[spoiler]PANEL 1
Illustration shows Alamar, a dark-skinned man wearing overalls and a hardhat, standing behind a partly built brick wall holding a brick in one hand and a trowel in the other.
CAPTION: Alamar came to the United States to find work. Alamar is a brick mason. He works hard and is very productive.
PANEL 2
Illustration shows Alamar continuing to work on the wall, while a woman nearby wearing a hardhat checks something off on her clipboard. Behind Alamar, a man walks up carrying a box. Behind that man, a large truck has pulled up.
CAPTION: Because Alamar is so productive, people in related jobs, like brickmakers, site supervisors, and truckers, have more work to do.
PANEL 3
Illustration shows Alamar, no longer wearing a hardhat, buying groceries from a cashier.
CAPTION: All those people, including Alamar, spend money in the local economy, on things like groceries and movies and diners and gas and clothes. All that spending creates more jobs.
PANEL 4
Illustration shows Alamar back at work on the wall. Next to him, an angry bald man is yelling.
CAPTION: That’s why Americans welcome Alamar with friendship and open arms.
ANGRY BALD MAN: GO HOME, YOU *@%#! JOB-STEALER![/spoiler]
This is a good cartoon, it really is, but I’m afraid that we found a young cartoonist man from Oaxaca without nieces to support and who thinks $5 per completed comic page is a living wage. So we will need you to get your pens and brushes and stuff packed up today, OK? Oh, if you want to pull one more week of wages, you can train the new guy on how to do the blogging side of things. His English is pretty decent; he even knows how to spell “mazel tov” which puts him one up on some of us. He’ll do fine. Thanks for your service.
Dude, you apparently haven’t heard of it (which makes your participating in this forum a little odd), but there’s this thing called “the internet,” which I use to send cartoons to my clients, most of whom live thousands of miles from me, some of whom don’t even live on the same continent as me.
My point is, I’m already competing with that young cartoonist from Oaxaca for jobs.
Keeping him from moving to the US, if he wants to move here, won’t protect my job. (And since when were you a fan of protectionism?). But it will mean that the money he earns will not be spent in the US.
I’m all for globalization in labor markets; my objections to uncontrolled immigration are akin to Ron’s, based in concern for border control.
Yes, you’re competing with Oaxaca Amp – I call him Oaxacamp when I dream of his burly forearms gently sketching, sketching, sketching – but you have a huge advantage over him by being in Portland, where the dirt and grungy infrastructure are affectations layered over OC-48 trunks. When we bring him here, his competitive disadvantages vaporize and suddenly you’re REALLY competing. Or not, since we already decided to bring him on and put your ass on the curb.
However, I’ll grant you that my little joke was based on a job which is local and can’t be exported; no virtual brick masonry apps functioning yet. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that you could be working anywhere you had light, connectivity, and walls.
Your point – if I understand it, and look at your first comment as if my job was one that had to be done locally, like bricklaying – is that it sucks for the bricklayer who had a good bricklaying job, but lost it because Alamar is better or cheaper.
That’s true. And it’s also true that it sucks for Sally the typewriter technician that computers have made typewriters obsolete.
But the economy as a whole is much better off if we have Alamar and people like him working where they get paid the highest for their skills, and if we have innovations like computers. Because in both cases, what we’re talking about is growing the economy. And when the economy grows, the large majority of workers at all economic levels are better off than the alternative state, in which we protect those two individual jobs (in the short term) but impede economic growth.
The truth is, in the long term, a growing economy is more likely to mean that Barry the bricklayer has steady employment, then keeping Alamar out of the country will.
There is no healthy economic situation in which no one loses a job, ever. So “this is a bad idea because someone might lose a job” is not, in an of itself, a persuasive argument, except as a purely emotional appeal.
I cannot tell you how gratifying it is that you not only know it, but feel obliged to evangelize it to me.
Government enforcement of labor laws regardless of documented status tends to put a dent in the advantage of hiring illegal-Alamar. Though the cartoon doesn’t say that Alamar is here illegally. Only that he’s an immigrant.
“So “this is a bad idea because someone might lose a job” is not, in an of itself, a persuasive argument, except as a purely emotional appeal.”
This is going to come back at you, guy.
Mythago has a good point. If it were up to me, companies caught hiring undocumented workers would not only pay heavy fines, but paying back everyone they paid sub-minimum wage, plus interest if it had gone on for more than a year or so. If illegal labor stops being dirt cheap and easily exploitable labor, people will be way less likely to come here illegally. While we’re at it, we need to make the legal immigration process slightly less byzantine and impossible, but if there are jobs here, and no jobs there, people are always going to take the risk of coming illegally.
Or private enforcement. I represent plenty of people who aren’t working legally; they’re still entitled to get the wages they were promised.
Since I think that you’re probably still pro-union, how do you reconcile this?
Imagine Alomar’s a bricklaying god: he can do twice the work at the same price (or the same work at half the price.) Should he be able to undercut ALL workers, or only those workers who aren’t unionized?
Also: With respect to panel #4, that’s often inaccurate depending on immigration status. Illegal immigrants send an enormous amount of money OUT of the U.S., rather than spending it here. Obviously, this is most true for those who retain strong family ties to other countries.
If Paul lives with his family in Anytown, USA as his home, he’s likely to spend his money there. If Alomar lives with his family in Anytown, USA as his home then he’s likely to spend his money there, whether or not he’s a recent or longstanding immigrant, legal or otherwise.
But if Alomar is an illegal immigrant with family elsewhere, then he’s highly UNLIKELY to spend his money in Anytown; that can easily outbalance the benefits of his bricklaying skills.
A key point. By not making it clear, the cartoon resorts to the common device of the left of conflating the much larger group of people who are against illegal immigration with the much, much smaller group who are against immigration of any kind. It’s a great strategy if you want to paint everyone who is against illegal immigration as a bunch of xenophobes and bigots, but it’s not so effective in actually illuminating the issue.
If Alamar is here legally he’s likely unionized and is not driving down wages because he’s getting paid the same as the guy next to him (whether the guy next to him is as productive as Alamar is or not, but that’s a separate issue). It’s when Alamar is an illegal alien that he tends to get exploited and drives down wages for all. Keep them out and there’ll be more jobs open for citizens and resident aliens. Mind you, here in Chicago someone in the country illegally could just as easily be named Magdalena or Meagan.
Another fallacy is that if (for the sake of argument, presumably illegally-here) Alamar is sent home, we don’t get those benefits because nobody fills that job. First, I suspect that if you call up the local masonry union hall these days with a job req in hand they’ll have no problem sending you people to fill it, which not only gives us the benefits outlined in the cartoon but also gets someone off of unemployment – a double boon. Second, should things be booming and more masons are needed, I see no reason why someone here legally doesn’t fill that position.
Kelly K said
Nah. Too easy. Fines get paid and written off. Bring criminal charges against the CEO and the V.P. of H.R. of the company that hired him (or the head of the union that gave him his union card) that require jail time, not just fines – and where the use of eVerify is an affirmative defense against such charges. CEO’s are used to writing checks. They are not so used to imprisonment. Perfect? No. But then neither is the current system, and we should never let the perfect be the enemy of good.
But hell, YOU can spell “Oaxaca”! So I guess your job is secure.
Amp,
I’m sympathetic, but Paul Krugman will tell you that the data here is very clear. Long/short:
1. Immigration drives down the wages of the natives who compete with the immigrants.
2. The rest of us benefit (lower prices) but the benefits are small
3. Low-skilled immigration increases income-inequality (slightly)
4. Mass low-skilled immigration threatens the welfare state.
5. Its no coincidence that the New-Deal correlates to immigration restrictions
6. We should let them in anyway.
I can pull the exact quotes if you like.
**also, I was banned from this blog a couple of years ago. I figured the sentence would be up by now so I took the liberty. But if you don’t want me to comment no worries and my apologies.
Mythago, most of the benefits still happen if Alamar is here entirely legally. The US benefits from increases in our productive workforce, and that’s true for both legal and undocumented workers.
G&W:
I’m not sure I see where there’s a contradiction to be resolved. Could you spell out your question for me, please?
He should be recruited into the Union, obviously.
I find the “legal/illegal” distinction here to be besides the point. Plenty of “legal” immigrants have strong family ties in their country of origin, including sending money home.
And it doesn’t matter. Even if Alamar is sending every spare penny he has to Mexico, he’s still buying food here, paying rent here, buying gas here, etc.. If he needs a hot lunch during his break, he’s going to go to the food stand where he is, not drive across the border. (Plus, there’s the increased spending caused by other people who are more productive because Alamar is here, and many of those people aren’t sending money out of the country.)
Obviously Alamar HAS to spend at least some of his money here if he works here. Moreover, just because some of his money is sent out of country, does not in any way negate the benefits of his bricklaying skills to the local economy (and to the buildings he works on).
Manju, I’m not obligated to agree with everything Paul Krugman says. I’d be interested in any links you want to provide, sure.
In what I’ve seen, Krugman relies on Borjas for his claim that low-skilled immigration lowers some workers wages. (Even Krugman says that overall, native workers wages are raised). But Borjas’ work is pure theory, and has major issues. The work of more empirical economists who have relied on “natural experiments,” like Card and Peri, is more persuasive.
Ron, there are lots of ways of being against immigration other than being against undocumented immigrants. For instance, you could be against laws and regulations that would make legal citizenship reasonably available for hard-working immigrants like “Alamar” who just want to live here and work. Most Republicans are against such laws.
Please don’t use the term “illegal alien.” If you MUST use the word illegal, use the term “illegal immigrant.” Thanks.
That aside, what do you imagine happens to the rent paid by an undocumented immigrant? Or to the money she uses to buy groceries? Do you think that money just dissolves into dust like a vampire on Buffy? No, obviously not; it gets spent in the local economy until someone puts it into a bank, where hopefully it will be borrowed and invested. How do you imagine that doesn’t contribute to job creation?
If the work is being done in an efficient, highly productive manner, then that increased productivity is good for the economy and creates jobs. It doesn’t matter to the work if the person doing the work has the proper documents or not. How is it you imagine that increasing productivity doesn’t create jobs if the productive workers are undocumented immigrants?
I think whether you’re welcome back here has a lot to do with whether you post the kind of hate speech you did last time.
Don’t do that shit.
(This should not be construed as an invitation to discuss your past postings at all. It’s not. Just don’t do it.)
—Myca
Amp, that’s gotta be an Internet 1st. A RWing Libertarian presents Paul Krugman and the LWing Keynesian responds with Cato.
Seriously, I read folks I’m ideologically opposed to so much that I become more familiar with them than I am with those who I should agree with. I’ll pull the Krugman quotes and if you can show me he’s wrong, great.
I think that the response, broadly, to both Krugman’s objections and G&W’s “what about the unions” objections is that the left wing broadly believes in a strong social safety net and keeping wages high(er).
I think that it’s objectively true that globalization and increased immigration are economically positive in the aggregate. In creating that economic good, though, certain harms are created, generally for lower wage workers.
My position is that if we’re going to aim for the broadly positive effect (the benefits of which, if past performance is any indication, will go mostly to the already-wealthy), it’s morally imperative to mitigate those harms as much as we can. To do otherwise is merely to enrich oneself at the expense of impoverishing another.
—Myca
Here he relies on 3 Research papers, including the Borjas/Katz one you reference. They are all empirical studies, as opposed to “pure theory”.
But the theory is simple: Supply and Demand. The data confirms this basic principle:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/notes-on-immigration/
Yes, real wages increase (b/c of lower prices/increase in productivity). But:
1. the increase is small
2. the distribution works against the native poor
Same link as above:
Myca, that’s well put.
Myca, I think you’re forgetting about workers and immigrants from poorer countries. Paul Krugman again:
**Since writing those words, Krugman has walked back his rhetoric on free trade somewhat, but not fundamentally (mostly has to do with structural unemployment in the US, not the global poor).
Sure, and point well taken.
I was addressing globalization rather than immigration, and was focusing on who benefits in the USA, but the argument is essentially the same.
1) Both increased immigration and globalization are ways to get to a better place, creating more prosperity in general.
2) Though the utilitarian calculus is clear (more benefit to more people), some people will suffer so that the rest of us may enjoy this increased prosperity.
Therefore: Let’s do #1 while mitigating #2.
—Myca
Of the three links Krugman provides, two are dead (the one link that works is to Borjas/Katz),.
However, there is nothing in Krugman’s text to indicate that he’s relying on the other two papers he references for his claim that immigrants cause lower wages for low-wage workers (specifically, for workers without a high school degree). The only paper he mentions to support that conclusion, in his text, is Borjas/Katz.
I checked out a different paper by Hanson (the co-author of the two other papers). In that paper, Hanson relies entirely on a paper by Borjas to support the claim that immigration lower wages for low-income workers, and also notes that “estimates of the impact on low-skilled native workers are highly disputed.”
The Borjas/Katz paper, regarding wage effects, is a simulation. It’s “empirical” in the sense that they plugged some real-world data into the inputs of their model, but it’s not empirical in the sense of actually measuring the results of immigration on wages in the real world. The studies that do this are “natural experiment” studies, and those studies have, over and over, failed to find a negative effect of immigration on wages for low-income native workers. That indicates that either (1) no such negative effect exists, or (2) if negative effects do exist, they must be very small (otherwise they’d be detected by the studies).
Why the difference between the Borjas model and the papers based on observations of real-world outcomes? One possible reason is that Borjas’ model is ignoring positive effects of immigration:
You quote Krugman saying:
This simple supply and demand analysis only works if we assume that native-born workers and immigrant workers are perfect substitutes. But if instead of being substitutes, they are complimentary, then Krugman’s analysis doesn’t apply. And that’s what many economists who study this question seem to believe – that the skills of immigrant workers are on the whole complimentary, not substitutes.
Myca wrote:
This agrees with something Brad DeLong wrote in response to Krugman:
Even if it were true that immigration lowers wages for low-income natives by some small amount – and no one has ever shown this to be true, empirically – the best response wouldn’t be to hurt everyone else by cutting off immigration.
Fair point. My reasoning there was that the main reason for hiring undocumented workers illegally is that it’s cheaper–you can pay them below minimum wage, and what are they going to do, report it to the DOL? But if you make it likely that it’s going to be substantially more expensive to break the law, the incentive dries up. But, hey, I have no objection to heavy fines, payment of wages owed *and* jail time.
Oh dear me, no.
I dated a guy who was a wages & hours lawyer in Oakland a while back. (Terrible guy, good lawyer.) Oakland has laws stating that even if you employ non-union workers in city construction bids, you have to pay some kind of industry standard wage. So what happens? Guys like Alamar make a union-equivalent wage, right?
No. Unscrupulous firms under-bid the union firms to get the contracts. Then they hire a bunch of guys who don’t speak a lot of English – maybe they’re Mexican, maybe they’re Hmong, maybe they’re Guatemalan, doesn’t matter. They work them 7am to 5pm for a lot lower hourly wage, then they alter the time cards to make it look like the guys worked fewer hours for the union-equivalent. They fail to give the guys breaks and lunches, and when they do give them, they dock their pay for that time. They tell them “be ready for the truck to pick you up at 6am” and they drop them off at 6pm, but they don’t pay them for that hour at the beginning and end of the day like the law requires. And they get fat on their commissions and salaries and bonuses, while a bunch of Hmong and Mexican and Guatemalan guys make below-poverty wages because they don’t know any better and can’t read the mandatory signs about wages and hours which aren’t posted anywhere they can see them anyhow because they never go anywhere that isn’t the job site or the back of the truck.
And the guy who does learn enough English to read the signs, or whose neighbor says “wait a minute, that’s not legal,” is afraid to go and complain because maybe he’s documented but his friend on the same job isn’t, or he’s documented but he’s waiting on news about whether his wife and kids are going to get permission to immigrate as well, or he’s documented but he knows damn well that he needs this job because the economy is crap, or he’s not documented and he knows his family will starve if he gets sent back home and it’ll just be another trip via coyote and this time it might kill him.
And union firms that play by the rules go out of business and their owners wind up working the counter at the fancy Italian grocery store, which is where we met a dude who used to own a construction business.
And we definitely need fewer regulations on business, not more, and smaller government so there are fewer and fewer people to check up on whether people are playing by the rules, so we can just leave it to the law firms that have to hope they can eke out a living by winning cases on contingency. Thank goodness for “right to work” laws and a Senate that wouldn’t confirm Elizabeth Warren and the fantasy of building the Great Wall of America.
If Oxacamp is any good, I’ll read him and amp. With some luck, they’ll start promoting each other’s work and more people will know about and read both. Alternately, they’ll become hated rivals and people will buy both to see who’s right. Either way, what’s the problem?
And if immigrants do drive down wages, well, people didn’t evolve on the American continent. We’re all immigrants. Why should those whose ancestors came here a generation or two ago have the advantage over those moving here now?
And we definitely need fewer regulations on business, not more, and smaller government
Any smaller government or fewer regulations and we in the US will be immigrating to Mexico for the higher pay and safer working conditions. Not to mention the better infrastructure. “Small government” has been tried. It’s a failure. The economy won’t improve until the government starts taxing and spending at a reasonable rate.
Though I agree that the deck is stacked against unions and immigrants. Perhaps some immigration reform so that immigrants can “make trouble” without fear of retaliation would be helpful in the negative cycle you outline.
The economy won’t improve until the government starts taxing and spending at a reasonable rate.
At some point in the past history of the US, our economy grew from “bunch of hemp farmers and tea drowners” to “global hyperpower”.
What federal tax rate and spending rate, as a fraction of GDP, do you imagine was in effect during that period of growth and expansion?
And sometime in the past seven years, my friend Maddox has changed from being a tiny baby to being many times the mass of that tiny baby, even though she eats very little food compared to grown-ups, and as a baby thrived entirely on breast milk.
Should I expect this sort of diet to remain the diet that she thrives on for the next eight decades?
The Ampmobile cruises overhead, full of menace, and a single bright green ray lances down to the ground, like a soothing lightning strike. The ground explodes, and when the dust clears we see RonF standing in the smoking rubble of his supervillain lair. Standing around RonF are his minions, dazed, now with the word RACIST burned into their foreheads in glowing green. RonF shakes his fists at the sky. “Curse you, Ampersand!” he screams. “Curse you and your Rhetoric Ray and all liberals like you!”
Seriously, RonF, the whole point of the comic is that it doesn’t matter whether Alamar came here legally; he still works hard, he still does a good job, he still supports others with jobs, he still sends money into the local economy. All of those things are true regardless of what papers he has in his pocket. You’ll also note that the guy in the last panel could be screaming the same thing even if Alamar’s papers are in order; he’s not calling Alamar an “illegal alien”, he’s calling Alamar a migrant.
What federal tax rate and spending rate, as a fraction of GDP, do you imagine was in effect during that period of growth and expansion?
How about approximately what they had in the 1950s? Conservatives are always talking about the 1950s as the golden age. Well, perhaps it wasn’t the antic0mmunism and racism that made it so, but rather the government support for arts and science, higher rate of unionization, and big projects like the race to the moon.
But this time without the invasion of every country that has a slightly more liberal economic policy than us, please.
From a later column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=2&
Amp – No, you should not. Your basis for this understanding would be the billions of human infants we have seen make the journey to adulthood, and our extensive field tests of how their diets change over time.
What empirical examples do we have of already-enormous economies growing themselves further over the long term by shifting economic activity from private to public sectors?
Dianne – During the 1950s, Federal revenue ranged from about 15% to about 20% of GDP. During the 2000s, Federal revenue ranged from…about 15% to about 20% of GDP. (Google ‘Hauser’s Law’ if you like.) The average for the 50s was closer to 20% than the average for the oughts; that is because we spent much of the 2000s in recession, while the 1950s were relatively non-recessionary. (In recession, the same tax policy brings in less revenue.)
I am not sure how to even address your other comments. There was no Federal involvement in the arts in the 1950s in any significant sense (there really isn’t now, either, those appropriations are miniscule). Federal spending on non-military science was almost nonexistent; that ramped up in the 1960s, but other than a brief and small dip in the 1980s, it has been an ever-increasing sum. (http://www.sciencecoalition.org/sites/sciencecoalition.com/images/file/Research%20Funding%20Timeline.pdf)
You’re a bit off base about the relative peaceability of eras, as well.
The point of all this is not to quibble over GDP figures or which-war-was-worse; the point is that there is little evidence to support the idea that huge variations in Federal policy are primary drivers of economic change. Certainly, it helps or hinders to have smart or stupid economic policies in place…but I don’t think anyone can make the case that you have to tax yourself rich in order to grow the economy. The world doesn’t appear to work like that.
Mythago:
WTF? Are you calling me a racist, mythago?
I don’t dispute that.
Of all but the last panel, perhaps.
Which is my point. I believe that this is meant to propose that there’s a significant group of people out there who oppose legal immigration as well as illegal immigration – at least, that’s the message I heard. I think that’s inaccurate.
Amp:
Are these laws and regulations that would prevent Alamar from filing in Ireland, Poland or Mexico to obtain the legal permission to come here and work? Or are you talking about laws and regulations that would prevent Meghan, Piotr or Alamar from getting that legal permission after having already both illegaly snuck into the country and gotten a job? I have no problem with streamlining the former once our legislators have considered the matter and decided that we do in fact need to bring in more workers; but I oppose the latter.
RonF: I promise that if I want to call you a racist, I’ll flat-out do it. I was actually making fun of your rant about mean lefties and their tricksy ways. I think you knew that, though.
And seriously, you’ve never heard anyone complain about the number of H1B visa holders? That’s a rather large pool of legal immigrants.
ETA: it’s not illegal to enter the US to look for work. It is illegal to actually work once you’re here absent the proper permits or immigration status. Of course, try telling a border guard “I am entering the US to look for a job and then I will leave if I can’t legally stay and work.”
ETA: it’s not illegal to enter the US to look for work.
The intention itself is not illegal, no. But to enter the United States, you must be a citizen, be a lawful permanent resident and present documentation of same, have (and present) a passport and a visa, or have (and present) a passport alone if you are from Canada or a couple other harmless places.
Nobody is allowed to just wander across and see if Best Buy is hiring.
Bob x90
I think it’s more that there’s a significant number of people who make assumptions about the legality of someone’s immigration (or the value of their potential contributions in the US) based on their ethnicity.
@Robert: to be accurate, your statement should be “nobody is allowed to just wander across”. If you can legally enter the US, you can look for work while you’re here; asking Best Buy if they’re hiring is not the same as actually working for Best Buy.
Of course he has. We have a regular, if infrequent, commenter here who goes by the handle nomoreh1b. I find it hard to believe that anybody working IT in a major city is unfamiliar with H1B visas.
I used to complain about the number of H1B visas. We couldn’t get enough of them at Microsoft to hire all the engineers we wanted.
It’s clear that you should have been hiring American engineers. Why does Microsoft hate the USA?
We hired all the good ones we could, that would have us. Not our fault your union-wracked statist educational system is such a piece of shit.
But to answer your direct question, because of your freedom. We hated you for your freedom.
You should have hired all the qualified American engineers – good ones, mediocre ones, bad ones, godawfulhowthehelldidyougetanengineeringdegree ones – before hurting America’s economy by hiring foreigners to fill the remaining positions.
You and Microsoft are dirty foreigners what with the hating of our freedoms! I am eversoglad that I’ve placed my economic friendship with American, America-loving competitors such as Google and Apple.
True, I’ve heard some people complain about H1B hiring. But 1) the number of people who even know WTF an H1B even is is pretty small, and 2) it’s also a pretty specific complaint – again, those folks are not complaining about immigration in general.
Funny thing about engineering degrees and H1B visas and whether or not they are needed or Microsoft et. al. are just being greedy. I was having a conversation in an Italian restaurant in Warsaw a couple of weeks ago with one of our Polish network support people who has been to the USA a few times. He said that he’d noticed something. All the kids in Poland aspire to be either engineers or scientists or mathematicians or such, and only do something else if they can’t make that cut. Whereas it look as though most kids in America want to be anything but. He asked me to explain.
I said that probably the most likely reason was that math and science courses are reputed to be the hardest courses to take in high school and college. That wasn’t satisfying, though. If they’re hard in America they’re hard in Poland. Why the difference?
I can only speculate. Perhaps it’s because in math and science there’s no avoiding the fact that answers in those courses aren’t relative; the answers are absolute. 1 + 1 = 2. You don’t get partial credit for coming up with “2.1”. What I’ve noticed in my own experiences with teaching kids (“good enough” or “you tried hard!” isn’t good enough when you’re teaching a kid how to use an axe and make sure it chops the log in half and not his leg) that a lot of American kids have issues with being held to absolute standards – and their parents have problems with their kids being held to such standards as well. American kids are protected from experiencing failure. And when they do fail they are often permitted to simply give up instead of trying harder to succeed. So when they encounter a situation where they can see they aren’t going to be protected from failure they look to avoid it.
Ha ha, sucker, those companies are just Microsoft but secretly in another building! What do you think we did with all those Bangladeshi engineers? We weren’t going to let them work on quality software like Microsoft Bob. We made up “Google” one night while we were really high, and about peed ourselves every day when we would check the stock price.
Even today, that so-called ‘search engine’ of theirs is just Rajesh. He was the fastest typist we could find. Kid’s amazing.
Ron, I wonder if it’s also partially a social stigma/prestige thing, particularly in high school. Math and science are viewed as geeky and not cool.
Math and science are viewed as geeky and not cool.
By whom? By those who sense that power and wealth have shifted to favor STEM over football – last year’s elites, and those invested in that social structure.
Which I will admit can be a lot of people – I went to high school in Oklahoma. I was about the only person who was aware of the fact that I was at the top of the hierarchy. ;)
These days I suspect there is more awareness. Adults told us (them), back in the day, that when they grew up they’d be working for nerds and geeks, and they didn’t believe. These days kids believe, I think; they see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and such and they get it.
There’s still a lot of status in the old pyramid if for no other reason than that jocks tend to be good-looking and attractiveness always adds some points to the score. But the foundation is shifting slowly but surely, and has been for decades.
Short-sighted western thought. Alamar is a minority, and ethnically and culturally different from the majority. That alone is reason enough not to allow immigration. Differences cause political division and splits countries apart. Whether or not he’s “nice” or “productive” is irrelevant.
RonF, where do you live that American kids want to grow up to be “anything but” engineers? And it’s because they’re just lazy and spoiled? Seriously, that’s just not a reality-based observation. (Though I’m sure you’d agree that the ‘music’ they listen to today is just noise, and the way they dress is ridiculous, plus, they need to get the hell off my lawn.)
As for H1B visas, again, the idea that practically nobody ever heard of such a thing is silly – did you forget the tech crash so soon? – as is your goal-post shifting from talking about whether people just oppose illegal immigration vs. opposing ‘immigration in general’.
Re math and science, at the high-school level they’re not the same thing, and as you describe it math should actually be easier. There is, after all, only one right answer, which means that if you get it right, you get credit. You don’t lose points off your answer for failing to describe the pre-Marxist dialectic in the “+”, and you can’t fail a quiz because your calculation of the hypotenuse rests on Keynesian analysis and your teacher is a strict believer in supply-side geometry.
The idea that math is naturally hard, I think, comes from the belief that it is a natural ability that you either have or don’t, and not a learned skill that just about anyone can be taught, whereas we assume that anyone at all can learn ‘English’ (that’s what we all speak, yes?) or a second language (even though, like math, your answers are either right or wrong; you don’t get partial credit for arguing what the word for ‘cat’ should be).
You probably didn’t point out to your Polish friend that despite the very small difference between male and female math ability (driven, really, by a small number of very very good math prodigies at the tail end of the distribution in males), in the US we have this myth that girls are naturally bad at math. I imagine that he would have thought we were nuts, given that Eastern Europe seems to be full of female engineers and scientists and chess players. I guess we need to get them the memo.
@Robert, jocks don’t tend to be good-looking any more than non-jocks, really; more physically fit, probably, but not prettier.
[slow clap]
Yes, that’s definitely the issue here. Because without Latino immigration, America would be totally homogeneous, and therefore completely peaceful.
mythago:
“I was actually making fun of your rant about mean lefties and their tricksy ways. I think you knew that, though.”
No, I didn’t. If I had, I would have said so. Don’t make presumptions.
“RonF, where do you live that American kids want to grow up to be “anything but” engineers?” The SW Chicago suburbs. Where do you live that the majority of kids are in the top math and science courses in high school, go to college, and go into STEM once there?
“There is, after all, only one right answer, which means that if you get it right, you get credit.”
And if you don’t get it right you don’t get any credit, even if you go to great effort to BS about “the pre-Marxist dialectic in the ‘+'”, and you can fail a quiz because nobody cares if your calculation of the hypotenuse rests on Keynesian analysis if you don’t remember or can’t apply the square root of a squared + b squared. You can get partial credit in English and social studies for quiz answers; not so much in STEM.
I’d dispute that math is naturally hard. I found it naturally easy, but I’ve known plenty of people who mastered math by taking the time and effort to study. I go with the “geeky” theory, myself. Being good at math isn’t generally cool, something I confirm with the kids I interview for MIT every year. Being good at football is.
RonF, you’ve been disingenuous enough times on this blog that I feel pretty comfortable making presumptions.
As to whether math is ‘cool’, probably depends on where you are. If your high school is in a rural Texas town where football is nigh a religion, guessing not. If you’re in Palo Alto, very likely it is.
“RonF, you’ve been disingenuous enough times on this blog that I feel pretty comfortable making presumptions.”
Really? I find that comment amazing.
Okay, Mythago made the comment, and Ron responded to it. I’d like that to be the end of that particular digression, please.
Thanks!