UPDATED: Fiscal Deficit Attributable To Immigration (Ad Hominen Fallacy)

Debt, Economy, IMMIGRATION

According to Edwin Rubenstein, President of ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis, the average immigrant household generates a deficit of about $17,000 per immigrant household. This figure is a function of the difference between federal benefits received and federal taxes paid. Whereas it used to be “that native-born households generated a federal fiscal surplus—paying more taxes than they received in benefits,” this is no longer the case. “Today’s deficit,” Rubenstein acknowledges, “is too large to be ascribed to any narrowly defined group.” Everyone is in hock. “Food Stamp Nation,” as Pat Buchanan puts it in his latest, admirable book.

Nevertheless, as I’ve previously argued, “from the fact that taxpayer-funded welfare for nationals is morally wrong … it does not follow that extending it to millions of unviable non-nationals is economically and morally negligible. Or that such immigration remotely comports with the libertarian goal of curtailing government growth.” It’s like saying that because a bank has been robbed by one band of bandits (welfare-dependent nationals), repelling the next lot (welfare-dependent non-nationals) is unnecessary given that the damage has already been done.

Rubenstein:

There are about 13 million such households in the U.S. Well, when you do the math—13 million times $17,000—you get a federal “immigration deficit” of $220 billion.
That is the fiscal deficit attributable to immigration. It equals about 17% of the entire federal deficit.
That is a big chunk. It’s roughly equal the annual interest now paid on the national debt.

UPDATE (Oct. 20): To James below, I’m glad you wrote: Subscribe to my newsletter, James. In my next WND column, I give you the tools to counter the false argument your kids ought to have been taught at school not to make. Against your numbers, your kids have advanced the ad hominen fallacy. Read tonight’s WND column and join us here.

Regulated Scarcity

Free Markets, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, Socialism

When there is a shortage of a good, it is safe to say that it is a result of government incursion into the economy. And there are reported “shortages—“severe” shortages—in “drugs for chemotherapy, infections and other serious ailments.” The shortages, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are “endangering patients and forcing hospitals to buy life-saving medications from secondary suppliers at huge markups because they can’t get them any other way.”

How would consumer demand have been heeded in an unhampered market?

The urgent demand for a drug would have been followed by a shortfall of supply. Large demand and short supply would initially send the price of the drugs rocketing. Profits in an unhampered pharmaceutical market would signal to the many drug makers that it’s pedal to the metal: time to enter into accelerated production of this scarce commodity.

Walter Olson of CATO provides more details about “the federal government’s widely publicized crackdown in recent years on pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality-control practices” to have played a role in current shortages.

UPDATED: Author Replies to Amazon Reviews of ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’

Anti-Semitism, Fascism, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Literature, Race, Racism, Reason, South-Africa

“Compassionate Fascist” has reviewed Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa on Amazon. Here is my reply:

AUTHOR REPLIES TO A REVIEW BY A SELF-PROFESSED RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITE. “Compassionate Fascist” was indeed expelled from this author’s moderated weblog, after a long “tenure” as the resident racist and anti-Semite. That’s how much I value free speech. This character openly admits to hating Jews qua Jews and blacks qua blacks, in opposition to the philosophy of individualism. On 09.24.11, “Compassionate Fascist” wrote on Barely a Blog: “I intend to live long enough to see the power of organized Jewry broken, and Israel off the map. Have a nice day.” He was forthwith expelled for advocating the eradication of Jewish Israelis.

Up until his expulsion from Barely a Blog’s comments section, I had imagined, naïvely, that by extending my hospitality in cyberspace to “Compassionate Fascist,” and letting him vent his disdain for Jews openly, he would come to see the error of his collectivist, contemptuous ways. After all, did not his “theorizing” about the evil of Jews as a group fly in the face of the generosity and hospitality this frustrated man was receiving from a Jewish individual (me)? Of course it did.

Historian Alan Charles Kors once observed that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth; being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.” Malevolent, irrational individuals like “Compassionate Fascist” have no qualms about falling into self- contradiction, and being “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

THE FASCIST’S LIES. “Mercer,” writes “Compassionate Fascist,” above, “does make a few admissions about the leading role of Jews-including, not to put too fine a point on it, her father and herself-in bringing down the White regime.” This is a ridiculous claim; it is simply untrue. This so-called admission is nowhere in the book under review. Read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” to see for yourself.

THE FASCIST’S LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS. I don’t know much about the unfortunately named Revilo P. Oliver, except that he was, according to Wikipedia, “an editorial advisor for the Institute for Historical Review, an organization devoted primarily to … Holocaust denial.” In promoting myth and conspiracy under the guise of scholarship, “the nutball Institute for Hysterical Review” is hostile to the truth. And I care a great deal about standards of truth and honest inquiry. Of course, it is quite possible to deny the historic truth about the Holocaust and, at the same time, write well on other issues.

KEVIN MACDONALD. Profound? I doubt it. You’ll get more truth about Jews from watching Woody Allen films than from MacDonald’s Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum Science of Jews and their intellectual habits. For example, MacDonald claims somewhere in his elusory analysis that Jewish women are oppressed. He has clearly not met many Jewish women. I refuted some of his silly, discursive stuff in a column called “BLAME THE JEWS.”

*****

Get a glimpse into another not-so-Wonderful Mind by reading my response to Avery Morrow’s review of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa:

ILANA MERCER (Author) replies: This is a baffling review as it impugns the scientific method. In other words, according to the reviewer (Avery Morrow), the book’s deductions, drawn as they are from a critical mass of data, are unreliable–even iffy–because the author (me) has not divulged more about herself. The claim is that I ought to have introduced more personal bias into the data for these to be believable. This is how bad the miseducation of America has become! OFFERING PROOF IN SUPPORT OF ONE’S CASE IS TAKEN AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THAT CASE! The truth is the exact opposite of this reviewer’s gripe. A one-case study does not a rule make. The point about the scientific method is to prove your case beyond doubt. Of course, as was stated subtly in the Introduction, “In the interstices of this polemic, the reader will find my story and the story of those I love and had to leave behind” (p. 10). And more about crime vis-à-vis my family is on pp. 12-13. Like almost every other member of South Africa’s minority, so have they been brutalized by barbarians. The book is studded with the personal stories of South Africans, some my own. But no, the reviewer wants the author on Oprah’s couch; writhing in a vulgar, uniquely American display. Good schools once taught that good writing was understated, not hysterical or excessively personal, and that using the “me, me,” imperial “I” was plain self-indulgent, piss-poor prose. The bumper crops of ignoramuses our educational institutions now disgorge are ignorant of these eternal verities-and are, in fact, taught the exact opposite.

Next: The evidence the reader doubts comes from the painfully politically correct “Bureau of Justice statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United states, `Victims and Offenders,'” report of 2005. (And, contrary to the reviewer’s assertion, blacks are not 20 percent of the US’s population.) Read about “Sexual Subjugation” on p. 37: “Every year, approximately 37,460 white women are raped by blacks. As the BJS’s 2005 `Criminal Victimization Statistical Tables’ reveal, blacks, at 12.3 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION [emphasis added], were responsible for thirty-six percent of the 111,490 incidents in which whites were raped. And blacks committed 100 percent of the 36,620 incidents in which blacks were raped. …” But, for reporting these facts, the author is maligned!

Finally, the reader fails to offer a citation in support of his claim that I implied, “East Asians don’t volunteer at African hospitals in large numbers.” On page 181 I addressed a South African hospital only. “Baragwanath,” I wrote, is “the only hospital in South Africa’s biggest township. Now as then, the staff members ministering to the multitudes in Soweto are supervised and mentored by selfless Christian and Jewish medical men and women.”

UPDATE (Oct 18): Contemplationist: For someone whose name often appears in BAB’s Comments Section your question shows laziness or a lack of retention. Ad nauseam have I moderated and indulged discussion on what you and your ilk refer to as the “Jewish Question.” Apparently, you are unwilling or unable to search this blog’s archives (sidebar, under “Categories,” dah), especially, and those of the mother site under the relevant search categories. (Gosh, let me see: neoconservatism, Jews & Judaism, ilana mercer, South Africa, etc., get the drift?)

The following mental exercise is probably beyond the ken of our typical “gritty” Jew-focused “thinker.” How about we discuss the role of Jews in the freedom movement, the disease-conquering (or medicine) movement, the invention sphere, or the general-beneficiaries-of-humanity cabal? Hmmm: What might we conclude from that small exercise? (Insert Beavis and Butthead grunts here.) That a lot of Jews rise to to the top in society, and that many do untold good and many a good deal of harm, as individuals. Like a lot of other left-liberals, progressive Jews can do things we hard rightists view as bad. (I know one thing; most Jewish parents would never feed their kids fairy tales so that they come within an inch of losing their lives, as in the example in “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism.”

A Jewish parent, liberal or conservative, would have taught the kid as follows: “I don’t care what you learn at school, you klutz; but If I ever catch you jogging through THAT neighborhood again, I’ll … I’ll … Forget about the allowance and inheritance. Get that?” You get the drift.

UPDATE II: 999 Or 666?

Economy, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Taxation

“When you take the 999 plan and turn it upside down (666); the devil’s in the details.”—Michele Bachmann.

Here’s Bachmann’s brilliant quip in it entirety, excerpted from “The Hanover Economic Debate.” [YouTube of the beautiful Minnesota Congresswoman follows.]

BACHMANN: “I would have to say that the 999 plan isn’t a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. And I would say that from my experience being in Congress, but also as a federal tax lawyer, when you — the last thing you would do is give Congress another pipeline of a revenue stream. And this gives Congress a pipeline in a sales tax. A sales tax can also lead to value-added tax. The United States Congress put into place the Spanish-American War tax in 1888. We only partially repealed that in 2006. So once you get a new revenue stream, you are never going to get rid of it.

And one thing I would say is, when you take the 999 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil is in the details.”

UPDATE I (Oct. 15): Peter Schiff says 999 offers a substantial reduction in the corporate rate of income tax which is a positive thing (naturally). Schiff also credits Cain with intending to move toward the abolition of tax on income and toward replacing the income tax with some tariff-like national sales tax. So far so good, says Schiff. However, corporations will have to pay a 9 percent tax on profits as well as on their payroll. 999 is a hidden payroll tax. That’s a new thing. And it’s bad, says Schiff.

UPDATE II (Oct. 16): More about the 9-9-9 plan from Bruce Bartlett (whom I once praised for aiming a shot across the bows of Bush’s bastardized “conservatism” before it was allowable).

No mention is made on the site of a tax cut for those now in the 10 percent, 15 percent or 25 percent brackets. This means that the only people who would get a tax rate cut are those now in the 28 percent, 33 percent or 35 percent brackets. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, only 4 percent of taxpayers pay any taxes at those rates.
As for corporations, Mr. Cain’s proposal is primarily going to benefit those with revenues of more than $1 million a year, because they account for 98.7 percent of all receipts by C corporations. (A C corporation is a legal entity separate and distinct from its owners that is taxed as a corporation; its shareholders pay taxes individually on their gains.) Those companies with receipts over $50 million account for 88.8 percent of total receipts.
Other business entities — sole proprietorships, S corporations (which have between 1 and 100 shareholders and pass through net income or losses to shareholders) and partnerships — would not benefit because they are not taxed on the corporate schedule. But they represent 92 percent of all businesses.
Second, Mr. Cain would eliminate all taxes on profits earned by multinational corporations outside the United States. It’s hard to know the impact of this provision, but according to Martin Sullivan, an economist with Tax Analysts, the 50 largest corporations in the United States generated half of their profits in other countries.

Read the rest of Bartlett’s substantive analysis of 999.