The day Trump won the GOP nomination is not what the media and political consultants would have you believe. The latter are now doing their mea culpas about being blind to Trump’s rise. In particular, they assume Trump won with Tuesday’s Indiana primary outcome because Senator Ted Cruz then dropped out of the race. Nate Silver’s “Why Republican Voters Decided On Trump” is typical of these.
And like them, Silver is utterly wrong for omitting the only two words that mattered – Muslim Terrorism.
It is not surprising that Nate Silver, working for the uber-P.C. New York Times, would stick to political numbers and ignore the bleeding obvious that Trump jumped to his decisive lead on December 2, 2015, when immigrant Muslim terrorists gunned down 36, killing 14, at the Inland Regional Center Christmas party in San Bernardino, California.
Trump closed the deal with the American people in the next week because he was the ONLY American leader to state the bleeding obvious, that San Bernardino was Muslim Terrorism, and that we need to suspend Muslim immigration while devising more effective ways to keep out terrorist immigrants.
Trump won the GOP nomination in the week of December 2-8, 2015, because he bet his candidacy on stating the obvious truth in the face of an entrenched culture of political correctness which the GOP primary voters rightly perceived as a direct threat to America’s security at home.
Trump won by taking the risk of being a leader.
And the other GOP candidates lost because they were so concerned about not making a mistake that they could not perceive or take the opportunity to win.
The Muslim ban is part of his appeal but it is a subset of a larger theme – America the multicultural is alienating to too many white Americans who look about and no longer recognize the society in which they grew up, instead they see a mixture of alienness and familiarity and people want to undo what has been done and, when coming to terms with the sheer difficulty of undoing this mess, they at least want to stop the mess from getting worse.
They yearn for a feeling of community and as we know from social science diversity is to community like sulfuric acid is to skin.
Muslims are only one part of the problem of a transforming America.
That Nate Silver column should be subtitled, …”and put the final nail in the coffin of my forecasting methods.”
He was the toast of the town when he was predicting liberal victories. Now that his preferred candidates are losing, all his number crunching can’t mask the obvious – he’s just as biased and flawed as any other prognosticator.
It’s also interesting how these liberal pundits all the sudden are so interested in defending Reaganite orthodoxy. “Trump isn’t a true Conservative!” As if they ever gave a thought to what that even meant until Trump won.
Trump won by taking the risk of being a leader.
Excellent analysis. Which is why he is being held at arms length by the Republican establishment. They are more concerned with not losing instead of winning.
“a subset of a larger theme – America the multicultural is alienating to too many white Americans”
It’s not just whites. Latino citizens are threatened by illegal immigration. Blacks are equally threatened.
It will be interesting to see what this populist campaign picks up in unexpected support. Much of it may be muted by Bradley Effect,
His strategy, if that’s what it is, is risky but will pay off big, especially if there is another terrorist attack, which I think likely.
It’s not just whites. Latino citizens are threatened by illegal immigration. Blacks are equally threatened.
I think you and I are speaking to two different phenomena. You seem to be speaking to economic threats, which are indeed real, while I’m speaking of cultural threats – not recognizing your own society any longer. The free trade rethink argument really resonates with workers. The border wall and deportation and Muslim ban argument speaks to people who don’t want to live in a Middle Eastern bazaar or the Mos Eisley spaceport and instead want the Beaver Cleaver neighborhood of their youth.
Trump’s issues have broad appeal but they depend on different audiences sorting their own priorities is a particular way. For Hispanics who care about new immigrants undercutting the value of the labor they have to sell in the labor marketplace, Trump could help them but this will entail their being OK with other Hispanics being rounded up and deported. Same thing with American Muslims who care about economic issues, they have to get right with a Muslim ban which is desperately wanted by all of their non-Muslim neighbors.
I agree with your claim that Trump has a high risk, high reward strategy in play. There is though an internal contradiction – he’s leading a nascent white identity movement that no one really wants to acknowledge but for him to make inroads into minority communities with his economic message he requires those communities to put their own economic interests above their ethnic, racial and religious identities. It could work because the dynamics of a white majority losing their country are quite different from immigrants who came to make a life in a white country because that life was better than they could make in their native lands, so some of them might see that there is a fundamental problem with American turning into Mexico or Yemen or Nigeria and actually not want that to happen, to want to preserve the demographic nature of the society that invited them in. I’m skeptical though that people think in such terms.
As Expected, Donald Trump Trails Clinton By Double-Digits
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/05/05/as-expected-donald-trump-trails-clinton-by-doubledigits-n2158007
” … we need to supend Muslim immigration while devising more effective ways to keep out terrorist immigrants.” And what might those be, pray?
The San Bernadino (AKA San Berdoo) ISIS terrorist attack toggled over the Jacksonian’s this election cycle, an overwhelming majority of whom are Tea Party or Tea Party supporting.
See this John Zogby 2010 polling on the Jacksonian nature of the Tea Party, particularly the parts on how terrorism moved Sen. Scott Brown’s voters in 2010.
Boiling Tea
John Zogby
04/07/2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/boiling-tea_b_451306.html
“Contrary to the often repeated claim that Tea Partiers ‘lack agreed upon set of views,’ our data shows that terrorism and perceived unwillingness to talk about it in a straightforward manner might be another issue around which opposition to Washington will rally. Ironically, shifting their attention from health care might make Tea Partiers angrier.”
AKA Tea Party = Jacksonian, and San Berdoo is what crystalized the Tea Party around Trump.
The following was written shortly after the Zogby polling and captures the essence of why Trump’s statements after Paris and San Berdoo cemented the Tea Party to Trump come hell and high water.
May 06, 2010
Obama Stands with Muslims as He Promised
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/obama_stands_with_muslims_as_h.html
Carefully protecting feelings can be a priority of a mommy tending her babies. Protecting a group’s feelings at the expense of a nation’s real safety is a huge no-no for a Commander in Chief. And if Barack Obama would prefer to be the nurturing mommy to all Muslims, he ought to resign from the presidency.
Trying to be both a mommy to Muslim sensibilities and to perform adequately as our president is a losing formula for every real peace-loving American citizen.
It’s a terrible thing when Americans have to face the day not only needing to know where their own children are, but also asking the haunting question: Do you know where your Muslim neighbor is, and what he’s up to?
We have to ask that question now because our president and his people will not.
So in the end, Barack Obama has brought about the exact scenario he has worked so hard to avoid. If Americans were assured that our president and our national security employees are doing the necessary watching and profiling, then we would also know we don’t have to do it. We could be nice, hospitable, and open to our American Muslim neighbors and coworkers.
But when we know that the people paid to fight terrorism refuse to see the obvious, then we are necessarily put on high alert. We take on their jobs. We watch. We stare. We shy from the company of those we know might become our worst nightmare.<em?
Are there libertarians that want open borders? I’m sure there are somewhere.
However, libertarians, big L and small, are not part of those groups that tried to push through imigration reform. Immigration reform by the Gang of Eight had nothing to do with the libertarian agenda, which is promoting free enterprise and shrinking government. It was all Democrats and the GOPe. They are the responsible for the problems that gave rise to the “Trump” movement.
It’s also not true that libertarians want to dismantle domestic industry and move it all out of the country. If trade deals are done correctly with limited government interference and the free market picking winners and losers, then American business will thrive and jobs will be plentiful.
America is the greatest country on earth. In the history of earth. Let its people free to freely create and innovate, and the greatest prosperity on earth will be unleashed.
On the other hand, when government pick winners and losers, cronies and rent seekers win while jobs and domestic industry lose.
Michael Hiteshew,
In Politics, like the stock market, current performance is no guarentee of future results
Trump will have a fine time in general election debates ignoring the questions in favor of mini-speeches giving examples of where the Democrats are killing American citizens.
Exhibit A:
The purging of American counter-terrorism files that began in 2009.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/02/08/dhs-ordered-employee-to-scrub-records-of-muslims-with-terror-ties/
====================
DHS Ordered Employee to Scrub Records of Muslims with Terror Ties
By Debra Heine February 8, 2016
chat 8 comments
Back in December, Philip Haney, a former DHS investigator and now whistle blower, publicly stated what many of us have suspected for years: “the Obama administration is more concerned with the rights of non-citizens in known Islamist groups, than with the safety and security of the American people.”
During an appearance on Fox News, he also alleged that an investigation his team was working on could have stopped the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
In an explosive article in The Hill on Friday, Haney now claims that DHS ordered him to actually scrub records of Muslims with terror ties.
It begins with a recounting of the 2009 Christmas bombing terror plot to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (aka the Underwear Bomber) failed to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253 because the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned, and passengers were able to subdue him until he was arrested.
Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.
***
Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.” Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.
A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future””especially before an attack occurs.
***
Haney concludes that “it is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009.”
dearieme Says:
” ”¦ we need to supend Muslim immigration while devising more effective ways to keep out terrorist immigrants.” And what might those be, pray?
You start with an immigration pause from places like Syria.
You follow with extensive electronic surveillance of Mosques and Islamic centers who have had their Imam’s replaced in the last 8-years by Saudi-funded Fundimentalist Imams.
After the proper lists are made, the worst Mosques raided, the terroist tied Imam’s deported and the associated financial networks broken up, you then impliment an invasive vetting procedure for any Muslim immigrants with the data gathered above.
I strongly supect that CAIR will wind up being designated a ‘terrorist supporting organzation’ as a result of the above US internal security shake down.
“this will entail their being OK with other Hispanics being rounded up and deported.”
I think actually enforcing E-Verify would solve most of that as the illegals would self deport.
I have no problem with real enforcement, after which peaceful residents who have been here for years and stayed away from the radicals could be legalized.
A lot of these “unaccompanied children” are criminals and probably have no ties to the assimilated Hispanic community.
Islamic centers who have had their Imam’s replaced in the last 8-years by Saudi-funded Fundamentalist Imams.
After the proper lists are made, the worst Mosques raided, the terrorist tied Imam’s deported and the associated financial networks broken up.
You then implement an invasive vetting procedure for any immigrants with the data gathered above.
I think this would solve another problem, which is the silence of Muslims of good will through fear of retaliation. The Saudis have been converting mosques to Wahabbi centers for years. I have read of moderate imams being forced out as money is tied to radicals.
Tangoman,
I disagree with this —
There is though an internal contradiction – he’s leading a nascent white identity movement that no one really wants to acknowledge but for him to make inroads into minority communities with his economic message he requires those communities to put their own economic interests above their ethnic, racial and religious identities.
Some in the Alt-Right claim the above.
Poppycock.
Trump is simply being Trump, and assaulting P.C. is his shtick.
The issue here isn’t an “emerging white identity movement.” There is far more of that with African-Americans that whites. See “Knock down game”
The issue is that US politics has become expressions of identity and tribal affiliation, and far more so on the left.
The well of communication between the progressive left and everyone else is so poisoned that the two sides in any communication won’t be able to agree what is the color of the sky, what is white and what is black.
Honestly, it’s easier to develop commonality and communication between a soldier in Afghanistan and a Taliban war leader than between two Americans from radically different political backgrounds.
If real civil conflict breaks out in the next few years between the Left and a Trump dominated Right in America, there is no end game. That is because there is no way to negotiate given the cultural/political-gap communication issues.
Tangoman,
Another thought for your consideration —
The Plutocrats, the politicians the plutocrats have bought, the MSM, and the political consultant class that caters too them all overlap with and are just as tribal as most Lefties.
That is why these folks thought Jeb Bush was a viable GOP primary candidate and Hillary is a viable general election candidate.
This separate class/tribal identity is the real reason why Trump was able to steal them all blind in the GOP primaries and soon in the general election.
Trump started rich, but self-identified culturally with the ethnic white working class, and not the Plutocrats.
It is why the Plutocrats so hate the man, just like 1930’s Republicans hated FDR.
Trump, like FDR, is a class/tribal traitor.
“a immigration pause from places like Syria”: how on earth are you going to tell whether a purported refugee is from Syria? And when, and on what criteria, do you end the pause?
“You follow with extensive electronic surveillance of Mosques and Islamic centers who have had their Imam’s replaced in the last 8-years by Saudi-funded Fundimentalist Imams.” Ah, the wonders of electronic surveillance. Grasping at straws I suspect. Anyway, wouldn’t SCOTUS declare such antics unconstitutional?
“After the proper lists are made, the worst Mosques raided, the terroist tied Imam’s deported and the associated financial networks broken up”: almost certainly unconstitutional.
“you then impliment an invasive vetting procedure for any Muslim immigrants”: a hopeless task. Where in earth in the Muslim world will you find useful data with which to vet people?
And anyway this all misses the point that even if Mr & Mrs Abdullah have no terrorist intentions, their soon to be teenage sons may become full of them. Wasn’t that roughly the case with the two young men accused of the Boston bombing?
I suspect that what you would really need to do would be far too radical for the US. The Spanish managed it in the 15th century but they were a less stick-in-the-mud country.
I’m glad he and Hillary are close. I’d like Trump to take his time and build to a crescendo, rather than peak too early. He can do it; he just has to take it slow and steady and build his case.
Trump won when he demonstrated that he actually liked the United States and its people and showed he was willing to stand up for them and fight for them. As the communists discovered long ago, the only thing they can do to bring down the United States is to vilify everything about it 24 hours a day; if they didn’t do that, Americans would understand they have it better than anyone has ever had it in the history of the world and can be a great force for good. We’ve had 50+ years of the Left’s childish, illogical, and evil nonsense, and we’ve had it. Who needs such a negative, suicidal—entirely unproductive—philosophy? According to them, we should all have been better never to be born, and we’d all be better off dead. But we were born and we’re not better off dead. Marxism is a 19th century solution to 21st century problems. It’s obsolete; it’s deadly. The Left is completely wrong, and it has been proved for decades. These stupid people have destroyed our art, our literature, our prosperity, our politics, and out culture.
To hell with them.
Trump reminds us that life is worth living. It’s a challenge, and societies are capable of great things when their citizens have the right attitude. Doing things is better than contemplating your navel.
The Left can’t all jump into that ‘dustbin of history’ they’re so fond of soon enough. Let’s seal them in and toss them out, and learn to live again.
I think the term should be “importation” rather than immigration. I wouldn’t go out for a two thousand mile walk, flat broke, and with no contacts at the other end, unless I was pretty sure I’d be welcomed.
>> how on earth are you going to tell whether a purported refugee is from Syria?
No/incomplete papers = “From Syria”. Do not enter.
>> Anyway, wouldn’t SCOTUS declare such antics unconstitutional?
Every single secret surveillance request under the Patriot act had been approved by the FISA court.
>>almost certainly unconstitutional.
The US Constitution is what five people in black robes say it is on any given day.
>>Where in earth in the Muslim world will you find useful data with which to vet people?
See “No/incomplete papers” above.
>>And anyway this all misses the point that even if Mr & Mrs Abdullah have no terrorist intentions, their soon to be teenage sons may become full of them. Wasn’t that roughly the case with the two young men accused of the Boston bombing?
The issue with foreign born Muslims is keeping their numbers in America so small that they can assimilate.
For those that still can’t, see invasive surveillance and deportation.
Immigration rates at tens to hundreds of thousands allow extended clans to migrate intact and bring their dysfunctional culture with them and propagate it.
Immigration rates of a few thousand a year means foreign Muslims can abandon their dysfunctional culture and assimilate as Americans.
“Immigration rates of a few thousand a year means foreign Muslims can abandon their dysfunctional culture and assimilate as Americans.”
It’s America with the dysfunctional culture. Now you have a contest between a racist, failed hair, buffoon and a monster who may kill us all.
Certainly the Muslim experiment is not working very well although it’s use by monsters, for their purpose, has a great deal to do with this.
America is not very good at Empire. This is really what is destroying your culture. Your need for preeminence, which is inevitably failing, is your cross, that you are not bearing at all well.
Hillary will beat Trump like a drum.
“foreign Muslims can abandon their dysfunctional culture and assimilate as Americans”: but they may decline to. How are your Somalis doing? Or the Chechen boys in Boston? Or the terrorists in San Bernardino: they had had every opportunity to assimilate.
You’re going to have to be much more ruthless if you are to get anywhere.
It matters a great deal that the media blacked out the “terrorist” terms for the whole day on December 2.
“Trump won the GOP nomination in the week of December 2-8, 2015, because he bet his candidacy on stating the obvious truth in the face of an entrenched culture of political correctness which the GOP primary voters rightly perceived as a direct threat to America’s security at home.“
I have no problem with real enforcement, after which peaceful residents who have been here for years and stayed away from the radicals could be legalized.
I’m operating on a longer time-frame and so I can’t favor your proposal. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I believe that a Robot Revolution is coming down the pike, where many low value jobs are going to be more cheaply done by robots than by humans and that this is going to create an unemployable army of zero marginal product workers. We’re going to have to take care of these people. There’s not much we can do with American citizens, they are our burden to carry, but we sure can do something about those who’ve invaded the US and kept their nose clean. They are not our burden to carry. The more we can reduce the size of the ZMP faction, the lighter the load for those who will not be ZMP workers.
Better to boot everyone we can now than to be soft and then pay a never ending price.
Trump is simply being Trump, and assaulting P.C. is his schtick.
I agree. I wasn’t clear with my statement. I don’t think Trump is trying to lead a white identity movement. His policies resonate in a way which lends awareness to such a movement. For instance, the Muslim ban makes explicit an US vs Them dynamic. It undercuts the proposition nation garbage.
The issue here isn’t an “emerging white identity movement.”
Actually it is. This is baked into the cake, so no one has to do anything to bring it about, it’s coming whether people and politicians want it or not. In the SC primary, I ran the numbers, 85% of all whites voted for the Republicans and 87% of white men voted for the Republicans. Sean Trende has looked at decade long trends, the Republicans keep increasing their share of the white vote with every election cycle going back to the 70s. As the Democrats focus on bribing racial minorities with race-based goodies, they signal to whites that there is nothing for whites within the Democratic Party and so whites slowly leak out of the Democrats, first as unaffiliated and then eventually they come to the Republicans BECAUSE they begin to mold their opinions to shape those held by their identity group.
Trump has simply accelerated this ongoing process by removing some of the PC prohibitions and openly talking about an US vs THEM dynamic with respect to Muslims and Mexicans.
The issue is that US politics has become expressions of identity and tribal affiliation, and far more so on the left.
I agree. What the Democrats drive the Republicans have to respond to. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews are driven by identity and vote on identity. Whites are very late to the game. They’re waking up though. Slowly, but surely.
If real civil conflict breaks out in the next few years between the Left and a Trump dominated Right in America, there is no end game. That is because there is no way to negotiate given the cultural/political-gap communication issues.
I agree. Even absent Trump, the societal dynamics we have are unstable. We are getting to the point where we are no longer a nation, we’re merely a state.
Amen. The Democrats have no idea what 3D printing means for the fast food industry.
“TangoMan Says:
… I believe that a Robot Revolution is coming down the pike, where many low value jobs are going to be more cheaply done by robots than by humans and that this is going to create an unemployable army of zero marginal product workers.“
Tangoman,
WRT this —
The issue here isn’t an “emerging white identity movement.”
>>Actually it is. This is baked into the cake, so no one has to do anything
>>to bring it about, it’s coming whether people and politicians want it or not.
It is no movement.
A movement has leaders, followers and a direction.
What is happening to American whites is a -reaction- to the multi-cultural identity movements of others.
Think sheep being herded by a pack of wolves.
The Alt-Right has very little if any traction in the culture outside the male pick up artist and “men going their own way” communities.
When men start organizing civil rights groups and filing class action law suits against the family court system is the day I will believe the Alt-Right has come of age.
Amen. The Democrats have no idea what 3D printing means for the fast food industry.
And this is why some conservatives are now in favor of increased minimum wage levels. Necessity becomes the mother of invention, we also cut off the magnet for illegal, for no jobs means no reason to come. Wage enforcement against employers is easier to administer e-Verify in that existing laws already create liability for employers who pay less than minimum.
In the bigger picture, the ripple effects get to work on the broader economy and shape it. There really is little logic behind society subsidizing a low wage dishwasher so that restaurant meals can be cheaper for patrons. Reduce subsidy to the dishwasher and have the restaurateur pay him more and then charge more for meals. The higher price of meals will induce customers to behave differently with respect to how they spend their discretionary income.
None of the above makes sense though if we keep expanding the army of low wage workers who need societal subsidy. We need to be drying up that pool, so as some industries adjust to living without societal subsidy, and thus contract, their freed up workers can be picked up by other industries which can put them to higher use.
A movement has leaders, followers and a direction.
We’re quibbling over definitions. Some movements are self-organizing. Does the TEA Party not exist? Who is the leader of the TEA Party?
What is happening to American whites is a -reaction- to the multi-cultural identity movements of others.
Think sheep being herded by a pack of wolves.
On the one hand I don’t disagree, yes, this is a reaction. It doesn’t matter. It’s still happening.
On the other hand, I believe that you’re misdiagnosing a part of what is going on. This is not a reaction to “multicultural identity movements” but is instead a reaction to multiculturalism. People are not supporting a Muslim ban because they’re upset with CAIR activities, they’re responding to the presence of Islam in America. People are not upset with La Raza whipping up Mexican Mestizos, they’re upset with the Hispanicization of America. Some people find it offensive to see Spanish only enclaves, to go to a store and see Mexicans speaking Spanish, they find it offensive that Americans can’t get hired onto a forest fire fighting crew in California unless they speak Spanish. These reactions are not directed against identity movements but at the very people who are different from Americans.
Tango…”I believe that a Robot Revolution is coming down the pike, where many low value jobs are going to be more cheaply done by robots than by humans and that this is going to create an unemployable army of zero marginal product workers”
This isn’t exactly new, though. A Jacquard loom (circa 1800) is a robot; so is an automatic telephone switch (1920s-1970s_ or an automatic elevator (1940s-1960s) or a numerically-controlled machine tool (1960s-1970s). I’m unconvinced that what is going on now is a disconnect or step function (in productivity terms) as opposed to a continuation of long-term trends. Certainly, the productivity statistics don’t show any sharp break upward over the last few years.
David,
Automated check-out at supermarkets reduces the need for cashiers. Now one cashier can monitor 6 to 10 checkout stations. It’s cheaper for the supermarket to invest in the technology than to pay for an additional 5 to 9 cashiers. There is a restaurant in Germany which has no waiters, the food is delivered by a type of conveyor system. Japan has robots to provide various forms of elder care.
I’m not trying to say that we’re going to suddenly develop some technology which will rapidly replace workers, but I believe that the pace of innovation is increasing and that the costs of the technology are dropping, so employers are going to be presented with concrete opportunities for using tech to replace labor and this will boost their profits. As the threshold lowers, the pace should accelerate, just like what we saw with PC market penetration compared to the era of mainframes.
The issue of what to do with workers is going to become more focused.
“how on earth are you going to tell whether a purported refugee is from Syria?”
One way is to limit refugees to Christians. There is apparently a fairly reliable network of churches and church elders from the Orthodox and Syriac churches and hierarchy.
We did this with Vietnamese doctors in the 1970s after the NV would not provide records of medical education. The medical schools faculty were also refugees and got together. They could compare notes and eventually all Vietnamese doctors got licensed.
Obama is blocking Christian immigration while, allowing thousands of anonymous Muslims to come.
Bar code scanners also reduced the need for cashiers, by allowing much faster processing of individual items.
Check-sorting machines greatly reduced the number of humans required for clerical operations in bank back offices…but enabled a much larger people to have checking accounts, which had its own positive implications for employment.
Check-sorting machines greatly reduced the number of humans required for clerical operations in bank back offices”¦but enabled a much larger people to have checking accounts, which had its own positive implications for employment.
Yep. I’m all for moving American workers up the value ladder in terms of the work they do. I’d much rather have robot salesmen, robot designers, robot technicians, replacing cashiers, waiters, etc. It won’t be a 1:1 and that’s OK. What we do need to do is reduce the number of unskilled and the easiest fruit to pick on that tree is to stop importing them and to deport all those that are here illegally. This gradual reshifting of the labor market will be stressful but because we live in a welfare state we need to actually be involved rather than letting market forces dictate because market forces operating in a welfare state are going to eject a lot of people from the labor force into our welfare programs, far worse than what is taking place at present, with 95 million employable people sitting outside of the labor force collecting some kinds of welfare.
So back to Mike’s point, no, no amnesty for people who’ve kept their nose clean because they are an unrecorded liability on the nation’s balance sheet. We need to dry up that pool of low skill labor and do what we can to reduce the aggregate subsidy we currently pay and which we will pay in the future.
“We need to dry up that pool of low skill labor”
Not all are “low skill labor” and some are homeowners.
I suspect that I have had my hands in the belly of more illegals than you have seen on the street. Some are OK.
I suspect that I have had my hands in the belly of more illegals than you have seen on the street. Some are OK.
I don’t care whether they’re OK. They barged into the US uninvited. They’re forcing themselves on Americans as fellow countrymen to which we owe some obligation. I have enough countrymen to which I owe obligation and I’m thinking of them first. Clearly, I’m not some touchy-feely liberal who loves multiculturalism, but if I have to live within a heterogeneous society, I want to make it work as best as possible without having to put up with sky-high tax rates to support welfare and sky-high crime rates because some segments of society are getting the short end of the stick:
That Mexican homeowner can sell his house and buy one in Mexico. As a net tax consumer, he’s sucking up resources that we need to deploy to benefit our own. He’s not “our own.”
“And this is why some conservatives are now in favor of increased minimum wage levels.”
Not any conservatives I know. The minimum wage is simply a government campaign to keep people unemployed in order to transfer then to the welfare rolls. Abolish it immediately.
In addition to the excellent starting points offered by Mr. Trelenko, there is another starting point that is well within the power of the President under current laws.
The president can ban any group from immigrating to or being refugees accepted by the US. Obama is doing it now by explicitly banning Christian refugees from the Middle East.
The first step should be a flat ban on all immigration or refugees from The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the 57 nation confederation of officially Islamic countries [actually 56 nation-states plus “Palestine”]. This is the organization that it is assumed that Obama meant when he was referring to “all 57 states”. If they are coming from a non-OIC state, there should be something of a modern trail of records that can be investigated.
And the investigation of any wanna-be immigrants/refugees should routinely also include what I call the “Ellis Island Tests”.
1) Do you have, or could you be carrying any loathsome diseases we don’t want in our country? If so, you get to play the home game.
2) Do you have a record of criminal conduct or mental health problems? We have a surplus of native born criminals and crazy people. Y’all don’t need to come in. I might be willing to bend the criminal conduct factor, if it was telling your local dictator to FOADIAF. If done well, it might get you extra points.
and I would bring back two things from the past of our immigration system, back when members of my family were legally immigrating.
3a) Every immigrant would have to have a US citizen sponsor who was financially responsible, and who would be liable for costs if they ended up on welfare until they got First Papers.
and
3b) Y’all gotta learn English. I don’t care what you speak at home or in private life. It is not because I hate other languages. I want as many languages spoken as possible, but one of them has to be the dominant language of the country, English. If you do not speak English, you are at the mercy of those who do, and your ability to prosper as a free person is limited. It used to be that such happened naturally. My dad refused to teach me Chinese, because he wanted me to be American. I’ve forgotten what Cantonese I picked up in passing, and almost forgotten what Mandarin I learned in high school and college. But my broken English has served me fairly well in my life.
Subotai,
My mother’s father could not have met your second qualification. He came here for his health. He grew up in Bloemfontein as the son of a Welsh immigrant. The Boers did not like the English (and still don’t according to a bartender on a Princess Cruise tour ship) so he hung around with the “kaffirs” while learning the horse trade. He moved to the Cape Colony and developed a thriving import business during the Boer War, bringing in horses from Argentina and whatnot. But that market died when the Boers surrendered, so he cut his acquisition costs.
Not too long later the Germans were after him because the broken-down old horses he sold them broke down in the middle of the Kalahari Desert and they had to walk out, the British were after him because he didn’t pay for the horses, and the Boers disapproved of horse-thieves on principal. Plus they never liked him.
So he moved to San Francisco, helped build Golden Gate Park, and went back into the horse business, but with a better & better clientele until he had a number of ranches in the Bay Area raising polo ponies and jumpers for the seriously rich. That’s good old American upscale in a single generation. My mother had a teenage crush on Bill Roth, who was the model for Pick Pickering in _The Corps_ series by W.E.B. Griffin. I have a photo of her playing polo at Golden Gate Fields in 1937 when she was 14. Roth remembered her when he was helping a docent at Filoli House when I toured it in 1994.
But Mom was true to type. She used Jack London’s _Tales of the Fish Patrol_ as a how-to guide when she was partners in a commercial fishing boat.
Rascals and hard cases make great Americans.
Not any conservatives I know.
You need to broaden your conservative circles.
Here’s Phyllis Schlafly:
Here’s Bruce Bartlett talking about Ron Unz, who is currently running for the California Republican Senate nomination. Go to Unz’s site and he’s got links to lots of conservative backers of minimum wage increases:
Not conservatives, but Nobel Laureatte’s in Economics, via Bloomberg:
Here is Ron Unz making the case for in a magazine published by the former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association who is currently president of the Small Business Action Committee – The Conservative Case for a Higher Minimum Wage.
As I noted in my comment, I’m not seeing the wisdom of my taxes subsidizing your restaurant meal. Pay for it yourself and leave the taxpayers out of it.
One more link. Daily Caller, writing about Unz.
“Do you have a record of criminal conduct or mental health problems?” Away with the fairies: if you come from most Muslim countries your criminal record or lack thereof will either be unknowable or a pack of lies. Too many of you are being too naive about all this. You cannot usefully vet them. Maybe you should just refuse them all entry: at least it would be a start.
Good point Dearieme.
Unz is a very interesting guy. He is a bit odd but so are many people who made that kind of money on his own.
He ran against Pete Wilson for governor. Too bad he didn’t win that one.
“They barged into the US uninvited. They’re forcing themselves on Americans as fellow countrymen.”
You are carrying the argument to the “reductio ad absurdum” level. Some of these people have been here for 25 years and own homes and have employees.
I think the keys are E-Verify and law enforcement to get rid of the criminals.
The border patrol union could probably write the legislation needed. They also support Trump.
Unfortunately, Phyllis is wrong. A minimum wage increase raises unemployment which puts more people on welfare. The problem with government regulations is they always intend to do one thing but end up doing something else unintended.
“Conservative case for a higher minimum wage” sounds like “Conservative case for a VAT”. It’s wrong on the merits and there’s a good chance we’d end up with both a higher minimum wage and the continuation of the same destructive entitlement programs the higher minimum wage was intended to reduce the need for. We might even get an expansion of the destructive entitlement programs, which would be sold as necessary because of higher unemployment rates unintentionally caused by the higher minimum wage.
Also, support for a higher minimum wage is a political trap for conservatives because the Left will always outbid them on the desired level of the minimum.
It might be better for conservatives to argue against the minimum wage and for the replacement of the crazy-quilt of regulations, subsidies and in-kind benefits for the poor with a single monthly cash stipend for each individual. The amount of the stipend would vary based on the individual’s or family’s income, in such a way as not to kill work incentives as individual/family income increases near the subsidy threshold. This is the Friedman negative-income tax concept. Of course none of these schemes works unless we restrict them to citizens and perhaps also long-term permanent residents.
Not only is Phyllis wrong, she would be wrong in the future even if she were currently right. The mob of government social workers need something to justify their salaries (and Pensions! and will immediately begin agitating for larger welfare payments for the unemployed and higher levels of entrance for the “working poor”.
In the Minimum Wage arguments, what you are really saying is that government cannot be trusted. It’s not really economics.
Ironman at Political Calculations has done a lot of work showing the destruction caused by the minimum wage here, here, here, here and here, and many other posts
Using our tool’s default values, our tool estimates that the deadweight loss to the U.S. economy as a result of the increase in the U.S. federal minimum wage from $4.25 per hour in 1994 to $7.25 per hour in 2011 is $485,430 per hour (in terms of constant 2011 U.S. dollars).
Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 worked an average of 19.2 hours per week in 2011. Multiplied over a 52 week year puts the estimated deadweight loss of the minimum wage from $4.25 per hour in 1994 to $7.25 per hour in 2011 at $483,391,573.
In other words, if not for the increase in the minimum wage, the U.S. economy would be nearly half a billion dollars bigger today.
I would support individual cash payments with some slight modifications. Assign a fixed amount for an entire community based on the cost of living for that area, but make the individual payments random like a lottery. Make the duration of the individual payments random also. That way no one would become dependent on them and recipients will be more likely to make better use of the money because they’ll never know how long it will last.
These ‘Conservatives’ have it backwards. Firms that employ low wage workers are
subsidizing the welfare state. Were it not for the employer of last resort, many
of these marginal employees would be totally dependent on transfer payments. Try as they might to raise the minimum wage to enable everyone to enjoy a living wage, the
minimum wage is always going to be zero.
Low-wage jobs are also important because for many people, particularly lower-class teenagers, such jobs are the only way to learn work skills. High minimum wages are a disaster for such people because the minimums kill the low-end jobs that many young people need to get ahead in life.
Unfortunately, Phyllis is wrong. A minimum wage increase raises unemployment which puts more people on welfare.
I’m still not convinced that I should be subsidizing your garden maintenance and your fancy meals when you go out to eat. Pay for them yourself. Taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing your consumption of services provided by low wage workers.
Low-wage jobs are also important because for many people, particularly lower-class teenagers, such jobs are the only way to learn work skills.
We know longer live in Colonial America, the frontier is finished, we now live in a welfare state where welfare pays more than a minimum wage job in 35 states. We’re not going to wish away the welfare state.
I understand your argument and I would stand with you if, IF, we lived in a society without a welfare state, but we don’t and so I need to account for the welfare state and how to reduce welfare dependence. Far worse is that taxpayers are subsidizing employers/customers who hire low wage workers.
Let the rationalization begin. Let employers who can’t market their services to customers at higher prices, necessary due to paying higher wages, either go out of business or replace low wage workers with capital substitutes. Those entry level jobs for teenagers are minor these days compared to those jobs being taken by immigrants. What you see as a benefit for teenagers I see as a detriment for society when applied to immigrants.
These ‘Conservatives’ have it backwards. Firms that employ low wage workers are
subsidizing the welfare state.
So, are you arguing that we should pay Ford and General Motors to rip out the robots they have in their factories and have the government subsidize the salaries of the workers that would need to be hired to do the work of the robots?
Employers of low wage workers can substitute capital for labor, just as the auto manufacturers do, but why should they when taxpayers are subsidizing their low cost labor.
Taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing your consumption of services provided by low wage workers.
Consumers and businesses shouldn’t be subsidizing unions and govt bureaucracies. Low wage jobs are low wage jobs because they are low productivity jobs. If they were high productivity jobs employers would bid up their wages in competition for workers.
If we want to keep out illegal migrants we should keep out illegal migrants, not attempt to fiddle with migration incentives in ways that are likely to have negative unintended consequences on the economy at large.
Low wage jobs are low wage jobs because they are low productivity jobs.
Right. A check-out station at your supermarket doesn’t have kids which need to be educated, it doesn’t require cancer treatment, it doesn’t require an expanded sewer system, an expanded freeway system, it doesn’t require police protection, nor prisons, the point is that low wage workers consume just as much public infrastructure as a brain surgeon but return less to society, so why the hell are we importing millions upon millions of these people and then having society subsidize them so that employers can benefit.
We need to be drying up the pool of low wage workers but cutting off supply and then trying to migrate those workers higher up the labor value chain. The ideal state is society is where every person pulls their weight and doesn’t require subsidy. The closer we get to the ideal state the better we are in terms of reducing the size of the welfare state.
If we want to keep out illegal migrants we should keep out illegal migrants
It’s not just illegals, it’s also legal immigrants. That low wage job is their foot in the door. We’re importing people because employers are screaming about not enough workers (willing to work for low wages). These employers are hooked on privatizing the gains and socializing the losses. What’s good for them is NOT good for society.
The wages of a job depend not only on the productivity of that job, but on the productivity of adjacent jobs. A cook in a diner in 1958 Detroit benefited from the high productivity of the autoworkers who were his customers: he personally was probably no more productive than his counterpart in 1890, but his real income was much higher.
The wages of a job depend not only on the productivity of that job, but on the productivity of adjacent jobs.
They also depend on labor market conditions with respect to supply of labor.
A cook in a diner in 1958 Detroit benefited from the high productivity of the autoworkers who were his customers: he personally was probably no more productive than his counterpart in 1890, but his real income was much higher.
I agree. This though likely arises from the labor market conditions which existed back in the 1890s – fewer opportunities to marry labor to capital equipment and thus boost productivity, so wages for a lot of people were very low and lots of people were competing for jobs, thus driving down wages. Come 1958 much of the cook’s competitors have moved up the labor value ladder thus removing the downward pressure on his wages by eliminating many competitors for his job. The same dynamic is in place with farm field hands and fruit pickers today. These were jobs which used to be done by Americans and European immigrants but as better job opportunities arose, fewer wanted to work as field hands. Instead of raising wages, farmers import labor and get society to subsidize that labor. To bring this back to the 1958 cook, what happens if in 1958 restaurant owners twist government to serve them and flood the labor market with cooks from Mexico? The wages of the cook will soon approximate the wages of the cook from 1890.
The black wage gap prior to the passage of the CRA made remarkable gains against white mean wages during the period 1930-1970. Employers still didn’t like hiring blacks but because the supply of European immigrants fresh off the boat had dried up due to the immigration moratorium, employers had no choice and began hiring. Wages increased as competition for labor increased.
It wasn’t just blacks that moved to northern factories. There were many whites who left their farms also in the great “rural flight”. The Dust Bowl saw a huge migration from the Great Plains. My grandmother was an Okie. Her father lost both his farm and his life within a few months in the early 30s, and her mother packed up the kids and moved north. Many also went West as the popular stories depicted
A big factor in wage increases was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 allowed unions to capture all those new workers and demand higher pay. The Okies who went to California for the most part wouldn’t join any unions, despite what those popular stories depicted. They were too stubborn, too independent, too family oriented for socialistic tendencies (as was my grandmother). The farm unions didn’t take off until decades later when they could import Mexican members.
This is the same argument that Hillary famously made when defending her nationalized health care schemes as 1st lady back in 1993. She stated “I can’t be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America.” This is not
a conservative talking point, but a progressive one. If conservatives are arguing in support of a substantially higher minimum wage, I think that lends support to the notion that conservatism is dead.
Apparently the Donald has made some favorable comments about a higher minimum wage. He is poaching in Bernie’s preserve. Hah! I can hardly wait to see
him maul Hillary. It will be epic.
If conservatives are arguing in support of a substantially higher minimum wage, I think that lends support to the notion that conservatism is dead.
Since when has it been the conservative position that government must subsidize the low wage employees of businesses who chose not to substitute capital in place of labor?
I’d never heard any conservative proclaim “Private the Gains, Socialize the Losses, All Hail Conservatism!”
It wasn’t just blacks that moved to northern factories.
The black wage data is pretty discombobulating in that it upends the belief that the CRA was instrumental in closing the black-white wage gap. No, labor scarcity during a period of an immigration moratorium had a far larger effect.
Yes, of course the immigration slow-down had a positive effect for white workers as well. The union bosses, Gompers chief among them, pushed for the moratorium.
I find it odd that Progressives are in favor of both more immigration and a higher minimum wage. Immigration drives down wages. You can square that circle by understanding that Progressives goal is to bring in people who sign up and vote as Democrats to keep their wages high and benefits flowing.
Tangoman,
Minimum wage discussions are frankly irrelevant in the face of the societal change we are faced with.
3d Printing is the “electrification” of the 21st Century.
3D printing, combined with the automation of both retail and food service, is going to be society shattering in terms of employment.
And no, I am not kidding.
A typical McDonald’s has a six person daytime/evening shift. The beginning of the day and end of night shifts tends to be larger with part timer’s helping to open the restaurant setting up the food for the day and clean up at close of the next day.
The 24/7 McDonald’s with drive-thru only service usually have only three people after the early evening shift leaves and before the breakfast to early evening shift arrives.
A retail restaurant set up where all the cooking is replaced with 3D printed fast food and self-service dispenser machines drops the shift size to one person to monitor the machines and load the processed protein, carbohydrate, and fats in the form of powders and liquid food-goo, as well as assist in the taking of orders.
And as the automation technology improves, a lot of the manual labor and order taking (voice recognition software) may even dispense with a full time human employee in this set up.
This sort of change will hit the “Big Box” retail model before we get “pizza printers” hitting retail food service. ‘Micro-factories’ for cheap and rapid turn around consumer products makes the old “Christmas retail trips to China” by big box stores manufacturing-retail model obsolescent.
Whether the Walmart’s and Amazon’s of the world buy their own ‘Micro-factories’ to place within their existing distribution warehouses, their retail properties or they just contract out local micro-factories will be an intensely interesting question.
That is a biggie as it cuts marketing lead time as well as transport/inventory costs
The economic replacement process that substitutes the shipment of physical things with the transmission of information — to provide value added return on investment — has been going on for decades.
The ISO container box and its alliance with internet ordering, which made the big box retailing model possible, was simply the gust front of this trend.
The 3D printing revolution means we are in a catalytic, asymptotic, economic transformation based upon that information for physical materiel trend to the Nth degree.
The following is from someone I correspond with inside the 3D Printing field —
… nobody can afford to stuff that 3D printer toothpaste back into the tube.
The whole world is scrambling to develop new ways to extrude, deposit, spray, glue, fuse, weld, melt and lase metal powders, plastics, carbon fiber, graphene, conductive circuitry, semiconductors and Murphy only knows how many other materials, because everybody MUST push these technologies as hard and fast as they can.
Failure to innovate in this new industrial revolution would be like Polish lancers charging German panzers in 1939.
A lot of the tech is hidden, too. Calling it all “3D printing” is like describing the process of creating an M1 Abrams Chobham armor hull as “casting” — rather less than complete.
There are hundreds of fantastic technologies embedded into leading edge industrial equipment today, and thousands more coming tomorrow.
Do you remember the scene from a movie about the formation of the modern state of Israel ( maybe EXODUS ) where Israeli machinists in British-occupied Palestine are churning out submachine gun parts on lathes and mills until they are warned an inspector is coming? They hide the gun parts and put something ‘harmless’ on the machines instead, until the inspectors leave.
Of course, there are also all those crazy ‘blacksmiths’ in Pakistan’s northern provinces who can build an AK-47 out of horseshoes and plumbing parts.
Imagine what they could do with plastic 3D printers and metal powder 3D printers today.
For that matter, just imagine what’s possible with today’s huge expansion of wholesale and retail sales of industrial quantities of powdered aluminum, titanium, steel, bronze, milled carbon fiber, buckeyballs, etc. All sorts of new customers popping up all around the world. Thousands more shipments of all sizes every month. So many opportunities for misdirection, theft, repurposing
. . . .
Ick.
Clever revolutionaries will, as you say, change the game, and I have to wonder if any of the alphabet soup departments are even thinking about it yet.
DARPA is probably rattling their cages.
I have no idea where this is headed, but it will be a hell of a ride regardless.
Trent…please explain how:
–a dishwasher
–a ceiling fan
–a metal outdoor table
–a wooden chest of drawers
–a lawnmower
…could be made more effectively and economically soley with 3d printing as opposed to conventional methods or with conventional methods plus use of 3dP for certain selective parts. (The above are just some of the things within about 50 feet of me as I write this on my mom’s porch)
Considerations need to include such things as the electric motor and control electronics (for the dishwasher) and the need for heat-treating, etc of certain parts for the lawnmower.
I think 3dP has a lot of applications, but these machines are not really SF ‘replicators/
A small point. Restaurants are driven by prosperity. I can’t afford them for just food. I will visit one rarely with a friend, but I am not much use in their support.
If we go much further with our worldwide recession, in many countries, many people will largely stop using them.
It’s not far off here, a Fillet and Fries is like $8 in Canada. I can make that for a couple of bucks. It’s true that people love their little outings though, my very poor friend will spend money in Starbucks for awful coffee and poor treats, just because it’s an outing.
Anyhoo, 3D printing is exploding all over. Some of my favorite uses are the printed houses we are seeing, concrete printing is upon us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SObzNdyRTBs
David Foster,
Transport of raw materials and energy for just-in-time on the spot manufacturing is cheaper than transport and storage of finished and semi-finished products. Elimination of theft opportunities is an issue too, though the latter varies significantly by industry. See _The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger_ by Marc Levinson.
They forgot to print the rebar!
I think that concrete made with very fine mesh aggregate is more properly called mortar. If mortar in freeze zones is exposed to standing water, over time it converts back to sand. Then your brick row home falls into the street.
“If we go much further with our worldwide recession, in many countries,”
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded””here and there, now and then””are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck’.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
Regards this —
Trent”¦please explain how:
–a dishwasher
–a ceiling fan
–a metal outdoor table
–a wooden chest of drawers
–a lawnmower
”¦could be made more effectively and economically solely with 3d printing as opposed to conventional methods or with conventional methods plus use of 3dP for certain selective parts. (The above are just some of the things within about 50 feet of me as I write this on my mom’s porch)
There is too much to answer in the time I have available. I’ll simply point out printing wood cellulose will be easier than printing edible pizza. In fact, wood wall paneling or wood flooring are both really good first candidates for mass consumer items to be hit by the “3D micro-factory” supply chain collapse. Especially if 3D material printers can lay down panels/flooring that looks like a good red wood and is as hard as bamboo.
The 3D printer phenomena will neither begin nor end there.
See this 2012 Forbes article WRT the implications for gun control of 3D printers.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/07/28/the-end-of-gun-control/2/
3D printing allows you to build things that are, as the name implies, three dimensional. A few years ago 3D printers were very rare, hugely expensive, and hard to use. But as with anything that can be driven by computers, 3D printers has become cheaper and cheaper to the point where, today, you can buy a 3D printer, off the shelf, for as little $500.
Using either free or low cost computer aided drafting software you can create digital 3D models of pretty much anything you can think of and, with hardly any fuss, your 3D printer will render them as physical objects.
The only constraints on what you can print are that the size of the printed object (typically a maximum of 6 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches unless you spend more money on your printer ; the bigger the final object you want, the more you’ll have to spend), the material printed (all of the low end printers can, at present, only print with thermosetting plastics; very high end printers can print with ceramics and metals), and the resolution of the printer (for current low end printers this is typically around 0.1mm).
So, can you print a gun? Yep, you can and that’s exactly what somebody with the alias “HaveBlue” did.
The author of the article was worried about gun receivers. He wasn’t thinking it through.
I suspect we will see printed shell cases as a part of hand reloading first, with experiments in how 3D materiel printed shell cases can modified to take various pressures at each part of the propellant pressure curve, so as to get the most accurate .50 caliber round and how such cases take reloads over time.
It is highly likely that there will be a Linux like “open source” race developing to see who can program the best ammo case and in which calibers. As well as completely new gun calibers we have never seen before.
_That_ sort of application surfacing is when the Blue State politicians, Blue State local law men, the BATFE & Homeland Security will all go ape s*** in formation.
Trent,
Haven’t seen your name on the ‘net for a while.
Nice bit on Trump. I’m a supporter as well.
I agree that Trump’s proposal to stop “Moslem immigration” was a major selling point to his voters. It’s exactly the sort of simple-but-useless talking point that such demagogues trade on.
Yes, useless. How could it be enforced? What test is there to identify Moslems who don’t want to be identified? If a man says he is Christian, or Buddhist, or atheist, how would one prove he is isn’t? National origin is of little help, as there are huge numbers of Moslems living in countries where there are also lots of non-Moslems: 160M Moslems in India, for instance. 1.6M Moslems in Israel. What about Turkish Alevis, Syrian Alawites, or Pakistani Ahmadis? Many Moslems say these groups are not Moslem – rather like the mainstream Christian view of Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It wouldn’t do anything about American-born jihadist sympathizers like Huma Abedin, or American converts to Islam, like “Beltway sniper” John Allan Muhammad.
I wonder how many Trump enthusiasts know that the Taliban murdered over 100 cadets at a Pakistani military school, or that President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria is an ex-general, elected on his pledge to exterminate Boko Haram.
Certainly the U.S. should absolutely stop illegal immigration of all sorts, and susbtantially reduce legal immigration, and should be much more selective about immigrants and visitors from dubious backgrounds. But a flat ban on “Moslems” would be unworkable, and pointlessly offensive to millions of people, including many who are valuable allies of the U.S.
Rich,
That is a pretty silly question. We could go on and on just concerning offensive ways to do so.
I recall that the day after Trump talked about temporarily blocking Muslims, James Taranto at WSJ’s Best of the Web speculated that Trump may have just won the election.
Which was also my first thought when I saw him do it (on TV), while all the other candidates were wringing their hands. “Oh this is terrible, but what can we do? Doing anything would be ISLAMOPHBIC!!!”
This is not saying he deserves to win based on that– but as the only candidate willing to take on the PC armies, he had in one 10-second outburst carved out a unique, almost unassailable, and powerful political position, on terror, immigration, homeland security, and every issue touched by PC cant (which is almost everything).
Of course, in the end he will backtrack–it is his style to lay out a maximalist position, one which he may not even wish for, and then negotiate back to what he really wants. He has said as much, very open about it, and just did it on taxes.
I am still quite scared of some of Trump’s attributes–the conspiracy theory stuff, the temper, the thin skin, the assumption that he can take maximalist positions and then roll them back as if it’s a business negotiation, which may not be a viable model for statesmen. But none of that has much to do with how he positioned himself with much of the electorate right after San Bernardino.
My fear isn’t that Trump won’t do too much, it’s that he won’t do enough to address the fundamental problems.
But a flat ban on “Moslems” would be unworkable, and pointlessly offensive to millions of people, including many who are valuable allies of the U.S.
Pointlessly offensive to millions versus deeply meaningful to millions. Many who are offended are foreigners, most all those who are gratified are American citizens.
For whom does the nation exist, for its citizens or for foreigner?
My fear isn’t that Trump won’t do too much, it’s that he won’t do enough to address the fundamental problems.
I agree. People are noting that Trump is staking out extreme positions and will scale back. For plenty of voters, Trump’s stated positions are actually a starting point towards better policies, not extreme positions in need of scaling back.
At the core there is a simple to understand dynamic – problems exist and solutions must be implemented. Either moderate solutions fix the problems or they don’t. If moderate solutions do fix the problem, then that ends the decision branch. However, if the moderate solutions do not fix the problem, then the problem remains or it gets worse.
If Trump’s policy fixes are scaled back to moderate positions and the problems remain, then some successor to Trump is going to be a lot more jarring to those who favor moderate, but failing, policies.
I agree with Rich.
I have no idea what Trump will do if elected. However, I think there’s a significant chance we will end up with an immigration moratorium or at least a substantial scaling back of legal immigration. The many voters who are deeply concerned about illegal immigration are not getting what they want. If Trump stiffs them as other pols have, they are not going to give up and we might end up with some kind of lowest-common-denominator solution.
However, I think there’s a significant chance we will end up with an immigration moratorium or at least a substantial scaling back of legal immigration.
I’m so jaded by how politics is conducted that I assign this a very low probability.
We had an immigration moratorium back in the 1920s for two reasons. One was the power of organized labor and the second was that the elites had the fear of god put into them by foreign communists and what they did in Russia and they didn’t want to be deposed from power here in the US. Both of these factors are not acting on society at the present.
Much of what Trump will do, if he is actually being honest with his rhetoric, depends on his valuing civic obligation far above his own personal financial interests. Trump reduces future growth for his companies by shutting down rich immigrants from coming here. He damages his brand by deporting millions. He raises his own labor costs by marginally decreasing labor supply. He harms the economic interests of his billionaire friends. What’s good for Trump, the businessman, is not so good for society, and I’m speaking beyond just economic interests.
Trump is ideally situated to be the guy who can value civic obligation over financial interests because, unlike other presidents, he doesn’t have to depend on the largesse of the billionaire class in order to retire in comfort and prestige. Secondly, he might choose to make lemonade from the lemons he’s dealt, a broader middle class, a more prosperous middle class, might expand his mid-range business activities – they can afford to visit Trump Las Vegas, more can afford to play golf at his resorts, so here again, his own personal interests might play some part, unlike other presidents. He also has the best 3 advisors, Sessions, his aide Miller, and Kris Kobach.
I expect some action on the illegals, high probability to a token measure, and will be pleasantly surprised if he does roll out his “deportation force” but because I’m so used to politicians lying all the time, I’m more inclined to believe that he’ll do nothing in the face of resistance and punt the problem to the future. Some people manage their private lives quite well and balance short term pain against long term gain – but I never see politicians doing this, likely because their time in office is best described as being a renter of the office, not the owner, so they work to maximize their benefit from the rental and leave all of the future maintenance and hard decisions to someone else.
If Trump stiffs them as other pols have, they are not going to give up and we might end up with some kind of lowest-common-denominator solution.
If Trump stiffs the people of the US, he contributes to social disillusionment. The nation erases itself and all we’re left with is a state. That will have profound implications. People will not give up on their national identity, their patriotism, without a fight.