Thursday, August 15, 2019

Immigration

Marx, a Victorian intellectual, predicted that capitalism would be undone by its immiseration of the proletariat. Actually, capitalism has done more to jeopardize itself by annoying intellectuals. Many of them look down their upturned noses at the marketplace, and therefore at those who thrive in it. The intellectuals’ disdain is a manifestation of resentment about the fact that markets generally function nicely without the supervision of intellectuals.--Will

Dinner last night with the Blaxters. They have come through some tough times and are doing well.
Chris had dinner with Kevin Lynch and David Edwards.

I am beginning to worry about the impact the Trump economic policies are having on trade. Both the Germans and the Chinese are seeing downturns.


My nurse is a poker player. She plays five days a week for money. In a play-in tournament last night, where she was the only woman, she was the last one out of the qualifying round and the men cheered. I asked if this was simple sexism and she said no. She says that men do not know how to play against women and really dislike it.

The logic of the tribe leads to sectarian warfare, not harmony. Tribalism in a culture is the obverse of the necessary associations that symbolize freedom and focused energy. In tribalism the energy is not creative but antagonistic, hostile and resentful.

 President Trump explained yesterday that he would delay the new wave of tariffs on China to December 15th so as not to derail Christmas shopping in America. That implies that he understands that the tariffs—import taxes—he has been imposing on imports from all over the world are paid in large part by American consumers not exclusively, or even mainly, by the Chinese and other foreigners, as he has been claiming for some time.

"...make no mistake that every firm, every industry, every worker shielded by tariffs, subsidies, and other interventions from the competitive market process is being allowed to break the rules of that process. Protected firms, industries, and workers receive benefits unjustly extracted from their fellow citizens.And no matter how much pundits such as Oren Cass, or politicians such as Trump, Warren, or Schumer, plead moralizingly for the protection of existing firms and jobs from competition, recognize that all such pleas are pleas that some people be entitled to receive special privileges at the greater expense of their fellow citizens." This is Bordeaux, who does not raise the question of what such distortion does to the recipient.


Nobel Prize winner Vernon L. Smith writes that while there seem to be differences between Adam Smith's two great worksThe Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, the “two views are not inconsistent, however, if we recognize that a universal propensity for social exchange is a fundamental distinguishing feature of the hominid line, and that it finds expression in both personal exchange in small-group social transactions and in impersonal trade through large-group markets.” 

Marcia Angell wrote an article in favor of Sanders' Medicare-for -all plan. She is a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, is on the faculty of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School!

The inclusion of curtailing fentanyl production in the China tariff agreement implies that the tariffs are not a simple economic plan. But it may be simple.  The millions of Chinese nationals and the hundreds of chemical business they run across Asia mean that even if Beijing wanted to clamp down on the fentanyl trade it is far from certain it can have much impact. 

First of all, the government doesn’t have any responsibility to the poor. People have responsibility. This building doesn’t have responsibility. You and I have responsibility. People have responsibility. Second, the question is how can we as people exercise our responsibility to our fellow-man most effectively? That’s the problem. So far as poverty is concerned, there has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market. The period in which you had the greatest improvement in the lot of the ordinary man was the period of the 19th and early 20th century.--Freidman

The Panama Canal opened today in 1914 and the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. Symbolism.

                      Immigration

From an angry article on immigration by the usually angry Coulter:


Looking at our immigration policies compared to the rest of the world, you’d think America lost a bet.
The United States is one of only two developed countries in the world (the other is Canada, and even it has some restrictions we don’t have) with full “birthright citizenship,” meaning that any child born when his mother was physically present within the geographical borders of the U.S. automatically gets a U.S. birth certificate and a Social Security card.
We’re the only country but two that confers automatic citizenship on children born to illegal aliens. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — the notorious Mexican drug lord, sentenced on July 17 to life plus 30 years for drug trafficking and multiple murder conspiracies — has two children who are American, born in sunny California to his wife, who’s an anchor baby herself.
The U.S. is one of the rare countries that makes citizens of people who can’t speak the language.
No other country holds a “lottery” in which the prize is U.S. citizenship. We bring in 50,000 lucky lottery winners each year, literally for no reason at all. (Thanks, First President Bush!) To enter, you must be from a specified country, like the Congo, Nepal, Ethiopia or Uzbekistan. You submit your name to the State Department and, if your name is pulled out of a hat, WELCOME TO AMERICA!
Two-thirds of all legal immigrants to the U.S. come in on these “family reunification” visas. 
Her conclusion: We’re in a buyer’s market but, instead of taking the top draft picks, we aggressively recruit the desperately poor, the culturally deprived, the sick and the needy. All because American elites seem to believe that it’s unfair — even snooty — to try to bring in the best immigrants we can.

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