My Weekly Reading for October 6, 2024
A Pro-Immigrant Party Wouldn’t Want To Revive the Failed Senate Border Bill
by Fiona Harrigan, Reason, October 2, 2024.
Excerpt:
The bill did include some reforms, such as additional employment- and family-based visas and work authorizations for the family members of certain visa holders. It would have helped protect Documented Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. legally as children by parents on nonimmigrant visas and may need to self-deport if they don’t secure a green card before turning 21. It also included protections for the Afghans evacuated to the U.S. following the August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
But it also would have ravaged the asylum-seeking process—which is certainly flawed—and likely jeopardized due process and humanitarian protection for vulnerable migrants. The bill’s main provision would have significantly limited access to asylum if border crossings exceeded a certain threshold. It would have given Immigration and Customs Enforcement billions to fund more detention capacity and deportation flights. It would have created a hasty screening process and deprived migrants of the opportunity to appear before an immigration judge.
DRH comment: Fiona Harrigan is one of my favorite writers at Reason. She does a consistently good job of reporting on immigration issues.
What populists don’t understand about tariffs (but economists do)
by Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld, Peterson Institute for International Economics, October 1, 2024.
Excerpt:
Costs of tariffs. Tariffs are a tax on imports, and they will raise prices for households and, crucially, for businesses that rely on imported inputs to make their products. Not only will prices rise for the imported products, so will the prices of goods produced at home that compete with imports. Simply put, protectionism reduces the gains from trade; we choose to pay more than necessary for some goods (imports and their domestic substitutes) instead of focusing on those goods that we produce more efficiently than foreigners.
One clarification: When they say “we choose to pay more than necessary for some goods,” what they really mean is that because our government imposes these taxes called tariffs, we do pay more. But “we” aren’t choosing the tariffs. It’s true that we choose to pay those higher prices when we buy, but I think that’s not what they’re getting at. I think they’re writing as if they think that Americans and government are one. It’s a typically collectivist language that creeps into an otherwise excellent analysis.
Obstfeld, by the way, is co-author, with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz, of the textbook International Economics: Theory and Policy, one of the leading textbooks in international economics.
Americans Grow Increasingly Dependent on Government Payments
by J.D. Tuccille, Reason, October 4, 2024
Excerpt:
“Income from government transfers is the fastest-growing major component of Americans’ personal income,” according to a September report from the bipartisan Economic Innovation Group (EIG). “Nationally, Americans received $3.8 trillion in government transfers in 2022, accounting for 18 percent of all personal income in the United States. That share has more than doubled since 1970.”
And:
Separately, the Foundation for Government Accountability finds that “total spending on Medicaid expansion has surpassed $1 trillion nationwide—$574 billion more than expected.”
Even so, the EIG report emphasizes that “Medicaid expansion had only three quarters the effect on transfer spending annually as a single percentage point increase in the share of the population aged 65 and over.” Seniors are growing as a share of the U.S. population, cashing in on Social Security and Medicare, and that’s the main driver of dependency on government payments.
Guantanamo: Deal or No Deal?
by Andrew P. Napolitano, antiwar.com, October 4, 2024.
Moreover, the Pentagon’s own team of prosecutors have warned against the public revelation of “all” the evidence in the case because the evidence of stomach-churning torture will expose war crimes for which there is no statute of limitations.
Stated differently, if this case is tried in the traditional way as opposed to the entry of a plea agreement with the defendants’ recitation under oath of their knowledge of the crimes, George W. Bush himself and others in his administration, in the CIA and in the military could be indicted and tried in foreign countries for war crimes.
by Michael R. Strain, in Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism, edited by Melissa S. Kearney and Luke Pardue. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.
Excerpt:
Much of the rise in protectionism owes to the view that free trade has led to substantial employment reductions. This conclusion is incorrect. Economic theory suggests that trade liberalization should have no effect on the level of employment. And the evidence from the “China shock,” taken as a whole, suggests that trade with China did not affect the aggregate number of jobs in the United States.
It is also predicated on the wrongheaded assumption held by many elected officials and commentators that free trade is about jobs. But open trade is not about jobs. It is about wages and consumption. Leveraging comparative advantage allows nations to specialize in their productive activities. Specialization makes their workers more productive, putting upward pressure on their wages and incomes. Specialization increases world output, raising the level of consumption and the quality and variety of consumer goods and services.