Links - Uncomfortable But True
Resist the urges of motivated reasoning.
Which of these propositions makes you uncomfortable?
Evangelical Christian conservatives should support full legalization of illicit narcotics.
The wealthy are rich largely because they can produce more value to society than the poor.
President Trump’s crackdown on immigration will result in much less legal entry and might even increase illegal entry—it almost certainly won’t curtail illegal more than legal.
I’m sure for many two if not all three strike as dubious. Some may even be initially offended at the mere suggestion of one or more—perhaps I should have had a trigger warning.
Well, open your mind as you explore these three links in support of those statements.
First, Billy Binion interviews Christina Dent, “an evangelical Christian who believes legalizing drugs is the conservative thing to do—a position she adopted after an encounter she had as a foster mom.”
This is the best drug legalization interview that I’ve heard in a long time. She backs up the logical reasoning with real-world experience. She has walked the walk.
Watch the whole thing.
Second, Michael Huemer compares the simplified stereotypical leftist and rightist theories of wealth disparities. He comes down decisively with the right. After outlining the views of each, he begins his argument for why the right holds the correct framework:
There is a lot more to productivity than physical labor. Take a company that produces cellphones. It is not only the people physically assembling the phones who are being productive. There are the engineers who design the phone, the people who create the company itself, the people who decide what the company should be trying to sell where, the people who save money and invest it in a startup so that the company can start operating, the people who evaluate loan applications from the company, and so on. All that “pushing paper around” has to be done, or no product appears, so that is all productive activity.
It’s not like the workers in the factory were just going to make phones on their own, and they just had to pay these paper pushers to let them. No, the workers, just on their own, were not going to make anything.
It’s totally plausible that the capitalists and other paper-pushers are vastly more productive than the workers — not as a class, but individually. I.e., subtracting one capitalist from the economy decreases total productivity by more than subtracting one worker, because the capitalist modifies the behavior of many other people in a beneficial way. If I can make 1000 workers be 1% more productive, then I am ten times more productive than a single worker.
…
If you set aside feelings, the idea is completely natural and plausible. Of course the main reason why someone would have a low income would be that other people are only willing to pay that person a small amount, because that person is only producing a small amount of value for others. And of course the most natural explanation of that would be that the person is either unable or unwilling to produce more value. So it is really extremely commonsensical that low-income people tend to have less (economically valuable) talent or motivation. If this upsets you, then reality upsets you. In which case, you should blame God, not me.
Read the whole thing.
Third, David Bier examines the raw facts on the ground and evidence from Trump’s first term in showing that “Trump Will Cut Legal Entries More Than Illegal Entries”.
Trump will likely cut legal entries more than illegal ones for five reasons:
That’s precisely what he did during his first term. Illegal immigration actually increased substantially during his first term, while legal migration of all types was reduced before and after the pandemic.
Legal migration is now much higher than it was at any point during Trump’s first four years. This higher baseline means that if Trump imposes limits similar to those we saw during his first term, the cut will be much greater than during his first term.
Illegal immigration is much lower than when Trump left office. Moreover, illegal entries are always much lower than legal entries, so even a small percentage cut from legal migration will be much larger than even a large percentage cut to illegal immigration.
Trump has repeatedly promised to impose even more severe restrictions on legal entries than he did during his first term (at least pre-pandemic). Moreover, his legal immigration agenda was never fully implemented during his first term, so we should expect much more serious cuts.
Trump has promised mass deportation, but this will be much more difficult to achieve. It is far easier to end legal activity than end illegal activity, so he will attempt to appease his nativist base and the nationalist political class by cutting legal immigration.
Basic math, simple logic, and history are all pointing to immigration policy failure by Trump AS DEFINED BY THE WAY TRUMP DEFINES SUCCESS. This would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Bier concludes,
Although Trump likes to claim that his immigration agenda is focused primarily on stopping illegal immigration, his record indicates otherwise. He oversaw severe cuts to legal immigration while illegal immigration increased during his time in office. Illegal immigrants can hide and obstruct removals in many ways, whereas legal immigrants have little way to protect themselves from Trump policy changes. Stripping someone of their legal status requires little more action than the stroke of a pen. Trump’s anti-legal immigration agenda will increase illegal immigration and harm American prosperity.
Read the whole thing.
Just because it makes your mind squirm doesn’t mean it isn’t logically sound or factually accurate.