Presidential election, 2016

[Warren Dew]

(01-14-2017, 08:52 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-13-2017, 11:50 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Lots are already complaining about illegal immigrants, which are likely the right targets since there's such a close correlation between immigration and the fall of low end wages.  Whether the complaints are adequately directed to people who could do something with it, I don't know.

Well, net entry of illegal immigrants into the US stopped like 8 years ago. Hasn't had much of an effect so far. Building a wall will serve to maintain the status quo at a significant cost. Seems like a waste of money, mandating E-verify would cost less and work better.

Total number of illegals today are about 1 million less than in 2007, which hasn't had much of an effect.  Trump is now saying he wants to deport 2 million, so perhaps a bit more than the imperceptible impact so far.  Has he talked about repealing Hart-Cellar?  That may have some impact.  If he has I haven't heard about it.

I heard or read a rumor that Trump is talking about an across-the-board 10% tariff or something like that.  Is that right?  That's something I'd like the see.

I agree that mandating E-verify is more important, at least in the short term.  In fact, mandating E-verify will make so much of a change that it may need to be phased in somehow.  I think its effect on the economy would be roughly the same as changing the minimum wage to the $15-$20 an hour range for places with average cost of living.  We'd see unskilled wages in the range of $10/hour in Mississippi and $25/hour in the richer areas of the coasts.  That's the kind of shock that we might want to phase in over 5 or 10 years.

However, "the wall" is more durable institutionally - a future attorney general could negate mandatory E-verify by failing to enforce it, which is likely given how much the big money hates it - so the wall needs to be built too.  The estimates I've seen - from Democrats who didn't want to build it, so likely high - are in the $20 billion range.  I'm sure we could find $20 billion of fat in our $600 billion defense budget for the wall.  Just switch one Navy squadron of F35s to advanced F18s or something; the Navy doesn't want F35s anyway. And the Army is currently bloated in terms of manpower which could be reduced to make up for ongoing manpower and funding requirements for the wall.

Any across the board tariff is unnecessary and destructive, as I've discussed elsewhere. Changing the tax system to permit repatriation of capital would achieve all of the benefits with none of the costs.