Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!


Contact
Ace:
aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck:
buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD:
cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix:
mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum:
petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton:
sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com


Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« Backlash? Public Now Trusts the GOP Over Obama to Make the Right Decisions on Gun Laws | Main | Large Northeastern Obama-Supporting Institution: Woman Survives After Husband Shoots Harpoon Through Her Mouth »
May 09, 2013

David Frum Is Going to Rock Your World on Immigration

Wait, what? Sarcastically, right?

No seriously. I have to break embargo here because his piece is very good and there is no fair way to excerpt it without a link.

Unless you posit that the newly legalized immigrants will dramatically outperform the existing immigrant population, you will reach a result very like that of the Heritage Foundation: that the taxes paid by the newly legalized will not begin to equal the costs of their Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other benefits.

(The Wall Street Journal is trumpeting a letter from the Social Security Administration declaring that the Senate bill will have positive effects on the solvency of the retirement program. But in a really shabby piece of misleading reporting, the Journal's lead paragraph refers to the program's "long-term solvency" and waits until paragraph four to note that this "long term" extends only to the program's next ten years - long before the vast majority of the newly legalized will become eligible for benefits! The SSA promises in its letter to provide a 75-year accounting somewhat later. I can well imagine Senator Rubio urging them, "take your time, take your time.")

Let me put this in boldface: Heritage's cost estimates are driven not primarily by welfare, but by healthcare. Every newly legalized immigrant, no matter how ambitious and hard-working, will get old. When he or she gets old, he or she will qualify for Medicare. Medicare is very, very expensive, and getting more expensive all the time. Fewer and fewer Americans - whatever their ethnic origin - pay enough in taxes to cover their predicted future health care costs. Inevitably, Medicare is becoming a more redistributionist program. People on the left get this point when they scoff at the imputed Tea Party slogan, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Why do they forget the point when they speak of immigration?

He then gets into the objections lodged by the pro-low-skilled-labor-pool right -- those who say but you haven't measured the effects on the economy.

No. This analysis measures fiscal effects, budget-related effects. The government's budget is not the economy -- not yet, anyway, though we are getting close to that. And this amnesty would bring us closer to that.

Those who claim that bringing in a lot of low-skilled, low-income workers into our social safety net will actually pour money into the safety net have to answer one question: In what country, anywhere, are the poorest citizens net-payers into the government's fisc?

It's ludicrous. It is no knock on poor people -- no slight to their humanity -- to note the obvious fact that the poorer a person is, the less he pays into the government (lower taxes, if any at all) and the more he takes out of it (needing more frequent use of welfare, foodstamps, unemployment insurance, and, of course, Medicare and ObamaCare).

You are either stupid or lying if you claim that adding 20 million fairly poor people into our social safety net is actually a net fiscal winner for the US taxpayer and treasury.

As DrewM. has noted, it's not as if the country wants for poor people. If poor people are the Gateway to National Prosperity, why bother training people to have more in-demand skills at all? After all, since poor folks are the key to a government fisc overflowing like a cornucopia filled with cash and stock options, we shouldn't "invest" any resources in skill-training or education. We should just endeavor to produce as many poor folks as possible, and, as DrewM. says, "let the good times roll."

Larry Kudrow demands that the Heritage report add "dynamic scoring," a demand Frum himself rubbishes. I'll direct you to his article; I don't want to restate what he wrote.

But I'd add this thought. "Dynamic scoring" is the notion that as policy changes, so too does economic performance. That is, you can't change policy and expect the country will be precisely the same. Changes in policy create changes in life as actually lived. Thus, Kudrow argues, we must take into account the effects of this policy on our economy.

Okay. But I've got another idea about dynamic scoring myself. If the idea is that we want to properly forecast the effects on the economy due to a change in policy, let's talk about all of it.

Because illegal immigrants are in fact illegal and not entitled to welfare, ObamaCare, etc. -- all the free gifts to the poor of government -- they have to work. And, everyone says that illegal immigrants do in fact work rather hard. Most people praise them for that.

Okay.

What happens when they don't have to work anymore? What happens when Daddy Government tells them he's gonna provide for them working or not?

Are they still going to be working quite so hard at hard manual labor and unpleasant jobs like working in a slaughterhouse?

As Larry Kudrow is keen to account for changes in behavior attributable to a change in policy -- as he insists on the "Magic Asterisk" of dynamic scoring (Frum's term; a fudge factor, a guess) -- let's factor the dynamic change to work ethic effected by now having the overflowing cabinet of the American dole opened to one.


digg this
posted by Ace at 07:44 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Seems Legit: "How odd, I thought everyone understood that electr ..."

rickb223 Gold & Silver Spot Prices [s][/b][/i][/u]: "You’d think they would’ve come up with ..."

Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with the Struggle : "MiG-29 has two sets of intakes Bonus hole. ..."

It's me donna : "270 242 To be fair, Elon did advise that there isn ..."

West Frisian Women's Auxiliary : "The red head gene mutation also enables them to dr ..."

eleven: "If there wasn't a steel re-enforced concrete wall ..."

SMOD: "DC_Draino @DC_Draino Think about this If Tr ..."

Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden: "[i]thus, his push to ship congolese lithium mining ..."

garrett: "What is the increased Mass of an Electric School B ..."

Thomas Paine: "242 To be fair, Elon did advise that there isn't e ..."

Skip : "Bet they won't get 10 years of use out of a EV Bus ..."

Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden: "[i]They handle 25% more pain than others, and repo ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64