(08-28-2016, 10:16 AM)Anthony Wrote:

Quote:Hillary's better-than-nothing is much better than Trump's better-than-nothing.

But Hillary is offering Paul Fussell's mid proles and low proles less than nothing - no wage bump because she's for the TPP and amnesty for illegal aliens, and higher taxes on them in the form of a 2.2% across-the-board increase to pay for expanded ObamaCare.

(08-26-2016, 03:32 PM)Anthony Wrote: Yeah I'd say that cutting off immigration has worked out great for Japan - where any unemployment rate above 4% is indicative of a "lost decade."

And Trump would cut the top tax rate from 39.6% to 33%.  Big deal.  Gary Johnson would cut their taxes to basically nothing: If a super-richie makes $50 million in a year and spends $50,000 of it, you do the math under the Fair Tax - and its "pre-bate" is a red herring if ever there was one: The soon as the usual moral judgmentalists point out that it would give Skid Row bums and druggies free money to indulge their pathologies, the pre-bate is toast, and then the poor pay the full 30%.

Only 47% of them pay taxes already?  You mean that a single taxpayer with no dependents who makes $10 an hour is part of the top 47%?  Really?

And if you're thinking ahead to a future Presidential run, maybe it's a good idea to join those 15 votes against that bankruptcy bill?

Quote:According to an April 2015 symposium on the effects of illegal immigrants in the Southern Economic Journal, illegal immigrants actually raise wages for documented/native workers. Meanwhile, rules preventing illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses raise our car insurance premiums and E-Verify requirements raise the cost of doing business and reduce employment.
Using data from Georgia, Julie Hotchkiss, Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, and Fernando Rios-Avila find that documented workers’ wages rise with increases in the share of undocumented workers in a worker’s county and employed by their employers. The biggest boosts are for workers in low- and medium-skill firms that hire a lot of undocumented immigrants with an even larger boost for workers in low-skill firms with a lot of undocumented workers in the county and industry.

Why? The law of comparative advantage says we get more productive when we have more trading partners, and the arrival of undocumented workers with limited English skills frees up low-skill American workers who can then specialize in tasks that require better English. In July, I had the honor of sharing the stage with Ann Coulter, and fellow Forbescontributor Rick Ungar on Fox Business’s Stossel show, and I got to explain how unskilled immigrants make us more productive at the end of the show.
Some states make it harder for undocumented workers to get driver’s licenses. Mauricio Caceres and Kenneth P. Jameson estimate that drivers in states with these restrictions pay an average of about $17.22 (in 2009 dollars) more for car insurance because they are surrounded by more uninsured motorists.Many states are hustling to attract foreign investment. Alabama, where I live, has given lots of money to foreign manufacturers (Mercedes and Airbus, for example) in order to entice them to locate in Alabama. Catalina Amuendo-Dorantes, Cynthia Bansak, and Allan A. Zebedee report results suggesting that even after controlling for possible confounders E-Verify reduces states’ ability to attract investment from foreign companies, with employment growth at foreign affiliates falling by 3-4.7%.

Shifting the symposium’s focus to the labor market, Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny estimate that E-Verify lowers wages for unauthorized male Mexican immigrants, raises wages for US-born Hispanic men, increases the labor force participation rate of undocumented Mexican female immigrants, raises employment for Mexican-born naturalized citizens, and has essentially no effect on whites’ earnings.

E-Verify compliance is costly, which could reduce total employment. In the final contribution to the symposium, Sarah Bohn, Magnus Lofstrom, and Steven Raphael conclude that the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act reduced employment among low-skilled Arizona workers, albeit with higher wages for those who are still employed. They find that the law did reduce Arizona’s population of undocumented immigrants, but with the negative unintended consequence of reducing employment opportunities for those they were trying to protect from undocumented immigrant competition.
The researchers are careful to discuss the limitations of the papers in the symposium, but the the results are broadly consistent with existing evidence on the effects of immigration. Anti-immigration voters and candidates are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of social science on this: opening the borders—even just a little bit—could make a huge difference for the world’s poor while making Americans richer as well.

(08-27-2016, 05:53 PM)Anthony Wrote: All right, I believe in "Better-Than-Nothing-ism."

Knowing full well that so long as anyone with even a childhood memory of the Cold War is still alive - having been taken to see The Hunt For Red October by one's parents as a 6-year-old will do - there will never be socialism, "democratic" or otherwise, in America, propping up wages by cutting off immigration and having a large personal exemption from income taxes, even at the cost of a lower top marginal tax rate if necessary, is better than nothing - and certainly better than a return to the 19th Century, as the only recently defeated wing of the Republican Party was actively seeking to bring about.

Similarly, replacing ObamaCare with charity care funded by a tax on legalized marijuana sales would be better than the "nothing" that we would have in fact gotten had Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio won the Republican nomination and then the November election.  EMTALA would have been gone in that scenario just the same.

And I'm anticipating the retort that my "better-than-nothing-ism" on the Culture Wars - ENDA and civil unions in lieu of same-sex marriages - proved not to be necessary.  But is that really true - considering that the better-than-nothing approach here too would have meant less backlash, and therefore, fewer Republicans in both houses of Congress?  And who knows what might have happened in that case?

(08-28-2016, 12:08 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-26-2016, 11:46 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: To "cut off immigration" you'd have to cut off legal immigration. Trump just wants to get all the illegals and "put them through the process" at which point they could immigrate. He doesn't even want to do that with all the illegals. And he praises Obama and Bush for controlling immigration, and pledges to continue doing that "perhaps with a lot more energy." How's that for a well-defined plan! No, not only does immigration create jobs, there's no immigration to cut off now!

And I don't get your constant references to cutting taxes for workers. Only 47% of them pay taxes already; didn't you hear Mitt Romney? Trumpie can't cut taxes for low income working people lower than they already are.

Yes, Hillary wants the USA to do its part to help the millions of refugees fleeing the tyranny about which we have done too little too late. But don't count on Trump to be any tougher on trade than Hillary. Hillary is often against free trade, while Trumpie uses and benefits from it.

Trump like all the worst politicians tries to soften his policies so he can be all things to all people. Everybody loves me, he says. And he truly wants everyone to love him. That's why he says that he won't get his tax policies adopted, which make huge cuts for the wealthy and send the deficit into orbit. He'll have to negotiate, he says, so the cuts won't happen. Really? If the people are so stupid to elect Trump president, you can be sure they will be stupid enough to put the Republicans back in control of congress too, and then some. You can bet those Republicans will give him every tax cut for the rich that he wants. Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric will be well taken care of.

Trump would dedicate more money and resources to border security. What happens to the illegals here will most likely be left to the legislative branch to work out among themselves.  Hilary is not winning on the issues and she's not in Obama's position of following a major crisis. Hilary is winning a least unpopular contest. This election is going to be nothing compared to Obama's election.  Hilary has become a multi-millionaire with her support of global policies and free trade. Do I care if Hilary wins, becomes the 1st woman president and accomplishes nothing substantial for you for the next four years? Do we need Trump in office to do it for us or do we need Hilary in office to do it for us instead? It's a win-win either way for Republican voters.

(08-28-2016, 10:16 AM)Anthony Wrote:

Quote:Hillary's better-than-nothing is much better than Trump's better-than-nothing.

But Hillary is offering Paul Fussell's mid proles and low proles less than nothing - no wage bump because she's for the TPP and amnesty for illegal aliens, and higher taxes on them in the form of a 2.2% across-the-board increase to pay for expanded ObamaCare.

(08-28-2016, 04:45 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-28-2016, 12:42 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It may be that, Classic, but Republican voters are still a diminishing demographic, and their party is on the way out, because it promotes ideas that are the most outdated of any ideas ever promoted since the 1860s by any substantial group of the population.

What makes you think that they are diminishing? I'd hope that you aren't foolish enough to believe that minority voters are incapable of changing their views, their minds, their values and their primary interests over time. I'd hope that you would able to give them more credit for their ability to advance themselves without the need for blue sympathy, government support and hand outs. Hell, I'm giving them more credit for that than you appear to be giving them.

(09-02-2016, 11:54 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(09-01-2016, 11:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: People coming into California from Nicaragua are no worse at devouring natural resources, or contributing to air pollution or urban sprawl than are people from New Hampshire.

These days, now that we have essentially a reverse flow to Latin America, most of the newbs are coming in from Asia and Far Eastern Europe. Many of them are upper crust folks. It is notable that human trafficking issues have grown along with this trend. These are not huddled masses. But some of them know how to exploit huddled masses. Unlike elites who have Western, Central or Near Eastern European backgrounds, they don't have an instinct to temper the excesses of capitalism with philanthropy and volunteering. This is the real, actual, "immigration problem" - at least here in California. Of course, Trump, doing the bidding of Far Eastern European elites, won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.