Another reason why NASA has blown through so much money over the years
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People tend to massively over-estimate how much money the government spends on NASA. It's about 15 billion a year, or about.05% of the federal budget, or about $50 per person per year. That's roughly equal to the amount of money we spend on over-priced coffee machines or on skateboards. We literally spend about 50 times as much on our military...
Good for him. Meantime, the market gyrates all over the place, forcing people to clear their positions and potentially causing bankruptcies and further market problems. Also, the parts of the economy that desperately rely on the price signals that markets provide (Farmers, airlines, etc) get fucked.
I'm somewhat conflicted on the issue. On one hand, some people are sexually attracted to Children, and the simulated variety could give those affected an outlet without attacking children. On the other hand, it faces the risk of normalizing these desires, and most would consider that a very very bad thing.
Can I ask what you're there for? I'm studying abroad in Moscow right now and am curious.
As for the content of your post: I think you under-estimate the kindness of others. I've been all over the place, and have had essentially the same experience as I've had in Russia. Most people are good, a couple of people are bad, and for the most part, people are as nice as they can afford to be. Your experience with the cashier could happen in pretty much every city in the world. (Except for India. Then they'll just try really hard to rip you off...)
Also, keep in mind: You can't actually understand what the people around you are saying. It's not surprising that you think everyone is nice.
p?
To give you an example: My neighbor was walking down Arbat with her American boyfriend, when a group of Russian guys came by and started yelling in Russian "What are you doing with a Russian girl?! Go back to your country!!". She told the American that they were singing a soccer song, and he knew none the better.
It's also hard to paper over the Racism. Russia is a bit special in that it has racist skin-head gangs roving around looking for dark people. This isn't a theoretical issue, two of the students in my program, out of twenty, have been attacked this year.
"I am not aware of any state where it is against the law to have sex as a minor."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#Wisconsin , in Wisconsin, if two people between the age of 16 and 18 have sex, then it's a felony if they're not married. The laws are pretty convoluted, but I'd say that in most states, it'd be a felony for a freshman and a junior to have sex. See http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/LegalCenter/story?id=1693362&page=1 . Stories come out like that one every couple months, I could produce a bunch more on request. (Funny enough, it turned out that oral sex was illegal in Georgia between consenting adults.
To throw another example out there, sodomy was illegal in Texas until 2003. And not in a cutesy "You won't believe these crazy laws on the books" sense. Police actively went around breaking into Gay people's homes arresting them until a decade ago. Would you call gay people in Texas, pre-2003, criminals?
" No one is protesting in the streets about arresting minors in possession of alcohol, are they?"
Sure, because the police don't make any effort to enforce it. 75% of high-school students report having drunk a non-trivial amount of alcohol. If the Police started arresting anywhere near that amount, there would be a tremendous amount of protest. ( http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2005.pdf )
"A criminal is someone who has committed a crime."
Sure, there's a sense in which that's true. But then, nearly everybody is a criminal. It is a crime to drink alcohol as a minor, yet most people do it. By this definition, I'm a criminal, our last 3 presidents were criminals, and I'm willing to bet quite a bit of money that you're one too.
And if all of us are criminals, then frankly, the word loses any negative connotation. That's why, in standard English usage, we don't actually use the word criminal for someone who has committed any crime.
In most states, it's against the law to have sex before the age of 18. In every state, it's illegal to drink before the age of 21 or take illegal drugs.
Yet, according to the CDC, a large majority of the population has sex before the age of 18. Most people illegally drink alcohol before 21. And three of our last presidents have publicly admitted to smoking pot, with the last two having used Cocaine.
So, by your definition, most of us are criminals. Obviously, this does not coincide with standard English usage.
Anecdotally, nearly everybody I know has gone to college. Yet only 20% of the population ever enters college. 90% of the people I know are Democrat who favors amnesty-type programs. But clearly, the actual percentages aren't that high. Basically, we tend to congregate near people who agree with us, which skews our social networks.
But objectively, it's very very unlikely that a majority of Hispanic citizens support the law. Hispanics are overwhelmingly democrats, and Democrats mostly support amnesty. And frankly, if we didn't support it because of the Hispanic wing of our party, what other interest group in the Democratic party would make it a priority?
"In the September poll Goddard had a 3 point lead with white voters, but he now trails Brewer by 8. At the same time he's increased his lead with Hispanic voters from 20 points to 46. There are a lot more white voters in the state than Hispanic ones so from a cynical, purely political perspective Brewer's actions last week probably did her some good"
"Firstly, without even knowing how many illegals are in the country or what 95% of them are actually doing in terms of taxes and use of social services, I doubt the usefulness of any supposed "study". The best estimates are that between 12 and 20 million illegals are in the country illegally. That's a huge gap from low to high and that's the best job we can do estimating. If someone's trying to tell me they know exactly what's being contributed by and taken by a group whose numbers can't even remotely be determined, I can't help but think they're confused."
Look, this isn't complicated. Illegal immigrants pay sales taxes, but don't receive EITC, food stamps, or Medicaid. Because they usually work with fake social security numbers, they get a huge portion of their paycheck withheld for income tax, which is never refunded because they're not real tax payers.
There are some costs associated with schooling their kids and emergency care, but realistically, because of the above, they almost always pay more into the system then they use.
But hey, basic logic and every empirical study are on my side. But since you have a hunch, clearly that over-rides everything else...
"Secondly, illegals all commit crimes by definition. The act of crossing into the United States without permission is a violation of United States sovereignty and an affront to our entire legal system."
Lots of things are against the law. Having sex before 18 and drinking before the age of 21 is against the law. Yet, the vast majority of the US population has done it. Three of our last presidents have admitted to drug use. Most of us have gone over the speed limit!
And yet, you don't seem to regard this an "affront to our entire legal system". Why the double standard?
"Again, percentages and ratios are absurd here given that we don't even have a basic understanding of the total number. What we do know is that our citizens are being raped, kidnapped, and murdered in ever increasing numbers by people who should not even be here in the first place. We don't know which of them are otherwise good and decent people and which ones are violent psychopaths. Why? Because they chose to skip past the normal immigration system that would sort out known violent criminals."
This is not true. Logic would dictate that illegals, out of fear of deportation, would keep their head down and avoid crime. And that's what the data shows! To quote http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// :
""Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable.""
"Thirdly, illegals drive down wages in every industry they become largely involved with. They not only take jobs away from citizens and other legal residents, but for those who manage to keep their job in that particular field, wages and benefits will drop when there are a dozen illegals waiting at the door to do the job at below minimum wage and without any benefits."
" Finally, we account for the short run and long run adjustment of capital in response to immigration. Using our estimates and Census data we find that immigration (1990-2006) had small negative effects in the short run on native workers with no high school degree (-0.7%) and on ave
"Now that's not nice. We need legal immigrants to bring new talents and new ideas into our marketplace. S/he is exactly what we do need. What we don't need are the border-jumping criminal aliens who ignore the laws and live here as parasites. Every last one of the illegals needs to be booted back to their country of origin and barred from ever returning."
"I hear people talk about a "path to citizenship" for illegals. I got a path for them: get out of the US before our law enforcement finds you and go through the legal application process. That's the only path that should ever have any hope of leading to citizenship for an illegal alien. If you're found to be here illegally, not only should you never have any chance at citizenship, but you should also never be allowed to return legally."
It's against the law in most states to have sex or drink before the age of 18, yet the vast majority of the population violated it at some point in their lives. Should they be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law? (Often several years of jail-time). Should we give police officers the authority to plant cameras in teenagers rooms and monitor their Facebook for sexual activity? Three of our last presidents have publicly admitted to illegal drug use, we have a sitting Senator (Vitter) who has been found to frequent prostitutes. Should they be jailed? Why the double standard?
These people, for the most part, are hard-working members of their communities, with a huge number of friends and family who are citizens. The pain, both emotional and economic, caused by ripping them out far exceeds whatever benefits come from idealogical purity of having perfectly enforced laws.
Personally, I don't see why someone who wants to work here, doesn't commit any crimes, and is willing to forgo welfare benefits for a certain period of time and pass a basic English proficiency test, shouldn't be allowed to come. If it were up to me, I would put a $5,000 charge on a green card, let in anyone who passes a background check, and use the money for education and job retraining for the professions that would be affected.
It's a poll of "Likely Voters", not a random sample of the population. According to the CNN 2008 exit poll of Arizona ( http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#AZP00p1 ), Latino's make up 16% of actual voters. Not only that, but Rasmussen is known in the industry to have a very tight likely voter screen that excludes minorities (My research is on this specifically, see http://stochasticdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/02/rasmussen-polling-irregularities-first.html ). Working through the algebra, it becomes clear that it's very very unlikely that anywhere near a majority of Latinos support this bill.
"Oh. And states don't have a right, or implicit duty, to ensure that candidates for federal office be ELIGIBLE for that office? By that measure, Arizona has no right to require that a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat representing Arizona even be a RESIDENT of Arizona... Right? What would be so illegal about requiring that a candidate for President even be of minimum age as specified byh the Constitution? That alone requires some proof of birth. Let's go, baby. I want this fight."
"The Senate (not the judiciary) is the sole judge of a senator's qualifications. During its early years, however, the Senate did not closely scrutinize the qualifications of members. As a result, three senators who failed to meet the age qualification were nevertheless admitted to the Senate: Henry Clay (aged 29 in 1806), and Armistead Thomson Mason (aged 28 in 1816) and John Eaton (aged 28 in 1818). Such an occurrence, however, has not been repeated since.[5] In 1934, Rush D. Holt, Sr. was elected to the Senate at the age of 29; he waited until he turned 30 to take the oath of office. Likewise, Joe Biden was elected to the Senate shortly before his 30th birthday in 1972; he had passed his 30th birthday by the time the Senate conducted its swearing-in ceremony for that year's incoming senators in January 1973."
"It is pretty damned obvious by now to anyone with a brain that the feds aren't gonna do jack shit about illegals, and as anyone who has lived in one of the border states can tell you illegals are turning the towns into war zones!"
I live in Miami, a city with one of the highest percentages of Hispanics in the country. Most crime in my area is committed by Russians. Despite your assertion, study after study has shown that Hispanics, and illegals in particular, are far less likely to be criminals then the over-all population. This makes sense, if you're illegal, you don't want to rock the boat and get yourself deported. See http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// . To quote:
"Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable."
"And with double digit unemployment I'm really fucking sick of jobs like construction, which used to be filled by hard working Americans that actually paid taxes"
From a pure fiscal point of view, there wasn't a chance in hell that construction workers were net tax payers. Illegal immigrants don't receive EITC, Medicaid, or food stamps, and still pay sales taxes. Not only that, put the money saved accrues to owners, who probably pay taxes on it at a pretty high rate. Not only that, but from what I understand, illegals work with fake SS numbers, and so their paychecks are automatically withheld. But because they're not actually tax payers, they don't get the refund that anyone working in construction would be entitled to.
Also, because of the housing burst, there is a huge surplus of housing. If I remember correctly, Arizona has enough houses to last for another 15 years. You know what would create more construction jobs? Population growth! Which also boosts demand by creating more potential customers, creating jobs for everybody in every sector...
"Hell it is so fucking bad here that guys yell "Immigra!" in front of construction sites for a joke. Yell Immigra around here and you can watch an entire job site turn into a ghost town in seconds, they just scatter like fucking deer."
They scatter like *people* trying to feed their family. It's perfectly fine to oppose illegal immigration, but the immigrants themselves are nearly all just hard working people trying to create a better life for themselves. Dehumanizing and mocking them isn't necessarily racist, but it's fucking cruel. To paraphrase the Bible, "Be kind to immigrants, remember that you were once a slave in Egypt".
"So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move."
No. Arizona gets far more money from the federal government then they pay in taxes, as well as billions of dollars in defense related pork, and in exchange for that, they have to follow basic standards with regards to treating their citizens. If they want to succeed, then fine. But if they start violating central tenants of our constitution and national values, then they better expect to be slapped down by our courts and federal agencies.
"So scream "racist" all you want, I don't give a fuck. I've known too many folks that have lost their homes and are living barely better than animals because all the non McJobs have been given to illegals, whom the owners can treat like shi
"here is no right to be protected by police and it's not their job to protect you. It's their job to enforce the law. So, come up with a better example."
Murder is against the law. If their job is to enforce the law, then yes, it is their job to protect me.
"There's only right enumerated in the Bill of Rights that fails that simple test, the right "to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.""
Right, because philosophy and views on how to run a society have not advanced at all since 1789...
At this point, you're just watering down the concept of rights until it's something meaningless and stupid. By your definition, you don't have the right to free speech either, just the right to defend yourself when the government comes to take you away.
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That's all nice and consistent, but you're just playing with words. I believe that it should be an explicit aim of society to provide certain freedoms to all of it's members. I call these freedoms "rights".
I believe that these freedoms include the right to political speech without facing prosecution, the right to not live in fear of being attacked or killed, and yes, a right to a minimum standard of food, housing, and health care.
Right, that's my point. There exists a "free-market" version of security, it exists in many third world countries.
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But most people don't want that. Transaction costs and distributional issues make it inefficient, pointless, and cruel. I'm arguing that basically, universal health-care can be in the same category.
"Police are part of the general welfare which *everyone* benefits from, therefore everyone shares the bill. Same with mail service or an army."
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Not everyone benefits, just most people. Trivially, robbers don't. But really, many people would argue that entitlements, like universal health-care or education also make most people better off as well.
The distinction is arbitrary. Why should I have the right to declare that *nobody* can ever step on my property, even when I'm not there? And why should the state enforce this claim? Doesn't that infringe on other people's liberty to go through your lawn?
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The answer, of course, comes down to a utilitarian argument: That communal property often leads to Tragedy of Commons situations, and so most people are better off in a society with strong property "rights" then one without one. But this has nothing to do with "liberty". It's a technocratic calculation, and one that can be subject to disagreement(Property rights are not always a good thing! There's we don't give people the right to declare no-fly zones...) It's in exactly the same class of decisions as whether or not people should be given universal health care or protected from starvation.
"If it costs me money for someone else to have it is not a right."
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It costs money to pay police officers to make sure people can't rob your house and kill your kids. The money to pay for these officers was taken by force from other people. Are you going that you don't have a fundamental right not to be killed by random strangers? Some of these tax-payers had enough money to defend themselves with private security forces, why should their money be stolen just to pay for your "security"? Socialism!!!
""Explain to me how the subsidies work.
It’s tied to income. At 100 to 133 percent of poverty – some of those folks might be in the exchange rather than Medicaid – they will pay up to 2 percent of income. From 133 percent to 150 percent, they’ll pay 3-4 percent. At the upper reaches, at 300 percent to 400 percent of poverty, it goes up to 9.5 percent of income.
"Medicaid is huge in terms of the improvement. It now will establish income eligibility at 133 percent of poverty irrespective of family status. Right now, eligibility is predicated both on the state where you live and the family status. For adults who are not parents, in 43 states you literally can be penniless and you’re ineligible for Medicare. Period. End of subject. In those 43 states that do nothing, this is huge in terms of childless adults. For parents, the median income eligibility standard is 69 percent of poverty. In some states, it’s as low as 25 percent of poverty. If you make more than that, you are not eligible for Medicaid."
"Medicaid is huge in terms of the improvement. It now will establish income eligibility at 133 percent of poverty irrespective of family status. Right now, eligibility is predicated both on the state where you live and the family status. For adults who are not parents, in 43 states you literally can be penniless and you’re ineligible for Medicare. Period. End of subject. In those 43 states that do nothing, this is huge in terms of childless adults. For parents, the median income eligibility standard is 69 percent of poverty. In some states, it’s as low as 25 percent of poverty. If you make more than that, you are not eligible for Medicaid."
"If profits are insanely high, it sounds to me like something that needs to be changed by increasing competition in the marketplace and deliberately encouraging new insurance companies to be formed. "
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The bill creates exchanges where insurance companies place bids on standardized plans. This, combined with a lot of new transparency legislation, should do a good deal to make these markets more competitive and efficient.
There are limits to what can be done though, a health insurance company's bargaining power with providers is proportional to the number of customers it has in an area. This creates an accelerating returns to scale problem: Insurance company gets big, uses size to negotiate lower prices, lowers premiums, gets more customers, get's lower prices... So you end up seeing one or two insurance companies dominating outside of the major markets. But there are a bunch of regulations aimed at stopping insurance companies from utilizing monopoly power.
Last I saw, the EITC was designed to increase incentives to work. But yeah, high effective marginal taxes are a concern. I remember I saw a horrifying graph on it, but it was made by a nut-job Von Mises group that probably wasn't too methodical about it...
I'm a big proponent of welfare harmonization, but I don't really know what can be done about it short of single-payer. I don't think anybody is claiming that poor people are worse off then they would be without transfers. Well...some people are, but the onus is on them to show it empirically.
On the other hand, the marginal utility of money for the poor is extremely high compared to normal due to capital constraints. So that probably counteracts a good deal of the effect you're worrying about.
Slashdot Mirror
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People tend to massively over-estimate how much money the government spends on NASA. It's about 15 billion a year, or about .05% of the federal budget, or about $50 per person per year. That's roughly equal to the amount of money we spend on over-priced coffee machines or on skateboards. We literally spend about 50 times as much on our military...
Good for him. Meantime, the market gyrates all over the place, forcing people to clear their positions and potentially causing bankruptcies and further market problems. Also, the parts of the economy that desperately rely on the price signals that markets provide (Farmers, airlines, etc) get fucked.
I'm somewhat conflicted on the issue. On one hand, some people are sexually attracted to Children, and the simulated variety could give those affected an outlet without attacking children. On the other hand, it faces the risk of normalizing these desires, and most would consider that a very very bad thing.
As for the content of your post: I think you under-estimate the kindness of others. I've been all over the place, and have had essentially the same experience as I've had in Russia. Most people are good, a couple of people are bad, and for the most part, people are as nice as they can afford to be. Your experience with the cashier could happen in pretty much every city in the world. (Except for India. Then they'll just try really hard to rip you off...)
Also, keep in mind: You can't actually understand what the people around you are saying. It's not surprising that you think everyone is nice. p? To give you an example: My neighbor was walking down Arbat with her American boyfriend, when a group of Russian guys came by and started yelling in Russian "What are you doing with a Russian girl?! Go back to your country!!". She told the American that they were singing a soccer song, and he knew none the better. It's also hard to paper over the Racism. Russia is a bit special in that it has racist skin-head gangs roving around looking for dark people. This isn't a theoretical issue, two of the students in my program, out of twenty, have been attacked this year.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#Wisconsin , in Wisconsin, if two people between the age of 16 and 18 have sex, then it's a felony if they're not married. The laws are pretty convoluted, but I'd say that in most states, it'd be a felony for a freshman and a junior to have sex. See http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/LegalCenter/story?id=1693362&page=1 . Stories come out like that one every couple months, I could produce a bunch more on request. (Funny enough, it turned out that oral sex was illegal in Georgia between consenting adults.
To throw another example out there, sodomy was illegal in Texas until 2003. And not in a cutesy "You won't believe these crazy laws on the books" sense. Police actively went around breaking into Gay people's homes arresting them until a decade ago. Would you call gay people in Texas, pre-2003, criminals?
" No one is protesting in the streets about arresting minors in possession of alcohol, are they?"
Sure, because the police don't make any effort to enforce it. 75% of high-school students report having drunk a non-trivial amount of alcohol. If the Police started arresting anywhere near that amount, there would be a tremendous amount of protest. ( http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2005.pdf )
"A criminal is someone who has committed a crime."
Sure, there's a sense in which that's true. But then, nearly everybody is a criminal. It is a crime to drink alcohol as a minor, yet most people do it. By this definition, I'm a criminal, our last 3 presidents were criminals, and I'm willing to bet quite a bit of money that you're one too.
And if all of us are criminals, then frankly, the word loses any negative connotation. That's why, in standard English usage, we don't actually use the word criminal for someone who has committed any crime.
Yet, according to the CDC, a large majority of the population has sex before the age of 18. Most people illegally drink alcohol before 21. And three of our last presidents have publicly admitted to smoking pot, with the last two having used Cocaine.
So, by your definition, most of us are criminals. Obviously, this does not coincide with standard English usage.
Right, it's racism to be against the wide-scale deportation of your friends and relatives...
But objectively, it's very very unlikely that a majority of Hispanic citizens support the law. Hispanics are overwhelmingly democrats, and Democrats mostly support amnesty. And frankly, if we didn't support it because of the Hispanic wing of our party, what other interest group in the Democratic party would make it a priority?
See http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/04/polls :
"In the September poll Goddard had a 3 point lead with white voters, but he now trails Brewer by 8. At the same time he's increased his lead with Hispanic voters from 20 points to 46. There are a lot more white voters in the state than Hispanic ones so from a cynical, purely political perspective Brewer's actions last week probably did her some good"
Look, this isn't complicated. Illegal immigrants pay sales taxes, but don't receive EITC, food stamps, or Medicaid. Because they usually work with fake social security numbers, they get a huge portion of their paycheck withheld for income tax, which is never refunded because they're not real tax payers.
There are some costs associated with schooling their kids and emergency care, but realistically, because of the above, they almost always pay more into the system then they use.
But hey, basic logic and every empirical study are on my side. But since you have a hunch, clearly that over-rides everything else...
"Secondly, illegals all commit crimes by definition. The act of crossing into the United States without permission is a violation of United States sovereignty and an affront to our entire legal system."
Lots of things are against the law. Having sex before 18 and drinking before the age of 21 is against the law. Yet, the vast majority of the US population has done it. Three of our last presidents have admitted to drug use. Most of us have gone over the speed limit!
And yet, you don't seem to regard this an "affront to our entire legal system". Why the double standard?
"Again, percentages and ratios are absurd here given that we don't even have a basic understanding of the total number. What we do know is that our citizens are being raped, kidnapped, and murdered in ever increasing numbers by people who should not even be here in the first place. We don't know which of them are otherwise good and decent people and which ones are violent psychopaths. Why? Because they chose to skip past the normal immigration system that would sort out known violent criminals."
This is not true. Logic would dictate that illegals, out of fear of deportation, would keep their head down and avoid crime. And that's what the data shows! To quote http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// :
""Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable.""
"Thirdly, illegals drive down wages in every industry they become largely involved with. They not only take jobs away from citizens and other legal residents, but for those who manage to keep their job in that particular field, wages and benefits will drop when there are a dozen illegals waiting at the door to do the job at below minimum wage and without any benefits."
Anecdotes are great, but let's look at the actual data: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/immigration-and.html
" Finally, we account for the short run and long run adjustment of capital in response to immigration. Using our estimates and Census data we find that immigration (1990-2006) had small negative effects in the short run on native workers with no high school degree (-0.7%) and on ave
Every study I've ever seen has shown that illegal immigrants put in more tax money then they put into the system. See http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8711/12-6-Immigration.pdf . How does this change your world view?
"I hear people talk about a "path to citizenship" for illegals. I got a path for them: get out of the US before our law enforcement finds you and go through the legal application process. That's the only path that should ever have any hope of leading to citizenship for an illegal alien. If you're found to be here illegally, not only should you never have any chance at citizenship, but you should also never be allowed to return legally."
It's against the law in most states to have sex or drink before the age of 18, yet the vast majority of the population violated it at some point in their lives. Should they be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law? (Often several years of jail-time). Should we give police officers the authority to plant cameras in teenagers rooms and monitor their Facebook for sexual activity? Three of our last presidents have publicly admitted to illegal drug use, we have a sitting Senator (Vitter) who has been found to frequent prostitutes. Should they be jailed? Why the double standard?
These people, for the most part, are hard-working members of their communities, with a huge number of friends and family who are citizens. The pain, both emotional and economic, caused by ripping them out far exceeds whatever benefits come from idealogical purity of having perfectly enforced laws.
Personally, I don't see why someone who wants to work here, doesn't commit any crimes, and is willing to forgo welfare benefits for a certain period of time and pass a basic English proficiency test, shouldn't be allowed to come. If it were up to me, I would put a $5,000 charge on a green card, let in anyone who passes a background check, and use the money for education and job retraining for the professions that would be affected.
It's a poll of "Likely Voters", not a random sample of the population. According to the CNN 2008 exit poll of Arizona ( http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#AZP00p1 ), Latino's make up 16% of actual voters. Not only that, but Rasmussen is known in the industry to have a very tight likely voter screen that excludes minorities (My research is on this specifically, see http://stochasticdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/02/rasmussen-polling-irregularities-first.html ). Working through the algebra, it becomes clear that it's very very unlikely that anywhere near a majority of Latinos support this bill.
Nope, that's up to the federal government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Qualifications :
"The Senate (not the judiciary) is the sole judge of a senator's qualifications. During its early years, however, the Senate did not closely scrutinize the qualifications of members. As a result, three senators who failed to meet the age qualification were nevertheless admitted to the Senate: Henry Clay (aged 29 in 1806), and Armistead Thomson Mason (aged 28 in 1816) and John Eaton (aged 28 in 1818). Such an occurrence, however, has not been repeated since.[5] In 1934, Rush D. Holt, Sr. was elected to the Senate at the age of 29; he waited until he turned 30 to take the oath of office. Likewise, Joe Biden was elected to the Senate shortly before his 30th birthday in 1972; he had passed his 30th birthday by the time the Senate conducted its swearing-in ceremony for that year's incoming senators in January 1973."
I live in Miami, a city with one of the highest percentages of Hispanics in the country. Most crime in my area is committed by Russians. Despite your assertion, study after study has shown that Hispanics, and illegals in particular, are far less likely to be criminals then the over-all population. This makes sense, if you're illegal, you don't want to rock the boat and get yourself deported. See http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// . To quote:
"Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable."
"And with double digit unemployment I'm really fucking sick of jobs like construction, which used to be filled by hard working Americans that actually paid taxes"
From a pure fiscal point of view, there wasn't a chance in hell that construction workers were net tax payers. Illegal immigrants don't receive EITC, Medicaid, or food stamps, and still pay sales taxes. Not only that, put the money saved accrues to owners, who probably pay taxes on it at a pretty high rate. Not only that, but from what I understand, illegals work with fake SS numbers, and so their paychecks are automatically withheld. But because they're not actually tax payers, they don't get the refund that anyone working in construction would be entitled to.
Also, because of the housing burst, there is a huge surplus of housing. If I remember correctly, Arizona has enough houses to last for another 15 years. You know what would create more construction jobs? Population growth! Which also boosts demand by creating more potential customers, creating jobs for everybody in every sector...
"Hell it is so fucking bad here that guys yell "Immigra!" in front of construction sites for a joke. Yell Immigra around here and you can watch an entire job site turn into a ghost town in seconds, they just scatter like fucking deer."
They scatter like *people* trying to feed their family. It's perfectly fine to oppose illegal immigration, but the immigrants themselves are nearly all just hard working people trying to create a better life for themselves. Dehumanizing and mocking them isn't necessarily racist, but it's fucking cruel. To paraphrase the Bible, "Be kind to immigrants, remember that you were once a slave in Egypt".
"So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move."
No. Arizona gets far more money from the federal government then they pay in taxes, as well as billions of dollars in defense related pork, and in exchange for that, they have to follow basic standards with regards to treating their citizens. If they want to succeed, then fine. But if they start violating central tenants of our constitution and national values, then they better expect to be slapped down by our courts and federal agencies.
"So scream "racist" all you want, I don't give a fuck. I've known too many folks that have lost their homes and are living barely better than animals because all the non McJobs have been given to illegals, whom the owners can treat like shi
Murder is against the law. If their job is to enforce the law, then yes, it is their job to protect me.
"There's only right enumerated in the Bill of Rights that fails that simple test, the right "to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.""
Right, because philosophy and views on how to run a society have not advanced at all since 1789...
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That's all nice and consistent, but you're just playing with words. I believe that it should be an explicit aim of society to provide certain freedoms to all of it's members. I call these freedoms "rights".
I believe that these freedoms include the right to political speech without facing prosecution, the right to not live in fear of being attacked or killed, and yes, a right to a minimum standard of food, housing, and health care.
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But most people don't want that. Transaction costs and distributional issues make it inefficient, pointless, and cruel. I'm arguing that basically, universal health-care can be in the same category.
Yeah, there's a pretty obvious intuitive right to "personal effects". I should have made the distinction more obvious in the post.
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Not everyone benefits, just most people. Trivially, robbers don't. But really, many people would argue that entitlements, like universal health-care or education also make most people better off as well.
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The answer, of course, comes down to a utilitarian argument: That communal property often leads to Tragedy of Commons situations, and so most people are better off in a society with strong property "rights" then one without one. But this has nothing to do with "liberty". It's a technocratic calculation, and one that can be subject to disagreement(Property rights are not always a good thing! There's we don't give people the right to declare no-fly zones...) It's in exactly the same class of decisions as whether or not people should be given universal health care or protected from starvation.
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It costs money to pay police officers to make sure people can't rob your house and kill your kids. The money to pay for these officers was taken by force from other people. Are you going that you don't have a fundamental right not to be killed by random strangers? Some of these tax-payers had enough money to defend themselves with private security forces, why should their money be stolen just to pay for your "security"? Socialism!!!
All rights cost something, that's the point.
""Explain to me how the subsidies work. It’s tied to income. At 100 to 133 percent of poverty – some of those folks might be in the exchange rather than Medicaid – they will pay up to 2 percent of income. From 133 percent to 150 percent, they’ll pay 3-4 percent. At the upper reaches, at 300 percent to 400 percent of poverty, it goes up to 9.5 percent of income.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/ron_pollack_explains_how_the_b.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/ron_pollack_explains_how_the_b.html#comments
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The bill creates exchanges where insurance companies place bids on standardized plans. This, combined with a lot of new transparency legislation, should do a good deal to make these markets more competitive and efficient.
There are limits to what can be done though, a health insurance company's bargaining power with providers is proportional to the number of customers it has in an area. This creates an accelerating returns to scale problem: Insurance company gets big, uses size to negotiate lower prices, lowers premiums, gets more customers, get's lower prices... So you end up seeing one or two insurance companies dominating outside of the major markets. But there are a bunch of regulations aimed at stopping insurance companies from utilizing monopoly power.
Still, improvement over the status quo...
I'm a big proponent of welfare harmonization, but I don't really know what can be done about it short of single-payer. I don't think anybody is claiming that poor people are worse off then they would be without transfers. Well...some people are, but the onus is on them to show it empirically.
On the other hand, the marginal utility of money for the poor is extremely high compared to normal due to capital constraints. So that probably counteracts a good deal of the effect you're worrying about.