I haven’t read this study, and have no intention to do so, but for the life of me, is anyone really gullible enough to fall for this:
The conservative Heritage Foundation is claiming in a new report that bipartisan immigration legislation pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion.
The study from the Republican-led group opposed to an immigration overhaul is sure to come under fire. Already, the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute has decried it as “fatally flawed.” Critics say it doesn’t measure economic boosts from the bill.
$6.3 trillion dollars? Are they serious?
Look, if that study is accurate, with an estimated 12 million undocumented people in the country, we could give them $ 500,000 a piece and ask them to leave. Hell, we could do it on the cheap, and give them 250k each and “save” three trillion.
Of course, then our economy would collapse, agriculture would basically grind to a halt (because, as you know, John McCain told us Americans won’t pick lettuce for $50 an hour), many southern cities would turn into ghost towns and watch their tax base dry up, and Republicans would learn how much money 12 million people contribute to payroll taxes, but hey, the brown menace would be gone.
? Martin
Nobody bothered to consider that we built a $14T GDP economy almost exclusively on immigrants.
Oh, right, white immigrants. My mistake.
Yatsuno
Did they have their pinkies raised to their mouths when they gave that number?
Comrade Dread
Fox News and at least 2 major conservative blogs that I’ve visited today.
Which means you can expect every conservative friend or family member you have to parrot it as gospel truth.
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: Aren’t you forgetting those who were brought here against their will? How much did slave labor contribute towards the economy?
Redshift
You mean other than every wingnut in the country?
I would think it would be better strategy to make up a figure that might pass the laugh test long enough to fool some of the people some of the time, but they seem to know their propaganda business, so who am I to question it?
Mike in NC
Will go way out on a limb and guess that some stooge at Heritage simply pulled a ridiculous number out of his/her ass.
schrodinger's cat
Immigration reform will show us who is charge of the Republican party.
The 1% want it.
The base doesn’t.
MikeJ
@? Martin:
The cargo of the Amistad wold like a word with you.
The Other Bob
Guarantee permanent residency in Canada, give me the $500,000 and I will consider leaving.
…and I was born here.
NonyNony
@? Martin:
In addition to the slaves that built the early economy of the US (and others have pointed out), the Irish, Italian, Slavic and other ethnicities of immigrant only gained “white status” retroactively.
This whole immigration debate is being fueled by people whose very grandparents or great-grandparents were the scary immigrants of their own generation. It makes me physically ill to hear some of my “proud to be Irish” family members rail on about the evils of immigrants coming to this country because they want to work.
aimai
Larry Summers has just assured all of us that when it comes to the economy, no body knows nuthin’ so who am I to call bullshit on this transparent bullshit?
Mudge
Maybe it’s $6.3 trillion over 1000 years. You know how they usually couch these numbers..gotta make them look sensational.
Redshift
There was also this classic:
I’d be more sanguine about this if I hadn’t actually heard people on the street in DC (a few years ago) talking about how they read the Washington Times because it’s unbiased.
Teresa
The Heritage Foundation is there to manipulate the republican base. That is their only function.
Redshift
@Mike in NC:
If only numbers took up space there in proportion to how large they were. Then we could at least have the satisfaction of knowing it was an uncomfortable experience.
some guy
the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty Bill sure sounds very expensive.
tofubo
i’m no english major (hell, didn’t even read the article you linked to), but are they talking about a 5 year, 10 year, 75 year total cost ??
e.g., the total cost of medicare is what, 75 billion over 75 years or some such number ?? (38 billion w/out part ‘d’ for example)
did you know the def dept has a 114 trillion dollar 75 year unfunded mandate ?? (650b/yr assuming ‘only’ a 2% yearly increase, not including all the def related operations at DOS or DOE or DHS or CIA or whatever other acronym’d agency for instance)
what be included in the numbers and what be the timeframe of the 6.3t??
jibeaux
I heard they revised their estimate to fifty eleven gajillionty dollars, to have more gravitas.
jl
The vile and malicious Cole posted this because he knew, he just knew, I would download the report. Which I just did. And which I will force myself, out of masochism, to read later.
I already glanced through it, and I was amazed. It looks like that on immigration the Heritage foundation has been actually trying to do some original research, rather than just repackaging stuff that other hack right wing think tanks pump out.
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
I predict that hilarity will ensue, once qualified reviews appear on the blogs.
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
When did you change your nym?
Rosalita
@Comrade Dread:
This. On Facebook feed early this morning. I love debunking the guy when I can.
Comrade Jake
I wonder what the Heritage Foundation estimated for the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Anoniminous
This study will cause much frothing at the mouth, dramatically lowering shaving cream sales.
WILL NO ONE THINK OF GILLETTE!?!
reflectionephemeral
@jibeaux: Funny, I was thinking “eleventy kajillion”, but yours might be more gravitastastic.
I had to read some Isabel Allende in Spanish classes in HS. There was one book, maybe Eva Luna, where some strongman had a fake election. He declared he’d won like 97% of the vote. Everyone fell into the streets, seized by uncontrollable laughter. He was laughed out of power. That’s what this Heritage study reminds me of.
I had figured the GOP would just give into their noisiest morons, like always, but Heritage may have gone too far: “Haley Barbour on the Heritage report: ‘It’s a political document. It’s not serious analysis.'”
SatanicPanic
@Mudge: This was the first thing I thought of. Sounds like that $16 trillion in debt the teaparty morons throw around or the $100 trillion that some firebaggers tell me the banks have borrowed. Or something.
Yatsuno
@Amir Khalid: A few minutes ago. Trying to see if that cures the random FYWP memory hole.
Bruce S
I’m not a mathematician or an economist and I won’t read this study, but it’s entirely plausible that it’s “true” in some fundamental, larger sense.
Since the entire scam around “illegals” is to provide a low-wage, no-benefit workforce at the bottom rung of the labor market, if we start treating these people like “Real” Americans it’s hard to argue with the likelihood that it will “cost” more. That’s the whole fucking point – bring these folks out of the shadows, out of deep poverty, out of fear of claiming any rights or benefits, etc.
I’m all for “illegals” costing as much as we, on average, cost ourselves. It’s called reducing the degree of their exploitation. These are human beings who have lived and worked among us for years…likely decades – not widgets.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
We’re talking about people who were gullible enough, or willfully malicious enough, to believe that President Obama spent $2 billion on a ten day a trip to India.
So I guess the answer is: Yes.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Republicans will never learn anything.
Since you bring up math, I wanted to mention my new favorite person from history: Emmy Noether. When you talk about the late 18th-early 19th century in math and science, her name needs to be up there with Hilbert and Einstein.
azlib
I suspect they only counted expense side of the ledger on this one. Accounting is not Heritage’s strong suit.
Tonal Crow
Noooooo Republicans don’t throw us in the “immigration reform’ll cost TRILLIONS” patch! We’ll DIE DIE DIE in there!!!!!!!!
reflectionephemeral
@Comrade Jake:
Well the Bush tax cuts were supposed to be free.
That must have been a typo at the end there. Surely they meant to write “revenue that could be used to reform the Social Security and Medicare systems and increase the payroll tax”, thereby decreasing revenues.
? Martin
@MikeJ: They were not considered immigrants, but cargo – cogs for the white man’s machine, and still beholden to the white economy.
And they were not immigrants as they were not citizens – not until Lincoln fixed that. Then everything changed. Once they became citizens everything (per the GOP) went to shit. They refused to vote as they were told. They competed with white business owners. They took white people’s jobs. Sure, the economy grew, but whites had to work for it, and that’s just fucking unfair.
jibeaux
I mean, come on, MY family would leave the country for $2mil (half mil apiece) tax-free. Nice cheap-ish country, $50k a year would last you 40 years even without interest DAMMIT HERITAGE BUY OUT MY CITIZENSHIP AND SEND ME TO BELIZE.
NonyNony
@Bruce S:
According to the TPM article, Heritage is arguing:
Their argument seems to be “filthy immigrants will come here and suck up the benefits of America while not contributing their fair share via taxes”. So … basically the same anti-immigrant argument that reactionary conservatives have been making for generations, but with numbers!
Anoniminous
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Also forgotten is Émilie du Châtelet whose translation and explanation of Newton’s Principia is still the standard.
Chris
@Teresa:
I remember reading a pretty long article on American think tanks last semester which concluded that one of the biggest differences between liberal and conservative think tanks was that the former recruited people primarily for their expertise and the latter recruited people primarily for their ideology. (Which put liberals at a disadvantage in the political arena, since politics wasn’t their be all and end all).
Same article said that think tanks as originally conceived were supposed to be places for pure research, removing people from the political pressures that existed in government. That changed in the seventies when wingnuts created the new model of think-tanks-as-purely-political-entities.
ranchandsyrup
If the brown menace were to disappear, another menace would take its place. Goopers gots a backlog of menaces.
Darkrose
Given that the AP has stopped using the term “illegals”, I have to admit I was a little taken aback to see that here.
scav
@Yatsuno: After the dramatic flag-planting geographic naming ceremony I was attempting? That triangle could have been on googlemaps! On the upside, I think the BGN only allows things to be named after former people. No apostrophes, dead, that’s what I remember. So long as potentially impacted First Nations groups don’t object, it could still work.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Well, actually, you’d have to pay off every citizen of Mexico, otherwise the ones who didn’t get paid off would — by wingnut reasoning — come here to collect a payoff themselves.
So, with $6.3 trillion divided by a population of about 112 million, you could give every single person in Mexico $50,000 not to come here
And you’d still have $700,000,000 left over. Maybe we could use it for food and fertilizer plant inspections?
Citizen_X
@Yatsuno: Reminds me of Dr. Evil trying to issue a ransom demand in the sixties:
“… one hundred billion dollars!…What? What’s so funny?”
President Tim Robbins: “That’s more money than there is in the entire world right now! You might as well have asked for a billion jillion dollars!”
Bruce S
@NonyNony:
My guess is, however, they’re not counting the taxes – payroll and other deductions – that most of them have been paying for years without any ability to collect benefits. Haven’t read the study, but it would be the “research” style of Heritage to start the accounting from Day One of passage of the bill, not from the time that these workers have been paying into what amounts for them to a black hole.
Also, they’re not counting the tangible “benefit” to our economy of super-exploitation all these years – i.e. lower prices and higher profits (probably mostly the latter.)
Yatsuno
@jibeaux: Costa Rica. Universal health care plus if you have a guaranteed income of $1300 a month you’re pretty much guaranteed residency.
jibeaux
@NonyNony: Obviously, Heritage does not embrace the concept of “upward mobility.” Glad to see them admitting that so many people have no bootstraps.
jibeaux
@Yatsuno: We would also be willing to go there. If Heritage will call, we can begin the negotiations.
rikyrah
they’re so used to just throwing numbers out there, they just KNEW that the GOP would automatically parrot them, without asking them to PROVE where their numbers came from…I mean, who actually ASKS that of Heritage?
? Martin
I’m at a loss where to start with this one.
Mark B.
So, the logic behind this is that everyone who gets naturalized is going to be on the government dole for as long as they live? What’s to say that that they don’t end up getting a decent job and education and end up contributing much more to the economy than they would if they had to skulk in the shadows trying not to get taken away by La Migra?
rikyrah
There isn’t an institution in this country that wasn’t built on the backs of SLAVERY…
you know…
those non-volunteer ‘ immigrants’.
JPL
Because Heritage assumes that immigrants only earn minimum wage, the government assistance programs would cost more. That’s my guess. Maybe someone should write to DeMint and ask what happens, if the minimum wage were raised to sixteen dollars a hour.
John Cole
@Darkrose:
What’s the right term? As I was typing it, I made sure I didn’t use the word aliens.
JPL
@? Martin: That story will fall down the memory hole, unless a Koran was found in his trailer.
Mark B.
@rikyrah: I’ve actually had personal experience with Heritage Foundation fellows, and I can state that the one I met was an intellectually dishonest cretin.
? Martin
@Bruce S:
It’s true in the same sense that all economic policies are costly if you only add up the costs and none of the benefits. The GOP (and Heritage in particular) has spent decades arguing that if you just cut taxes (reduce revenues) you’ll make it up through economic expansion.
Unless that expansion happens with brown people. Because brown people are lazy and contribute nothing to the economy.
NonyNony
@? Martin:
Link please.
Seriously – “Buford” Rogers? You sure that’s not from the Onion or the Daily Currant?
jl
I’m not a specialist in this stuff, but could not help glancing through the methods appendices.
Basically seems to be an accounting exercise. Some odd choices were made. The effect of all user fees were omitted, based on a couple of sentences giving examples like utility bills. But how many users fees are government revenue? I don’t know.
Lots of seemingly inconsistent assumptions. Very detailed listing of how they adjusted medical expenditures in accordance with evidence that many immigrant groups have lower medical costs.
But for a lot of government benefits and revenues, they just assumed average newly legalized ‘unlawful’ immigrant family would be just the same as state average. Would that be true for government expenditures on education? (Edit: and education is the example I remember where they made this assumption.)
Or in other cases, the expenditures and revenues would be the same as average income or educational level for state.
Whey they chose which in each case I see no explanation.
I will definitely keep an eye out for review of this report. Should be interesting.
Ahasuerus
I’m reading the report’s executive summary now. The nut sentence seems to be:
This is based on assumptions that (formerly) unlawful immigrants will, because of low skills and education, consume more in benefits than they produce in taxes. I will admit to skimming much of the piece, but their justification seems to be mostly assumptions and handwaving, with a healthy dollop of “taxes iz redistribution iz eeebil!!” thrown in for good measure.
If you’re interested, the summary (and report) are here
ETA: and I see several of the usual suspects have beaten me to the punch with the salient data. Le sigh.
? Martin
@JPL: But it was a 24 year old named Buford living in Minnesota. That’s 3 degrees of awesome even before we get to the mobile home and the weapons.
Linky as requested
Bubblegum Tate
If you liked the numbers they pulled out of their collective ass for Paul Ryan’s “budget” “plan,” you’ll love the latest absurdity from the Heritage Foundation!
NonyNony
@JPL:
Actually I would assume (without reading the paper) that it’s because these immigrants would now be entitled to things like Worker’s Comp, Medicaid assistance, Food Stamps, WIC, and other services we provide to workers whose wages don’t get them up above the minimum floor of the poverty level – you know, the stuff that Wal*Mart depends on to make their low wages/low prices business model work. Well that framework would extend to the shadow economy that employs undocumented immigrants now and collects the tax money but doesn’t allow them to be eligible for those services.
It’s a shamelessly immoral argument, but that isn’t going to impact anyone. The numbers are probably going to be cooked though (because it’s Heritage, and if you’re betting on how much they “cooked the numbers” you should take the over), and sadly that might influence people.
jl
@Ahasuerus: From my quick reading I think they gamed the ‘like to like’ comparison of an ‘unlawful’ person with the newly ‘legalized’ person.
Man, there were at least a dozen decisions on how to do that, with little explanation as to why.
And the completely omitted any user fees from the analysis as revenue. I am not sure how important that is. As I said above, they gave examples of utility payments, which I guess would mostly be payments to private utility companies. But I don’t know how many user fees are government revenue.
Dozens of special assumptions for different categories of services. The only give a detailed explanation for medical care.
NonyNony
@? Martin:
“Black Snake Militia”? “Buford”? Living in a trailer? Previous felony conviction?
It’s like a whole bunch of bad stereotypes all rolled up into a single ball. It looks like nobody was hurt, at least, so small mercy there.
JPL
@NonyNony: Yup! What’s the over/under that this will be on Fox News.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mark B.:
Conservative reasoning is: If they were capable of doing that, they would have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Illegal immigrants are by definition lazy uneducated moochers trying to get a free ride in the Greatest Country In The World. It is completely safe to assume that they will say in minimum wage jobs, if they hold any jobs at all, the rest of their lives.
There are times when even describing conservative thought makes me feel dirty. This is one of those times.
? Martin
Now would be a good time to point out that nearly ⅓ of the students going into University of California STEM programs are chicano/latino. Most are low income and first generation. And at ⅓ they’re still underrepresented. They’re going to be putting a lot of tax revenue back into the economy in just a few years.
Oh, and California who is supposedly overrun with undocumented immigrants and provides all kinds of services for them (including financial support for college) is projecting (inconveniently for Heritage) a $4.5B budget surplus this year.
MikeJ
@John Cole: Illegal is an adjective. you generally use nouns to refer to people, unless you wish to dehumanize them and reduce them to one adjective.
The blacks, the gays, illegals. They all sound bad because you’re skipping the fact that they’re people.
Illegal is extra troublesome because people are never illegal. In the case of undocumented workers, they didn’t fill out some paperwork. That does not make their existence “illegal”.
I didn’t yell at you about it because you seem to have a good heart, even if sometimes you aren’t all that bright.
John Cole
@MikeJ: So undocumented workers is the right phrase?
Pokeyblow
$6.3 trillion?
George W. Bush paid only a third of that for the chance to hold Saddam’s gun.
Ben Franklin
Two weeks ago SecDef Hagel announced the Syrian govt may have used chems; two days later the cautious Obama said the same but said we need some corroboration. The noveau Neo-cons (McCain et al) immediately began hammering on the ‘red line’ and it’s crossing. They sure want to ‘help’ the Rebels, maybe because they are so concerned with establishing FEMAcracy in the ME.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505
Ash Can
So this means that if the folks at the Heritage Foundation ever found out what’s happening with red states and their tax-contribution-to-government-services deficits, they’d call for all those states to be kicked out of the union, right?
Ben Franklin
The defector Col. may just be the new Chalabi or ‘Curveball’. Good sourcing, guys. Your MO doesn’t change.
“On a recent day, Col. Abduljabbar Aqidi, an army defector who heads the newly formed Aleppo Military Council, drove into the city with a small convoy. It felt a bit like a political campaign as he grabbed a Kalashnikov rifle, thanked rebels for their duty and posed with them for photos. At one point, in the Bab al-Hadid neighborhood, Aqidi stood on top of a fallen poster of Assad as he shook hands with children.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/09/world/la-fg-aleppo-battle-20120810
MikeJ
@NonyNony: Did you say black snake militia?
Ben Franklin
“Of course anyone whose brain fired on more than one cylinder should have questioned why in the hell the Syrian government would use in such a limited and militarily insignificant way the one weapon it knew would likely bring on a US and NATO Libya-style intervention. It made no sense at all for the Syrian government to use “just a little” sarin — not enough to do more than kill a few people, nothing to alter the course of the war — knowing about “red lines” and a US/Saudi/Qatari/Israeli/Turk bloodlust to invade.
On the other hand, it made all the sense in the world for the insurgents to release some sarin here and there, make some videos of the victims, and email the links to some very willing Israeli generals and McCainian rabid warhawks in the US and their absurd poodles in the UK and France.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/137223.html
MikeJ
@John Cole: Honestly, I don’t know. I like that one because it seems to capture 1) what the problem is and 2) why they’re here.
If someone were to take offense and could make a reasonable argument for a better term, I’d be happy to switch. Until then I muddle on.
Ben Franklin
The Israelis sure seem to hold Aquidi in some esteem
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.ca/2013/05/aipac-winep-to-host-israeli-minister.html
? Martin
@NonyNony:
Yeah, that’s what I’m stuck on. I shouldn’t stereotype ‘Bufords’ – it’s not their fault, and it’s a perfectly good name. But I can’t help but imagine Clifton James’ character from Live and Let Die when I hear the name. Must have been a line he said or a character with that name that evokes the image.
jrg
@Redshift:
Not if your goal is to anchor an estimate.
Bubblegum Tate
@Chris:
Would you happen to have a link–or just a title–of that article? Sounds like interesting reading.
? Martin
@John Cole: Undocumented immigrant, or undocumented worker (when referring to workers).
The problem with the old phrasing is that it’s not illegal. It’s a civil violation, not a criminal one. That’s cutting it a bit fine, but the anti-immigration folks coined the ‘illegal’ term.
catclub
@Mudge: yep, just like the $75 Tr deficit in SS and Medicare – over the next 100 years.
Why do I think they have included NO economic growth in that estimate, but have put in inflation over those years.
I suspect the immigrants are assumed to make no economic contribution but cost money due to using Obama cell phones.
RaflW
Of course they are! The whole point is to get this bullshit into enough of the news cycle for the tinfoil/NRA/birther/Beghazi! crowd to then cite this study in all their future insane rantings, and presto! Mission accomplished.
Facts?! W.T.F. you talkin’ ’bout? They don’t matter, this is politics.
Bob Munck
Not until January 20, 2017. And they don’t even believe that; they’re certain he’s going to declare Marshall Law (and his sister, Common Law) and stay in their White House forever.
Gravenstone
@Yatsuno: Did you re-jigger your name to escape the vortex of FYWP? Or do we have an imposter in our midst?
Certified Mutant Enemy
@catclub:
yep, just like the $75 Tr deficit in SS and Medicare – over the next 100 years.
Not sure about that one, but at some point the horrendous SS deficits were arrived at by projecting infinitely into the future…
Haydnseek
@John Cole: AP, LA Times, WSJ and others are moving to terms like “living in country illegally,” or “entering country illegally,” and variations thereof. Apparently many of these people have a lot of proper documentation, but lack things like up-to-date visas, etc., rendering the term “undocumented” of dubious accuracy. The term “illegal” is still there, so I’m still not really seeing this as an improvement, personally.
Bob Munck
Not until January 20, 2017. And they don’t even believe that; they’re certain he’s going to declare Marshall Law (and his sister, Common Law) and stay in their White House forever.
(I was a math major, but only Applied Math. My wife did the real thing, pure Math. And we’ve both Brown menaces.)
Amir Khalid
@Gravenstone:
It’s Yutsy. See comment #26.
catclub
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Speaking of math, I think you meant late 1800’s, early 1900’s in reference to Emmy Noether, not 18th century.
Math is hard!
scav
? Martin
@Yatsuno:
Forget it Jake, it’s WordPress.
catclub
@Bob Munck: How is the Math Dept at Brown University?
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
It was a class reading, posted on Blackboard. Don’t remember what it was called, sorry :(
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Given the suspect’s name and that he lived in a mobile home in Minnesota, he must be white, in which case he can’t possibly be a terrorist.
Gravenstone
@Ben Franklin: Oh look, its the sound of One Hand Fapping.
ruviana
@? Martin: The minute I saw the name “Buford” I thought of This.
Bob Munck
@catclub: I can’t speak for now; we long since spun off as a separate CS department, which is still pretty good. Back in the 60’s, both Math and Apple Math were very good.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Sure, but that’s mostly because we’ve slashed services and raised taxes. Poor immigrants are going to have a hard time completing their STEM degrees with all the tuition hikes we’re throwing at them to make up for reduced tax revenues.
? Martin
@ruviana: Oh, I totally forgot that guy’s name was Buford. Not helping me avoid stereotyping the name, btw.
Villago Delenda Est
The Heritage Institute is an intellectual brothel. No, wait, that’s too respectable a simile. I’ll come up with something for them, eventually.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@catclub: yep. My bad. Obiwan error (off by one) got me.
ETA: Simple conversion of bases is hard. Not enough variables.
scav
@Chris: The name Thomas Medvetz ring any bells? He seems to publishing a lot on the subject in Sociology. There’s also something by Andrew Rich – based on cheap and easy google of American Think Tanks transformation 1970s.
Eta. David M. Ricci?
? Martin
@Roger Moore: They’re doing okay. Better than was expected. It’s a hell of a lift for them, though. And low-income populations grew all through that period. As hard as paying for college is, getting a job without a degree has gotten even harder, and they seem to know that deep down – they work hard. It’s the white kids that tend to take the opportunity for granted.
LABiker
I’m going to check Charles Pierce’s blog later to see if the findings came from Professor Otto Yerass.
Chris
@scav:
Yep, it was Andrew Rich!
Never mind what I said above, turns out it wasn’t on Blackboard… it was in the book “Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research,” chapter 9 by Andrew Rich, “Ideas, Expertise and Think Tanks.” There you go.
While not exactly the same chapter, this is basically the same idea – http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/shulockn/Executive%20Fellows%20PDF%20readings/War%20of%20Ideas%20SSIR%20Spr%202005.pdf
Bruce S
@rikyrah:
If the Heritage Foundation had been around in 1963, they could have helpfully provided “us” with a cost-benefit analysis of desegregation. I’m sure it’s cost TRILLIONS to extend black folks constitutional rights. A major reason the country needed an influx of shadow immigrants was to offset those losses.
Maybe Heritage can get Lee Greenwood to update the old Nina Simone song – “I wish that I knew how it would feel to be Free Markets!”
burnspbesq
OT:
It’s hardly an easy read, but if you want to enhance your understanding of what’s at issue in the debate over “reform” of U.S. taxation of multinational business, this is a good place to start.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2245128
Bruce S
@? Martin:
I’m half-kidding and being ironic, but it’s true that I don’t want these folks to not “cost” any more than they do in their shadow status. Part of what motivates this Heritage crap is their persistent attempts to create hysteria about how “we” can’t afford “entitlements” – just more of the same shit opportunistically dumped on the browns. But they don’t want working class white folks to have these goodies either.
jl
TPM has a story on the report.
Heritage Claims Immigration Reform Will Cost $6.3 Trillion, Sparking Conservative Civil War
“The core of the study is its claim that undocumented immigrants, because they are disproportionately less educated and wealthy, will prove a net drain on various benefits aimed at combating poverty.”
<a http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/heritage-jim-demint-immigration-63-trillion.php“>href=”http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/heritage-jim-demint-immigration-63-trillion.php”>http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/heritage-jim-demint-immigration-63-trillion.php
(Edit: what the heck happened with the linky widget. Click on the blue part, it seems to work)
My comment: If this is true, I think that the report’s methodology for education is a big part of the gaming. If the analysis of government expenditures is based on assumption that ‘unlawful’ immigrants are less educated, why was the state average educational expenditure imputed to the newly legalized ‘unlawful’ people. Maybe I am missing something and someone can correct my error. Will the newly legal “unlawful”s get state HS money after they dropped out, or flush their state average college money down the toilet? What?
And as has already been pointed out, the report is basically an accounting exercise, no analysis of the effects on economic growth were included.
The report also assumes that undocumented workers have big effects on lower educated current legal residents’ incomes. That is debatable. The different legal status of undocumented workers creates a segmented labor market, and the greatest downward effect on income of more undocumenteds entering country may be on undocumenteds already here. See Dean Baker’s blog Beat the Press with some recent entries on that angle.
Though, I don’t have time to go back and look at how the Heritage bunch dealt with effects of immigration reform on wages. From the editorial language in the report that I did see, looks like they assume it cannot result in any increase in wages, which I think is doubtful.
Also, I did not think about the GOP civil war angle. This report might do some good after all.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
My bigger point is that California shouldn’t necessarily be pointed to as a great example of how to do things. We’ve finally managed to end our deficit, but it required round after round of very painful cuts followed by a tax increase. And we still have problems because some of the savings have been from pushing prisoners from state prison to county jails that aren’t well equipped to hold them, and the state prison system is still in trouble with the feds for overcrowding and failure to provide adequate health care. We need to take a very serious look at clearing out as many non-violent drug offenders as possible.
Bruce S
@Ahasuerus:
This has probably been pointed out elsewhere, but government programs that keep the working poor afloat are taxpayers subsidizing low-wage employers.
artem1s
@? Martin:
call and raise you this… http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_cuyahoga/standoff-reported-at-home-on-clevelands-west-side
Neighbors told NewsChannel5 the homeowner was walking a dog and fired at least 30 shots into the air. They said he walked up his driveway, continuing to fire shots, and went inside the home.
Police said that further investigation revealed two men were observed entering the home.
They said they did not believe it was a hostage situation but wanted the men to call police.
Just after 10:30 a.m., family members told NewsChannel5 the event was over, but police said that’s not the case.
Then at about noon, police confirmed one person was under arrest, but they did not say whether the situation was resolved.
At 1:15 p.m., police made a second arrest.
About an hour later, authorities said three dogs were removed from the home and more weapons were found inside. The bomb squad was called to the scene due to chemicals used from marijuana plants also discovered inside.
Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_cuyahoga/standoff-reported-at-home-on-clevelands-west-side#ixzz2SXqMdiFZ
jl
General comment on these types of reports: beware when the methodology section is a collection of pages and pages with dozens and dozens of comments about specific decisions that were made for every little thing.
I looked in vain for an overall strategy to their methods.
Nice to have a few simple rules that guide all the decisions to make. If you don’t see any general rules that can be summarized in a few simple sentences, and you have to dive into fine print immediately, that is a bad sign.
For example: “For Hispanics, this report assumed that currently undocumented Hispanic population would become like existing documented Hispanic population, adjusted for differences in demographics and length of stay following legalized status.”
See? Was that so hard?
JGabriel
@Bruce S:
Which raises the question of who’s funding Heritage? You’d think most of the rich conservatives — whose wealth is somewhat dependent on the cheap labor of undocumented workers — would want some form of immigration reform …
Oh.
I get it now.
They want the system to remain as is, so they can continue to exploit undocumented laborers with threats of jailing and deportation.
I don’t know why, but I thought they were just xenophobes. Didn’t occur to me that there were even more cynical reasons than that.
.
danielx
Yes. This has been yet another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
Seriously – straining at gnats and swallowing camels is more or less SOP for wingnutteria. This is how Barack Obama can simultaneously be an incompetent weakling unsuited for the presidency and a sinister mastermind who is plotting to have himself declared dictator for life after taking away everybody’s guns and then forcing all the little children to get ghey married and have buttsecks. Plus destroying the American economy for fun in his spare time.
catclub
somebody posted that the 1% want immigration reform and the base does not. And this is a test of who is in charge of the GOP asylum.
But why then is this a Heritage report? If they ain’t backed by the 1%, then nobody is.
of course, wanting cheap, abusable, labor is what the 1% want, so I am not sure they want immigration reform, either. The status quo works for them. Maybe only Marco Rubio wants it.
Roy G.
@Teresa: Not quite – Heritage also manipulates the Republican shaft and head, usually in a repeated piston-like movement.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Of course the Republicans’ wealthy backers don’t want any sort of legal status for currently undocumented workers. If the workers are brought into the system then that means they’ll be covered by wage and safety laws. It means that the workers will have legal recourse should an employer break these laws. Finally, it means that the excuse that there is a shortage of willing, legally employable workers will be lost to those who currently employ the undocumented.
Immigration reform will not pass until the Republicans are unable to block it.
drkrick
@? Martin: I can hardly wait for the comments claiming “Buford” means warrior in Arabic.
? Martin
@burnspbesq: Reform is really needed. It’s ludicrous that Apple is taking out $17B in bonds to pay shareholders simply because it’s cheaper to pay the interest (at damn near 0%) than it is to pay the taxes to repatriate.
With reasonable interest rates, that was less common. Not that I think Apple should be able to repatriate at no cost just to pay shareholders, mind you, but we need to sort out some kind of tax policy that prevents this sort of thing that encourages investment and discourages the financial bullshit.
gnomedad
Wingnut definition of a “fact”: any declarative sentence that reinforces their worldview.
Woodrowfan
@drkrick: I think he was Mohammed’s youngest son.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Agreed on all of that. UC is still slightly cheaper than the average public school in the US. The issue is that we went from being one of the cheapest to average in a very short period of time. It really hurt students and parents that had already budgeted for their 4 years only to have tuition skyrocket after they committed.
And the unseen side of the problem is that while costs have gone up, the systems have been unable to keep up with population growth and demand. UC went from serving the top 12% to now only serving the top 9%. That’ll tighten further if the system doesn’t find a way to expand in a big way. CalState isn’t faring any better. All the growth went to the prison system.
And Brown is trying to move prisoners out. I like the idea of putting the drug offenders down at the local/county level rather than having municipalities dumping the problem on the state rather than dealing with rehabilitation and prevention.
Darkrose
@John Cole: Undocumented workers is the preferred term, I think. “Illegal immigrant” may be okay, but just “illegals” suggests that the people themselves are illegal.
TriassicSands
Maybe there’s an amendment that gives the 1% a $6.1 trillion tax break. But, if that were the case, I guess the Heritage Foundation would be either silent or cheering.