Month: October 2024

Sunset in the Mojave Desert.

I'm not sure why I did this, but something from last night got me curious about the effect of immigration on the economy in the broadest terms. That is, can we tease out any effect at the highest levels of economic activity? Here are naturalizations compared to GDP:

Naturalizations rose steadily through the mid-90s and then flattened. GDP just bounced around. There's nothing there. Now here are illegal border crossings vs income growth:

Oddly enough, there's a glimmer of something there. In the '60s border crossings rose and income growth went down. Over the next 30 years both were flattish. Then, in the teens, border crossings were down and income grew. But in 2021 it all falls apart, with border crossings skyrocketing and income growing strongly anyway.

Note that I'm measuring the income of the poorest quintile since it seems likely that low-income work is most affected by illegal immigration.

In any case, there's probably nothing much here. The economy putters along without taking much notice of immigration in any way. But it's possible that illegal crossings do have an effect on income growth at the bottom. Maybe.

According to our friends at YouGov, nothing much happened this week. Kamala Harris continues to have a 3-point national lead over Donald Trump. But just for fun, here's a simple linear extrapolation of how they're doing:

Don't take this seriously in any way. Not that it matters. If things really do end up with Harris beating Trump by 3½ points in the popular vote, the Electoral College is likely to be a pure tossup. Harris needs to pick up her game.

One of the weirdest claims in the Trump-Harris debate was Trump's lengthy declaration that he sucked it up and did his best to save a flailing Obamacare because it was the best choice for the American people. J.D. Vance repeated the claim tonight.

It's beyond even Trumpian levels of bizarreness. He campaigned on repealing Obamacare. He spent months pushing repeal through the House and almost through the Senate. He reacted bitterly to losing the fight thanks to a single vote by Sen. John McCain. He then spent the rest of his term defunding outreach and supporting lawsuits against Obamacare. And he's been publicly trashing it ever since.

This is not ancient history. We were all there. It's just not possible to gaslight Democrats about this, and Republicans aren't impressed in the first place since they all wanted to repeal Obamacare too.

In fact, Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare endlessly. They savaged it constantly. Nearly a dozen Republican states still don't accept its virtually free Medicaid expansion out of sheer spite. This is so deeply embedded in Republican DNA that it's literally impossible even for Trump to turn around and pretend to be its champion. It would be like Democrats trying to convince the country that they've never really been in favor of food stamps. Just forget it.

So what's the story? Why hasn't it been a bigger deal that Trump now says he's a big fan of keeping and improving Obamacare? And why has Kamala Harris mostly just shrugged about it?  Can anyone even take a stab at explaining this to me?

In tonight's vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance obviously made a calculated decision tonight to tone the rhetoric way down and introduce himself to America as a friendly, reasonable guy. On some important issues he backed way down. Deport 25 million illegal immigrants? How about a million criminals and then we'll think about the rest. Ban abortion? Um, er, we really need to re-earn the trust of the American public on that. Haitian immigrants eating pet cats? What I really meant is that they're overwhelming our schools.

Tim Walz decided to stay Minnesota nice and let Vance get away with his newfound warmth. Walz was also pretty nervous, especially at first. But he got better as the debate progressed, and obviously had the advantage of not having to defend a nutbag.

I thought Walz did a good job of emphasizing "stability" when both candidates were asked about a preemptive strike on Iran. Vance mainly punted on the question, which allowed Walz to hold and keep the high ground.

Vance scored on the economy thanks to Harris/Walz's continued decision—maybe correct—not to even fight back on inflation. I assume that they believe anything they say would sound dismissive and defensive, so they're better off just taking their lumps and moving on. I dunno. I understand the logic but I hate to see them vacate the field entirely.

Walz talked too fast and tried to stuff in too much, much of it too arcane. Vance was better, but he was also more salesman-y. Vance may have won on style points, but I'd guess only barely.

At the end, Vance resolutely refused to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. No surprise there. What else could he do? But I think Walz missed a chance to really drill home how bad January 6 was, which has been sanitized for so long that a lot of people don't remember what Trump was really trying to accomplish and how he tried to do it.

Vance instead pivoted to censorship, which probably didn't help him outside the MAGA base. It's an obscure issue for most people. Still, Walz meandered around in his response without forthrightly saying "Kamala Harris has never supported censorship of anything in her life," or words to that effect. But no harm done.

In the end, I'd guess Vance did a bit better job, but it was basically a tie. It will have no impact at all on the race.

As long as we're on the subject of interviewing presidential candidates:

Trump refuses to submit himself to a fact check. Could he possibly make it any more obvious that his campaign is built entirely around an insane firehose of lies, insults, and flat-out inventions? I mean:

Where does this drivel even come from? He thinks CBP One, a mobile app planned and released under his own administration, tells cartel drug lords where to unload all their illegal immigrants? This is drooling imbecility, and on second thought, who cares where it comes from? It's a blaring red siren of dementia no matter what.

Trump is so far down the rabbit hole that he regurgitates literally anything that pops up on his timeline. Haitians are eating pet cats. Kamala Harris only recently became Black. CBP One is a human trafficking app. Democrats are withholding Secret Service protection. We should have a day of unlimited police brutality. These aren't just bizarre policies, they're signs of an increasingly unhinged mind. The press needs to start calling this exactly what it is.

At the New York Times, Bret Stephens and Gail Collins take up their weekly conversation:

Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but reasonable questions about urgent public policy matters? The same, of course, should be done with Trump.

Gail: You know I’m not gonna tell you that Harris is doing enough serious interviews with national reporters. She’s not. Neither, obviously, is Trump, but we have a right to hold her to a higher standard.

Wait. Say that again?

Neither, obviously, is Trump, but we have a right to hold her to a higher standard.

Why should the New York Times hold Harris to a higher standard than Trump? Isn't that sort of our whole problem, that Trump isn't held to anything within spitting distance of normal human standards? Maybe now is a good time to start.

Iran's "sharp escalation" today involved less than 200 missiles and, apparently, zero casualties.

It's barely conceivable that this wasn't intensely deliberate. Twice now, Iran has lobbed missiles at Israel, and both times they've done it with plenty of warning, small numbers, and ineffective targeting. They might as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing that the whole thing is purely symbolic and not meant to do any real harm.

I have no love for Iran. If its theocratic rulers could be snuffed out at a stroke I'd shed no tears. They are living proof that there are way worse things than a thuggish and corrupt shah.

Still, this is obviously not worth a wider war. Netanyahu can't possibly not understand that, from a politics of cynical self-survival if nothing else.

With the port strike in the news, you may be wondering how much money unionized longshoremen really make. It turns out this is not so easy to suss out. Pacific Coast shippers are represented by the PMA, which publishes a relatively straightforward list of average annual earnings. East Coast shippers are represented by the USMX, which does no such thing. However, they do publish their master agreements, which provide contracted hourly wages on an annual basis. These can be roughly converted to annual earnings on a PMA basis, which allows a reasonable comparison.

After adjusting it all for inflation, here's my best guesstimate for an average worker with moderate seniority and around 32 hours of work per week:

A few things are obvious:

• West Coast workers earn way more than East Coast workers.
• East Coast workers average around $60,000 per year, which is OK money but hardly a king's ransom.
• Neither coast has seen much of a pay increase over the past 20 years. East Coast workers, in fact, earn less than they did in 2000. In addition, the East Coast has a tiered pay scale, with new workers earning considerably less than the average.

The ILA is asking for large wage increases on East Coast ports, but much of this will just make up for past losses plus the recent inflationary spike.

NOTE: The West Coast figures show some volatility because they're based on actual earnings. During a recession, when hours of work go down, so do earnings. The East Coast figures are extrapolated from hourly wages with an assumption of 1,600 hours of work per year. They're probably volatile too, but since we don't know actual hours worked there's no way to incorporate this. If I had to guess, I'd say that actual annual earnings show similar volatility on both coasts.

The chimpanzee is keeping an eye on you.