DISQUS

Micha Ghertner · 1 year ago

Everything Kerry writes makes me green with envy for not having written it first and for not being able to say it as clearly and persuasively as she can. Perhaps a redistributive tax on Kerry to benefit less-skilled writers is needed?

TGGP · 1 year ago

I guess that means in your view I was on the side of the angels way back when, though I'm still wary of a two-tiered society.

bjk · 1 year ago

This makes no sense. We have "deeply held mythologies about our relationship to the global poor"? Apart from ignoring the global poor, I'm unaware of any relationship, much less "deeply held mythologies." And guest workers would not undermine a "shared, naive sense of global solidarity" because no such thing exists. If you replace "global" with "American" and argue guest workers would lower the wages of poor Americans and benefit rich Americans, undermining the solidarity between rich and poor Americans, that makes sense.

bjk · 1 year ago

It's a funny way to argue, to invent a non-existent mythology and then make the charge that these non-existent beliefs are being hypocritically betrayed. Strange.

Doctor X · 1 year ago

BJK, while we're at it, let's also get rid of all labor-displacing technology.

The assertion that the poor will be worse off because of an influx in labor supply is debatable - there is plenty of data to point to a long-term productivity and expansion effect that creates more jobs. Even if the truth lies in favor of your argument, the effects would probably be marginal. There are plenty of things in this country keeping the poor down - the war on drugs, crumbling schools, subsidized obesity - that having a few more latinos won't make much of a difference.

On the other hand, allowing these few more latinos, no less human than American citizens (that is how we apply any moral standard - universally), an opportunity to make their lives significantly better would probably outweigh any moral objection you have to marginal unskilled labor displacement.

bjk · 1 year ago

Thanks for the morality lesson, Doctor X. In my experience, however, most moral standards are applied self-servingly.

Micha Ghertner · 1 year ago

In my experience, however, most moral standards are applied self-servingly.

Bullshit. What possible self-serving reason do we pro-immigration libertarians have for recognizing that undocumented Mexican workers are no less human than American citicizens? I'm calling bullshit on that accusation; it's oft-repeated but never explained.

bjk · 1 year ago

Other than self-congratulation? Nobody is denying anybody's humanity. That's just your self-congratulation speaking. More generally, the argument for guest workers ignores that cheap labor largely serves to prevent the most efficient division of labor. Agriculture is the most obvious example. The best way to increase labor market efficiency is to end subsidies for uneconomic industries, and those subsidies include guest worker programs. Viable industries can pay the going market rate for labor and don't need the subsidy.

Micha Ghertner · 1 year ago

Nobody is denying anybody’s humanity.

Sure you are. Other people are not your property, period.

More generally, the argument for guest workers ignores that cheap labor largely serves to prevent the most efficient division of labor.

Up is down. Left is right. Orwellian doublespeak. Cheap labor prevents the most efficient division of labor? Only if you completely ignore the interests of the migrant workers themselves. Which you apparently do. Guest worker programs count as a subsidy for uneconomic industries? No more than immigration restrictions (which actually cost enormously more taxpayer dollars than any free immigration alternative) count as a subsidy for native workers and firms who enjoy dominance of the status quo.

Viable industries can pay the going market rate for labor and don’t need the subsidy.

*Head explodes*

bjk · 1 year ago

Who is most in favor of guest workers? Who has the most to gain from blather about those poor migrant workers? Employers, and more specifically, employers of dead and dying industries like US agriculture. Who has the most to lose? Some Brazilian sugar farmer who can't compete with the combination of tariffs, subsidies, and guest worker programs. It seems an awful lot like the part-time champions of the poor, full-time champions of corporate interests, the libertarians, have given up on attacking domestic subsidies and decided to go along with the flow and promote the least worst alternative, guest workers. It still sucks for some African farmer who justs wants to sell his cotton in the US.

Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

"Who has the most to gain from blather about those poor migrant workers?"

Poor migrant workers and their families. Obviously.

I, for one, have not given up on attacking domestic ag subsidies. And, yes, migration restrictions are a domestic subsidy, as Micha points out.

bjk · 1 year ago

The sugar farmer and the migrant workers are of course, the same person, except there are alot more of the former. As to second point, I suspect immigration policy went off the rails about the same time the US instituted a volunteer army. We all, of course, live off the subsidy provided by those who serve our country at the risk of their lives. A nation is not a vast and unjust transfer-payment scheme, as some seem to imagine.

Micha Ghertner · 1 year ago

Please, you of all people don't get to claim you care about the poor African farmer. You couldn't give two shits about poor, dark skinned people, as you've already so ably demonstrated.

When you talk about our "volunteer" army, you make it sound as if the soldiers are doing it for free. They aren't. Is it better or worse to subsidize our "defense" against such terrible threats to U.S. security as Saddam's Iraq through the current mercenary system of paying recruits to die, or the previous slavery system of drafting them against their will? Both are pretty shitty options, but I'll stick with Uncle Milton; you can have General Westmoreland.

bjk · 1 year ago

I just pointed out what seemed to me a causal relationship between the draft and immigration policy. When the cost of citizenship is so low for so many, there is less resistance to handing out the benefits of citizenship for free, like amnesty. And one last point, for the second time: self-congratulation is not a basis for social policy.

Micha Ghertner · 1 year ago

As I recall from Scorsese's excellent Gangs of New York, Irish immigrants directly off the boat were drafted into Lincoln's army to fight the American Civil War, thereby leading to the infamous New York Draft Riots. So the exact opposite of your contention is true: military conscription (for poor immigrants, not wealthy white men, of course) first originated in response to nativist whinging about immigration, in direct contrast to your historically challenged theory.

MaryJ · 1 year ago

I prefer to remain living in the First World country for which my ancestors fought, bled and died to establish. Why does the "freedom" of open borders fanatics and poverty-stricken foreign nationals come before my "freedom" to bequeath to my children and grandchildren the same First World country that I grew up in? Why are so-called "libertarians" using appeals to altruism to promote open borders and immigration anarchy? Hasn't anybody here ever read Ayn Rand and the "Virtue of Selfishness"? Altruism has no place in true libertarianism, if your "altrusim" is obtained at the expense of my desire to live in a country with a First World quality of life. No sale here, fake "libertarians."

MaryJ · 1 year ago

Wil: And, yes, migration restrictions are a domestic subsidy, as Micha points out.

So native-born people don't have the right to benefit from the societies our ancestors fought, bled and died to establish? We must let people whose ancestors never fought bled and died for our country to come here in uncontrolled numbers and compete with us for the fruits of our ancestors' labors? Sounds pretty grim to me. What would be the point of doing anything to establish a decent society, if the fruits of our labors cannot be passed on to our posterity? My ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War did not risk their lives so that some Indonesian guy they had nothing in common with could have a better life; they did it for their children, grandchildren and so on down the line. This does not seem to be a very "libertarian" concept, the concept of denying people the right to pass onto their descendants the fruits of their labors.

MaryJ · 1 year ago

Micha: As I recall from Scorsese’s excellent Gangs of New York, Irish immigrants directly off the boat were drafted into Lincoln’s army to fight the American Civil War, thereby leading to the infamous New York Draft Riots. So the exact opposite of your contention is true: military conscription (for poor immigrants, not wealthy white men, of course) first originated in response to nativist whinging about immigration, in direct contrast to your historically challenged theory.

Gee, I thought drafting immigrants came from a desire for the North to win the Civil War by overwhelming the South with superior numbers, not because of "nativist whining." Also interesting to note that the Irish weren't "white." News to my great-great grandfather, I am sure.

bjk · 1 year ago

I agree completely with what some may consider the bilge of MaryJ.