Mussolinoids is a brillaint term as it reminds me of something similar that only leads to backside pain and discomfort. Another wonderful post and most of all, unlike a lot of writing, you often stake a claim not commonly asserted and defend it with evidence and observation.
Have you read Dan Slater's "Ordering Power," about Southeast Asian authoritarian governments?
Slater argues that authoritarians delivered economic growth, when they did, because their supporting elites were nervous about revolution and foreign invasion.
That is, authoritarians delivered growth because growth was the best hope of security.
Jobs and land reform kept the masses compliant; foreign exchange and/or heavy industry made the military strong. (Park's Korea, Deng's China.)
Conversely, where elites were less afraid of invasion and/or revolutionaries, authoritarians delivered "security" by the easy routes of stagnation and crony perquisites, not growth. (Philippines, or arguably today's China.)
It's not a perfect theory. Mussolini certainly thought he was there to deliver a strong army and keep the leftists down, but he didn't give Italy an economic miracle. Conversely, Erdogan and Modi started out genuinely delivering economic growth, albeit back when they were less politically invincible and less authoritarian.
But up to a point, I like the idea: authoritarians focus on "security," and "security" only means growth when the alternative is imminent revolution or invasion.
More often, the feeling of security is the reality of stagnation. Which is one reason why authoritarians promise to save the country, and end up stalling it.
Wrt elites, it seems to me that the real difference maker is the presence and power of elites. Land reform defanged them, at least temporarily in China and South Korea. Not so much in Philippines. Too powerful elites probably hold back the country because they advance by changing the rules of game rather than by innovating.
It's no longer growing at stellar developing country level rates. That's because it's economy is now big enough that relying on export driven growth is not as big a deal, which means it needs to rely more on domestic consumption. It's actually been trying to make that switch and failing. Plus all that stuff about limiting video games and condemning Korean boy bands don't help.
Key question is if they can sustain 4-5% growth in to the future with demographic headwinds. I'm skeptical. I don't see convincing reasons why China's growth won't slow further below 5%.
Firstly, the term 'effective governing' needs to be defined in a way that incorporates the entire geo-political and social realities and permits to track progress.
I think the conclusion is dangerous mostly because it's hard to correlate liberal-democracies with success. What can we infer about failing liberal-democracies?
An economically isolated Iran, with tremendous pressure on all fronts from almost everyone in the international community cannot measure in a fair and unbiased way how effective the administration was. I'm using administration instead of governing, on purpose. China rejected western vaccines. Iran was only offered western vaccines when the pandemic was past its peak, for economic reasons.
Interestingly, if we look into recent history, the western liberal democracies deposed a democratically elected government in Iran to create a monarchy that serves their interests.
UK liberal democratic government bet on Brexit, China 'authoritarian' regime bet on the Belt and Road initiative. I still believe China's bet was more realistic and anchored in geopolitical and economic realities than UK's direction of travel.
China is very often reduced to Xi's will and whims. The entire administration apparatus behind him is completely disregarded in spite of showing profound thinking about their own economy and synergies with the rest of the world.
In the west we are told to give up some privacy in favour of protecting national security and integrity. In China, Iran, Russia, they trade off different freedoms in an attempt to protect their own national interests and security as well as be able to catch up with their adversaries. I'm not saying I agree with their situation but I understand where they come from.
In Eastern Europe the are countries who's national integrity is guaranteed by US in exchange to almost delegating their foreign and economic policies to external parties. Is this 'effective governing'?
An interesting question is if a country can have an effective governing without having a direct, unmediated control over their national integrity, security and interest?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on what is China doing well that perhaps the liberal democracies should start doing too.
Good stuff. I read a book awhile back called the Corruption Paradox about China’s provincial governments. The author wrote about how incentive structures in the Chinese government rewarded provincial leaders for hitting growth targets. These local officials would partner with private firms and adopt plans to improve their local economies. I thought it was a fairly persuasive model that would be effective to deploy here for something like sustainability or reducing poverty.
I think we have reached a new Peak Noah, particularly the paragraph referring to China and India. As with previous pieces, on Indonesia for instance, it is quickly coming across (fairly or unfairly) as though Noah has never set foot in these places. Which is then doubly ironic since he exhorts readers to use the "simple evidence of our own eyes" ....
Do you think that ban on immigrant’s from India,might lead to economic dysfunction in The USA,but can be beneficial to India as the brain-drain problem is resolved upto an extent?
Dysfunction? I work in the tech industry (semiconductors). We have great Indian engineers. But after 30-40 years of Indian immigration, they are just a few percent of tech workers. Are you proposing this disfunction would occur 100 years from now when we failed to grow their contribution from 2% to 6%??? It seems far more likely we would see a nearly infinitesimal decline in GDP growth.
E.g. over 40 percent of tech workers in Seattle - home to Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon - are Indian immigrants. (The article is confusing, first it states 40% of all tech workers, then it says 40% of all foreign-born tech workers.)
The Immigration of tech workers from India(&Pakistan) basically started about 20-25 years ago. Their number is limited because of the cap on H-1B visas and the limitation of Green Cards to 140.000 (includes wives/kids) and the single country limit of 7%. Many tech workers now continue to reside in India etc. and work for US co.'s remotely.
I do not know IT. I work in semiconductors. However, it appears that the settle statistic is distorted. The Seattle Times says (2018) that 40% of Seattle tech workers are foreign born and 40% of foreign born workers are Indian. That puts us at 16% which is certainly more than 2% but closer to 2% than to 40%. If this number did not continue to grow. It would most certainly not cause dysfunction.
Immigrants made up almost one-fourth, or 23.1 percent, of all STEM workers in the United States in 2019. Immigrants from India formed the largest country of birth group among immigrant STEM workers, at 28.9 percent of all foreign-born STEM workers in that year. This would put the average number of Indian people working in STEM all over the US at 7% ? That number is growing but, as said, is kept lower than it could be.
Thank you. I changed the text. Question then is how a rather low number causes so much hatred (as expressed e.g. in the H-4). Some experts state that H-1B non-immigrants from India took most of the jobs that were added in high tech over the past 20 years. Others, like dr. Gene Nelson, estimated in 2012 already that foreign tech workers, mainly from India, robbed American Citizen high-tech workers of 10 Trillion dollars (in part because older US workers are replaced with younger, cheaper, H-1B workers).
I think it's worth noting that while Trump talked big about the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin, it was actually pushed by a mini-Mussolinoid in Scott Walker. And the presence of others making noise, DeSantis chief among them, makes me wonder how authoritarians rise in other countries. Are they also, like provincial governors or something?
Also, are other Mussolinoids as terrible at hiring as Trump was? Up close, we saw how often his appointments were a perfect blend of corrupt and incompetent. (Scott Pruitt is my favorite example, because I remain convinced his resignation was only sparked by Alexandra Petri's column that made fun of his hand lotion and therefore made Trump think of him as effeminate.) Are Xi's and Putin's subordinates also bad at their jobs? I don't get the feeling they are, but I don't live in their countries.
To me the Carrier “rescue” was a classic bullshit exercise. Make a big show of “saving” this factory, throw tax credits at it, and then watch the company do what it was going to do anyway.
When loyalty is your first filter (as opposed to competence or honesty) I'd imagine the likelihood of success goes down. Also helps to not have hangers on skimming off funds in their preview.
Great article and insights. However, my question is given the governance failures, why do Mussolinoids have such staying power? Even in the U.S. it is highly likely that Trump will be the next President again.
You left the Brexiteers off this list who completely fit the model of failure that the other Mussolinoids have displayed, only as Brexit is locked in the ‘culture war over economics’ fear is being realised every day
There's a quote from the twentieth century French rightist Charles Maurras that reminds me of natcons (and maybe conservatives in general these days: "in order to love France today, it is necessary to hate what she has become." They consider themselves super patriots, but they think the way to love America is to hate what it is here and now.
"But immigrants are the lifeblood of the American economy (...)"
I read sentences like this rather often, too often. Which immigrants ? Illegal, legal, non-immigrants ? Family-reunion newcomers, investors, small business owners, work-bound immigrants, who does the expression pertain to ? In the past or nowadays or both ?
Just by itself the remark is nothing. more than feel-good interjection, meaningless. And for some of us, rather hurtful.
And that was my question: WHO are the immigrants delivering that net positive ?
He mentions high tech workers. But if that is true, why are these treated almost the worst of all legal immigrants ? (Low number admitted, long waiting times for a permanent visa, lots of insecurity, wives getting bonkers as their lives leak away, kids kicked out, etc.)
Do not call them aliens anymore ! So woke we changed the name - but their shitty situation - stayed just the same.
2. On the front page, beneath the banner article, there's a bar that says "New Top Community". To the right of that, there's a magnifying glass.
3. Click on the magnifying glass.
4. In the bar that says "Search ..." type in the word "immigrant" or "immigration".
5. Read the many articles that come up about the topic.
There's a consistent theme in Noahpinion that shows immigrants have been a net benefit to the U.S. economy. There are charts, links to data posts, and even spicy commentary.
If you are asking where to find Noah's arguments showing immigrants are a net burden, or their success came at the expense of native-borns, you'll find very little to confirm your priors.
Economics isn't a binary choice, though. It's a complex discipline with so many dynamics. If it were binary, it would mean only two possible outcomes: 49% poorer or 51% poorer.
Pareto efficiency offers a condition where beyond a point, one person cannot gain without causing a loss to another. This implies a possibility of negotiation.
Whether to implement a proposal that makes 49% of the people poorer and 51% richer is a binary choice. If that is the result of doing it, then the result of not doing it is that 51% of the people are poorer than if you had done it. I was merely pointing out that Eugene's original statement was fairly asinine (as stated).
Ah, yes then that is a binary choice. It's a restatement of the Trolley Problem.
I'd wonder why conditions would be bounded to just those two choices. Maybe if it was like Argentina's currency collapse and these were the only choices for a bailout.
Did the presence of immigrants cause the wages to fall, or was it a coincidental factor?
When a group of immigrants come in, do they end up leaving a corresponding number of native-born workers unemployable? Also, US immigration and employment law is designed to minimize the effects of this happening. Not to say that it prevents it entirely, but being a native-born American in the American labor market does give you a leg up.
If we're talking about low-wage jobs that don't require college-level education or costly licensing, the problem here is that all workers -- native born and immigrant -- are bearing the brunt of market forces where costs of all kinds have to be kept low, especially labor. Opportunities for offshoring (moving the jobs out of the U.S. entirely) as well as automation (taking a job away from humans entirely) play into keeping jobs low-wage. This also influences the decision for native-borns to not take certain jobs at any wage, thus leaving a job open for an immigrant who would take a lower wage.
Nothing as cheap as an illegal worker. Preventing them from working will require private people to be forced to use E-verify too. I do not see that happen anytime soon.
Immigrants bring wages down or make that payment will not go up. They also help the gig-economy grow. Many economists consider this keeping-wages-in-check a great benefit.
Seldom mentioned, people losing their job or not getting a job because the customers/clients are now Hispanics.
The problem with authoritarians is they value loyalty over competent execution, which inevitably leads to incompetence and corruption. Authoritarian leaders measure their underlings by how well they follow orders, not the successes in their jobs. Putin's troops in Ukraine follow stupid orders and screw up. Xi's apparatchiks hide incompetence and corruption. Trump's people can barely form a rational thought, but they stroke their boss.
The real problem in the U.S. is that our billionaires lose touch with competent execution too quickly and begin to value loyalty to short-term profit over sharp vision.
Loyalty puts on an excellent show but fizzles in action.
Agree completely. I don't see the connection between competence and the type of government, which I thought was the point of this article. The problem is that the engineers and accountants of the world who understand the impacts of good and bad decisions typically lack the charisma to rise to leadership. Competence is boring.
The US private sector is filled with authoritarians running its corporations. Incompetent ones eventually (sometimes it takes way too long) go away due to bad results, immoral/illegal acts, and/or they take the company down due to their bad decisions. Competent leaders are visionaries who surround themsleves with nerds and listen to them. Over time, with the help of technology to provide transparency, this has resulted in better run companies.
Governments don't have the same safety net. Actual results matter less than perceived results (popularity). They need to get lucky in that the people who are popular enough to rise to power and stay there just happen to be competent enough to run an effective and efficient organization without corruption. That would be Utopia. Governments on this planet seem to get worse over time due to the impact of snowballing incompetence, eventually ending up in history books.
Well, ask yourself, if you were to be randomly born in one type of country or the other, would you choose the democracy bin or the autocracy bin? Where would you rather live right now?
Greg, the danger in engineering and accounting types who also have ambition yet lack the charisma for politics fulfill their desires by becoming Svengalis.
They latch on to a charismatic but not particularly capable personality who will give them the space to put their designs on the world (engineer) or to see an order in the world (accountant), as well as exploit the capability gap between the principal and agent to create a dependency.
Well, ask yourself, if you were to be randomly born in one type of country or the other, would you choose the democracy bin or the autocracy bin? Where would you rather live right now?
That's a very favorable presentation of the views of our nation's authoritarians. Their principal concerns are radically right-wing - deregulation, defunding education/healthcare/welfare, and lowering taxes. Who cares that they think about woke culture when schools in the South are moving to 4-day workweeks because they can't pay teachers enough to come in for 5 days...
You're kind of right - I got this from a WSJ podcast that highlighted a school in a southern state, and erroneously extrapolated.
However if we're going to look at red vs blue, by absolute numbers of districts these four states are highest: "More than half of these districts are located in four states—Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma and Oregon" -- so, half and half in terms of blue/red. And centrists democrats are pretty far right in how much education they're ok with gutting, so these policies aren't limited to wacko laissez-faire right-wingers. Doesn't make this swing toward gutting public good any more tolerable.
I'm from Alabama, so just a bit sensitive over the frequent sneering disdain online for my region and people.
I apologize for kind of snapping at you.
I'd be curious to see what regions of the blue states have the 4-day school weeks. I would suspect that they are in predominately rural areas, but I'm not sure and haven't seen any data with those details.
I understand, thanks for explaining; also I didn't mean to come off disdainful - I am more indignant at the fleecing of kids' potential, regardless of where in the US.
I'd be curious, too. It could equally be inner city schools that have trouble retaining teachers...
We all remember the days when the substitute teacher arrives as the placeholder. Teacher deficits are the ultimate measure of delivered quality I would assume (assuming the water is clean and the children are fed) -- by this measure the state of education around the country is pretty clear.
Does the 4-day workweek come with a 20% pay cut? Or does the 4-day workweek come with a 25% longer workday? Both are zero-sum scenarios and don't improve the financial trajectory of the school district.
No pay cut - the example in the podcast I heard was $38k starting salary was being offered, but there were no qualified takers. This is to attract people to even apply...!
On the other hand, kids get less instruction. Childcare needs go up by a day. Kids rely on food from school greatly, as many found out during the pandemic. So - maybe drawbacks, but I guess less bad than not having a teacher at all??
Might it be the case that the dysfunctional authoritarianism precedes or causes wars and the disciplined authoritarianism follows wars, or is that overfitting to the 20th century? That would not bode well for us, especially having nukes this time.
"Park Chung-hee, Deng Xiaoping, and Lee Kuan Yew certainly put that notion to rest." You are forgetting the most impressive example of authoritarian rule -- the Meiji oligarchy. These autocrats' successes are mostly just about them mimicking Meiji era Japan in the first place.
Mussolinoids is a brillaint term as it reminds me of something similar that only leads to backside pain and discomfort. Another wonderful post and most of all, unlike a lot of writing, you often stake a claim not commonly asserted and defend it with evidence and observation.
Thank you!!
You are the reason I joined Substack and now even write for myself! Thank you
Have you read Dan Slater's "Ordering Power," about Southeast Asian authoritarian governments?
Slater argues that authoritarians delivered economic growth, when they did, because their supporting elites were nervous about revolution and foreign invasion.
That is, authoritarians delivered growth because growth was the best hope of security.
Jobs and land reform kept the masses compliant; foreign exchange and/or heavy industry made the military strong. (Park's Korea, Deng's China.)
Conversely, where elites were less afraid of invasion and/or revolutionaries, authoritarians delivered "security" by the easy routes of stagnation and crony perquisites, not growth. (Philippines, or arguably today's China.)
It's not a perfect theory. Mussolini certainly thought he was there to deliver a strong army and keep the leftists down, but he didn't give Italy an economic miracle. Conversely, Erdogan and Modi started out genuinely delivering economic growth, albeit back when they were less politically invincible and less authoritarian.
But up to a point, I like the idea: authoritarians focus on "security," and "security" only means growth when the alternative is imminent revolution or invasion.
More often, the feeling of security is the reality of stagnation. Which is one reason why authoritarians promise to save the country, and end up stalling it.
Wrt elites, it seems to me that the real difference maker is the presence and power of elites. Land reform defanged them, at least temporarily in China and South Korea. Not so much in Philippines. Too powerful elites probably hold back the country because they advance by changing the rules of game rather than by innovating.
Acemoglu and Robinson are casting a long shadow here.
Is that an argument they make? I was thinking of Joe Studwell's How Asia Works and Asian Godfathers.
Their story is that authoritarian governments can't allow creative destruction, because economic insiders prevent it via political influence.
It's no longer growing at stellar developing country level rates. That's because it's economy is now big enough that relying on export driven growth is not as big a deal, which means it needs to rely more on domestic consumption. It's actually been trying to make that switch and failing. Plus all that stuff about limiting video games and condemning Korean boy bands don't help.
Key question is if they can sustain 4-5% growth in to the future with demographic headwinds. I'm skeptical. I don't see convincing reasons why China's growth won't slow further below 5%.
Firstly, the term 'effective governing' needs to be defined in a way that incorporates the entire geo-political and social realities and permits to track progress.
I think the conclusion is dangerous mostly because it's hard to correlate liberal-democracies with success. What can we infer about failing liberal-democracies?
An economically isolated Iran, with tremendous pressure on all fronts from almost everyone in the international community cannot measure in a fair and unbiased way how effective the administration was. I'm using administration instead of governing, on purpose. China rejected western vaccines. Iran was only offered western vaccines when the pandemic was past its peak, for economic reasons.
Interestingly, if we look into recent history, the western liberal democracies deposed a democratically elected government in Iran to create a monarchy that serves their interests.
UK liberal democratic government bet on Brexit, China 'authoritarian' regime bet on the Belt and Road initiative. I still believe China's bet was more realistic and anchored in geopolitical and economic realities than UK's direction of travel.
China is very often reduced to Xi's will and whims. The entire administration apparatus behind him is completely disregarded in spite of showing profound thinking about their own economy and synergies with the rest of the world.
In the west we are told to give up some privacy in favour of protecting national security and integrity. In China, Iran, Russia, they trade off different freedoms in an attempt to protect their own national interests and security as well as be able to catch up with their adversaries. I'm not saying I agree with their situation but I understand where they come from.
In Eastern Europe the are countries who's national integrity is guaranteed by US in exchange to almost delegating their foreign and economic policies to external parties. Is this 'effective governing'?
An interesting question is if a country can have an effective governing without having a direct, unmediated control over their national integrity, security and interest?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on what is China doing well that perhaps the liberal democracies should start doing too.
Good stuff. I read a book awhile back called the Corruption Paradox about China’s provincial governments. The author wrote about how incentive structures in the Chinese government rewarded provincial leaders for hitting growth targets. These local officials would partner with private firms and adopt plans to improve their local economies. I thought it was a fairly persuasive model that would be effective to deploy here for something like sustainability or reducing poverty.
I think we have reached a new Peak Noah, particularly the paragraph referring to China and India. As with previous pieces, on Indonesia for instance, it is quickly coming across (fairly or unfairly) as though Noah has never set foot in these places. Which is then doubly ironic since he exhorts readers to use the "simple evidence of our own eyes" ....
It’s all just surprisingly parochial.
Do you think that ban on immigrant’s from India,might lead to economic dysfunction in The USA,but can be beneficial to India as the brain-drain problem is resolved upto an extent?
Dysfunction? I work in the tech industry (semiconductors). We have great Indian engineers. But after 30-40 years of Indian immigration, they are just a few percent of tech workers. Are you proposing this disfunction would occur 100 years from now when we failed to grow their contribution from 2% to 6%??? It seems far more likely we would see a nearly infinitesimal decline in GDP growth.
Can you give a source for the "just a few %"?
E.g. over 40 percent of tech workers in Seattle - home to Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon - are Indian immigrants. (The article is confusing, first it states 40% of all tech workers, then it says 40% of all foreign-born tech workers.)
The Immigration of tech workers from India(&Pakistan) basically started about 20-25 years ago. Their number is limited because of the cap on H-1B visas and the limitation of Green Cards to 140.000 (includes wives/kids) and the single country limit of 7%. Many tech workers now continue to reside in India etc. and work for US co.'s remotely.
I do not know IT. I work in semiconductors. However, it appears that the settle statistic is distorted. The Seattle Times says (2018) that 40% of Seattle tech workers are foreign born and 40% of foreign born workers are Indian. That puts us at 16% which is certainly more than 2% but closer to 2% than to 40%. If this number did not continue to grow. It would most certainly not cause dysfunction.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/more-than-half-of-seattles-software-developers-were-born-outside-u-s/. (edit: these numbers seem in line with 2022 numbers for Meta and Google.
Immigrants made up almost one-fourth, or 23.1 percent, of all STEM workers in the United States in 2019. Immigrants from India formed the largest country of birth group among immigrant STEM workers, at 28.9 percent of all foreign-born STEM workers in that year. This would put the average number of Indian people working in STEM all over the US at 7% ? That number is growing but, as said, is kept lower than it could be.
0.231 * 0.289 = 0.067 or 6.7%
Thank you. I changed the text. Question then is how a rather low number causes so much hatred (as expressed e.g. in the H-4). Some experts state that H-1B non-immigrants from India took most of the jobs that were added in high tech over the past 20 years. Others, like dr. Gene Nelson, estimated in 2012 already that foreign tech workers, mainly from India, robbed American Citizen high-tech workers of 10 Trillion dollars (in part because older US workers are replaced with younger, cheaper, H-1B workers).
I think it's worth noting that while Trump talked big about the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin, it was actually pushed by a mini-Mussolinoid in Scott Walker. And the presence of others making noise, DeSantis chief among them, makes me wonder how authoritarians rise in other countries. Are they also, like provincial governors or something?
Also, are other Mussolinoids as terrible at hiring as Trump was? Up close, we saw how often his appointments were a perfect blend of corrupt and incompetent. (Scott Pruitt is my favorite example, because I remain convinced his resignation was only sparked by Alexandra Petri's column that made fun of his hand lotion and therefore made Trump think of him as effeminate.) Are Xi's and Putin's subordinates also bad at their jobs? I don't get the feeling they are, but I don't live in their countries.
To me the Carrier “rescue” was a classic bullshit exercise. Make a big show of “saving” this factory, throw tax credits at it, and then watch the company do what it was going to do anyway.
That seemed predictable and probably just something to buy Pence's personal loyalty.
When loyalty is your first filter (as opposed to competence or honesty) I'd imagine the likelihood of success goes down. Also helps to not have hangers on skimming off funds in their preview.
You've laid out in elegant fashion why authoritarianism isn't just bad for "them" but also for "us." Timely and appreciated piece.
Great article and insights. However, my question is given the governance failures, why do Mussolinoids have such staying power? Even in the U.S. it is highly likely that Trump will be the next President again.
I wouldn’t say “highly likely”.
Fair point.
You left the Brexiteers off this list who completely fit the model of failure that the other Mussolinoids have displayed, only as Brexit is locked in the ‘culture war over economics’ fear is being realised every day
Britain is utterly broken
There's a quote from the twentieth century French rightist Charles Maurras that reminds me of natcons (and maybe conservatives in general these days: "in order to love France today, it is necessary to hate what she has become." They consider themselves super patriots, but they think the way to love America is to hate what it is here and now.
"But immigrants are the lifeblood of the American economy (...)"
I read sentences like this rather often, too often. Which immigrants ? Illegal, legal, non-immigrants ? Family-reunion newcomers, investors, small business owners, work-bound immigrants, who does the expression pertain to ? In the past or nowadays or both ?
Just by itself the remark is nothing. more than feel-good interjection, meaningless. And for some of us, rather hurtful.
Noah has several posts showing the economics of immigrants are a net positive. It's not a shock to anyone here. Read the archives.
You might be displeased with the conclusions.
And that was my question: WHO are the immigrants delivering that net positive ?
He mentions high tech workers. But if that is true, why are these treated almost the worst of all legal immigrants ? (Low number admitted, long waiting times for a permanent visa, lots of insecurity, wives getting bonkers as their lives leak away, kids kicked out, etc.)
Do not call them aliens anymore ! So woke we changed the name - but their shitty situation - stayed just the same.
Learn by doing.
1. Go to noahpinion.substack.com
2. On the front page, beneath the banner article, there's a bar that says "New Top Community". To the right of that, there's a magnifying glass.
3. Click on the magnifying glass.
4. In the bar that says "Search ..." type in the word "immigrant" or "immigration".
5. Read the many articles that come up about the topic.
There's a consistent theme in Noahpinion that shows immigrants have been a net benefit to the U.S. economy. There are charts, links to data posts, and even spicy commentary.
If you are asking where to find Noah's arguments showing immigrants are a net burden, or their success came at the expense of native-borns, you'll find very little to confirm your priors.
I know how to search a website, thank you. Your answer is rather condescending.
Apparently you did not pick up on the fact that learned about immigration. The hard way. By doing. For the past 25 years already.
I know we (hub and me) are a net benefit. For starters, the US did not pay a dime towards his education. He works, he pays (a lot of) taxes.
However when I talk to politicians, one-on-one, I am told we are wage-lowering job-stealers. Better if we left. ASAP.
The condescension is the point.
Your immigration questions have been asked and answered.
I wasn't trying to start a conversation, but to stop it.
If you did not want a conversation, why did you reply ? You had nothing to contribute obviously.
I asked for more details: which groups of immigrants ? A question that apparently cannot be answered here.
It is of course a binary choice. You would prefer the option to make 51% poorer?
Economics isn't a binary choice, though. It's a complex discipline with so many dynamics. If it were binary, it would mean only two possible outcomes: 49% poorer or 51% poorer.
Pareto efficiency offers a condition where beyond a point, one person cannot gain without causing a loss to another. This implies a possibility of negotiation.
Whether to implement a proposal that makes 49% of the people poorer and 51% richer is a binary choice. If that is the result of doing it, then the result of not doing it is that 51% of the people are poorer than if you had done it. I was merely pointing out that Eugene's original statement was fairly asinine (as stated).
Ah, yes then that is a binary choice. It's a restatement of the Trolley Problem.
I'd wonder why conditions would be bounded to just those two choices. Maybe if it was like Argentina's currency collapse and these were the only choices for a bailout.
We don't need hypotheticals. We have a natural experiment in the U.S. economy. We have immigrants. We have the data. In short: coulda but didn't-a.
Did the presence of immigrants cause the wages to fall, or was it a coincidental factor?
When a group of immigrants come in, do they end up leaving a corresponding number of native-born workers unemployable? Also, US immigration and employment law is designed to minimize the effects of this happening. Not to say that it prevents it entirely, but being a native-born American in the American labor market does give you a leg up.
If we're talking about low-wage jobs that don't require college-level education or costly licensing, the problem here is that all workers -- native born and immigrant -- are bearing the brunt of market forces where costs of all kinds have to be kept low, especially labor. Opportunities for offshoring (moving the jobs out of the U.S. entirely) as well as automation (taking a job away from humans entirely) play into keeping jobs low-wage. This also influences the decision for native-borns to not take certain jobs at any wage, thus leaving a job open for an immigrant who would take a lower wage.
Nothing as cheap as an illegal worker. Preventing them from working will require private people to be forced to use E-verify too. I do not see that happen anytime soon.
Immigrants bring wages down or make that payment will not go up. They also help the gig-economy grow. Many economists consider this keeping-wages-in-check a great benefit.
Seldom mentioned, people losing their job or not getting a job because the customers/clients are now Hispanics.
Yeah, you're ignoring the China Shock, which had a much larger effect than immigration.
I think it was a double whammy. The immigrants however are the most visible.
I always joke that, with kleptocrats, the problem is they eventually have to govern.
The problem with authoritarians is they value loyalty over competent execution, which inevitably leads to incompetence and corruption. Authoritarian leaders measure their underlings by how well they follow orders, not the successes in their jobs. Putin's troops in Ukraine follow stupid orders and screw up. Xi's apparatchiks hide incompetence and corruption. Trump's people can barely form a rational thought, but they stroke their boss.
The real problem in the U.S. is that our billionaires lose touch with competent execution too quickly and begin to value loyalty to short-term profit over sharp vision.
Loyalty puts on an excellent show but fizzles in action.
Agree completely. I don't see the connection between competence and the type of government, which I thought was the point of this article. The problem is that the engineers and accountants of the world who understand the impacts of good and bad decisions typically lack the charisma to rise to leadership. Competence is boring.
The US private sector is filled with authoritarians running its corporations. Incompetent ones eventually (sometimes it takes way too long) go away due to bad results, immoral/illegal acts, and/or they take the company down due to their bad decisions. Competent leaders are visionaries who surround themsleves with nerds and listen to them. Over time, with the help of technology to provide transparency, this has resulted in better run companies.
Governments don't have the same safety net. Actual results matter less than perceived results (popularity). They need to get lucky in that the people who are popular enough to rise to power and stay there just happen to be competent enough to run an effective and efficient organization without corruption. That would be Utopia. Governments on this planet seem to get worse over time due to the impact of snowballing incompetence, eventually ending up in history books.
Well, ask yourself, if you were to be randomly born in one type of country or the other, would you choose the democracy bin or the autocracy bin? Where would you rather live right now?
I'd love to know Edward Snowden's answer to this now that Putin has implemented the draft.
Greg, the danger in engineering and accounting types who also have ambition yet lack the charisma for politics fulfill their desires by becoming Svengalis.
They latch on to a charismatic but not particularly capable personality who will give them the space to put their designs on the world (engineer) or to see an order in the world (accountant), as well as exploit the capability gap between the principal and agent to create a dependency.
Well, ask yourself, if you were to be randomly born in one type of country or the other, would you choose the democracy bin or the autocracy bin? Where would you rather live right now?
LOL. Please move to a real authoritarian place first to experience real authoritarianism.
You joke about authoritarianism only if you've never experienced it. I do find many Americans too clueless and blithely ignorant.
That's a very favorable presentation of the views of our nation's authoritarians. Their principal concerns are radically right-wing - deregulation, defunding education/healthcare/welfare, and lowering taxes. Who cares that they think about woke culture when schools in the South are moving to 4-day workweeks because they can't pay teachers enough to come in for 5 days...
The South?
https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/school-calendar-four-day-school-week-overview.aspx
Oregon, Idaho, South Dakota, Colorado, and New Mexico seem to be the states with where this practice is most frequent.
And 3/5 of those states are blue.
It is relatively rare in most of the South. But nice assumption.
You're kind of right - I got this from a WSJ podcast that highlighted a school in a southern state, and erroneously extrapolated.
However if we're going to look at red vs blue, by absolute numbers of districts these four states are highest: "More than half of these districts are located in four states—Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma and Oregon" -- so, half and half in terms of blue/red. And centrists democrats are pretty far right in how much education they're ok with gutting, so these policies aren't limited to wacko laissez-faire right-wingers. Doesn't make this swing toward gutting public good any more tolerable.
I'm from Alabama, so just a bit sensitive over the frequent sneering disdain online for my region and people.
I apologize for kind of snapping at you.
I'd be curious to see what regions of the blue states have the 4-day school weeks. I would suspect that they are in predominately rural areas, but I'm not sure and haven't seen any data with those details.
I understand, thanks for explaining; also I didn't mean to come off disdainful - I am more indignant at the fleecing of kids' potential, regardless of where in the US.
I'd be curious, too. It could equally be inner city schools that have trouble retaining teachers...
We all remember the days when the substitute teacher arrives as the placeholder. Teacher deficits are the ultimate measure of delivered quality I would assume (assuming the water is clean and the children are fed) -- by this measure the state of education around the country is pretty clear.
https://districtadministration.com/which-states-are-hurting-the-most-when-it-comes-to-teacher-shortages/#:~:text=Mississippi%20saw%20the%20highest%20teacher,missing%20teacher%20per%2010%2C000%20students.
Does the 4-day workweek come with a 20% pay cut? Or does the 4-day workweek come with a 25% longer workday? Both are zero-sum scenarios and don't improve the financial trajectory of the school district.
No pay cut - the example in the podcast I heard was $38k starting salary was being offered, but there were no qualified takers. This is to attract people to even apply...!
On the other hand, kids get less instruction. Childcare needs go up by a day. Kids rely on food from school greatly, as many found out during the pandemic. So - maybe drawbacks, but I guess less bad than not having a teacher at all??
Might it be the case that the dysfunctional authoritarianism precedes or causes wars and the disciplined authoritarianism follows wars, or is that overfitting to the 20th century? That would not bode well for us, especially having nukes this time.
Hmm, interesting thought, but could be overfitting yeah.
It can be hard to draw the line between pre-war and post-war. Which one was Mussolini? Franco?
"Park Chung-hee, Deng Xiaoping, and Lee Kuan Yew certainly put that notion to rest." You are forgetting the most impressive example of authoritarian rule -- the Meiji oligarchy. These autocrats' successes are mostly just about them mimicking Meiji era Japan in the first place.