The Political & Philosophy Thread

[Einherjar86]

Hard to argue that people who say illegal immigration undercuts citizens working or looking for work are just paranoid xenophobes when you have GMD's biggest leftist literally making the most capitalist argument I think I've ever seen on the site in favour of illegal immigration.

If you haven't, you should read this piece I wrote (a long time ago, but that I still ultimately identify with): http://borrowingfromthefuture.blogspot.com/2014/09/dr-freelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop.html

I accuse Americans of paranoia not because immigrants aren't coming here and accepting work; they most definitely are. I accuse Americans of paranoia because I don't think immigrants working here is a bad thing.

 

[CiG]

Well of course, nobody is coming to America illegally to undercut a professor or whatever you are lol that just reinforces what many poor and working class people already think about those in the media, higher education and politics: that you guys are completely out of touch.

I'll give it a read though.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Two parts:

a) if they were paid more, then they would pay more in taxes; and

b) by earning so little, they put more money in the pockets of their employers, which helps them pay the taxes they owe. If white people worked those jobs and demanded higher pay, the companies would make less and there would be less overall growth.

I'm not making an argument in favor of either of those; but overall I think it's difficult to say that immigrants are a definitive drain on the economy.

In a hypothetical commie land where literally every household makes the same amount of money without affecting employment or work incentives, they'd make $60k/yr. That might sound like a lot until you realize it's a husband and wife each making $30k/yr. With two children to support, the grand total income tax owed is, surprise surprise, still $0. It's $13k with no children but then you can't make the multi-generational argument. A token ~10% withholding tax still applies, but $6k/yr obviously doesn't pay the costs of just one child, let alone two.

White students make up just under half of the total public school student body, I believe. Hispanics make up something like 25%, I believe...?

You're right that the majority of public school students are non-white, but they're not non-hispanic. I'm saying is that white students, demographically speaking, comprise a single set, whereas there are multiple subsets of the non-white majority. When we talk about specifically immigrant schoolchildren, the number goes way down. I'm not sure the exact numbers, but I'm willing to bet there are as many, if not more, impoverished white schoolchildren as there are impoverished immigrant schoolchildren (or the children of immigrants).

The ratio is quickly shrinking, and in favor of demographics which statistically provide marginal or no net benefit towards the federal budget. Hispanics + blacks + Native Americans push the percentage to around 40%, when maybe a quarter of that bundle actually pays back more than what they take. Raw numbers of students don't matter when white and Asian families actually pay their way back.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well of course, nobody is coming to America illegally to undercut a professor or whatever you are lol that just reinforces what many poor and working class people already think about those in the media, higher education and politics: that you guys are completely out of touch.

Graduate programs are increasingly accepting students on visas and from overseas, and increasingly pushing diversity programs and student applicants who enhance the diversity of the department. You seem to insinuate that I would feel differently if my job was threatened, but I think these are good things.

 

[CiG]

You seem to continuously conflate legal immigration with illegal immigration. Most people conceptualize losing fair and square quite differently compared to being fucked over by a criminal.

 

[Einherjar86]

In a hypothetical commie land where literally every household makes the same amount of money without affecting employment or work incentives, they'd make $60k/yr. That might sound like a lot until you realize it's a husband and wife each making $30k/yr. With two children to support, the grand total income tax owed is, surprise surprise, still $0. It's $13k with no children but then you can't make the multi-generational argument. A token ~10% withholding tax still applies, but $6k/yr obviously doesn't pay the costs of just one child, let alone two.

The ratio is quickly shrinking, and in favor of demographics which statistically provide marginal or no net benefit towards the federal budget. Hispanics + blacks + Native Americans push the percentage to around 40%, when maybe a quarter of that bundle actually pays back more than what they take. Raw numbers of students don't matter when white and Asian families actually pay their way back.

And yet despite all of this, most economists agree that the majority of American families' incomes are increased because of immigration...

I understand the math here, but I don't think it equals a net drain on the economy. There are more factors at work than numbers.

You seem to continuously conflate legal immigration with illegal immigration. Most people conceptualize losing fair and square quite differently compared to being fucked over by a criminal.

That's true, I apologize. Although in all fairness, most paranoid Americans also conflate the two. Every week there's a new story about a white American cursing out a legal immigrant (or American-born minority) for being here "illegally."

All I mean to say is that I don't see much difference between a legal or illegal immigrant who's a productive member of the economy.

 

[CiG]

I wouldn't call illegally entering a country in the first place to be productive, although I guess it depends on how you define productivity. You seem to be looking at it through a lens of pure capital.

 

[Einherjar86]

Not just in terms of capital--it's also productive if staying in your home country means death by warlord, drug cartel, or autocrat.

 

[CiG]

I don't fault illegal immigrants for doing what they do, just like I don't fault a starving man who steals some food. They're both making logical decisions given the context of their lives, but if you give a free pass to the crime itself suddenly you have looting of supermarkets.

 

[Einherjar86]

if you give a free pass to the crime itself suddenly you have looting of supermarkets.

I don't think so, but mainly because I disagree with the analogy. We're talking about varying scales of "criminality."

 

[CiG]

Well I agree, looting of a supermarket is less important than permissively justifying and encouraging illegal immigration.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

And yet despite all of this, most economists agree that the majority of American families' incomes are increased because of immigration...

I understand the math here, but I don't think it equals a net drain on the economy. There are more factors at work than numbers.

[citation needed]

If you're talking about legal immigration, then obviously. Legal immigrants are overall highly successful. Illegal immigrants do help to make certain products and services cheaper, but not to the tune of several thousand dollars a year in savings.

 

[Einherjar86]

[citation needed]

There are many ways to debate immigration, but when it comes to economics, there isn’t much of a debate at all. Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants — those here legally or not — benefit the overall economy. “That is not controversial,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. Shierholz also said that “there is a consensus that, on average, the incomes of families in this country are increased by a small, but clearly positive amount, because of immigration.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/do-illegal-immigrants-actually-hurt-the-us-economy.html

 

[CiG]

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/do-illegal-immigrants-actually-hurt-the-us-economy.html

"Illegal immigration does have some undeniably negative economic effects. Similarly skilled native-born workers are faced with a choice of either accepting lower pay or not working in the field at all. Labor economists have concluded that undocumented workers have lowered the wages of U.S. adults without a high-school diploma — 25 million of them — by anywhere between 0.4 to 7.4 percent. The impact on everyone else, though, is surprisingly positive. Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, has written a series of influential papers comparing the labor markets in states with high immigration levels to those with low ones. He concluded that undocumented workers do not compete with skilled laborers — instead, they complement them."

And this is where you'd think the left steps in and says "our unskilled and poor are more important than theirs."

 

[Einherjar86]

Being a human being doesn’t begin and end at being American. I like to think that empathy and concern extends beyond borders. But apparently not in today’s nationalist fervor (and people are amazed at accusations of fascism...).

 

[CiG]

The progressive left are so brilliant at manipulating the Overton window.

You're saying it's fascism to regulate the border, oppose ILLEGAL immigration and not support illegal immigration specifically because it, by your own source, hurts the poor, unskilled and uneducated in favour of helping the corporations, educated and skilled.

And of course it always comes from people like you who don't have to deal with the real impacts of illegal immigration, as you virtue-signal from a classroom.

 

[Einherjar86]

I’m not virtue-signaling from the classroom; I’m doing it on a metal forum.

And I’m not saying that’s what fascism is.

 

[CiG]

Btw yes empathy does extend beyond borders, this is why people donate to charities and agree with giving aid to other countries.

Anybody who calls someone a fascist because they're sick and tired of decades of political capitulation and spinelessness towards soft border control and pervasively okaying illegal immigration is basically just a scumfuck imo.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/do-illegal-immigrants-actually-hurt-the-us-economy.html

I was hoping for a primary source, but whatevs. Short-term economic benefits from illegal immigration are probably real for those that don't have to compete with illegals; long-term benefits are a completely different matter.

 

[Einherjar86]

Anybody who calls someone a fascist because they're sick and tired of decades of political capitulation and spinelessness towards soft border control and pervasively okaying illegal immigration is basically just a scumfuck imo.

I wasn't calling you or anyone fascist. I was pointing out that nationalism, particularly the fervent kind that perceives those of other skin colors as outsiders and believes that a country should tend toward purity (however that's defined), is a key component of fascism, and so people shouldn't be surprised at the accusation.

I'm taking my definition of fascism from Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), in which he writes:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Paxton came to his definition by tending to the similarities among typically described "fascist" countries--not to the differences, of which there are many. You can also look at his essay "The Five Stages of Fascism." Also, this is why I cringe when people describe national socialism as "left-wing." The nationalist elements of national socialism distinguish it from conventional left-wing models such as communism (of course, this doesn't mean there aren't authoritarian manifestations of left-wing politics).