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Thursday, March 30, 2006I got a Borders Rewards card last night. And with the money I spend on books, it will be put to good use. But...As Instapundit and everyone else notes, Borders chickened out and cow-towed to the Islamofascists when it came to selling a magazine with the Mohammed cartoons. Remember that when they do their next self-congratulatory "banned books" display or get uptight because someone has complained about a book they're carrying. They're still a pretty good bookstore. But any claims to being a special civic institution that feeds minds, not just cash registers, are looking rather tarnished. 
posted by gbarto at 7:38 PM As I noted in an earlier post, while we debate the repercussions of immigration for the U.S. willy-nilly, we haven't thought through the repercussions for Mexico. By now, it's not uncommon to speak of a brain drain - what happens when the smart people go elsewhere. But what about a value drain, or an initiative drain? I live and work in Silicon Valley. I work and do business with Mexican immigrants on a daily basis. Truth be told, some of my favorite people to deal with are Mexican. They add value to my life. But what value are they adding to Mexico? A made-up but not too far-fetched case: Miguel makes $1000/month. He lives with three people in San Francisco. Rent: $200. Taxes, FICA, etc: $100. Food: $200 Transportation: $100 Utilities, clothing, incidentals: $100 Miguel is a selfless guy. Every dime he can save, he sends to his family in Mexico. Miguel works for a small business with shoestring margins. Most of the money he generates pays his wages (ha!). Still, he and the ten guys he works with generate enough value to keep the business owner in about the same style and pay for his home office. Miguel generates $1200 a month for the business. Obviously, Miguel would have to generate more value than that, or the company couldn't stay in business. But we're keeping figures round on the way to making a point: If Miguel only generated $1200/month in value, here's what the picture would look like. Miguel generates $1200. $900 of it stays in the U.S. Miguel makes $1000. $700 of it stays in the U.S. Obviously, $US300 is a lot of money in Mexico. But... does Mexico really have a sustainable economic model if it gains more by its workers generating $900 of value for America so it can pick up $300 than by having that worker at home, with all that worker's value going into the Mexican economy? Clearly, something has to change. When we look at the immigration debate in the U.S., we look at the workers who are here and the possibility they are displacing American workers. But the U.S. has a big enough, strong enough economy to withstand at least the short-term pressures. The bigger question is whether the country south of the border can survive, and the people there escape their present plight, if their economic model is reliant upon the United States generating enough wealth that they can make do on the leavings. At present, Mexico faces a serious value drain. Mexicans in San Diego can generate as much value in a few weeks as Mexicans in poorer Mexican cities generate in a year. And that makes it seem like letting guest workers - even uninvited ones - is the best way to get money to Mexico. But there is a price for this arrangement - the overwhelming majority of value created stays in the United States. And that money pays landlords, electric companies, Medicare recipients... It circulates in the U.S. and is used to fund more value-generating efforts in the U.S. It does this in Mexico, too, of course, but on a smaller scale, and starting with mere dollars, not cash plus the work for which the cash was paid. Assuming the velocity of money means something - and I think it does, since money only changes hands where value is experienced - the U.S. gets significantly more bang for the buck. What's called for? Economic reform in Mexico? How is that effectuated? That's a good question for the Mexicans. But one sure way to avoid effectuating the reforms that will help Mexico follow the Asian Tigers and other PacRim economies out of the third world and into the developed world is for American policy to make it easier for those who would emulate us to move here than push for change at home. I believe in largely open borders. I believe people should be able to vote with their feet when they live in societies where the social contract is messed up or non-existent. I believe the United States is enriched when immigrants come here with new cultures, new ideas, new visions of what the good life is and can be when lived in a land of liberty. But the world's problems are not to be solved simply by our absorption of everyone who is unhappy with their homeland. What we face with Mexico in the future is not unlike what we now face with the Middle East - a culture of grievance and discontent where those who strive have left and the only remaining social energy is for lashing out. Just as our policies seek to contain, redirect and change things in the Middle East, so must our policies seek to reshape Mexico. Mexico, fortunately, is not the Middle East. While it's in a world of hurt, it is not as socially messed up as the worst quarters of the Middle East. Our policy for change, then, does not require that we tinker with Mexican sovereignty. It does require that we make Mexico face up to the obligations of its sovereignty, adopting policies to capture within its borders the value its citizens have shown themselves capable of creating when outside the country. We do not need immigration form, I believe, in order to save a United States that can take care of itself. We do need immigration reform as a preliminary act of nation building so that we will be living in a more hospitable neighborhood as the 22nd century approaches.
posted by gbarto at 3:16 PM Over at Qando, in response to a post on immigration, Kyle writes: You maybe right when you say that border control is important, but if you really want to stop immigration than you have to start giving immigrants a reason to stay.My response: Mexico is a sovereign state. The economic conditions within that country are largely the result of the policies of that independent people's government. For us to effect a leveling of economic inequalities, we would have three choices: 1) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty in fact by annexing it. (Don't laugh, we did it with Afghanistan and Iraq in effect for other reasons.) 2) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty in practice by forcing them to adopt our financial policies. (Don't laugh, Senators Coburn and Schumer were trying to set Chinese currency policy a week ago.) 3) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty indirectly by injecting sufficient cash that the Mexican people are no longer subject to the results of their government's economic policies - but instead to ours. There are many well-meaning people who think option 3, which we call foreign aid, is benign, not to say wonderful. It is potentially the most pernicious - it puts the United States and other wealthy nations in charge of whether the conditions are good or bad for the government of a supposedly sovereign state to survive. It masks the symptoms of decay that might otherwise prompt a sovereign people to change course. And it leaves us the option of - in righteous indignation - impoverishing a people should their leaders push us too far. Kyle is possibly right that the best long-term solution to the immigration problem is for the United States to directly or indirectly sabotage Mexican sovereignty by determining its economic conditions by our policies. But I don't think that was the intended meaning. I myself think there is another way we can harmonize conditions between the two countries. In the short term it's ugly; in the long term, it may be the only answer. Right now, the politicians of Mexico have a pressure valve - illegal and legal immigration - that allows them to pursue policies that are bad for the country but good for select constituencies. This leads to the impoverishment of the Mexican people and the transference of Mexico's income generating power from the Mexican economy to the American economy. Tighter, if hardly impermeable, border controls, would simultaneously limit the outside income which subsidizes poor Mexican socio-economic policy and increase the number of productive workers within the country. While Mexican politicians would blame the U.S. - more than ever - for all that ails, the lack of a shut-off valve would force Mexico to choose between maintaining regimes with lousy policies and suffering the consequences or looking for a better way. There are those who talk about giving productive workers from Mexico a fair shot in the U.S. while taking action to alleviate inequalities between the two countries. What this really means is that the U.S. will absorb those Mexicans who are productive, let the Mexicans in Mexico languish in a declining society and throw enough money their way to subsidize an independent nation's descent into full-fledged vassal status. If we feel bad about restricting immigration on our own behalf, we should be doing so on Mexico's behalf. If we continue to be the place for those who take chances to come and get ahead and in the bargain provide the financing to keep corrupt and inept governments in place, in 20-50 years, Mexico will lay in ruins (even moreso than now) and we will discover that the inequalities Kyle wants to address will have grown 1000 times worse.
posted by gbarto at 12:46 PM Wednesday, March 29, 2006Music Review:As a fan of nineteenth-century poetry, I could not help stopping at the site of two CDs this evening in Borders. The first was Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, a song cycle that encompassed styles from classical to opera to reggae and succeeded in leaving me cold after the hearing of each. Maybe it was the recording (a Naxos). And maybe it's that it was (is?) a 20th century American composer. Whatever the case, after scanning and listening, I quickly deposited it in the "no thanks" bin while hoping Blake wasn't spinning too quickly in his grave over the existence of such things. |
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