Sunday, May 21, 2006

The Stupidity of Larry Kudlow is Awesome

This piece by Larry Kudlow is one of the biggest pieces of B.S. I have ever read.

Where to begin?

First, he scoffs at a fence with the commonly used argument that because it won't stop everybody, why bother?

The best example of this is this incredibly stupid line from Robert D. Feinman's "immigration myths" webpage on his website:

The INS estimates that roughly 40% of the illegal immigrants living in the U.S., originally entered the country on non-immigrant visas (such as H-1B, L-1, etc.). These non-immigrants have become "illegal" immigrants by overstaying their visas. These people didn't jump a fence or swim across the Rio Grande, they flew in and entered legally. Building a wall won't change this.

So that means that approximately 60% living here illegally came here illegally, a very large portion of which presumably came in through the Mexican border. In fact, this may be an underestimate; let's remember that people who come here legally and then overstay their visas have some level of documentation, and presumably there is also documentation when they leave the country, so we should be able to get a good idea who has come here and not left. People who come here without any documentation are much harder to track, so we likely have underestimated their numbers greatly.

The message appears to be that if you cannot stop all illegal immigration with a fence, it must be worthless. I doubt that liberals would use that type of reasoning with any wealth-redistributing social program.

Back to Kudlow:

In his case, he is just being totally dishonest because he doesn't want to do anything to curb the immigration of a new generation of helots for him and his wealthy friends.

Second, this brilliant economist is aghast that we are trying to limit the number of workers coming here legally. He then suggests that the productivity of skilled H1B visa applicants would offset any costs from unskilled H2B applicants (although why we need to admit the latter is something of a mystery. Why do we need to let in a "bad immigrant" every time we let in a "good immigrant?" Does not compute. (He also insists that H1Bers are "crucial to America's competitiveness," which is meant to imply that we do not have enough native workers to fill those jobs. In reality, of course, the goal is simply to create a class of peons who can avoid taxes and be exploited while skilled American labor becomes unemployed and unemployable.

Next he says:

Why legislators fail to understand the economics of this problem is beyond me.

Which is an incredibly ironic statement, considering the economically dishonest things he says later. (Not ignorant - I'm sure he knows that a lot of what he says is untrue). Back to that later.

His next line of argument is that due to differences in wages between the U.S. and Mexico, there will be immigration into the U.S., and nothing can be done to stop it. This sort of handwaving is rather disingenuous when you consider that (a) no one has tried to stop it, so we don't know, and (b) he displays no concern about trying to solve this problem by, you know, pressuring Mexico to reform? Why Kudlow supports trying to force reform on Iraq by invasion and occupation, but cannot bring himself to suggest that Bush even put diplomatic pressure on Vincente Fox is beyond me.

Next, he dazzles us with this incoherent paragraph:

The anti-immigration crowd also gets it wrong when it points out that the Senate compromise bill would increase the number of immigrant workers in the U.S. by roughly 61 million over the next two decades. This Heritage Foundation analysis has the fear-mongerers predicting a Mexican takeover of the United States. But we need these workers.

So the Senate bill will not increase by 61 million over two decades, but we need them anyway? It sort of seems like he is switching arguments in mid-stream. Notice also how Kudlow does not address the prediction of a Mexican takeover, but rather asserts simply that "we need these workers," implying essentially that yes, there will be a Mexican takeover, but that is a price he is willing to pay to get those workers.

Then he insists that we need the extra workers to support Social Security. Other than the fact that such an argument ignores what we will do about the immigrant's need for Social Security in twenty more years "(apparently he is assuming that they will graciously forego any Social Security benefits when it is their turn), the fact is that this is not true. If there are demographic problems with Social Security that can only be dealt with under the present system by constantly importing new workers in some gigantic pyramid scheme, then there is a structural problem that needs to be dealt with. Robert Locke has done some good work on this here (see #8) and here (do a control-F or apple-F for the phrase "Most of us will die in poverty.".

This, however, is where Kudlow forgets economics, culture, and everything, and just says something mind-numbingly DUMB:

Let’s also not forget that immigrants come here to work, raise families, and assimilate. They would in effect become a much-needed churchgoing blue-collar middle class — an all but forgotten demographic that is crucial to a healthy America.

What evidence do we have that the Mexicans in the U.S. are assimilating? Oh, wait, they are assimilating. To black cultural norms. How does he suppose that a gaggle of unskilled workers is ever going to form a middle class when we import so many that no one will earn over minimum wage?

In short, Kudlow just lies, lies, lies, and lies in this paragraph, and is stupid enough to assume that people will believe him - or else he is a fan of Adolf Hitler's philosophy of "never lie unless you lie big."

Next he adds that he agrees that these immigrants need to learn English. Good luck on forcing that. What if a lot of them have trouble learning it? What enforcement provisions will he use to make certain that anyone who stays here learns it fluently enough to speak it? Then he quotes Reagan: "[Immigrants] renew our spirit . . . and they add to the unity of America.”

Which is another way of saying that American culture (and by extension native born Americans) is stagnant and senescing, and that native borns are simply not enough to keep the U.S. competitive and vibrant. This is a direct insult to native borns. Reagan was a great guy, but some of the things he said were wrong. There are certainly benefits to immigration at certain times and in reasonable numbers, but added unity is not one of them. In any case, this was said back in the 80s, when immigration was much smaller in magnitude than it is now. In the current context, where we are talking about 60 million new immigrants in 20 years, stating that immigrants add to our unity is a total load of B.S.

And then he jumps on the Bush's Lies Bus:

Hotheaded conservative populists who equate temporary workers and a long-term path to citizenship with amnesty are dead wrong, and their calls for deportation are lunacy. Imagine U.S. security forces somehow putting immigrants and their families onto armed busses and shipping them back to Mexico. What would that say about our country?

Dead-of-night deportation raids smack of totalitarianism, not Americanism.


First, the proper punishment for being here illeglaly is deportation. If you don't deport, it is amnesty. Moreover, the aliens care about residence more than citizenship. This plan gives essentially automatic residence, even if the immigrants never get citizenship, so IT IS AMNESTY! Kudlow's assertion that it isn't amnesty are simply assertions. He doesn't offer any argument to back them up. Even if he wants to argue that deportation is un-American, he should be honest enough to admit that he thinks that we need an amnesty. Instead, he is basically asserting that because he finds deportation distasteful, and because the American people don't want amnesty, then letting the illegals stay cannot be amnesty, because what he wants cannot posibly be against what the majority of Americans want.

Kudlow is a dirty liar.

In any case, deporting all 11 or 12 million illegal immigrants is unnecessary. All that is necessary is to deport some of them, and to prosecute enough employers who hire them so that they can't get jobs. They will deport themselves. (We aslo need to make it easier for businesses to check their employees immigration status on a regular basis without getting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on their backs).

Besides, what is so "un-American" about deporting people who do not belong here, who are here because they broke the law? What Larry Kudlow calls "Americanism" is actually anti-America, what Lawrence Auster refers to as "The American Creed’s War on America ." Nota bene: Kudlow wants to use "Americanism" as a reason why we need to replace the current population of the U.S. and its culture with an alien culture. The only thing that defines America, according to Kudlow, is its politics and its openness and tolerance (not that a Latin American U.S. will likely have the same politics or be as tolerant or open). The specific culture and people that occupy it are dispensible.

Kudlow is a disgusting little man and a pathetic excuse for an American.

Next, Kudlow asserts that after excusing law-breaking in the past, Bush will enforce the law in the future. Liar.

Finally, he asserts:

As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial points out, Reagan wondered aloud about “the illegal alien fuss.” He signed a bill in the mid-1980s that legalized immigrants, and in the next twenty years the U.S. prospered as never before.

Yeah, like the aliens were the cause of that. Rather, they are the reason why California is now a Democratic stronghold. And considering that the laws were not enforced after Reagan amnestied the aliens, why should we believe that Bush will enforce them if he gets his amnesty? Why should we assume that Kudlow's assurance that, under Bush, "henceforth, in the future, temporary workers will finish their jobs and go home before applying for permanent status" is anything but a lie to get us to go along?

Answer: we shouldn't. Kudlow knows it wasn't enforced before, and that it will not be enforced in the future. He does not expect to see it enforced. He just thinks that the majority of dumb American yahoos are too stupid to see what a good thing illegal immigration is, and so they need to be lied to for their own good. Or more likely, he sees them as untermenschen who are standing in the way of him getting a new slave class, who need to be lied to so that they can be crushed for the benefit of him and his fellows in the upper class.

In short, Kudlow is a liar, and if the folks at National Review are real Americans, they should take a clue from Polipundit and stop publishing him.

That is all.

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