Russell Roberts's Blog, page 1560

Some Immigration Links

On Judge Andrew Napolitano's FreedomWatch, the gentlemanly Jack Hunter and I debate immigration .

The never-any-nonsense Radley Balko here.

The always-excellent Shikha Dalmia here, and also here.

And finally, Pima County, Arizona, sheriff Clarence Dupnik – writing in today's Wall Street Journal – on the threats to liberty posed by Arizona's new immigration statute.  Here are couple of key paragraphs from Sheriff Dupnik's essay:

The more fundamental problem with the law is its vague language. It...

Working together

John Dewey is one of my all time favorite commenters here at the Cafe. He is calm, patient, and reasons superbly.

In commenting on this post where I argued for ending a social security system that taxes nearly everybody in order to give money to nearly everybody, and replacing it with at most, a welfare system for the elderly poor,  he wrote:

Those who are very near retirement (such as me), and who have been promised for four decades that future generations would help fund their retirement...

Stopping the social security ponzi scheme

What if I told you that there is a program to give poor people food, called food stamps. You're not poor. So you can't have food stamps. But wait you say, I've spent all these years paying taxes. You're telling me I can't have food stamps? Well, I reply, if we tax everybody to pay for free food for everybody, that would be kind of silly wouldn't it? I suppose, you reply. Food stamps are for poor people, I explain. I pay taxes to fund them even if I never have a poor month where I'm eligible a...

Los Suns

Markets in everything, including using immigration legislation to help market your product:

The Phoenix Suns will wear "Los Suns" on their jerseys in Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals on Wednesday night, owner Robert Sarver said, "to honor our Latino community and the diversity of our league, the state of Arizona, and our nation."

And at the end of this interview, Steve Nash describes his feeling about the legislation and wearing the Los Suns jerseys:

Is the President a Thoroughly Modern "Progressive" Politician?

Today at the New York Times's Bloggingheads, David Frum and Jonah Goldberg debate the question: "Is Obama a Socialist?"  Because of its political toxicity outside of Vermont, the term "socialist" will never be emblazoned on any banner that Mr. Obama chooses to sail beneath.  No matter.  The President has many of the notions, and suffers from many of the tics, shared by all self-proclaimed socialists.  I'm reminded of H.L. Mencken's thoughts on the question of whether or not labor-union...

Divorce

Scott Sumner makes some interesting observations on how far we've come and the proposals  on the table today compared to 40 years ago. Along the way he talks about the economic problems of the 1970s and how growth rates dropped around the world. He then points out that it's really hard to make thoughtful generalizations and how easy it is to leap to false conclusions, particularly about which policies worked and which didn't. Of course, he is right.

But there is one change that took place in t...

Talking about Fear the Boom and Bust

Here's a brief (about 18 minutes) Mercatus Center podcast where I talk about Fear the Boom and Bust and talk about economics education generally.

Some Immigration Links

Bryan Caplan on the surprising weakness in Milton Friedman's argument that the existence of a welfare state counsels against more-open immigration.

Former GMU students Ryan Young and Alex Nowrasteh on problems caused by immigration restrictions.

Alex Nowrashteh on conservatives' failure to embrace more-open immigration.

Robert Higgs on the "Your papers, please" mentality.

Anthony Gregory on Democrats' push for National ID cards.

Ben Parizek graphs America's immigration history.  (HT Karol...

Milton Friedman, the Welfare State, and Immigration

Many of you have written to me to express the same thought – to wit: Even Milton Friedman – Milton Friedman! – said that the U.S. can't return to the more-open immigration regime that we had until the 1920s as long as we have a welfare state.

Friedman did indeed take this position.

I just submitted my next column to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; it addresses this very issue.  When it is published, I'll link to it here at the Cafe.  You will then be able to read, if you're interested, (some...

Words on Paper about Papers Do Not Alone Make Law

Here's a letter sent yesterday to the Washington Post:

George Will rightly charges left-liberal opponents of Arizona's immigration statute of cynically exploiting it to discredit the courageous men and women who object to Washington's current agenda of politicizing all aspects of Americans' lives ("Arizona law's foes are using the real immigration scare tactics," May 2).

Unusually for Mr. Will, though, his defense of Arizona's statute rests on weak reeds.  For example, excusing Arizona's...