Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Nicolae Carpathia]

There are some bad fucking takes in this thread: including:

The third world must be protected from brain drain by cutting off emigration and hence any flow of investment (I'm sure you have some enlightened opinion on less self-directed forms of investment from corporations and wealthier nations).

Income tax is a form of anti-semitism, because apparently european jews are disproportionately wealthier than their compatriots.

This is some galaxy brain shit.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thanks, Banzailizard.

[AdrienIer]

The actual situation is even worse. In many states people can vote without producing any document which would verify your identity. It allows all these illegal immigrants to participate in elections directly like they were citizens. Republicans try to bring some resemblance of order to this situation but Dems fight for voter fraud like lions.

That's republican propaganda to justify voter suppression, studies have shown that illegals cannot and do not vote in the US in any meaningful numbers, but that the voter suppression from the republican bills lower turnout by possibly as much as 2.5% and make a swing for republicans by up to 1%

[ipecac]

The actual situation is even worse. In many states people can vote without producing any document which would verify your identity. It allows all these illegal immigrants to participate in elections directly like they were citizens. Republicans try to bring some resemblance of order to this situation but Dems fight for voter fraud like lions.

I was aware of the voter ID part.

(Interestingly enough, they would enthusiastically support all sorts of nightmarish bureaucracy in pretty much every other case.)

Interestingly, Democrats argue for the implementation of this, that and the other " obvious commonsensical policies like other developed nations have", strangely enough good border security and voter ID isn't included in their list.

[ipecac]

THH: you have to take into account that net immigration into Canada has historically not been very high, even sometimes negative, because of emigration from Canada to the US.

Banzailizard: the Econs 101 argument for free movement of good and services (free trade) as well as labour (mass immigration) is full of crap assumptions, some of which you noted. It's a theoretical argument that doesn't hold up in the real world.

Here is what the economics 101 version would say. The immigrants arriving will do the work at a lower wage, and while that might hurt some of the people they are replacing in the short term it benefits society at large in the long term. Cheaper inputs means that goods can be made at a cheaper price which will be passed on to consumers. That means they will be able to purchase the same goods with less money and spend that saved money on other good and services growing the economy and employing more people overall.

Of course this view requires some...unwarranted assumptions like perfectly or near perfectly competitive markets etc. This is a problem because in the absence of such competition firms have less intensive to lower prices and instead pocket most of the savings on inputs as profit redistributed to owners like shareholders. That would not be a problem if redistribution policies were put in place to use that profit to offset the harm to affected individuals, but they are frequently not.

1) A main driving force behind mass migration is firms wanting cheap labour for the profits. So though the cost of production dropped, the wealth is mostly not going to trickle down, as we both note, because firms keep the lion's share of the savings (as expected).

2) It is subtly assumed that lower prices make up for the loss of income caused by the increase in supply of labour. The argument doesn't even give theoretical justification for this. What we do see in real life is long-term unemployment and underemployment because free trade and free movement of labour.

So what has happened is that the unemployed and the under-employed are fed up, and vote for protectionism (Trump and Brexit). Meanwhile economists in their ivory tower wonder 'why did they just do that?!?'

[ipecac]

Then there are also arguments for homogeneity on the basis of supporting social trust and social capital which is what ipecac was referring to.  Again there is some dispute but the general agreement is that diversity does, in the short term, negatively impact social trust. In the long run though, diversity seems to have advantages.

Things might work out in the long run if there is sufficient assimilation. Otherwise, in democratic societies the politics become more racially polarised over time given sufficient numbers of minorities, see below:

So you think it's pure chance that there have been so many policies in the US that target black people even in the past couple decades ? Like the expanded medicaid in Michigan that was only in certain counties that happened to be predominantly white.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mic...2d69cea93c

The most obvious explanation here is that a Republican politician tries to channel government funding to areas in which the most of his voters live.

Voting blocs split across race build up, accusations of racism and unfairness are thrown around and the vicious cycle of division continues.

[Bacchus]

That's republican propaganda to justify voter suppression, studies have shown that illegals cannot and do not vote in the US in any meaningful numbers, but that the voter suppression from the republican bills lower turnout by possibly as much as 2.5% and make a swing for republicans by up to 1%

Studies have also shown the opposite: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...414000973i

And because this is a question of illegal activity, it's pretty difficult to know. Note that this cited study was the first to attempt anything like a real study — almost all the others, including those you read in the news about, were not studies of facts on the ground, they were studies of records — complaints, legal actions and convictions. As with any crime, the number of convictions is a weak correlate of the number of incidents, and frequently the low number of convictions is itself part of the problem (think of sexual assault/domestic violence).

Edit: what we really need is a close anthropological study of a predominantly Latino community in the run up to and during an election. If anyone knows of one, I'd be very interested.

[Gavagai]

2 Banzailizard

1) OK, instead of spending money on guarding the border you propose to open it and then spend money on watching all, who gets in, really closely. I would really want you to advertise this project as much as possible to make all voters aware of it. This would increase the probability of Trumps's second term considerably, the result with which I'll be very pleased.

2) I am aware of American case law in respect to the right of asylum and I believe that this interpretation is invalid. It essentially turns the right to asylum into an unlimited right to move from places with higher crime rate to places with the lower crime rate. Even if such right exists, it is a very different right.

3) Your usage of "racism" term is dramatically different from its traditional usage. Traditionally "racism" is an extremely strong moral label which evokes associations with Nazis and Ku-Klux-Klan. It is very inadvisable to apply it to much more innocent beliefs as it only serves to smear them.

[Gavagai]

The actual situation is even worse. In many states people can vote without producing any document which would verify your identity. It allows all these illegal immigrants to participate in elections directly like they were citizens. Republicans try to bring some resemblance of order to this situation but Dems fight for voter fraud like lions.

That's republican propaganda to justify voter suppression, studies have shown that illegals cannot and do not vote in the US in any meaningful numbers, but that the voter suppression from the republican bills lower turnout by possibly as much as 2.5% and make a swing for republicans by up to 1%

I generally do not trust "studies" on politically hot topics. Ninety percent of academics have ultra-left political beliefs, are totally unreflective about them and do nothing to control their bias.
The very fact that Dems oppose voter ID laws so vigorously is a very strong evidence that voter fraud is widespread enough to influence elections. This is because it is the only possible reason to take such position which is dramatically at odds with their general approach to the issue of rights. In all other cases they are very receptive to the idea that we need... how they say... "commonsense regulation" to prevent the abuse of right. Somehow they do not argue for the right to buy a gun without a photo ID. And yet, when it comes to voting rights - they are suddenly more libertarian than Murray Rothbard. Something is obviously fishy here if you ask me.

[darrelljs]

It amuses me that a liberal will argue against immigration to save the source country from brain drain with a conservative who wants it for the economic benefit .

Darrell