« The good news is... | Main | Artists who died in 2007 »
In Praise of Uncertainty
Writing in the comments, David R. Henderson asks me to list three policy areas where my views are uncertain. Since this blog (or at least this author) has been streaming uncertainty for over four years, this strikes me as an odd request. But perhaps it is useful to have such a list in one place, so here goes:
1. We must address the looming crisis in medical care costs but how? I am uncertain as to how much means-testing Medicare will ease future budgetary pressures. I do favor means-testing, mostly through lack of better ideas, but it is a) notoriously difficult to enforce, b) often unfair (do we measure income or wealth? current or lifetime?) and c) an implicit hike in marginal tax rates. And if you could talk me out of means-testing, I am not sure which recommendation would come next.
2. I favor further experimentation with school vouchers, but to what extent? There are many good school districts that probably would not be improved much if at all, and the resulting political hand-wringing would be costly and also could give vouchers a bad name. Should vouchers be isolated experiments or implemented on a near-universal basis? Near-universal vouchers run the risk of becoming the new middle class entitlement.
3. I don't see a Social Security "crisis" in the numbers, but I do believe we should be fiscally conservative with the program, most of all because of forthcoming Medicare expenditures. Yet this view would be wrong if the growth rate of the economy exceeds the real rate of interest. We could then spend as much on Social Security as we wanted to. (Growth-optimistic conservatives rarely emphasize this conclusion, I might add.) I do not expect such a result, but I give it a probability of about 30 percent.
4. I am uncertain how much the United States should "move first" with costly anti-global warming measures, assuming that China and other nations are not very cooperative.
5. To what extent is the ongoing loss of biodiversity a very serious problem? I suspect in the long run this will prove a more important issue than global warming, but I am not sure. I also don't know what to do about it; property rights and better quotas for fishing is a good idea but that only dents the larger problem.
6. I favor legalizing or decriminalizing many drugs, but I am not sure how far this process can go when so many actual and potential drug customers are under eighteen years of age. Can we really sell crack cocaine in the 7-11, provided there is an ID check for every buyer?
7. I am pro-immigration relative to either current policy or the median voter, but I am uncertain how many immigrants the United States could take in. I'm not just whinging about not knowing where the decimal point goes. More generally, we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion.
8. I am highly uncertain about most of the major questions in foreign policy, for a start try Pakistan or the Koreas or nuclear proliferation. Even if you think we shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place, that doesn't mean immediate withdrawal is our best option. And while I know more about economics than foreign policy, I find that the more I learn about a given foreign policy area, the more uncertain I become.
9. Virtually any question in water policy. This is a good, complex area for shaking up policy preconceptions.
That's a lot of uncertainty. I could go on, but that's already most of the major policy issues today. Don't forget this: even if your view is the one "most likely to be right," in absolute terms your view, like mine, is probably wrong relative to the sum of competing views.
In other words, it is hard for me to see why, in these and many other areas, we should be highly certain of the views we hold.
At some point I'll give you my take on "What I Think We Should Be (Nearly) Certain About." But I am not yet sure what should go in that post.
Addendum: Here are Arnold Kling's certainties and uncertainties.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 30, 2007 at 07:07 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Wow, I'm on-board with number five, loss of biodiversity, but I thought that outside of environmental circles that was unheard of. (FWIW, I think it inter-relates with global warming in important ways, but agree that ocean management is more pressing.)
Posted by: odograph at Dec 30, 2007 8:15:34 AM
Wow, that's much less ideological than I would have expected, and quite similar to my own liberal views. Refreshing!
Aren't you worried that you'll be denounced by libertarian purists?
Posted by: Mike Huben at Dec 30, 2007 8:16:46 AM
While I will claim to have no more certainty than you, I think that #4 could be cleared up a little by looking at the efforts of Interface, Inc, a leading carpet manufacturer. They are working to become fully sustainable, and even hope to be restorative by 2020, and despite the money spent on sustainability upgrades, the company is growing and prospering.
While I'm not certain that it will work for every company in every industry, there's no reason to automatically assume that spending large amounts of money on protecting the environment won't pay dividends in the long run. Especially if it means we can avoid the predictions in the new report titled The Age of Consequences", just released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security (read about it with a link to the actual 130 page report here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/the-forecast-in-the-streets/#more-518 )
Even the conservative "expected" consequences by 2040 are very bad, which means that we shouldn't be worrying about who should "move first", we need to just do it, especially since per capita America is one of, if not the, worst polluter globally.
No one living in the year 2208 will care what the quarterly profits of 2008 were if our species is facing extinction.
Posted by: Harlan at Dec 30, 2007 8:49:16 AM
In my mind I have thought of you and the GM Econ School as Austrian. Your areas of confusion appear to reflect a trust in government action that I did not believ was reflected in the Austrian School. Especially 2,4,5,6,and 7. On water policy I could not pull up any comments on #9. Where am I misinformed?
John
Posted by: John McConnico at Dec 30, 2007 9:17:36 AM
2: If vouchers are simply an alternative channel for existing education expenditure it's hard to see how that becomes the "new middle class welfare". Perhaps you could describe the scenario you have in mind when making that comment?
4: Start with a (small) carbon tax with the possibility that if the (economic) case becomes clearer it could be raised. There are probably sufficient other benefits in terms of various externalities associated with energy use (especially gasoline) to justify at least a small tax regardless of what other nations do or what the long term prognosis on climate change is.
6: Don't fall into the trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because we don't know how to solve 100% of a problem, doesn't mean we don't know how to solve 80% of it. Sure, there's a problem with making sure intoxicants don't get into the hands of minors (a problem we largely manage to deal with in terms of alcohol and tobacco, undermined only by our stupidity in telling adults under 21 that they can vote and die for their country but can't have a beer). But wouldn't a great big slice of the problems caused by the "war on drugs" go away even if we moved to a sub-optimal solution like distributing drugs through the equivalent of state liquor stores?
7: US society seems to be coping with current levels of immigration including illegals so perhaps that would be a good starting point for a new level of legal migration.
Posted by: Dan Hill at Dec 30, 2007 10:25:00 AM
#1 -- I'm not sure how this plays out either except possibly that if a universal state insurance system is created, it may be able to say 'no' in ways that for-profit insurance companies simply cannot. Private insurance companies have to worry much more about a reputation for fairness and generosity than government health systems do.
#2 -- I agree with Arnold Kling that vouchers are unlikely to produce dramatically improved educational results -- innovations in instruction are very difficult to carry out. But I do see vouchers as having the potential to produce equal or better results much more cost effectively than is currently the case. I also see the potential for a schools -- freed from the joint grip of teachers unions and school-system bureaucrats -- to become more meritocratic and attractive places for smart people to work. And more responsive to the concerns of parents and students.
"Near-universal vouchers run the risk of becoming the new middle class entitlement."
But how is that different than the middle-class entitlement that is our current public education system?
#4 -- The U.S. making serious reductions without China seems A) politically unfeasible in the U.S. and B) poor strategy. The latter because China has been the largest emitter since 2006 and is pulling away at a rate of nearly 10% annually. By the time the next round of accords are negotiated, China will exceed the emissions of the U.S. by 25-50%. It's unlikely that the U.S. could cut fast enough even to offset China's increases.
#6 -- Legalizing doesn't mean treating all drugs equally. Alcohol and tobacco already have different age restrictions, and beer and wine are often handled differently than liquor. It seems to me that it would make sense for pot to be about as tightly regulated as beer and wine, with cocaine more tightly controlled.
Posted by: Slocum at Dec 30, 2007 10:54:44 AM
About #6:
So, what's the economic or public-policy benefit of legalizing drugs, anyways? I was wondering how that made it to the list.
Posted by: Raul at Dec 30, 2007 11:03:00 AM
The odds overwhelmingly favour there not being a Global Warming problem. So bin that and attend to water and, perhaps, biodiversity, as the environmental worries. Vouchers: look upon them as the only chance to improve education while, eventually, cutting its preposterous costs. Medical care: good luck! Immigration: pious believers in the Precautionary Principle say that you must stop it immediately, I presume?
Posted by: dearieme at Dec 30, 2007 11:28:34 AM
That's a good list and all are worthy of comment. In the interest of space, let me focus on #4:
Why shouldn't the US "move first" on global climate change if China et al. don't cooperate? I think of three possible arguments:
1. Because the net marginal benefit of our efforts s less at lower levels of Chinese efforts.
2. Because of spite -- why should we help if they won't help?
3. Because of a game-theoretic story. By refusing to help we make it more likely that someone else will help.
Well, #1 seems very unlikely. Almost surely the net marginal benefits of efforts to mitigate climate change are decreasing with effort, and at some point reach zero. The net marginal benefits of our efforts are only greater if the Chinese do little.
#2 is clearly unworthy of you, although sadly I get the sense that is may be the predominant motivation of many voters and the policy makers that respond to them.
#3 Is plausible, but requires a good deal more explanation. In particular, it seems just as easy, if not easier, to make the opposite case. Also, your phrasing of your thinking doesn't really line up with a game-theory story, if that's what you were intending.
Incidentally, since the post is on "uncertainty", it's worth noting that for any given mean level of climate change, greater uncertainty only strengthens the case for earlier and greater action today. Because of increasing marginal costs of climate change for each degree of temperature change, a 50-50 chance of extreme change or zero change is likely to be much more costly, in expected value, than a certain outcome of moderate climate change. Hence, the common argument that "we don't know for sure" what the outcome will be is no argument for waiting.
Posted by: A student of economics at Dec 30, 2007 11:46:51 AM
Raul: So, what's the economic or public-policy benefit of legalizing drugs, anyways? I was wondering how that made it to the list.
Uh, more freedom? More liberty?
Prohibition didn't work in the 1920s and 1930s, and it isn't working today.
Posted by: chug at Dec 30, 2007 12:03:09 PM
No one living in the year 2208 will care what the quarterly profits of 2008 were if our species is facing extinction.
What can the person who made this comment above be thinking? There is no even remotely credible scientific basis for thinking that anthropogenic climate change will be extreme enough to threaten human extinction. Such comments increase my belief that much of the popular support for action on climate change is essentially a form of religious devotion, much like concern about hell fire in fundamentalist Christian circles. Of course, this says nothing directly about the actual extent to which we should be worried about climate change, and take action, except that the tendency of supposedly responsible scientists to let such rhetoric slide by without any strong refutation makes one wonder about the objectivity of their views as well.
Posted by: Radford Neal at Dec 30, 2007 12:16:52 PM
Chug: True! So are there any items a libertarian advocates prohibition on? I'm just curious of how a libertarian draws his lines.
Posted by: Raul at Dec 30, 2007 12:17:44 PM
Dear Tyler,
Thanks. You gave more than I asked for.
Best,
David
Posted by: David R. Henderson at Dec 30, 2007 12:27:55 PM
8. I find that a lot of "bad" foreign policy being propagated by non-expert sources has much to do with misconceptions about the use of military force, and what it is capable of.
Right-wingers tend to think that we could demolish entire countries with impunity, and point to instances like the Persian Gulf War. The Persian Gulf War, was a very specific situation, and is not applicable to, say, China, where we would probably deplete our entire supply of smart bombs in a few weeks. And conventional bombs don't do as much damage, certainly not enough to stop an organized enemy.
Left-wingers seem to have an obsession with Vietnam, forgetting that we effectively turned South Vietnam from a nation on the brink of a destruction to a formidable military power that held out against a Chinese- and Soviet- supplied North Vietnamese army for a good while.
And libertarians have this belief that "bad states" will collapse on their own and that "revolutions" are likely to succeed, while ignoring the fact that the Soviet economy was effectively in a state of war from 1941 to 1990, or that revolutions are often miserable failures. See: Myanmar, Uzbekistan.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 30, 2007 1:21:23 PM
Regarding global warming and "going first," the hard fact is that neither China nor India will
do anything unless the US goes first. We have done nothing so far, except this just-passed bill
and are thus viewed universally as the bad guy on this issue. It may be that we will get shafted,
but more likely by India than by China, where environmental issues are being taken seriously by
the political leadership. But, without us going first, they will do nothing, period.
Regarding China as world's largest emitter, there is uncertainty about the amounts, but it certainly
has not been since 2006, and the most reliable sources have the US still as top dog, although China
certainly will be top dog shortly.
There certainly are uncertainties about the degree of anthropogenic effect. But the claim that "odds
are that global warming is not a problem" looks pretty ludicrous.
Regarding social security, congratulations on actually looking at the numbers, Tyler. So many do not,
including some of the Dem candidates. I find it bizarre to watch Obama denouncing Hillary because she
has not provided her plan to "fix" social security. Gag.
I also find it interesting that while you focus on uncertainties, always a wise way to go, Arnold seems
to be full of certainties. Oh well, glad he knows so much for so sure...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 30, 2007 1:39:29 PM
I'd add a special area of concern related to #1 for mental health. The problem of involuntary treatment for people who are potentially dangerous to themselves and especially to others is not trivial. Perhaps the deinstitutionalization movement went too far?
Otherwise, these are the things that I think are difficult problems, too. It's notable that many are related to population pressures and a few to increasing wealth, so is that Garrett Hardin's ghost I hear?
Posted by: Eric H at Dec 30, 2007 2:50:23 PM
"...we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion."
Look at the history of places where immigrants have had large impacts.
Milwaukee used to be majority German-speaking (the figure I've seen is 78%; I don't know how that was determined.) Boston and some other New England cities went from being very Protestant to political domination by Catholics. Some rural areas have been dominated by immigrants and their descendants.
Posted by: Dan Goodman at Dec 30, 2007 3:11:28 PM
Raul: So, what's the economic or public-policy benefit of legalizing drugs, anyways? I was wondering how that made it to the list.
Right now we spend tons of money on drug enforcement, which some people consider is not working. This coupled with the observation that in alot of places people can get incarcerated fairly simply, might not be the most efficient way to work.
It takes something like 30000 tax dollars to incarcerate 1 prisoner a year, not counting money spent on legal procedures or the actual enforcement process.
If it were taxed then, not only would the money not be lost on "pointless" enforcement, but we would gain revenue from the tax.
We also might be able to relatively reguate the demand or the certain drugs by the tax.
But a major problem is that a somewhat stable black market is in place for alot of the drugs, and it may continue unless somehow they could be integrated into the market as well.
I imagine it would be much easier to do this with a drug that would not stir as much of a public outcry, such as marijuana; cocaine, i feel, might not work out in the long run, due perhaps to one or two health issues. :)
I would love feed back
thanks
Posted by: at Dec 30, 2007 3:55:23 PM
Tyler writes:
"I am pro-immigration relative to either current policy or the median voter, but I am uncertain how many immigrants the United States could take in. I'm not just whinging about not knowing where the decimal point goes. More generally, we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion."
Since we don't know when "the social and political fabric will start to crack," why take the risk of continuing to allow massive unskilled immigration? When you weigh the risks and the opportunity costs against the minor benefits, how can you justify your stance other than on sentimentalism, ideology, and whim?
This is essentially and admission that you've lost the running debate with your commenters on immigration on empirical/rational grounds. I'd be fascinated to see a frank discussion of the non-rational motivations you have for sticking by your prejudice on this issue.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 30, 2007 4:16:16 PM
"7: US society seems to be coping with current levels of immigration including illegals so perhaps that would be a good starting point for a new level of legal migration."
Is "US seems to be coping" a new level of argument?
And it should be a starting point for a new (much increased?) level of legal immigration?
Are we supposed to take new huge risk that immigration will not work out in the end, all based on "seems to be coping"?
Posted by: mik at Dec 30, 2007 4:31:00 PM
Steve,
Dan Goodman provides Boston and Milwaukee going from majority Protestant to majority Catholic
as being examples of the "political and social fabric cracking in unproductive fashion." Really?
Did we have riots in the streets? Is life miserable or awful, wracked by street wars or other
upheavals in those places?
I would say that you are way overstating it when you say that Tyler has not held his own against
some of the commenters who have been on bloviating hysterically about immigration. You folks make
a lot of noise, but the evidence of all kinds of horrible things happening or impending has not been
remotely shown.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 30, 2007 4:44:49 PM
The threat of global warming is massively overstated. There seems a moderate probability of some moderate negative effects. So the climate will change over the course of centuries and humanity will adapt, as it always has. It's just not a big deal.
The enviro doom-mongers seem like so many Left Behind believers. Talk of human extinction is, quite literally, insane.
As to biodiversity, our current policy response is good at protecting large and cute species like mammals and birds. But the main benefit of biodiversity is the potential for new drugs and biochemical pathways.
We can get most of the benefits of biodiversity by cataloging and preserving bacteria and insects. Otherwise, having 10% more or less biodiversity doesn't provide much human benefit. And keeping cute mammals and birds has nothing but sentimental and cultural value (which does count, but there is not any material benefit to mankind).
The benefits of biodiversity are more often assumed than rationally argued. A simple example being croplands, which have minimal biodiversity. There are risks of disease, but the farmers of the world have managed that problem. Dramatically more biodiversity in our crops would be a bad thing since it would lower output and living standards.
Posted by: jim at Dec 30, 2007 4:53:39 PM
Re: #6
Raul: The opportunity cost of keeping drugs illegal is that the most violent people on the planet reap huge profits from artificial price supports that the drug laws create.
In regards to legalization, I think a better education policy in the school system would go a long way towards curbing use of hard drugs among youth. Rather than sentencing drug users who've run afoul of the law to AA or NA, send them to health awareness classes in grades three and up. Let the kids see the alcoholics, meth addicts, or crack addicts terrible appearance and demeanor up close. Let the kids hear their stories of hardship. That ought to be enough for any rational child to see that drugs aren't healthy.
Posted by: Kyle B at Dec 30, 2007 5:09:59 PM
Steve- The benefits of unskilled immigration are not minor, they are enormous. That most of these benefits accrue to non US citizens does not change this fact.
If an American citizen is impressed by the benefits immigrants receive and votes to liberalise immigration, what empirical error is she making?
Posted by: stuart at Dec 30, 2007 5:19:27 PM
“More generally, we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion.”
Try getting out some time and you will discover that counterproductive “cracks” are already dangerously evident.
1. A nation that was once united by a common language is now divided by “press 1 for English, press 2 for a new president”. With essentially once exception, no nation has long endured the linguistic divisions America has imported. The list of nations that have fallen to multilingualism is long indeed.
2. The life prospects of ordinary Americans have fallen dramatically since mass immigration resumed around 1970. Wages peaked in 1973 and have fallen substantially since. Of course, inequality has soared along with ever greater social divisions.
3. The core of the American Dream, an affordable home in community with decent schools and a reasonable commute is now a fantasy in the areas of the United States most ravaged by Open Borders. California was once the embodiment of the American Dream. Now it is the American nightmare with even illegal aliens fleeing the horrors of mass immigration.
4. Public education is now in deep, perhaps irreversible decline as a consequence of mass immigration. Each successive cohort of high schools students going forward will be less educated than their processors as a consequence of mass immigration. We are already producing a vast domestic surplus of unskilled labor. Yet, the Open Borders lusts for even more.
5. We have imported a large population that demands, gets, and evidently needs racial quotas. How this could ever make sense is beyond me. How anyone can justify admitting people who will demand quotas requires a level of logical legerdemain that I am incapable of.
6. There is little prospect of the transportation system of the United States keeping up with mass immigration in the future. Sadly, it hasn’t done so to date. The gridlock of California is becoming a national norm.
7. We are importing high crime populations. If anyone doubts this, take a look “Seeing Today’s Immigrants Straight” by Heather Mac Donald. Of course, she enumerates a long list of tragically imported social woes as well.
Of course, this is just a subset of the woes of Open Borders. The complete list would fill pages. Mass immigration has no upsides for ordinary Americans. Time for a change.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 30, 2007 6:03:00 PM
stuart,
"If an American citizen is impressed by the benefits immigrants receive and votes to liberalise immigration, what empirical error is she making?"
None. However, real Americans are more impressed by the pain mass immigration imposes on them. Something called "negative externalities"... And they are large. The American people aren't willing to sacrifice their country to help foreigners. Somehow I rather doubt you are willing to sacrifice your house to home invaders either.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 30, 2007 6:06:01 PM
All,
I don't get this "seems to be coping" line.
Take a look at California. Gridlock, dead public schools, unafforable housing, rock bottom wages, MS-13, high taxes, air and water problems, power shortages, people living in garages, etc.
Is this coping? The American people don't think so. They are leaving by the millions. The state can't even keep (net) its college graduates. Even illegal aliens are fleeing the hell created by mass immigration.
California is ground zero for mass immigration and the American Dream has died in California.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 30, 2007 6:10:58 PM
"costly anti-global warming measures"
What if the US was first to develop important technology to reduce emissions. Then the Kyoto protocol would become a means of forcing other countries to use US technology. That sounds like a business opportunity not a cost...
Posted by: Greg at Dec 30, 2007 6:18:44 PM
Steve,
It is okay to care about the welfare of the immigrants as well as the natives, even to the point where a utilitarian might be willing to sacrifice some of the natives utility for substantially large improvements in immigrant utilities. It's not clear at what point the costs to natives would even kick in given the usual story about efficiency gains, etc. It really isn't necessary to rely on "non-rational" "prejudice" to support continued or even increased immigration.
Posted by: josh at Dec 30, 2007 6:21:27 PM
josh,
Perhaps you haven't noticed but we live in something called "The United States" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states for an article on the subject). "The United States" is something called a "country" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country for an article about countries). In the "country" called "The United States" the well being of its citizens and lawful immigrants counts. Foreigners and illegals don't.
Try considering these ideas. You might come to understand them over time.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 30, 2007 6:44:44 PM
2. A school voucher system is far and away a better option of allowing choice and therefore some market input into the provision of a major service for all consumers. Enough work has been done to design effective voucher systems that can be implemented anywhere in the world. The hardest problem is determining an equitable allocation of funds to the voucher system when different parts of the educational network are funded by taxpayers through either the Federal, State or local government taxes.
4. Getting global agreement on any approach to restricting greenhouse gases will be extremely difficult as it is the classic free rider problem. Game theory at least gives us some outlines of where we might be able to get agreement. It will be a multiple iterations negotiation and therefore it allows countries to start small to minimise damage to their own economies and therefore assess the reciprocity of other countries in the negotiations. Someone has to go first and the US could start with its own carbon pricing mechanism as a sign of goodwill in the game and then test the actions of other participants as to if, when and how much it needs to tighten its emissions profile.
5. In Australia markets are being developed for biodiversity reserves on private land holdings. Transferable fishing quotas and property rights mechanisms in the marine environment have been pretty well long established and are improving with the mixture of science and property rights in the various industries. There is no doubt diminishment of biodiversity is a problem but with its recognition and the application of effective market policies it becomes a solvable policy problem.
Posted by: tjr at Dec 30, 2007 6:49:22 PM
Peter- there are many "real Americans" and they don't all agree on everything.
My point is that Steve shouldn't claim that the benefits are minor. He should rather argue that Americans should ignore the enormous benefits that go to the immigrants.
Posted by: stuart at Dec 30, 2007 7:10:11 PM
Excellent list, that does you credit.
On healthcare, another approach isn't to worry about spending large sums of money (as we get richer, we want to buy better health above most things) but rather to focus on quality (getting what we pay for). As it happens, there are reasonably well-developed ideas about the way to accomplish this through evidence based medicine.
I have always thought that worrying about biological diversity is very sensible for someone who believes that economic diversity is inherently valuable.
As for immigration, it certainly brngs all kinds of people out of the woodwork. It seems to me that all immigration to date, illegal and legal combined, has had overwhelming and measurable individual and collective benefits. Some may assert that the fabric of society is "cracking" but these are just assertions. So your idea to take today's flows as the baseline for policy is, I think, conservative. The main danger is not from the immigrants, but from native reaction, which I take seriously.
Posted by: Roland at Dec 30, 2007 7:21:00 PM
Peter S, I hope you're not a practicing doctor, because I've never seen as blatant an example of misdiagnosing a disease as your explanation of California's decline.
I don't suppose the tax, regulatory, and liability complaints of Angelenos loading up into moving vans have anything to do with it. What's you're explanation for the huge influx to Texas, Arizona, or Florida?
Posted by: M. Hodak at Dec 30, 2007 7:35:00 PM
Regarding China as world's largest emitter, there is uncertainty about the amounts, but it certainly
has not been since 2006...
That colored underlined text in my post was a thing called a 'hyperlink' which pointed to a report indicating that China overtook the U.S. in 2006. Do you have a link that points out the error in that source?
Regarding global warming and "going first," the hard fact is that neither China nor India will do anything unless the US goes first.
I would argue that the only way China and India are going to be induced to do anything is if their participation is a condition of U.S. participation.
Look, these are going to be hard-nosed negotiations where every nation will seek to get the best possible deal for itself while imposing costs on others, and if there are no strict measurement and enforcement mechanisms, nations will certainly cheat. This has been the pattern in Kyoto and there's every reason to expect it to be the pattern in the next round.
This is a giant, global, game of 'chicken' such has never been played before. 'Going first' as a good-will gesture would be an irresponsibly foolish thing to do. If we do not hold Chinese feet to the fire (and vice versa), no progress will be made.
Posted by: Slocum at Dec 30, 2007 7:41:10 PM
Roland,
The main danger is from the native reaction, because the natives can see and feel the vast negatives from mass immigration in their own lives.
See my list of immigration costs above. They aren't trivial. A few more. Each low skill immigration household costs the taxpayers of the US more than $20,000 per year (net). Using a low estimate of 10 million unskilled immigrant households that's a $200 billion per year burden.
It looks like around 1/3rd of the US prison population is foreign born (legal and illegal). That's a net cost of around $80 billion a year. Note that this estimate excludes all of the costs of crime for the victims.
These aren't small numbers and they aren't going down. Add in the negative externalities associated with education, housing, medical care, wages, inequality, and mass immigration is a huge tax on the American people. Any wonder that the natives are restless.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 30, 2007 7:43:23 PM
It seems to me that you have to argue for an end to free trade if you want US unilateral emissions cuts to have any real effect. Otherwise, you are just advocating sending more of the US manufacturing base overseas with no real environmental benefit.
I express my argument in somewhat greater detail here.
Posted by: Ape Man at Dec 30, 2007 7:48:14 PM
Two of these uncertainties can be solved very quickly.
#2: For educational freedom, use tax credits, not vouchers. The parents' property right in education should be paramount rather than creating another vehicle for government largesse and regulation. For a clear comprehensive version of this case, see, e.g., here.
#4: The right of the U.S. to domestically construct emissions-free nuclear power is uncontested among serious people.
The US should pass a national law requiring that it always lead the world in proportion of power generation coming from nuclear power. Since France is at 70%+, we must go higher from our current 20%. Give municipalities incentives to attract nuclear. Watch as our pollution rate plummets--painlessly and automatically.
Posted by: ck at Dec 30, 2007 7:52:33 PM
In the "country" called "The United States" the well being of its citizens and lawful immigrants counts. Foreigners and illegals don't.
This is a stunningly immoral statement. The well-being of foreigners and illegals "doesn't count?"
Fortunately, despite his proclamation, Peter Schaeffer doesn't get to decide what does and does not "count" in the US.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Dec 30, 2007 8:14:29 PM
ck:
How would poor families benefit from tax credits if they can't pay any taxes? Credits are better than deductions, but unless these credits are refundable, they will be useless to families that do not pay a substantial amount in taxes.
In the short run, a good idea to move towards school choice would be delinking property taxes and education - it's another stupid thing specific to America that makes no sense (much like the idea that your employer should pay for your insurance).
I also don't think it's a very good idea for the government to favour one form of technology over another - for all we know, solar and wind energy might be workable forms of power generation. If they aren't, nuclear energy won't need a huge boost to beat them anyway. A more helpful policy would be to reduce the immense amount of red tape which has prevented the construction of new nuclear plants in the first place.
Concerning the immigration debate, I think one oft-overlooked aspect is that of white-collar immigration. The quotas for legal white-collar immigrants are stunningly small, and are filled on the very first day of the year that applications open. They have to be expanded. The issue of Mexican immigration (which is what you really mean when you say "immigration") is more complex and a separate subject, but is no reason to so strongly regulate white-collar immigration.
Posted by: johnleemk at Dec 30, 2007 8:42:37 PM
people in my high school have lots of the same arguments for or against immigration, or whether or not illegals count as real people. I read this blog to escape that. Would you mind keeping this an educated conversation? (to both sides)
Posted by: student at Dec 30, 2007 9:19:27 PM
I applaud the list Tyler. I always tell people that there is nothing like becoming an expert in one area show you how uncertain you should be about things you are not an expert in.
I can't figure out how all of you people are so Goddamn sure about every little thing.
Posted by: GoodneesOfFit at Dec 30, 2007 10:01:04 PM
"More generally, we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion."
By the time Mr. Cowen and many other instinctively pro-immigration types finally decide that the social and political fabric is starting to crack, I doubt that us pre-1965 stock americans will have nearly as much say in politics. We will have to trust that a large percentage of post-1965 stock americans will be dispassionate enough about the issue to support an immigration reduction that will largely bar their own relatives and co-ethnics abroad from immigrating here. I am skeptical of that.
Posted by: pjgoober at Dec 30, 2007 10:28:31 PM
"More generally, we don't know when the social and political fabric will start to crack in counterproductive fashion."
By the time Mr. Cowen and many other instinctively pro-immigration types finally decide that the social and political fabric is starting to crack, I doubt that us pre-1965 stock americans will have nearly as much say in politics. We will have to trust that a large percentage of post-1965 stock americans will be dispassionate enough about the issue to support an immigration reduction that will largely bar their own relatives and co-ethnics abroad from immigrating here. I am skeptical of that.
Posted by: pjgoober at Dec 30, 2007 10:29:54 PM
On biodiversity. I'm still confused to what *exactly* the threat is and what are the negative human consequences.
Some quick #s.
5.4k mammal species
10k bird species
28k fish species
8.2k reptile species
6.2k amphib species
On the insect side the estimates range from 1-30 *million* species.
With bacteria the estimates are similarly massive: 1-100 *million* species.
All of our efforts at protecting endangered species has zero practical effect on the total # of extant species. Our efforts are a rounding error.
I'm actually fine with saving pretty animals. But that's not the reason given. The reason is to protect *biodiversity*.
We'd protect more biodiversity by buying a few square miles of Brazilian rainforest than all our current efforts combined
Posted by: jim at Dec 31, 2007 12:25:24 AM
Water policy? i would think that accurate pricing would go a long ways towards solving many of the problems. Here in Yemen, the best way to avert, or at least lessen the impending water crisis is to stop trying to support national agriculture with high tarrifs on imports. It turns out that you can indeed grow a lot of produce (and good stuff at that) on the Saudi peninsula if you are willing to expend 90% of your water doing it...
Isaac Crawford
Blogging in Yemen
www.isaharr.com
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Dec 31, 2007 12:36:28 AM
Water policy? i would think that accurate pricing would go a long ways towards solving many of the problems. Here in Yemen, the best way to avert, or at least lessen the impending water crisis is to stop trying to support national agriculture with high tarrifs on imports. It turns out that you can indeed grow a lot of produce (and good stuff at that) on the Saudi peninsula if you are willing to expend 90% of your water doing it...
Isaac Crawford
Blogging in Yemen
www.isaharr.com
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Dec 31, 2007 12:39:10 AM
Regarding drugs:
Pointless, overzealous drug enforcement on quasi-moral grounds (as is norm today) seems stupid. If a meth /crack user simply killed or injured himself I wouldn't care much. (almost like a cigarette user does; or a extreme alcoholic; or someone who catches an STD by flagrant unprotected promiscuity) People might argue there are cascading effects of all the above activities on society yet to a great extent the cost is borne by the user himself.
On the other hand, I suspect allowing drug usage might lead to more violent crime etc. Also the irrational thinking which is a unique concomitant of drug abuse might render typical economic incentive based approaches not viable.
Might that be good grounds to regulate it? Isn't a drug user in some sense more dangerous to society than a alcoholic or a smoker?
Posted by: Raul at Dec 31, 2007 1:23:50 AM
To Peter Schaeffer:
1. "The list of nations that have fallen to multilingualism is long indeed."
Really? And those that have NOT? India, China, Switzerland, Belgium(yet)........
2. "Wages peaked in 1973 and have fallen substantially since."
I'm not an expert but this statistic that Peter quotes seems awfully vague(whose wages? corrected for inflation or not?) and suspect. But maybe you are right Peter. I'm just putting it out here to get some more authoritative opinions.
In general, you seem to invoke immigration to explain everything that went sour with your version of the "mythical American Dream". I already saw transportation, crime, wages and education. On those lines I'd also blame the immigrants for global-warming, fossil-fuel depletion and the energy-crises.
Immigration may not be right, but the points you list definitely are not convincing!
Posted by: anon at Dec 31, 2007 1:51:38 AM
Slocum,
Uh, Slocum, I pointed out that different sources have been saying different things
on the matter of US versus Chinese emissions. I did not say your link was none
functional. So, the Dutch Environment Agency made the claim you assert based on
some numbers from BP, and somebody even put this into a Wikipedia entry. However,
some quick googling on the matter will show other sources disputing this, including
the International Energy Agency, which is forecasting 2009 for China doing it.
As for all the people who are so confident that global warming is not much of a problem,
all I can say is "Oh really, and how do you know?"
Ah, the glorious Peter Schaeffer has appeared to make Steve Sailer look reasonably
in his immigrant bashing. We had him around here earlier this year Peter: why are
you still up to spreading false information on this matter?
1) While language differences have been associated with conflicts within some
countries, many others have endured them just fine for longer than the US has been
around, Switzerland for one.
2) Growth in some of the areas you mention, such as real wages, has stalled out
in the US, but has not gone sharply negative, as your tone suggests. While there
is evidence of some downward pressure on low income wages, such pressure is also
coming from other sources as well, including international trade and technological
change, to name just two. Rising inequality is more a matter of the rich getting
much richer than the poor getting much poorer.
3) This is all just hysteria. California has lots of problems, but this is just
hysteria.
4) Regarding public education, many school districts with lots of immigrants are
among the finest in the country. One example is Fairfax County, Virginia, where
George Mason University is located. It also contains what was recently identified
as the top public high school in the US, Thomas Jefferson School for Science and
Technology. More hysterical exaggerations.
5) Last time I checked the group most publicly connected with advocating racial
quotas has been African Americans. Most of them are descended from people who
arrived quite a long time ago. I am not aware of current immigrant groups pushing
significantly for such things. Just whom are we talking about here, Peter, Mexicans?
Koreans?
6) Traffic is steadily growing in the US, and many cities are having problems with
too much traffic. But it is far from clear this is tied to immigration rather than
such things as failures to fund mass transit, as in LA, and other factors. "Gridlock"?
More exaggerations. Sure, it happens in some places, but again you exaggerate.
7) Ah, and now a specific claim that is simply false. You say 1/3 of the prison
population is foreign born? I just checked. According to the Department of Justice
in 2005, the percent is 6.7%. Did you get your hysterical number from the unreliable
Heather MacDonald? We went around on this the last time you were here ranting and
raving about this stuff. It was fully established that in fact immigrants have lower
crime rates than the native born population, not higher ones, although I grant that
children of Mexican immigrants may have higher ones. Can't you get it together and
stop spreading outright lies about this issue?
I shall not bother with your later list of supposedly catastrophic California ills
supposedly caused by immigration.
To Steve Sailer:
It is because of ravers like this Peter Schaeffer that it is ridiculous for you to
declare that you and your pals have somehow established your hysterical claims about
immigration against Tyler. You have not. You all just scream more loudly. The only
think I will grant is that there are some uncertainties about some of the matters
involved here, for example the degree of downward pressure on wages of low income
people in the US from immigration, just as there are also uncertainties about the size
of economic benefits that the native population receives from immigration, which appear
to be non-trivial, if varying by location and group.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 31, 2007 2:09:59 AM
Peter,
Regarding your California hysteria. I just checked data on states.
In 1990 CA was 10th in per capita income among states. In 2000 it
was 9th, and in 2007 it was 12th, not exactly evidence of collapse.
Oh, and unsurprisingly, many of the states ahead of it in per capita
income also happen to be major recipients of immmigration, such as
New York and Virginia. Duh.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 31, 2007 2:33:42 AM
M. Hodak,
California has been a relatively high tax and regulatory state since at least the progressive era of Hiram Johnson. Note that California’s state income tax started in 1935. That didn’t stop Americans from (net) moving to California by the millions. However, uncontrolled immigration certainly did.
Americans have been leaving California since around 1980. At the same time the state’s population has continued to rise rapidly because of mass immigration. “American cleansing” would be a fair description. Note that the exodus of Americans from areas with high immigration is not limited to California.
No less than Michael Barone has written on this subject. A few quotes
"New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco [and San Jose], San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washington [which is only marginally coastal] and Boston. Here is a pattern you don't find in other big cities: Americans moving out and immigrants moving in, in very large numbers …"
And
“"This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas. They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they're moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations—these are driving many Americans elsewhere."”
Barone’s credentials as an immigration enthusiast can hardly be doubted. He wrote the book “The New Americans”.
Indeed, the situation in California is so bad that illegal aliens are fleeing in horror. The normally very pro-Open Borders Los Angeles Times, published an article that trashes any claims as to how low-skill immigration is “helping” the US. The article makes it rather clear that mass immigration is turning the US into a third world slum. Don’t believe me? Check out what the (illegal) immigrants have to say:
”Her sister Alejandra was the first to leave. In Los Angeles, she and her husband were barely able to make ends meet. As in Mexico, ‘there was little work and it's poorly paid,’ she said.”
”Eight years ago, she and her family moved to Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs.’
"'What we weren't able to do in many years in California,' Alejandra said, 'we've done quickly here. We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico—everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken.'"
From http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-quadruplets28jul28,0,931508.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Now please tell me why we should allow Open Borders to “break” all of America the way mass immigration has wrecked California.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 31, 2007 3:19:49 AM
Barkley Rosser,
You failed to adjust the state per-capita income data for each state’s cost of living. I did. In 2005, California ranked 43rd in the nation. New York ranked 30th. For a map of the states ranked by 2006 median family income see http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter_schaeffer/1903841823/in/set-797845/. Predictably California and New York are near the bottom.
However, they rank at the very top in terms of family inequality. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter_schaeffer/1903841713/in/set-797845/. I guess rock bottom incomes combined with maximal inequality is the Open Borders version of nirvana.
But not to worry, California is definitely bringing up the rear when it comes to education. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter_schaeffer/1904678128/ for the percentage of 8th graders with “below basic” math skills and http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter_schaeffer/1903835791/ for the percentage of 8th graders with “below basic” reading skills. I could post the 8th grade science data. But alas, it is even worse.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 31, 2007 3:38:43 AM
Peter Schaeffer:
If there's nothing good on tv on a particular night, it's because of them immigrants. If it rained on your way to work this morning, it's because of them immigrants. If the side of your foot itches, well, what else, it's them immigrants. If your puppy made sad eyes at you today, it's them immigrants. If your mommy didn't love you enough, you know who to blame.
And then these folks turn around and accuse others of not wanting to have a rational discussion.
Posted by: notsneaky at Dec 31, 2007 4:36:25 AM
Peter,
OK. Cost of living is high in California. Main reason for that is that they have
placed restrictions on building new housing, and there has been massive speculation
in the housing market there. Not due to Mexicans. Life is still pretty good in
most of California. I have family there and visit regularly.
Your hysterical story from the LA Times is not all of California, much less all of
the US. Are there slums in some of the neighborhoods that the immigrants live in?
Yes. This has always been the case. The issue is what happens down the road, and
historically the US has done well at integrating immigrants. The data suggests that
holds up well for Mexicans as well, with most second and third generation ones speaking
English just fine.
Sure, school scores are lower when you have a higher percentage not speaking English.
They assimilate, and they adjust, although I am sure you will now blast us with all kinds
of phoney drivel claiming they do not. Fairfax County did not pass its SOL exam as
everyone had to take it in English. Still one of the best school systems in the country.
Oh yes, schools in CA have been hampered ever since the Jarvis prop got passed limiting
property tax increases. And Manhatten has had the most unequal income distribution of any
county in the US for decades. Does not look like it is exactly falling apart.
And, are you going to fess up that you provided us with an outright lie on the prison
population data? You did this before. You know this data. So you are engaging in
conscious distortions and lying. This is contemptible and despicable. Go lie elsewhere
to stupid fools who will fall for such tripe.
It is now New Year's Eve, and I am not going to
repeat the long slugfest we had earlier this year. But, frankly, after that one, Peter,
your credibility is in the toilet, so I am not going to waste my time. But neither you
nor Steve Sailer should think that because you both shout and scream more loudly than
anybody else on this issue that either of you has convinced all the readers, or even any
who did not already agree with your Know Nothingism.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 31, 2007 4:59:44 AM
"Uh, Slocum, I pointed out that different sources have been saying different things on the matter of US versus Chinese emissions."
Which, apparently, you could not trouble yourself to cite specifically. But, really, this is data that makes more sense in graphical form. This is from Paul Krugman (via Brad Delong):
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/carbon-dioxide-charting/
Now, there is no definitive measure of a country's emissions, so depending on the measure, the intersection point will be slightly farther to the right than the chart would indicate. But it is the relative slopes of the lines that really matter. If trends continue, China's emissions will be substantially above those of the U.S. in few years. Or are you disputing that as well?
Posted by: Slocum at Dec 31, 2007 8:48:23 AM
On why we should be concerned with biodiversity loss, and why that should affect systems, I think it's clear "simplified" biological systems are more fragile than natural ones. And when we "simplify" the natural systems upon which we depend (forest, fisheries) we increase our risk to crashes.
Posted by: odograph at Dec 31, 2007 9:00:55 AM
On the one hand, I instinctively love all the mechanisms of school choice. On the other hand, I keep running into things like this; money quote:
"...many parents still base their choice decisions on convenience. Many of the school improvements promised by choice theorists depend on parents choosing schools with the best academics. But reality shows that parents and students make decisions based on a host of other factors—where their friends go, how close the school is to home or work, and some very important, if not academic, criteria, like school safety."
I feel certain I've seen an even better quote recently about the lack of impact that testing data have on parental school choice, but I can't find it. (Not that tests are the only important criterion or even the most, but if a large number of parents aren't going to take advantage of the clearest metric of academic quality we have (flawed though it may be), where's the pressure on the system as a whole to improve academic quality going to come from?)
When it comes to choice, though, my real concern about where its limits should lie come from a year I spent in a school which was restructuring itself from...well, from a thirty-year-old schools-within-a-school implementation to a new, modern, shiny one. One of the major motivations behind the restructuring (which, oh God, was fraught with its own problems) was that, over those thirty years, unrestricted choice had led to horrifying inequalities. Parents who were wealthy, had leisure time, had access of some sort funneled their kids into two schools which were pretty good. Nearly everyone else -- to wit, this community's large number of poor people, minorities, immigrants, limited-English-proficient, parents who for whatever reason were lacking time or cultural capital or linguistic competency to navigate the system -- those kids ended up in the other schools, which were abjectly horrible. (I worked in those. Tenth graders in algebra who pull out calculators to divide by 10? Teachers who are clearly phoning it in, hiding behind computers or books as the kids do worksheets, or don't, whichever? Kids who have no concept of how the classes they're in now connect to their future plans or, worse, have no future plans at all? Check.)
*Parents* make the choices, by and large (or end up with the defaults), but *kids* are the ones affected. Just as with so many problems in education, there's a misalignment of incentives (I'm acutely aware of this as a teacher -- my best interests and the kids' do not necessarily align) and of power (the kids are never the ones who have it, and always the ones whose interests should be first). A system of choice has to include some mechanism for not screwing over kids whose parents cannot or do not invest in the choices.
Posted by: Andromeda at Dec 31, 2007 9:56:20 AM
Slocum,
I did not and I am not disputing that China's emissions are rising much more rapidly than
are those from the US, meaning indeed that if current trends hold, China will be well ahead
of the US in ten years time. But then ten years forward forecasts of things are exactly what
uncertainty is all about.
In any case, it is fine for an American, a citizen of a country whose Senate passed the
Byrd-Hagel Resolution 95-0 when the US was by far the world's largest emitter, to say that
we will only condition our going first on them promising to do something. In the end, effectively
something like that is what will have to go down, but loud public squawking along such lines
simply leads to the rest of the world booing and hissing at our diplomats as happened to Paula
Dobriansky in Bali. Again, I warn, especially given the past bad behavior of the US in this
matter, we will simply have to go first for anything to happen.
I am not going to say anymore on this thread about anything beyond, Happy New Year everybody!
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 31, 2007 10:04:08 AM
Tyler,
I appreacite the long list of uncertainties. But it would be much easier if we could discuss the topics one at a time. I am so tired of the Steve Sailer and Peter Schaeffer views on immigration that I'm inclined to skip any future posts that include the topic of immigration. Combining such inflamatory topics with less controversial ones such as medical costs, biodiversity, and school vouchers makes it difficult to find the thread on the latter ones.
That's just a request.
Posted by: John Dewey at Dec 31, 2007 10:12:17 AM
Barkley Rosser: "While language differences have been associated with conflicts within some
countries, many others have endured them just fine for longer than the US has been
around, Switzerland for one."
Not sure if you're aware, but Spanish Texas was coping very well with multi-lingualism in the years before 1829. In fact, the former border communities of Spanish-speaking Nacogdoches and French-speaking Natchitoches engaged in healthy though regulated commerce after Spain acquired Louisiana in 1762. The migrating Americans added another language to the mix, and peace was maintained between and within communities.
After Mexico gained independence, it was the crackdown and control of Santa Anna and the Mexican centralists and not cultural differences that caused the War for Texas Independence. In fact, many of the Spanish speaking Tejanos joined their more numerous American immigrants in fighting for independence. Also, Texas was one of three Mexican states that attempted to gain independence from Santa Anna's brutal rule.
Racial and religious prejudice on both sides was a factor leading to Texas independence. Spanish-speaking government leaders and their supporters treated the non-Catholic "gringos" with disdain, just as many of today's opponents of immigration treat both legal and illegal Mexican workers.
The third major cause of the Texas Revolution was slavery. Though the Mexican government had initially allowed Americano settlers to immigrate with their slaves, they continually threatened to eliminate slavery. The Texas Revolution was in some ways a pre-cursor to the American Civil War.
Multi-ligualism does not necessarily lead to permanent cultural conflict. That was demonstrated in Spanish Texas, in New Orleans, and in many of our larger U.S. cities.
Posted by: John Dewey at Dec 31, 2007 11:06:59 AM
Notsneaky,
The pervasive negative effects of mass immigration are an "inconvient truth". I can't change that. Nor am I willing to ignore them because that is the PC thing to do. Mass immigration isn't the only thing wrong with the United States. However, it is one thing we can definitely do something about (try fixing the divorce rate) and it is the only thing that overtly threatens the survival of this country as a nation.
John Dewey,
Your capsule history of Texas and Mexico should be taken as a warning to anyone willing to listen. Mexico tolerated immigration from a country with a different language, culture, and religion. Mexico was broken as a nation as a consequence.
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Dec 31, 2007 11:47:32 AM
"4. I am uncertain how much the United States should "move first" with costly anti-global warming measures, assuming that China and other nations are not very cooperative."
That would be "move second". Europe moved first some time ago.
From a political perspective, the US has to move second because China, India and the rest of the developing world isn't going to move at all until the US does.
Regardless of whether or not China is currently the largest CO2 emitter, the USA has been by far the largest emitter over the past 150 years. It is also by far the largest emitter on a per capita basis.
More importantly, the reluctance to move is based on the idea that doing something about global warming will crush the economy. This is not necessarily the case.
There is no need to tax and regulate ourselves into penury. By being smart about how we approach the problem we can set ourselves up for a bright economic future.
For example, by shifting the burden of taxes from work (an economic positive) to CO2 emission (a negative externality) we could guide the the future development of the economy in a way that is both environmentally friendly and wealth enhancing. As a fringe benefit, we would also become progressively less beholden to OPEC.
Posted by: Deepish Thinker at Dec 31, 2007 11:54:51 AM
Tyler: "I do favor means-testing, mostly through lack of better ideas, but it is a) notoriously difficult to enforce, b) often unfair (do we measure income or wealth? current or lifetime?) and c) an implicit hike in marginal tax rates."
Do you means-testing that would prohibit the wealthy from participating in Medicare? Such means-testing is just so unfair to impose after the fact. Those who accumulated wealth over decades, and who paid the taxes their politicians promised would provide them medical care, would be just screwed under such a plan. Had medicare not existed at all, they would have been able to negotiate some sort of lifetime medical insurance for a reasonable price. But once they are elderly, that option is closed.
Some seniors are basically uninsurable. In many states, diabetics cannot obtain medical insurance at any price. Means-testing of medicare would force many to move, leading to large increases in medical insurance costs in states which force insurance companies to cover diabetics.
By means-testing do you mean that higher-income or wealthy should pay more for medicare? Of course, they already do. Further, They likely paid much higher Medicare and Medicaid taxes throughout their lives.
Are you proposing that means-testing be phased in over decades, so that free markets in lifetime insurance are allowed to develop?
Posted by: John Dewey at Dec 31, 2007 12:02:11 PM
Tyler: "I do favor means-testing, mostly through lack of better ideas, but it is a) notoriously difficult to enforce, b) often unfair (do we measure income or wealth? current or lifetime?) and c) an implicit hike in marginal tax rates."
Do you means-testing that would prohibit the wealthy from participating in Medicare? Such means-testing is just so unfair to impose after the fact. Those who accumulated wealth over decades, and who paid the taxes their politicians promised would provide them medical care, would be just screwed under such a plan. Had medicare not existed at all, they would have been able to negotiate some sort of lifetime medical insurance for a reasonable price. But once they are elderly, that option is closed.
Some seniors are basically uninsurable. In many states, diabetics cannot obtain medical insurance at any price. Means-testing of medicare would force many to move, leading to large increases in medical insurance costs in states which force insurance companies to cover diabetics.
By means-testing do you mean that higher-income or wealthy should pay more for medicare? Of course, they already do. Further, They likely paid much higher Medicare and Medicaid taxes throughout their lives.
Are you proposing that means-testing be phased in over decades, so that free markets in lifetime insurance are allowed to develop?
Posted by: John Dewey at Dec 31, 2007 12:02:14 PM
Back to biodiversity. The "fragility" of an ecosystem is something often claimed yet never proved or rigorously defended. The evidence I see supports the opposite.
Natural disasters (fires, floods, hurricanes, etc) regularly demolish huge swaths of an ecosystem. Remarkably, life quickly returns after being burnt and drowned.
Life is robust, not fragile. The image of a fragile food chain that will collapse if one link is broken is just a false analogy spread by bad grade school science.
Claims about simple vs complex ecosystems are specious. What's the measure of simple? Remember, if you mean the # of species, it's all the insects and bacteria that really count. Having 2 vs 200 mammals doesn't materially effect that #.
The fear of ecosystem collapse doesn't seem to be born out by our experience of actual ecosystems. At least not in any measurable way that effects humanity.
In fact, the most biodiverse places on the planet are some of the least habitable for humanity. Humans can't live in sizable #s in a rain forest, for example. So clearly maximizing biodiversity is not an inherently good thing.
Posted by: jim at Dec 31, 2007 12:08:12 PM
Re #4:
The good news is that you can shed at least a little bit of your uncertainty and still remain a libertarian in good standing. The U.S. electrical grid operates nowhere near peak efficiency. About two thirds of the energy from our burning of fossil fuels is sent up the smokestack as waste heat. What accounts for this massive inefficiency? The continued treatment of utilities as regulated monopolies.
So: deregulate electricity production, boost efficiency, lower carbon emissions, and improve the economy. Everyone wins.
This alone won't solve global warming, but the potential savings are fairly eye-popping, and we certainly don't need to wait for China to start realizing them.
Posted by: Adam Stein at Dec 31, 2007 1:24:27 PM
The fairness (or not) of means testing is a purely academic argument. As public policy means testing has all the political lift of a lead balloon.
People on Medicare or approaching Medicare age make up a large and increasing proportion of eligible voters. Reducing Medicare benefits or limiting access is political suicide for any candidate moronic enough to actually suggest it.
Posted by: Deepish Thinker at Dec 31, 2007 1:33:53 PM
Don't forget this: even if your view is the one "most likely to be right," in absolute terms your view, like mine, is probably wrong relative to the sum of competing views
Overconfidence in the accuracy of one's views is a widespread problem, but it is exceptionally serious among ideologues, like Marxists, religious fundamentalists, and libertarians.
Of course I could be wrong.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Dec 31, 2007 1:41:52 PM
i love how most people ignored the main point of the post -- uncertainty is the norm, those who claim certainty on a given topic/issue are almost certainly wrong about way more than they think. but please continue to comment with certainty on everything under the sun, rather than discussing issues with humility regarding the limits of your own knowledge and/or wisdom, respect for the opinions of others, patience with those who misunderstand, etc.
Posted by: dj superflat at Dec 31, 2007 2:59:01 PM
Peter Schaeffer: "Your capsule history of Texas and Mexico should be taken as a warning to anyone willing to listen. Mexico tolerated immigration from a country with a different language, culture, and religion. Mexico was broken as a nation as a consequence. "
Did you even read my post, Peter? I made it very clear that Spanish Texas had a vibrant economy that embraced multilingualism and diverse cultures. The Spanish and Mexican governments didn't just "tolerate iimmigration", they invited immigrants. American, German, and Irish immigrants were all given land grants by the Mexican government.
Mexico was broken as a single entity only after Santa Anna initiated a crackdown. He insisted on enforcing Spanish-only laws that had been wisely ignored. He imposed federal controls over the desires of local communities. He enlisted the military in collecting tithes to the Catholic Church. He treated the invited immigrants with disdain.
The ill-fated practices of Santa Anna are being repeated in the U.S. today. Anti-immigrationists insist on an English-only culture. They insisted on a federal border fence, overruling Texas border towns that thrive from trans-border economic activity. Anti-immigrationists continue to demean the Mexican workers who build our homes and harvest our crops. The attitudes of anti-immigrationists today will lead to severe backlash at the voting booth over the long term, just as Santa Anna's disdain for Americanos forced a revolt in Texas. I will cheer their defeat.
Posted by: John Dewey at Dec 31, 2007 4:01:28 PM
I was not very impressed with the outcome of Bali, when the Papua New Guinea delegate apparently "shamed" the United States into conceding something. I am troubled that major policy decisions, with deep implications are decided like a courtroom drama with iffy words like "leadership" tossed around instead of concluding with recent debate. Aren't the theatrics of the United Nations supposed to stop outside of its New York building? Politicians take our lives far too cavalierly.
Posted by: Billare at Dec 31, 2007 5:14:17 PM
Texas -- the key issue was slavery, which Mexico outlawed in 1828, but the American immigrants wanted.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 31, 2007 6:18:40 PM
Something that leaps out of the comments is how much rage and hatred suffuses the pro-immigration side, as exemplified by Barkley Rosser's inchoate ad hominem attacks on the superbly-informed philanthropist Peter Schaeffer.
It's a status issue -- today, being pro-immigration is a status marker of one's intellectual, cultural, and moral superiority over the masses. Documenting that the conventional wisdom is largely based on ignorance and wishful thinking -- thus calling into question the status of someone who takes pride in holding fashionable opinions -- is something than only an evil person like Peter Schaeffer would do.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 31, 2007 6:23:43 PM
1) Whether you are for or against "illegal immigration" --- or even for an amnesty for those residing here over a specific period of time --- the comparisons made by some posters with the alleged stability of multi-lingual countries with the development of large Spanish-speaking populations here in the US is strikingly misleading.
2) How so?
2) Switzerland is an example of regionally based language groups, German speaking (75% or so), French-speaking (about 22%), and Italian (about 2.0%, plus a small Romanish group). Divided into separate cantons, these diverse ethnic groups --- totalling 6 million --- have a highly decentralized federal system that approaches a confederation: to an extent, even though less so than in the past, individual cantons can veto major changes in legislation. Switzerland's uniqueness is further brought out by a long history of neutrality and a refusal not simply to join the EU (the case of Norway), but even to develop a free-trade association with it. Similarly, its politics in Berne are organized to foster a grand coalition, itself unique in democratic societies, even though it has now changed as the leading party, the Swiss People's Party (headed by the billionaire Christoph Blocher, has officially moved into opposition . . . something Swiss politics hasn't witnessed for decades (if ever). Click here: http://www.expatica.com/ch/articles/news/Swiss-populist-Blocher-fails-in-votes-for-government-seat.html
3) China: 92% of the population are Han Chinese, and though they speak different regional variations of Chinese, they identify with China's historic past, present, and future. The 8% non-Chinese Han are located in faraway if important border regions, and they include the oppressed Tibetans (a million or so killed since Chinese occupation in the mid-1950s) and rebellions among some of the Muslim populations along the western borders.) What holds the minorities to China is the presence of a Communist monopoly rule, with a large military and police presence. Similar comments apply, to a lesser extent, to the daily protests, strikes, riots, and occasional killings in the countryside of tax-collectors and CP officials.
4)India: a remarkable country, no two ways about it . . . the more so since it is badly fragmented among different religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups, often violently at odds with one another. Its advances in economic growth, technological advance, and increasing openness to the global economy are impressive, especially when compared with Pakistan --- which gained independence along with India after the British left in 1947, amid huge population transfers and mass killings . . . several million. Pakistan is equally riven, less by religious conflicts (though fundamentalist vs. moderate Muslims is a serious one) than region-based tribalism, with the Pakistani government unable to maintain control of its northern provinces. Pakistan is also very poor, technologically backward, and unstable.
That said, the split into Muslim-dominated Pakistan (in two parts, east and west) and Hindu-majority India not only led to massive murder and massive population cleansing and transfers, but unstable boundaries in the north . . . especially in Kashmir. India, to be brief, remains something of a miracle, but hardly an exemplar of copycat multilingualism.
5) Belgium? Patched together by the great powers in 1832 from the Netherlands, it has never had a solid national identity of the sort found in Holland to the north or France to the south, and it has taken several months even to form a new governmental coalition. As with Corsica in France and Catalonia in Spain --- multilinguistic country --- Flemish nationalism has been revived and stoked by the diminished national identities fostered by EU regionalism, with increasing transfer of a fair number of important decisions to EU institutions.
6) Then there was the Soviet Union, the successor to the Russian Czarist empire --- with 15 major linguistic/ethnic groups and dozens or hundreds of smaller ones. Despite hundreds of years of such Russian rule, the Soviet Union disappeared as soon as the major non-Russian Republics could succeed in 1991, and no sooner did that happen than two wars with Chechnya broke out in federal Russia, plus continued violence in Georgia and to an extent in Azerbejian (where a large Armenian minority lives regionally) Yugoslavia, another multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic country, quickly divided among large-scale violence into several countries after the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Yugoslavia CP. The Ottoman empire earlier on? No need to elaborate, right?
7) The upshot of all this?
Well, those who extol the harmony and success of multilinguistic societies are hard-pressed to find any that are democratic, industrialized and rich, stable, and able to manage their linguistic/religious conflicts other than Switzerland and Canada. And the secessionist movement in Quebec, when put to a vote in 1995, almost gained a slight majority (50.6 percent "no" vs. 49.4 percent "yes"). Among the large French-speaking population in Quebec, 60% voted for independence.
As for the short-lived period of alleged multi-lingual harmony in Mexican-controlled Texas, it's even hard to know what relevance that has for the US compared to these modern examples.
8) One other point.
There's some confusion in these posts about multilingual societies between "ethnic" nationalism and "civic nationalism". Historically, in West Europe, only Britain and France fostered civic nationalism: anyone born in the country with residence there could claim citizenship, and immigrants after a periodf residence could too. In the new world, the US and Canada have similar civic citizenship (Australia didn't in any full sense until the 1970s). Ethnic citizenship --- pervasive in Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy (never mind Eastern Europe) --- required proof until the 1970s and 1980s that you were born to a family of the ethnic heritage of these countries. Even today, full citizenship rights for long-time non-European residents --- even those born there --- are only reluctantly be granted in some of these ethnic nationalist countries.
The Buggy Professor, AKA Michael Gordon
http://www.thebuggyprofessor.org
Posted by: michael gordon at Dec 31, 2007 10:26:42 PM
"Well, those who extol the harmony and success of multilinguistic societies are hard-pressed to find any that are democratic, industrialized and rich, stable, and able to manage their linguistic/religious conflicts"
ARE YOU FREAKIN' SERIOUS?
But perhaps there's is a good point there with respect to the comments so far. Why look to Europe or to history for an example when it's staring you right in the face?
Posted by: notsneaky at Dec 31, 2007 11:43:57 PM
sneaky sez:
"If there's nothing good on tv on a particular night, it's because of them immigrants. If it rained on your way to work this morning, it's because of them immigrants. If the side of your foot itches, well, what else, it's them immigrants. If your puppy made sad eyes at you today, it's them immigrants. If your mommy didn't love you enough, you know who to blame.
And then these folks turn around and accuse others of not wanting to have a rational discussion."
Bravo, sneak. Great post.
So much logic, so much deep thought.
You are perfect OpenBorder believer.
Posted by: mik at Jan 1, 2008 5:22:54 AM
Barkley Rosser sez:
"OK. Cost of living is high in California. Main reason for that is that they have
placed restrictions on building new housing, and there has been massive speculation
in the housing market there. Not due to Mexicans. Life is still pretty good in
most of California. I have family there and visit regularly."
First you didn't even know that cost of living makes real wages in CA one of the lowest
in the country.
Having been told that, you suddenly became an expert on what causes high cost of living.
Of course providing no sources for your assertions.
Especially interesting assertion of massive housing speculation.
You probably the only person who can so easily separate growth in housing prices due to
demand from growth due to speculation.
You should publish your research, great unwashed cannot wait.
Posted by: mik at Jan 1, 2008 6:23:18 AM
Barkley Rosser sez:
"Ah, and now a specific claim that is simply false. You say 1/3 of the prison
population is foreign born? I just checked. According to the Department of Justice
in 2005, the percent is 6.7%. Did you get your hysterical number from the unreliable
Heather MacDonald? We went around on this the last time you were here ranting and
raving about this stuff. It was fully established that in fact immigrants have lower
crime rates than the native born population, not higher ones, although I grant that
children of Mexican immigrants may have higher ones. Can't you get it together and
stop spreading outright lies about this issue?"
Thank you for a calm, logical and well sourced post.
I don't have data for the USA.
For CA I have this (archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/27/114208.shtml):
"As Investors Business Daily reported in March 2005:
The U.S. Justice Department estimated that 270,000 illegal immigrants served jail
time nationally in 2003. Of those, 108,000 were in California."
This document (www.pewpublicsafety.org/pdfs/PCT%20Public%20Safety%20Public%20Spending.pdf):
shows 173K prisoners in CA in 2006.
If my math is correct 108K / 173K > 50%.
In fact it is 62%, but then we have to consider that 108k and 173k are for different years.
So, at least for "Good Life" California we can confidently say that hard working immigrants
contribute way more than 6.7% to the prison population.
Must be all that illegal immigrant jaywalking.
Posted by: mik at Jan 1, 2008 6:56:31 AM
There's no better evidence of intellectual honesty than an expression of uncertainty.
Posted by: Tree at Jan 1, 2008 12:10:38 PM
mik -- that 50% number is certainly wrong.
Latinos account for 38% of the California prison population.
17% of the prisoners were born abroad.
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=701
26% of California's general population was born abroad
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html
Glad to be of assistance in getting the facts right!
Posted by: LN at Jan 1, 2008 1:37:25 PM
I'm CERTAIN that I want people who were willful global warming denialists for ideological reasons for so long to not be allowed to comment about how modest that warming will be, now that they finally admit it's happening.
Posted by: M1EK at Jan 1, 2008 4:31:31 PM
Notsneaky:
I looked over your three posts in these threads, all of which involve screaming at others and extravagant sarcasm of a comic-opera sort, nothing else. It's a waste of time to reply to your capitalized screech, but I will clarify a point about multi-lingual countries for those in this thread who show a mastery of reasoning powers, plus some civility.
The US is not a multi-lingual country like the others in the stable, affluent democratic world --- Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium. It is not officially one at all. In all three of the others, you can become a citizen as an immigrant resident after a period of time if you speak one of the officially recognized languages. In Canada, our neighbor to the North --- Notsneaky thinks, apparently, it's in Europe --- you can take your written and oral exams in either English or French. (In Switzerland, note, you also have to pay tens of thousands of dollars worth of Swiss Francs).
In the US, there is only one way to become a citizen: to pass written and oral tests in English. Without passing these tests, you cannot vote or enjoy all the other rights of full citizenship. Notsneaky and others might wish it were differently, but Notsneaky, for one, isn't going to get far in convincing his fellow citizens to change our Constitutional requirements with his boorish manners and crackling snap-like sarcasm.
I should add that as a professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara --- with a Ph.D. in both political science and economics (from Harvard) --- I have been very impressed with the quality of Tyler Cowen's posts and with the equally impressive quality of the one thread I participated in so far: a post of Professor Cowen's on Denmark and movement of EU citizens in and out of it and the rest of the EU, plus (in the comments section) lots of wider-ranging matters about the relative merits of the advance welfare-statist economies of Scandinavia and the relatively free-market economy of the US.
In that thread, the various forum members who commented were all civil, open-minded, and showed how to reason logically and at times with evidence. When they (or I) were criticized, they and I didn't erupt in loud-mouthed rants or insult one another with abusive hyperbole, nor did they exhibit any of Notsneaky's swaggering self-opionated ignorance. It was one of the most rewarding exchanges I've had on the Internet outside of exchanges with scholars themselves.
I can only hope that some of what I've seen on display in this thread by Notsneaky and maybe one or two others of his ilk won't be repeated in other threats at this otherwise admirable web site.
Michael Gordon AKA the buggy professor
http://www.thebuggyprofessor.org
Posted by: michael gordon at Jan 1, 2008 5:47:31 PM
"I looked over your three posts in these threads, all of which involve screaming at others and extravagant sarcasm of a comic-opera sort, nothing else."
Look, I'm sorry, but most of the people who comment on these threads, like Peter Shaeffer and mik, are plain ol' wackos. This always happens on immigration related threads. I've seen them around other places as well and as a result I see no point what so ever in engaging in rational discussion with them. It would be a waste of time.
Oh, I guess I should have written "why look to Europe or Canada or history". Horrible, unforgivable, tremendous mistake on my part. But writing it the other way does not imply that Canada is in Europe. You're confusing your particulars and universals.
Posted by: notsneaky at Jan 1, 2008 6:24:51 PM
Tyler:
Number 4 is (to me) a no-brainer: we need to move as quickly as possible, while we are still positioned as a technology leader. Whoever moves first is going to be the one tackling the big problems -- and developing the patents and techniques that everyone else will want to use. We've already got a number of fledgling companies and university labs that would be invaluable. Given a little more incentive and investment, we could be the ones selling low-carbon technology to China, India, and Europe. If we wait too long, though, we'll wind up buying the technology from them.
Posted by: Dolohov at Jan 1, 2008 7:03:03 PM
I'm CERTAIN that I want people who were willful global warming denialists for ideological reasons for so long to not be allowed to comment about how modest that warming will be, now that they finally admit it's happening.
Really? You're CERTAIN that you want to abandon centuries-long traditions of free speech in order to censor a group of people whom you think might make it harder for you to win one particular argument? Have you really thought this out?
Posted by: