( what a sad, tragic tale. i wonder why people, having made it to Canada, would take such lethal risks to come to the US. Canada is wealthy and extraordinarily open to immigrants. maybe it's easier to prosper without documents in the US? )
the piece suggests that asylum is misused by people who face no domestic persecution and even no great desperation, but merely ambition to live a much better life and a willingness to suffer and accept risks to achieve it. 1/
(it doesn't really emphasize the asylum piece, right? it just mentions obliquely, "If asked questions, they are told to say they don’t feel safe in India." it's not clear whether all of these migrants seek asylum, or whether many simply try to live undocumented and undetected?) 2/
beyond a case study in abuse of the intended purpose of asylum as a category, perhaps a case study more generally that not all migrants are particularly sympathetic relative to ill-done domestic constituencies, what lessons do you pull from it? /fin
i agree people find it abusive and unfair. i’ve increasingly come to think an asylum/economic-migration distinction is incoherent and unsustainable. rather than try to purity-police asylum, we need a normative framework that doesn’t depend on categories of desperation, only some measure of extent.
( i think we should shift to a kind of “price rationing”, as sketched out a bit here. www.interfluidity.com/v2/9548.html )
it’s harrowing, but what about it shifted your thinking?
for one thing, it tries to look through profit margins, which are historically (but past performance is no guarantee…) mean-reverting, rendering P/E overly optimistic when margins are thick.
just have a spoonful. you’ll quiet right down.
fair enough. i think it’s accurate that the piece mostly emphasizes economics education rather than acknowledging and addressing what might genuinely be unfair in immigration, even if it is in some sense economically valuable. including addressing unfairness would strengthen the piece.
bliss requires no fine distinctions.
i think that’s precisely @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social’s point: “voters don’t like foreigners” is where right-wing culture warriors want you to stop, but it’s the wrong place to stop. different forms of immigration impose different tradeoffs, and can be more or less unfair. get into the distinctions.
that depends who you are. you are presuming you are a wise technocrat, rather than a tax-avoiding plutocratic happy to become something of a warlord if state dysfunction renders that prudent.
one could. one could imagine (i’m not endorsing) guest-worker visas that waive conventional labor protections, permitting comparable exploitation with little of the loss of control associated with undocumented. i think all this is @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social’s point: it’s not the immigrants per se.
ot other hand, under (ugly) US contemporary practices, it’s undocumented who most contribute to reduced cost of ag products, construction, personal care… so taking @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social’s suggestion of explanation, voters’ concern for “bread and butter” issues, which way might it ultimately cut?
this @mattbruenig.bsky.social piece on health care economics is a work of art. www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2024/12/10/h... 1/
Health Care Administration Wastes Half a Trillion Dollars Every Year
Link Preview: Health Care Administration Wastes Half a Trillion Dollars Every Year: Health insurers are actually very bad.
administrative costs associated with health insurance are HUGE, not a rounding error next to inflated provider costs. 2/
Bar graph showing the scale of likely avoidable health-care administrative costs relative to comparable expenses, like running public colleges and K-12 education.
the only justification for those costs would be to rein in provider rents, but not only do private insurers fail to, they have structural incentives to let them grow. 3/
read this one. /fin www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2024/12/10/h...
Health Care Administration Wastes Half a Trillion Dollars Every Year
Link Preview: Health Care Administration Wastes Half a Trillion Dollars Every Year: Health insurers are actually very bad.
Text: The politics of stupid is believing that the way to deal with Farage or Trump type populism is to do what Farage or Trump happens to be shouting about at the time. Concern about immigration is real enough, but it is important to ask why there is concern about immigration. To put it very simply, there are probably two types of reasons why voters find populists going on about immigration attractive. The first is that these voters don’t like foreigners. Immigration numbers don’t matter to these people when there are already plenty of foreign looking people already here. The second type are voters who mistakenly think that problems like finding it difficult to see a doctor or buy a house are because of immigration. Cutting immigration is only likely to make those problems worse, by stopping doctors or construction workers coming to the UK
“Where are all the bureaucrats?” a useful chart by @kdrum.bsky.social (i’m hoping that’s a real rather than impersonating account?) jabberwocking.com/where-are-al...
Where are all the bureaucrats? - Kevin Drum
Link Preview: Where are all the bureaucrats? - Kevin Drum: Here are the federal agencies that America's civilian workers call home: Two-thirds of all civil service workers are in Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. Unless you're planning to slas...
or aggressive use of executive power without deference to law. seek and ye shall find authorities by which to waive, ignore, restraints. undermine legal challenges, intimidate judges and courts until the stream of opinions turns congenial. usually he’s all bluster, but authoritarianism is an option.
national greatness consists of burning it all down and watching it rise like a phoenix from the ashes. ideally from a condo in phoenix. or tempe is very nice.
you know you’ve encountered a higher class of revolutionary when at least a pinky toe, if not several of the more vigorous toes, is latent.
📌
the last time around we had robber barons. this time we have toddler tyrants.