We are doomed (economically), and other 2010 mid-term election observations

++Addition++Patrick Cleburne notes that I disagree with the idea that immigration is a winning issue for the GOP. That's a product of poor communication on my part, not my actual sentiments. I'm just speculating that going as far as Angle did may have been politically counterproductive. I suspect (and the exit polling data appears to support me) that people who are seriously concerned with immigration will seek out politicians' stances on it, so making it a campaign centerpiece is unnecessary and runs the risk of opening one up to all the usual point-and-sputter charges of racism, bigotry, hate, etc.

---

California's Proposition 19 was shot down at nearly identical rates by race. Like American Idol and Monday Night Football, the attempt to legalize marijuana use among those old enough to drink is something people of every color can appreciate, or in this case, object to:

Race	Yes	No
White (60%)	46%	54%
Black (10%)	47%	53%
Hispanic (22%)	45%	55%
Asian (4%)	39%	61%
Other (3%)	48%	52%

The partisan differences are far more distinct, however:

Party	Yes	No
Democrat	56%	44%
Republican	30%	70%
Independent	47%	53%

Without taking this into consideration, we'd miss the fact that non-white Democrats fell in between independent whites and Republican whites in their levels of opposition to Prop 19. Support only came from white Democrats which, even in solidly blue California, wasn't enough to get it passed. There's a take-home message or two here for SWPLs.

Arizona and Colorado each had propositions (actually an amendment to the state constitution in the case of the latter) on healthcare up for voter consideration that were similarly designed to challenge the Obama plan. As expected, in both states conservatives and Republicans were the most supportive of the propositions, liberals and Democrats the least so, with moderates and independents in between.

Far more remarkable (and in my opinion, encouraging) was how the age trend ran in the opposite direction it so consistently runs on other issues largely defined by party affiliation. Young people were most supportive of the propositions and, by extension, are the least supportive of Obamacare. In Arizona:

Age	Yes	No
18-29 (10%)	60%	40%
30-44 (21%)	55%	45%
45-64 (42%)	57%	43%
65+ (28%)	50%	50%

In Colorado, the 18-29 age range was too small to reliably report a breakdown for, but the trend is similar:

Age	Yes	No
18-29 (9%)	N/A	N/A
30-44 (22%)	48%	52%
45-64 (47%)	48%	52%
65+ (21%)	43%	57%

Young adults appear to understand that a socialized healthcare system is one in which they will be paying for benefits their elders will enjoy without getting anything in return. With the inversion of the age pyramid that is taking place across the Western world, the young are already going to be dealing with increasing demands on their resources from social security and other old age entitlements that are not tied directly to healthcare. They are understandably reluctant to take on the burdens Obamacare will inevitably place on them.

I wonder if supporters of the Arizona and Colorado propositions were aware of how the age element played into the results. This was the first general election in which such propositions directly challenging Obamacare could be put to the voting public, so waiting until 2012 would've meant passing up the earliest opportunity. But it also would've meant a higher percentage of the electorate would've been in the 18-29 year old range. In Arizona, it didn't matter--Prop 106 passed. In Colorado, however, amendment 63 narrowly went down to defeat.

Moving to the congressional elections, following President Obama's victory in the 2008 election, Half Sigma decried the GOP becoming a party of poor, dumb whites, citing Obama's victory among the highest income voters. Two years later, the clarion call is sounding a bit silly. One of the good (or convenient, anyway) things about stagnating per capita wealth in the US over the last decade is that like comparisons among voters by income range can be made across election cycles. The following table shows the percentage of voters who voted for the Democrat in their district's House race ('06 and '10) and who voted for Obama ('08):

Income	2006	2008	2010
$30k-	63%	64%	56%
$30k-$50k	56%	55%	51%
$50k-$75k	50%	48%	46%
$75k-$100k	52%	51%	42%
$100k-$200k	47%	48%	42%
$200k+	45%	52%	35%

More than half of all voters earning more than $200,000 a year supported Obama. A couple of years later, only one-third of high income earners voted Democrat. The country's most affluent swung farther back to the right--a full 17 points--than any other income group--where swings ranged from 2 to 9 points--did between '08 and '10. Either Obama is a uniquely SWPL candidate, or a lot of people didn't know who they were voting for. Everywhere exit polling was conducted and reported at the state level showed that income and voting Republican correlated positively with two exceptions; the uber SWPL state of Oregon, where the trend mostly ran in the opposite direction, and Delaware, where income wasn't much of a factor.

Contingent upon the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, I suspect the latter will prove to be the case, with many high income earners abandoning Obama in his reelection bid. On the brighter side for the left, however, post-graduates who don't make jack shit are still reliably Democratic!

Kudos to the media establishment for preferring the term "independent" to "moderate" when referring to swing voters. Among self-described moderates, Republicans gained a relatively paltry 6 points between '08 and '10 (and still lost them as a group, 42%-55%). Among self-described independents, though, the swing was more than twice that, at 13 points, for a 56%-38% victory. Parenthetically, moderate is a potential answer to the question on political ideology, while independent is a potential response to the question on party identification.

Despite disingenuous admonitions to Republicans about becoming the "party of no" from leftist commentators on NPR and NBC, 56% of the electorate asserted that the government needs to hear a lot more noes than it has been hearing lately ("government is doing too much"). Only 38% said the "government should do more".

Ideally, rather than asking specifically about illegal immigration, exit polls would query voters on immigration in general. The illegal adjective has negative connotations for most people, and consequently when asked to choose the most important issue among a list of several, those who identify illegal immigration as the most pressing are probably more restrictionist than would be the case if the issue in question was regarding immigration policy in general. Or more precisely, those who might choose immigration as their most important issue instead of say, healthcare, still choose healthcare if the immigration choice is limited to one concerning only illegal immigration.

That said, there are plenty of people out there who care about illegal immigration and want to make it easier for those who are illegal to become legal residents, in some cases by merely being present in the US and wanting to live here. And among those who care about illegal immigration the most, Republicans won big, 69%-26%. The pragmatic lesson here for politicians is that (in the general election) restrictionism wins, but it doesn't need to be a centerpiece of their campaigns.

Far from being an unfortunate curmudgeonly exception to the ebullient optimism of the American people, a plurality of voters basically agree with the Derb that we are doomed:

Life for the next generation will be...
Better	32%
Worse	38%
About the same	26%

For those hoping to see pessimism reclaimed, consider an even greater reason to be optimistic! In three seemingly random states that held a Senate and/or gubernatorial election--Colorado, Florida, and Ohio--exit pollsters asked voters whether the economy was in a normal downturn or in long-term decline:

US economy is in...	Colorado	Florida	Ohio
Normal downturn	22%	23%	22%
Long-term decline	72%	73%	77%

Whether you're from the mountain west, the Ohio valley, or the sunshine state, sing it from the rooftops: We are doomed!

Less happily, most Republicans continue to be sunny on the war in Afghanistan. A little over a month ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a column presaging a splitting of the blanket by the tea party wing and war wing of the new GOP. Looks like the latter has the advantage of strength in numbers:

War in Afghanistan	Approve (40%)	Disapprove (54%)
Democrat	23%	77%
Republican	60%	40%

Those opposed to the war are a minority (within the GOP; it's the majority opinion more generally), but at least they are now a substantial one.

In a series of email exchanges I had with the late Richard Nadler, the open borders conservative pointed to John McCain's strong performance among Hispanics in his '04 Senate reelection campaign, in which he won 70% of their votes. But he also won 77% of the white vote, illustrating Steve Sailer's observation that Hispanics tend to vote as whites do, shifted several points to the left.

Six years later, McCain won reelection again. His good fortune was sealed in the primary when he defeated JD Hayworth, but apparently his triumph there did not come without cost. After a decade of being the GOP establishment's front man on amnesty, one nebulous ad about completing "the danged fence" and his Hispanic support vanished* (so goes the media narrative, anyhow). He lost 40%-57% among Hispanics to Rodney Glassman, whose campaign stance on immigration was almost indistinguishable from McCain's.

Yet McCain still sailed to an easy victory because he won the far more important white vote by a wide margin, 64%-29%. It's still one person, one vote after all!

Despite the presumption many have of Christine O'Donnell as a Christian kook, she won among whites in Delaware, 51%-45%. She lost her Senate bid because more than one-fifth of the state's electorate is black, and blacks voted against her 93%-6%, nearly the same rate that blacks voted for Obama in the '08 presidential election. C'mon, don't act surprised. You know how black guys feel about white girls who won't put out!

In most states with large Hispanic populations and a Senate election taking place, exit pollsters asked voters an absurdly dichotomous question about whether most illegal immigrants should be "offered legal status" or "deported". Strangely enough, the question was left out in Florida! Could it be that the majority of those favoring deportation voted for a Hispanic guy and against a white guy? That doesn't fit the narrative and simply must be kept from the public at all costs!

Along with their opposition to federal healthcare mandates, Kentucky offers another reason to find joy in the phrase "the children are our future". Rand Paul pulled off a nearly impossible feat for a Republican in a tight statewide election--he won the 18-24 year old vote, 52%-47%. While I'm a bit wary of how he'll vote on immigration legislation, he embodies my sentiments more than any of the other 99 Senators he'll be sharing the chamber with next year.

Initial exit polling data was reported to show that Sharron Angle had taken a black-like shellacking among Hispanics in Nevada's Senate election. As it turns out, her performance among Hispanics (30%-68%) was in line with Republicans nationwide (34%-64%). It's hardly surprising that given eligibility for affirmative action benefits, low levels of educational attainment, low incomes, high rates of poverty, and high rates of welfare usage, Hispanics are going to find a home in the Democratic party. Very few currently backing Democrats would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican if only the GOP would listen to Bryan Caplan.

Finally, a conundrum from Washington. Patty Murray, the Democrat, won among those aged 45 and older, 54%-46%, but Dino Rossi, the Republican, won among those aged 18-44 by an identical 54%-46%. Hey, I only claimed that Rand Paul's feat was nearly impossible.

* His Arizonan support, anyway. McCain was never able to persuade many Hispanics to back him in '08, even though as I wrote a month before the election, he could not have asked for a more favorable Democratic opponent to be running against as far as garnering the Hispanic vote was concerned:

We have the highest-profile open borders member of the GOP's national leadership, who teamed up with Ted Kennedy in an amnesty attempt that united the public in opposition and who virtually barred restrictionists from the Republican National Convention, running against Obama, who lost the Hispanic vote 64%-36% [to Hillary Clinton, during the Democratic primaries], a margin less favorable than Bush enjoyed among Hispanics in '04. Could you [, Richard Nadler,] ask for a better setup? Yet McCain is getting massacred by Obama among Hispanics. The polls show him losing the Hispanic vote 59%-29%, an Obama advantage that has held steady for several months.

Restrictionist sentiment grows alongside resentment of elites

In cataloging the sorry state of California's financial affairs, Parapundit explains how the host will become increasingly intolerant of the parasites who feed off of it:

Hitting the wall of government growth means resentment of elites will grow. It also means the elite factions and other factions will come into more direct conflict and settled issues will become unsettled again. Fixed entitlements will become unfixed. Decades long promises will be broken. As governments approach bankruptcy old settlements of political battles will be repudiated out of necessity.

Not only will resentment against elites grow, but so will resentment against the Establishment in general. Big business, in pushing for open borders, will take it for trying to socialize costs while privatizing profits. While native employment levels have decreased during the recession, employment levels among the foreign-born have increased. In euphemism, Pew explains:

Immigrants' job gains may result from greater flexibility with regard to wages and hours or greater mobility. ...

Even as immigrants have managed to gain jobs in the recovery, they have experienced a sharp decline in earnings. From 2009 to 2010, the median weekly earnings of foreign-born workers decreased 4.5%, compared with a loss of less than one percent for native-born workers. Latino immigrants experienced the largest drop in wages of all.

Bringing in more Latin Americans will make the US more like Latin America.

Bryan Caplan argues that increased immigration is a good thing for those who want to see the welfare state dismantled because it creates resentment among natives who perceive an increasing amount they pay in taxes going to foreign settlers rather than to their fellow Americans. So in a similar vein, I guess I'll argue that the "recession" (though I think the term incorrectly insinuates that a recovery is just around the bend when there are so many fundamental indicators suggesting things are going to continue to get worse before they get better) is a good thing for immigration restrictionists. Pew reports that Hispanics in the US have soured significantly on immigration from Latin America over the last three years:

Hispanics are also divided about the impact of illegal immigration on Hispanics already living in the U.S. Roughly equal shares say the impact has been positive (29%), negative (31%) or made no difference (30%). This mixed judgment stands in sharp contrast to views that Latinos expressed on this subject in 2007. Back then, fully half (50%) of Latinos said the impact was positive, while just 20% said it was negative [with the remaining 30% saying it made no difference].

That is, just three years ago, for every two Hispanics who thought illegal immigration had a negative impact on Hispanics already in the US, there were five who thought it was having on positive impact on them. Fast-forward to the present and there are now slightly more Hispanics who assert that illegal immigration is a negative than their are Hispanics who say it is a positive thing. That's a huge shift in opinion.

Kudos, parenthetically, to Pew for having the courage to report as much--the center is left-leaning for sure, but it is empirically honest, which is what's important.

A lot of the polling data I've sifted through in previous posts dates back a few years. I would like to see Zogby do another poll as comprehensive as the one it conducted in 2006. I suspect Americans have become even more restrictionist across the political and economic spectrums since then.

Attitudinal and behavioral differences towards work by race

In a previous post, I looked at attitudinal and (self-reported) behavioral differences towards work among the sexes. There are several reasons for the wage gap between men and women putatively doing the same work; men tend to have been employed for a longer period of time than women have been (a function of the relatively recent uptick in the percentage of women entering the workforce), men are more willing to work oddball shifts which tend to include a wage supplemental relative to the same work done during preferred times, men are more likely to work overtime, men are more likely to name work as the top source of satisfaction in their lives, and men are more likely to say they'd prefer to work more hours and consequently earn more money they currently do.

Historically, men constituted the majority of those seeking higher education, though that is no longer the case. The IQ distribution of men is wider than that of women, and there is some evidence that men have slightly higher average IQs than women do, but that is not the consensus opinion. This said, educational attainment and IQ are similar among men and women, relative to the differences among racial groups.

Without attempting to control for either of these attributes in the GSS (the sample sizes for all but blacks become too small to be worth pursuing), the following table shows racial differences in the same attitudinal and behavioral approaches towards work that were considered by sex. I don't think there is much profundity here (black unemployment and underemployment is higher than it is for whites, so it's little surprise that they tend to want to work more and earn more money, etc), but since I ran the numbers I might as well share it with the readership. Responses are from 2002 and 2006, so this is all prior to the recession:

	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian	NatAm
Working other than day shifts (nights, swing, etc)	27.0%	34.4%	28.9%	31.0%	25.9%
Work overtime at least once a month	64.1%	57.4%	64.4%	57.5%	57.5%
Main satisfaction in life comes from work	25.6%	30.7%	32.8%	45.0%	28.8%
Want to work additional hours to earn more money	26.7%	38.0%	51.5%	51.7%	24.4%

Asians appear to be the bastion of the Protestant work ethic in contemporary America, with Hispanics catching the overflow. Whites work enough, or more than enough, with nearly two-thirds working overtime at least once a month. Blacks and whites are actually quite similar in aggregate to one another on these dimensions. The attitudes of Native Americans tend to be the least enthusiastic about the daily grind.

GSS variables used: RACECEN1(1)(2)(3)(4-10)(15-16), WRKSCHED, MOREDAYS, WKTOPSAT, HRSMONEY

Challenging Russ Roberts and Bryan Caplan on why the US should have open borders

A few weeks ago, GMU's Ross Roberts hosted colleague Bryan Caplan on EconTalk to refute arguments against open borders. Roberts putatively played devil's advocate, challenging Caplan from a restrictionist's perspective, but both guys are clearly in favor of unfettered immigration into the US (Roberts demonstrates his lack of familiarity with restrictionist thought by being unable to recall the term "coyote" as one that refers to those who assist immigrants illegally entering the country). To the extent that population differences were acknowledged at all, it was only in reference to differences in levels of education and skills.

Population differences in intelligence and personality went unmentioned, referred to only indirectly by Roberts who frames the discussion as one in which arguments against open borders "that have intellectual standing... that are legitimate arguments" will be considered. Presumably those un-intellectual, illegitimate arguments made by HBDers will not be. With human biodiversity preemptively exiled, the hour-plus long discussion suffers from ignoring the elephant in the room, and consequently shouldn't be taken too seriously by realists.

I do not materially change the excerpts in any way, although I did try to clean them up a bit grammatically, as verbal exchanges never conform exactly to written standards. There are still a few instances where [sic] should probably be employed, but that would merely be distracting without adding any value to the post.

Caplan starts by employing a thought experiment:

Suppose that moved by the plight of Haitians after the earthquake, you decide to take a trip down there to engage in some relief work. You help out for a few weeks and you're about to go home, when you go up to the desk at the airport and the person behind the counter says, "I'm sorry, you're not authorized to return."

You think that's very strange, so you go and talk to the US representative and he says, "That's right, you can't come back."

You say, "I don't understand. Why not?"

And the representative says, "The United States government does not have to answer questions. We don't give reasons."

Caplan argues that the fact that most Americans would oppose the US government restricting reentry of citizens in this way shows that there is an inherit moral presumption against restricting the movement of all people into the US.

Caplan is acting as the ecumenical humanist here. He is taking for granted that citizenship confers no meaningful distinction from non-citizenship, moral or otherwise. A person, by virtue of being human, deserves the same consideration as any other human. Nationality doesn't matter, ancestry doesn't matter, individual capabilities don't matter, etc. Given this assumption, if the well being of any given individual not currently living in the US but wishing to is the only consideration made, then Caplan's argument makes sense. If the totality of consequences are considered, it's more complicated.

If the well-being of citizens of the US are granted primacy, Caplan's argument is absurd. Consider a similar thought experiment using Caplan's home instead of his home country as the desired destination. To think that he would refuse entry to his son after a day of working at a soup kitchen in downtown Washington DC is appalling. But is it similarly appalling to think he would refuse to let one of those soup kitchen 'clients' take up residency in his guest room? Assuming the place is commodious enough to accommodate more people living in it, why keep out someone who wants to live there and who will be better off in so doing?

The retort that Caplan's house is his private property and he is thus entitled to allow and restrict entry into it is similarly applicable at the national level as well, unless the idea of national sovereignty is deemed illegitimate.

Tweak the thought experiment again, using a business firm as the restricting entity. An employee is not allowed to return to work (ie, is fired). An explanation will be offered, not just for legal reasons, but for practical reasons as well. If the employee receives no explanation, the sentiment of most observers will be one of disapproval at the firm's actions. But if someone solicits employment with the firm and the firm turns him down because it is perceived that he will be a liability rather than an asset to the firm, most observers will understandably claim that there is nothing wrong with the firm acting in this manner, even if being employed by the firm would be a good thing for the aspiring employee.

Does Caplan take issue with this distinction as well? Competition at the individual and company levels are great, but competition at the national level is not? I’d wager that most Americans see their nation as being more analogous to a big family than to a competitive enterprise competing against other countries, but both are accurate to some extent.

Ten minutes in, Roberts has largely ditched his role as an opposing voice. His thought process in determining what constitutes net benefit to the country:

There are subtle differences in the immigration argument. There are some people who say it's okay to let in the "right kind"--which is Borjas' position--he's okay with letting in highly educated workers who supposedly contribute more than they take away, which I don't agree with. I mean, I think they do contribute, but I think [all immigrants] contribute.

So everyone contributes. Presumably he is referring to a net contribution, however exactly that is defined. If every immigrant goes on the asset side of the ledger, then what we need more than anything is simply more people. I say we just annex Mexico! Instantaneously we'll have another 112 million people contributing to this great nation of ours. That’s the ticket!

Caplan continues, making the following assertion:

Immigrants are typically better at what are called "non-language jobs", or jobs that don't require such great knowledge of English. Americans, of course, have an advantage in these kinds of jobs [that require English proficiency].

Uh huh. Moving on. Concerning the effects on real estate, says Caplan:

Immigrants require housing, and when they come here they raise the demand for housing which means that real estate prices increase. And while there are Americans who don't own real estate and don't benefit from it, on average, American real estate is generally owned by Americans.

Bringing as many warm bodies as possible to an area is a great idea. They'll need a place to live, which means the people who already own places to live will see those places appreciate in value. Having those new arrivals earn the money to rent and buy those places to live by building more houses and then taking out loans that'll pay for themselves when the places the loans are going for are lifted up in the rising tide of perennial real estate value appreciation will keep the cycle going, and as long as people keep coming, everyone who is already there will get ever-wealthier in the process. What could possibly go wrong?

If only property values would simply cooperate and increase forever due solely to an increase in population density! This being 2010 rather than 2007, that wish seems hopelessly quixotic, though. In March of last year, I found the correlation between a state's illegal immigrants per capita and its foreclosure rate to be a rigorous .72 (p=0). A state's estimated average IQ, by contrast, was far less related, correlating with the foreclosure rate at .32 (p=.02). If those who come to an area are unable or unwilling to support themselves there over an extended period of time, the temporary spike in property values they cause creates painful distortions (namely property owners believing themselves to be much wealthier than they actually are), as the economic environment of the last couple of years illustrates.

Roberts argues that unfettered unskilled immigration is beneficial because:

A humane policy would be to try to improve the productivity of those high school dropouts we're worried about. ... I don't think people would argue that because labor-saving devices are hard on people who have limited skills, who used to be employed as people who wash dishes or wash clothing, that therefore we shouldn't allow people to create new devices. The argument would be, "Let's encourage people to get those skills", which [increased unskilled immigration] would!

Because the guy who went into construction after high school could have earned a PhD in engineering and designed a device that would've made his efforts obsolete, but he chose not to because the earnings differential between what he makes as a construction worker and what he could've made as an inventor are not wide enough now. But increased illegal immigration will drive down his construction wages and thus send him packing from Missouri to MIT on the double, where every person’s inner genius is brought to light.

This line of reasoning appears to be the same one that leads some libertarians (Caplan among them) to argue that increasing the size of the unskilled, low IQ population is a good idea because in a more intelligent world, somebody still has to pick up trash and sweep parking lots.

In actuality, though, only the conclusions--that unskilled immigration is beneficial--are the same. Roberts argues that the presence of lowly skilled immigrants will push unskilled natives into college, which will give them the intelligence to invent things that will make these immigrants' modest skill sets obsolete. Caplan, in contrast, thinks that the unskilled are still able to create a situation of comparative advantage by specializing in things that people with low IQs are good at (whatever those are, since even in occupations like truck driving, higher intelligence tends to correspond with better, more reliable truckers).

To some extent, Caplan accepts IQ differences, while Roberts bases his assumptions on more education leading to greater intelligence. If the average street sweeper, with an extra eight years of college, has the potential to be a successful chemical engineer, Roberts argument might be convincing. Unfortunately, most people lack the aptitude required to be a chemical engineer. And even if it were true that education raises intelligence, it runs into real-life observations that restricting businesses access to cheap, unskilled labor creates incentives for them to mechanize away from needing that unskilled labor in the first place.

Agriculture is both a relevant and great example of the options businesses have with regards to labor. They may either pursue cheap labor or, if labor becomes prohibitively expensive, will instead try to find technologically-advanced alternatives to that labor. Giving them access to unskilled peasants who can be paid a pittance in cash makes the former option appear far more appealing than it does with a tighter, more demanding labor supply.

Humorously, Roberts and Caplan go on to talk about how immigration likely hurts natives in academia more than it hurts most other Americans. Caplan is for open borders for the common good even at great personal sacrifice, whereas restrictionists are just looking out for number one:

If there is any industry in the United States that currently does face open immigration and full competition from every worker in the world, it's academia. Right now, there is a loophole that basically makes it possible for universities to hire any professor from anywhere on earth, and right now Russ and I are competing with them. ... If foreign-born professors had never been allowed in, I think Russ and I would be at much more highly ranked schools and we would be earning much higher wages. Actually, we are people who are suffering more than almost anyone.

Uh, so logically extending the argument Roberts made previously about unskilled immigration prodding natives into pursuing more education, this means increasing immigration among the highly skilled will cause more natives to forego college and drop out of high school, as competition with foreigners at the high end will tend to lower wages, which is exactly the opposite of what Roberts and Caplan would like to see happen! Being aware of individual differences in intelligence and other work-related capabilities, this side of Roberts argument (that he doesn't actually make, but I'm so graciously making for him) is more important, since intelligent people are more likely to do less demanding work (and do it effectively) if they are compensated well for it than are unintelligent people to do cognitively demanding work because they are incapable of doing that work, irrespective of the potential compensation they would receive.

Roberts raises the issue of welfare parasitism. He makes no note of it, but immigrant welfare usage rates are considerably higher than are those of natives, among those of Mexican descent in particular. Caplan then anecdotally argues that immigrants work harder than natives do:

Look at any hard work being done in Los Angeles, it's almost always being done by people from Latin America.

Granted, Montana and South Dakota are on the brink of financial implosion, unlike the sound, sturdy state of California, but in those places Americans somehow manage to get by with Americans doing the jobs that Americans won't do.

Caplan then downplays concern over welfare usage by pointing out that more government spending goes to the elderly than to the poor:

One very common misconception about the welfare state that makes people think that immigrants are worse than they really are is that we imagine that the welfare state is mainly about helping the poor. We take a look and we say, “Hey, there are all these poor immigrants coming here so obviously they’re going to be a net drain.” This is actually just factually wrong. If you go and take a look at the numbers on the budget, while the poor do get a fair amount—maybe 10% of the federal budget—they are a very distant runner-up against the group that actually gets the most money from the welfare state, which is the elderly.

As someone who thinks the healthcare expenditures made on behalf of the elderly to keep them undead for a couple of months or years longer than they would otherwise be around is extremely wasteful, I'm sympathetic to concerns about Medicare and Social Security spending. But that's a deflection, not an argument that addresses restrictionist concerns. While it is factually incorrect to assert that the poor receive more in benefits than the elderly do, it is not factually incorrect to assert that illegal immigrants are a net drain on American society.

Caplan takes on the argument that immigration has adverse consequences on American culture:

If this argument were made in France, I'd at least kind of understand what they're talking about, saying we need to preserve French culture. But culture seems to be so low down on Americans' priorities that it's odd to me. Like, the immigrants are not going to know about Friends or they're not going to appreciate Seinfield? I'm baffled about what kind of culture Americans do know that immigrants don't know.

If culture is merely shorthand for popular culture, then these concerns have more to do with things like the Virginia Department of Health putting out comics (Mexicans don't read many books) in an effort to combat statutory rape against Latinas because of Latin American "cultural mores condoning May-December relationships."

When it comes to aspects of mid- and high-brow culture, the restrictionist argument tends to be that we're fighting an uphill battle as it is, and we should not make it any worse by allowing unfettered immigration of those who have an average educational attainment equivalent to 'graduation' from the eighth grade and who read fewer than two books per year.

The discussion moves on to politics. Characterizing the restrictionist argument that immigrants, on net, tend to vote for larger government and tighter restrictions on personal liberties, Caplan says:

The fact that you come from countries [that aren't free] probably means that you don't like freedom, and if you come here, you're going to turn our politics into your politics. ... But there is the question of how hell bent immigrants are on turning America into Mexico or Congo? It may be that there opinions are moderately less pro-freedom than those of the people who grew up here. But it seems unlikely that this is that big of a deal for them.

The GSS contains a few items are relevant to the issue. The following tables show how the foreign-born compare to natives, first on political orientation:

POLVIEWS	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
Natives	25.3%	38.3%	36.4%
Foreign-born	29.0%	42.1%	28.9%

Partisan affiliation:

PARTYID	Democrat	Independent	Republican
Natives	33.3%	37.0%	29.6%
Foreign-born	34.6%	49.8%	15.7%

"What is your opinion of the following statement? It is the responsibility of the government to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes" (those with no opinion are not included):

EQINCOME	Agree	Disagree
Natives	30.8%	46.5%
Foreign-born	40.4%	38.9%

Racists should be allowed to speak in public:

ALLOWRAC	Yes	No
Natives	60.8%	39.2%
Foreign-born	42.7%	57.3%

Homosexuals should be allowed to speak in public:

SPKHOMO	Yes	No
Natives	77.5%	22.5%
Foreign-born	73.1%	26.9%

Atheists should be allowed to speak in public:

SPKATH	Yes	No
Native	72.7%	27.3%
Foreign-born	66.1%	33.9%

Caplan could be accused of minimizing the concerns that immigrants, on net, tend to be leftist, statist, and authoritarian in their political views relative to natives (keep in mind, too, that in all of these cases, "natives" includes blacks--if only whites are considered, the differences between natives and the foreign-born are wider on every item). He appears to be generally correct in noting that the differences are not uniformly enormous, however.

Roberts errantly argues that the children of immigrants actually tend to do better than their native peers do:

The studies I've seen show [no studies are cited] that not only do second-generation immigrants learn English, but that they thrive. They thrive relative to their parents, and very soon, of course, they're not immigrants anymore. They're like you and I, whose ancestors moved here at some point in the distant past, and how well they do in our society is not a function of what country they were born in [he's unknowingly on the money when it comes to the second-generation children of immigrants; it's more a function of the country their parents were born in!], it's a function of how much education they have, how hard they work, and luck. But education works, it's very powerful.

Immigrants who come here, uneducated, who can't speak English, give birth to children who end up speaking English, graduate from high school and go to college--or don't--but do better than their parents and eventually do as well as or better than native Americans.

Caplan, who is clearly more well versed in the issues surrounding immigration into the US than Roberts is, gently points out to Roberts that he is incorrect and that the second-generation does not perform as well as natives do. Parenthetically, he could have also pointed out that when it comes to Mexican immigrants and their progeny, even through the fourth generation they still fare far worse than natives do. Caplan brushes this aside, saying that even though the children of immigrants learn less and earn less than the children of natives do, they still contribute to the economy and "pull their own weight and more".

Directly after this, Caplan lets restrictionists know how he feels about them:

A lot of hostility to immigration is that every immigrant is reproached by every native-born American who didn't do more with his life. It's a little bit hard, but it's true.

Given that immigrants tend to do worse than natives do--especially white natives (who are more restrictionist than blacks are)--that's an interesting standard for what constitutes truth. Restrictionism wins out over support for open immigration across both the political and economic spectrums, so Caplan's characterization is untrue, but it does illustrate how being for unfettered immigration is a SWPL status marker worth multiple moral posturing points.

As he continued in that vein, I couldn't help but wonder if he would have so earnestly stated the following to a group of grassroots NAACP boosters:

Look, someone came here not speaking English, they worked their way up from the bottom, and now look at them. You were born here, you speak English as your
native language, you had an education paid for by American taxpayers for free, and these immigrants have done as well as you. How do you explain that? Why is it that we should be so worried about you when there are people like this in the world who have done so well with so little?

They touch briefly on crime, with Caplan noting that the foreign-born are less criminally prone than natives are at comparable ages. Statistics on immigration and crime are all inherently difficult to be certain about, especially when it comes to illegal immigrants, since they are by virtue of their illegality more shrouded in their activities than American citizens are and those they live around, who also tend to be illegal, are more apprehensive about reporting criminal activity than natives are. But even with underreported criminal activity among immigrants, Latin American migrants are, on the whole, more criminally prone than native whites are (see table 1).

If blacks are thrown into the mix, things change, of course. When it comes to comparisons of criminal activity, America's black population inevitably pulls the nation down. However, since bringing in Juan does not mean Julian disappears, that Mexican immigrants are less criminally prone than black Americans are is not on its own much of an argument for open borders.

Roberts suggests people living in Portland, where obstacles to new construction and perceived overcrowding keep out immigrants from other countries as well as from other states within the US, like their lives and the city they live in as is. He asks Caplan why they should open themselves up to more immigration. Caplan answers that even if denizens of Portland don't like the greater population density and cultural changes that will result if the city opens itself up, it would increase their property values and they would then be able to sell at a gain and move somewhere else in the US that is similar to how Portland had been before those changes (I'm not making that up). He then let's those in Portland what they're missing out on--being like Manhattan! Not Los Angeles or San Antonio, which would be more relevant comparisons, but Manhattan, a glorified, snazzy part of a much larger metropolitan area in the Northeast.

As they bring the discussion to a close, Caplan expresses how the personal relationships with immigrants influence his opinions on the subject:

When I really think about the immigrants that I know--and I know many immigrants--immigrants are my friends, my neighbors. My wife is an immigrant. These are all human beings who, if we all listened to the opponents of immigration, they wouldn't be here. They wouldn't be allowed to be here. We'd have erred on the side of caution and said "let's not let them in." And because we didn't error on the side of caution, we let them in, they're here enjoying their lives and these are people I care about.

Replace each instance of "immigrant" with "former fetus" or the like, and Caplan is pitching himself for a narration gig in a pro-life TV spot!

GSS variables used: BORN(1)(2), YEAR(2000-2008)*, POLVIEWS, PARTYID, EQINCOME, ALLOWRAC, SPKHOMO, SPKATH

* Only for the questions on political orientation and partisan affiliation, which are asked every year. For the other items, I included the entire timeframe over which the question was asked.

Juan Williams

The controversy pits candidness against political correctness:



A leftist equipped in a panoply of diversity do-gooding (black, Hispanic, immigrants, wrote a book about civil rights, etc) gets the guillotine for expressing thoughts--after prefacing them with a recitation tolerance rosary--that an overwhelming majority of Americans share:

When I get on a plane, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

He's termed by the putatively unbiaed NPR. Of the over $2 billion spent on public broadcasting each year, more than $800 million comes from taxpayers, about half from the federal level and half from state and local governments. This strikes me as the most convincing among a host of cogent reasons to strip the CPB of its public funding going forward. That is, kill the government feeder of PBS and NPR and let them fare as they will.

NPR is currently engaged in another round of mendicant begging, so if you regularly make a contribution, consider diverting those funds to a source that deserves them a zillion times more.

Achievement gap achieved household status a decade ago

I've been having some fun using the NYT archives to look at the usage history of phrases that seem to me to have been used regularly for as long as I can remember but that are, to those a generation older than, relatively new to the media lexicon. The phrase "achievement gap" falls into that category. The following graph shows the occurence of articles containing the phrase "achievement gap" as a fraction of the total number of articles written during the same period of time.

Prior to 1966, it had never been printed in the Grey Lady. There were a handul of references to it during the late sixties through the seventies (used in the same context that it is today). During the Reagan administration, it was mentioned only four times over eight years, and was a rarity until 1999, when I'd guess it popped up ahead of the 2000 general election. In 2001, as No Child Left Behind was being hammered out into legislation with bipartisan support, it became the recognizable phrase it is today. Without context, most people today are able to associate the phrase "achievement gap" with better scholastic performance among whites than among blacks (or more broadly, of ice people compared to sun people).

The achievement gap has remained incorrigible for a century and has been and continues to be so stable over time that La Griffe du Lion has referred to it as the fundamental law of sociology. And it's here to stay, indefinitely. We can thank, among many other politicians and educrats, the late Ted Kennedy and former President George Bush for the handy phrase now being as entrenched as the actual gap it refers to is.

IQ and age differential at first marriage

A couple of years ago I posted on the relationship between estimated average IQ and desired age differential in marriage partners by women at the national level. The revealed correlation was a statistically significant .58. That is, the lower a country's average IQ, the older that country's women want their men to be.

How does this align with what actually happens? Extremely well. Using 69 countries for which data on both attributes are available, the correlation between estimated average IQ and the average age differential for first marriages at the national level is a statistically significant .61 (p=0), nearly identical to stated female desires. The data used for desired age differential are from the eighties and before, whereas the actually age differentials at first marriage are almost all from the 2000s (there a few countries for which the most recent estimates available are from the nineties), suggesting that the relationship is more than "just so".


The two biggest outliers are South Africa (low IQ, low age differential) and Taiwan (high IQ, high age differential). In the case of the former, I wonder how representative the marriage data are. If it is skewed white, that offers an explanation.

Excepting Taiwan, the best place in the developed, industrialized world for a guy wanting a younger woman is Poland, followed closely by Greece, Italy, and Germany. The Anglophone countries, in contrast, are among the most age-egalitarian.

I also looked at the relationship between age differential at first marriage and purchasing power parity. Predictably, it travels alongside IQ, but the correlation is less rigorous, at .51 (p=0).