If they can't show a little firmness and clarity with disorderly juvenile-Americans over whom they putatively exercise authority, how can they possibly stand up to America's mortal enemies?
Readers of their respective blogs (DeLong, Mankiw) will know that no love is lost between these two. Yet, both these economists were early and enthusiastic signatories to my Open Letter on Immigration...
In terms of theory, the public focuses on the idea that "immigrants will take our jobs." But immigrants buy our products too so the primary effect of immigration is simply to increase the size of the market. Moreover, few people complain that in twenty years time our jobs will be threatened when all the babies born this year start working! Yet, population growth and immigration are very similar economic forces. Jobs can be a problem in a recession or if labor markets are not free and flexible but these problems are not caused by immigration and ought to be addressed directly.
So this is where the Great Global Warming Debate has brought us: Hey, these two experts are smarter than you. They agree that immigration's no problem, so you should just shut up.
Listen to the experts.
UPDATE: For anyone who's interested, I've finally come around to the position the symbolics of the issue are more important than the actual economics.
Two basic facts define a nation: contol of its currency and its borders. To me, those who loudly whine we simply can't hope to control the border are gloating over what they see as an implicit victory -- that of international liberal multiculturalism over a traditional and conventional American patriotism they privately despise.
UPDATE II: More elitist twaddle from Bloomberg. We're supposed to be impressed that he wants some sort of national DNA (sure -- maybe it gets cheaper and faster in quantity!) or fingerprint database.
The problem is, everyone now fully expects this will only work like airport security -- lots of shoe inspection, laptop manhandling, and nail clipper confiscation for all of us including (and perhaps especially) grandma.
The undocumented guys only have to pay taxes for any three out of the last five years? How come Americans can't get a deal like that? Meanwhile, any attempt to enforce the border requires "consultation" with Mexico. Vicente Fox has just got his own permanent Security Council veto in the Department of Homeland Security.
I think it's very hard for conservatives to support a Congress that would pass such a bill. Aside from the entitlement explosion and the national security issues, this bill is a cynical corruption of the integrity of US sovereignty and citizenship.
One never knows where something like this might lead:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he will call a national referendum on accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel if Hamas does not agree to the idea within 10 days.
Abbas' surprise announcement was a political gamble that could either help resolve the Palestinians' internal deadlock or lead them into a deeper crisis with the militant Hamas group.
Such a vote would effectively ask Palestinians to give implicit recognition to Israel by accepting a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in 1967. Approval of the 18-point plan would provide a way out of the impasse over acceptance of Israel, which has led to an international freeze on aid to the Hamas-led government.
Hamas officials were divided over the idea of a referendum, with several giving their blessing, but others dismissing it as an attempt to undercut the Hamas-led government.
A referendum, which Palestinian pollsters expect to pass, could provide cover for the militants to moderate without appearing to succumb to Western pressure. Such a vote could also renew pressure on Israel to return to the negotiating table rather than imposing borders on the Palestinians.
Hmmmm....lemme think about this. Via the Bush doctrine they've been forced to hold an election so they vote in the less-corrupt militant crazies satisfied with nothing less than full destruction of Israel and while finally holding office these crazies look over all realities of the situation and decide to hold a referendum which finally ends all the bullshit and lets everyone get back to their jobs and raising their kids...
Why do I think this is all so crazy it might actually be happening?
The 2006 Amnesty International Annual Report -- at least as summarized here -- reads like an Onion satire.
This is the theory of Moral Equivalence pushed to a logical and laughably extreme endpoint -- all nations are heretofore to be condemned for (a) civil liberties imperfections and (b) the silly, selfish viewpoint that domestic military and intelligence forces are best used to protect national interests.
UPDATE: Even the illustration is silly and uninformed. Are we supposed to think the "key to freedom" is somehow "in our own hands?" Any magician or police officer will tell you it is difficult if not impossible to use the key from that position.
A report by Barclays Capital says the run-up to the 1987 crash was characterised by a widening US current-account deficit, weak dollar, fears of rising inflation, a fading boom in American house prices, and the appointment of a new chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
In the decades after Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six Day War, an economic symbiosis began to emerge as Israel exported consumer goods to the Palestinians and Arab construction and agricultural laborers flooded into Israel. The peace accords of the 1990s included a separate economic treaty - the Paris Protocol - establishing a customs union between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But over the last decade, Israel has reduced its dependence on the Palestinian economy as technology exports surged and day laborers from Gaza and the West Bank were replaced by guest workers from primarily China, Thailand, and Romania.
A member of my family (whose opinion I value on most matters) was surprised this weekend when I declared I no longer pay even the slightest attention to Thomas Friedman's declarations or writings.
...if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But [we can't do anything like that because if we did] we'd be called imperialist oppressors...
So what's going on in that part of the business community affected by this issue?
The answer is simple. Businesses are now quietly doing something similar to what they do in the face of sudden dramatic news developments affecting (say) factory heating costs, insurance rates, or transport -- they are reassessing all options and deciding what might be done to "shift things around" when and if it becomes necessary.
Businesses dependent on undocumented immigrants are quietly investigating alternate arrangements. Any of their competitors who are for one reason or another less dependent on immigrants are assessing their relative position in the marketplace as well.
In 1975 anyone predicting a new world of self-service gas stations by 1995 would have been laughed at. The move out of immigrant agricultural labor in California has in fact already begun.
Nothing is so unique and indispensable that it has no substitute. And, sadly enough, nobody is irreplacable.
