Blue People

Immigration: A Postscript

It is said that the influx of immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, has put downward pressure on wages at the low end of the spectrum. We hear horror stories of Americans, who typically won't work for less than the minimum wage, being laid off and replaced by illegal Mexican immigrants who will.

I can't question the veracity of these reports, since at least some of them are backed up by serious research. However, another question needs to be addressed, which is: why do Americans need a certain wage level?

It is at this point that the question of this country's extreme levels of economic inequality enter the picture. Those at the very top, who are receiving a vastly disproportionate share of nation's total income, are able to casually bid up the prices of almost everything, most especially those goods and services which are high in labor content (education, health care, etc.). If the rich can easily pay extraordinary amounts for tuition at selective universities like Harvard or Stanford, these universities will go ahead and charge those amounts, thereby making these schools largely unaffordable for those who have the academic credentials but not the money. And in fact we have seen tuition at these (and many other) schools drift steadily upward to the point where only the wealthiest parents can afford them. Recent studies have shown that, at selective schools like Harvard, the percentage of students coming from the highest income percentiles has been growing steadily.

In the case of health care, the rich don't need insurance, and don't care about it, which first of all deprives the insurance pool of their direct contributions, and which secondly ensures that the rich will oppose politically any attempt to institute a national single-payer system, a system which they probably won't be able to avoid contributing to, even though they have no intention of using it. As we know, legislators in Congress are far more likely to do the bidding of the wealthy than of the non-wealthy (even if blatant quid-pro-quo situations are fairly rare).

So, the non-rich need a certain level of income simply in order to buy ordinary necessities, the prices of which are out of sight compared to those found in countries with less inequality and better systems of public provision.

Is small government possible?

As a regular reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog, the "Daily Dish", I've been impressed by Sullivan's ability, almost unique among those on the Right, to reexamine, and sometimes modify, his beliefs when presented with new evidence. This is an exercise that requires considerable fortitude and humility, more than is usually on display in the blogosphere (on either side).

In this spirit, I'm going to investigate the question posed in the title of this article, mostly in response to not only Sullivan's openness to change but also to his consistent defense of "limited government". I think most people, at least most Americans, would agree with the notion that "limited government", a la Thomas Jefferson, is a certified "good thing", that the expansion of government should have a really compelling justification. A corollary is the idea that much of what our government does today lacks such a justification, with a notorious example being the "bridge to nowhere" that was - and may still be - scheduled for construction in an almost-deserted area of Alaska.

The question is, in a society like ours, which features high levels of education and technology, and an almost incomprehensibly-fine division of labor, is small government really possible? My initial answer is, "probably not". I'll provide a couple of reasons below, and maybe more in subsequent essays.

Let's start with the libertarian proposition that the only real crime is the initiation of force or fraud, and that the only legitimate task of government is the administration of justice when societal actors break this code and initiate force or fraud against one another. All interpersonal relations, including but not limited to economic relations, are governed by contract, and it is the responsibility of government to see to it that all parties live up to the terms of the many contracts in which they are involved. Note that many, but not necessarily all, contracts are explicit; there can be such a thing as an "implicit" contract that exists even though no one has actually prepared or signed a document that expresses the contract.

Could such a government be "small"? It seems to me that the size of this contract-enforcing government would be directly proportional to the number and variety of contracts that people enter into, and in a society like ours that number would be huge. Keep in mind also that in this type of society there would be no regulation to keep tabs on peoples' behavior on a regular basis; there would be only lawsuits after some kind of harm has been alleged. There would be little incentive to actually live up to one's contracts, because it would be up to the harmed party to prove that harm was caused, and maybe even intended, by my behavior. This can be a difficult standard of proof to achieve.

So, inevitably, a regulation regime would tend to creep in, a regime whose charter would be the regular inspection of peoples' behavior even in the absence of any allegations of wrongdoing, simply to ensure that people are behaving well. This type of development would also be encouraged by the recognition that, in many cases, harm can be irreparable, and therefore waiting until harm has been done, and then charging the wrongdoer, can fail to produce justice for the aggrieved. Consider, for example, someone who in good faith takes a pill which ends up inflicting permanent damage on their heart. Clearly it would be better if the tendency of such a pill to cause harm were detected before any harm was actually inflicted in the wider world.

In a subsequent article we'll take up the role of government in promoting and facilitating the smooth operation of the kind of free-market economy that is favored by pundits like Sullivan.

Immigration

It's become pretty much de rigeur to weigh in on the immigration "controversy". This is a case that, unlike so many of our current problems, is relatively unambiguous. As others have pointed out, one can rant and rave about "illegals" until one is thoroughly exhausted, but none of it will change the brute underlying fact, which is that immigration - illegal and legal - is driven almost entirely by the gigantic disparity between living standards in the USA and that found in many countries to the south (notably Mexico). As long as this situation persists, the poor of these countries will feel a strong motivation to emigrate to the USA, and many will be willing to take great risks to do so. There is no wall, no police force, able to contain these forces.

A couple of parenthetical points:

1. While the bulk of the angry nativist rhetoric focuses on the "illegals", and their resemblence to vermin, I strongly suspect that most of these ranters are equally uncomfortable with legal immigration. What drives them is the fear of losing their culture, the fear of feeling like an alien in one's own country. It's the experience of driving through certain neighborhoods in certain cities and seeing all the signs in Spanish, and realizing that places exist in the USA in which one is not at home. This syndrome will be provoked by any immigration, of whatever legal status.

2. At some level, even the nativists understand that the same forces that drive today's Latino immigrants almost certainly drove their own ancestors. It's a well-worn cliche, but the USA really is a "nation of immigrants", and everyone who was born here can easily, and often without having to go back very far, trace their family tree to another country somewhere. Today's immigrants for the most part want for themselves and for their descendants the same things that the immigrant great-grandparents of today's nativists wanted.

3. In what sense is it right to legalize, even promote, the flow of capital from the USA to Mexico, in order to take advantage of the low labor rates available there, and wrong to permit the flow of people from Mexico to the USA, in order to take advantage of the higher labor rates found here?

Now, having dismissed the nativist case, what is my solution? I will defer to others, such as Anatol Lieven, who have recently offered some very wise proposals. All I wish to point out is that this whole North-South disparity has only begun to play itself out. The rich countries are going to have to find a way to share, a way to promote wealth-creation among the poor countries themselves, and I don't believe that the current "globalization" model fits the bill. All that globalization has done is take some very poor farmers and convert them into slightly less poor factory workers who are no less lacking in any independent way of improving their lives.

We cannot make these tensions, these disequilibria, vanish by passing laws or building fences.

More on a "progressive faith"

The stream of articles urging a progressive embrace of religion goes on, as in the recent issue of "The Nation" which featured, among other offerings, an article by Rabbi Michael Lerner in which he once again trots out the distaste for religion exhibited by secular progressives. While I disagree largely with his discussion of "scientism", I have to agree with at least the distaste part of his analysis.

As I've written before, I don't think religion as presently understood is intellectually respectable, and therefore I am not obliged to show respect for those whose worldview is driven largely by religious faith. Lerner talks about "spirituality", and "meaning", and ethical behavior, as if the experiences signified by these words are unavailable to non-believers.

I have news for Lerner: even atheists have experiences that they can honestly describe as "spiritual", and atheists just like others seek meaning and guidelines to morals and ethical behavior. They just don't happen to believe that these "spiritual" experiences involve any insight into the nature or existence of a supreme being; they are simply among the vast repertoire of psychological and emotional states which are available to humans, certainly among the more positive and desirable ones. This doesn't mean that we value these experiences any less.

If spirituality and meaning were all that religion was about, there would be little to object to. However, as we all know, religion as currently practiced is rarely content to stop there. Instead, we have preachers forbidding all kinds of perfectly blameless behavior, from eating certain foods (which naturally are different for different religions) to gay marriage. Consider that guy in Afghanistan who found himself the target of a death sentence when the (Muslim) authorities learned that he had converted from Islam to Christianity, thereby becoming that most hated figure, the apostate.

Even in cases like this, it's possible to accept that religion is justified to concern itself with diet and sex, even though by doing so it may be interfering with some peoples' efforts to attain spiritual enlightenment. But no, the religionists can't stop there either. We also have to contend with preachers who insist that the universe was created 6000 years ago, that all species were created more or less at once, and have remained unchanged (and presumably non-extinct) for the duration. And they insist that this drivel be taught in tax-supported public schools.

So, as far as I'm concerned, this is two big steps too far when it comes to my ability to accept religion as a legitimate contributor to political debate. The main difficulty is the simple fact that religion is inherently dogmatic and absolutist, lacking completely the humility and openness that is necessary to actually achieve some degree of spiritual enlightenment. That's right, you heard me: if spirituality is what we're after, then the first thing we need to do is ditch religion and then get on with it.

The things that Lerner mentions are good things that are obviously good even to non-believers, and therefore we need not confuse the matter by introducing talk of faith, or religion, or God. Let's just do the things we know to be good, and accept the fact that it is our humanity that tells us they are good, not some so-called "holy book". Yes, the authors of the Bible knew a thing or two (not sure I can say that about the Koran), but there's plenty that we know that they didn't, and we need to celebrate that just as much if not more. It means that there can be such a thing as moral progress, and what could be better or hopeful news than that?