaging in torture? Why is it that "appealing to the base" seems to require candidates to be if not pro-torture, in favor of coming as close to the "torture" line as possible? It seems to me that Evangelicals, of all people, ought to be absolutely outraged by "Enhanced Interrogation." And they, of all people, should be the least amenable to the sort of pragmatic "we've got to catch bad guys" arguments used to justify such practices. After all, I'm pretty sure the Romans could have come up with a reason why crucifying dissidents was necessary to national security.

Now, I will grant you that Christianity has previously been used to justify torture. There was that little interlude called The Inquisition, after all. "Get medieval on your ass" has meaning for a reason. So it's clear that ostensibly-Christian people can dig the whole torture scene.

But I thought they were supposed to be beyond that.

I guess not.

Yes, Al Qaeda Is Still Evil

Instapundit links to this article by Don Surber, about a recently-declassified Al Queda torture manual, found at The Smoking Gun.

If you decide to click on that Smoking Gun link, well, I hope you have a strong stomach. The first few pages consist of drawings designed to illustrate various grisly torture techniques, which include drilling through hands, gouging out eyes, applying a blowtorch to the skin, and putting the victim's head in a vice. The drawings look like something done by a disturbed high school student -- the kind who ends up shooting up the school. They're almost comical, until you come to the photographs of torture devices, and the dirty little room where these sadistic thugs carried out their brutality. Worst of all are the pictures showing the scarred and burned burned flesh of surviving victims.

Don Surber is right when he points out that Amnesty International, which hasn't been exactly shy about criticizing the United States, didn't say anything about this -- and it should have. He's right that papers like the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post didn't give this the coverage it deserved. He's right that something like this ought to take priority over a ginned-up story about flushing a Koran down the toilet. And yeah, Andrew Sullivan is being a bit obtuse when he says "I don't get the point" in response to this report. He even illustrates a report of al Qaeda torture with a picture of a bloody cell at Abu Gharib. As if Al Qaeda torture weren't independently worthy of reporting and condemnation absent reference to our own failings

Surber was too nice to say it, so I will: Many folks on the hate-America left have used the prisoner-mistreatment issue as a convenient club to beat the United States with. Lots of these people (not, I think, Andrew Sullivan) will hate America pretty much no matter what it does. If we put detainees up at the Ritz Carlton, some folks would say that only the Four Seasons is good enough.

But it's a club we gave to the enemies of the United States. Or, rather, a club that John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and President George W. Bush gave them. No, that's not quite a fair characterization. It would be more fair to say that Yoo, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush went into the woods and identified the stoutest tree they could find. They then felled the tree, and fashioned a portion into a club, polishing it to a fine sheen with all the care and attention the Louisville Slugger company gives to its justly-famous bats. After which they gift-wrapped the club and presented it to the enemies of the United States to beat Uncle Sam about the head and shoulders.

Our leaders knew darn well -- or should have known -- that our Islamist enemies and their de facto allies in the hate-America left would take every opportunity to score propaganda points against us. So what do they do? They give our enemies valid propaganda points. Sure, the media under-reports Al Queda wickedness and over-reports ours. And sure, sometimes they're credulous about claims of American wrongdoing -- like the Koran-flushing story. But isn't that a reason to be more careful about our own conduct?

And shouldn't we hold ourselves to a higher standard? Yes, al Qaeda consists of a bunch of degenerate sadists who are twisted by religion, hate, and fanaticism. So what? Does that mean we have license to become depraved ourselves?

If nothing else, by authorizing torture -- eh, "enhanced interrogation" -- the Bush administration has undermined America's ability to condemn our enemies for their barbarity. As I pointed out when the mini hostage drama involving the British sailors captured by Iran was resolved, we had a lot less room to gripe about their relatively mild mistreatment of British sailors when our own mistreatment of at least some prisoners was worse.

President Bush should have been able to wave the Al Quada torture manual like a bloody shirt, but he couldn't -- because to do so would raise questions of waterboarding and stress positions and naked human pyramids. Sure, I'd probably choose waterboarding over being branded with a red-hot iron or one of the other al Qaeda tortures. But "America: slightly less sadistic than al Quada" isn't a motto I feel comfortable with.

Yes, the New York Times and Washington Post ought to put al Qaeda torture on the front page. Yes! A thousand times, YES. But that doesn't for one second obviate the need to stop our own government from waterboarding people, putting them naked into an ice cold cell, forcing them to stand in "stress positions" for hours on end, or engaging in other forms of torture.

And one other thing that's worth thinking about. If you accept the George W. Bush notion of War as Social Work, then presumably we are in Iraq to help them build a peaceful, stable, prosperous democratic state. I haven't done a scientific study on it, but I am pretty sure that one difference between peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states and totalitarian hellholes is that in peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states, security services aren't allowed to go around torturing people. Yes, it can happen, but it's not supposed to, and there is a real norm against it.

So what are we teaching the Iraqis? Remember, the Ba'ath Party took power in 1968 -- many Iraqis alive today never lived in a non-totalitarian society. Sure, we talk about liberty and due process and all that good stuff. But shouldn't we be showing them how to maintain order without using what is, after all, one of the mainstays of totalitarian states? Hasn't our acceptance of "enhanced interrogation" made it far less likely that Iraq's future government will abstain from brutality in the future?

Way to go, guys.

More Monica -- Did I Hear The Right?

Did I hear this right? One of the U.S. Attorneys got complaints because he made his assistants go to a cabin in the woods with some sort of consultant and be analyzed. At least he didn't make them squeal like a pig.

I know that management consultants do weird stuff, but Jeesh.

UPDATE: Monica was just asked if Attorney General Gonzoles put his loyalty to the President above his loyalty to the rule of law. She said he was a good man, and that he tried -- but she couldn't answer because she wasn't sure about her own opinion on the matter.

Ouch.

Now she's talking about "inaccuracies" in Gonzales' testimony.

It says something that Monica Goodling -- who looks like a teenager -- is a better witness that the sitting Attorney General.

UPDATE 2: Gonzolas tried to get her to discuss their mutual recollections of what happened. She tries to spin it, but it sounds as if he was trying to get her to get their story straight.

UPDATE 3: Keith Ellison is sure a bully.

"Amnesty"

Representative Arthur Davis (D-Alabama) is on C-Span while we await Monica's return. It's quite amazing -- he says he doesn't favor amnesty, but he defines "amnesty" as letting illegals off Scot-free. Since there are some consequences, he says, the new bill isn't "amnesty."

To me, any bill that lets current illegals stay in the United States is an amnesty.

"We Have a Lot More From Harvard and Yale."

One of the more annoying things about this whole "scandal" is some of the simmering school snobbery. When asked about the number of people from Regents who wound up working for the Department of Justice, Monica said "we have a lot more from Harvard and Yale."

Go, Monica!

A Good Point

In response to a question about Deputy Attorney General Comey's assessment of the fired U.S. Attorneys, Goodling makes the quite valid point that different people have different experiences with a particular individual.

"Don't Be Evil" Indeed

It turns out that Dell and Google are installing a program that "borders on being spyware." I thought Dell was trying to repair its reputation?

Maxine Waters

What a moron. Maxine Waters is asking Goodling if she "used opposition research skills" that she learned at the Republican National Committee.

Goodling said she used Lexis and Westlaw and Google to research political appointees. Now that's ominous.

Thoughts On U.S. Attorney Firing

While Monica is on break, I had just a couple of thoughts on this whole thing.

Quite a few people seem pretty apoplectic about the "overblown personnel matter," but I have never known what to make of it.

United States Attorneys are political appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire a U.S. Attorney because of the way the person parts his hair. For any reason, or no reason at all. President Bush was entitled to fire people whom he (or the Attorney General) thought weren't doing a good job. Or he could let people go just to shake things up, bring in new blood. Or, more likely, he could want to replace one political hack with another.

It would surely be improper to fire a U.S. Attorney to torpedo a case involving a political ally, or to bring a purely political case against one's political opponents. Or to punish a U.S. Attorney for prosecuting a political ally. At the same time, however, if the Attorney General believed that a U.S. Attorney wasn't bringing valid cases, it would be legitimate to replace that attorney with one who would.

I certainly don't trust the Bush administration at this point, and I thought that Al Gonzoles was singularly unimpressive in his testimony. But I have yet to see any evidence that these people were fired for improper reasons.

More Monica

"I don't remember that I did, but I'm not sure and I may have."

Doesn't that mean yes?