nathaniel

No, that's not right, not in the US anyway. It's not a free market because most (all?) states force drivers to buy insurance whether they want it or not as a condition of driving--the exchange may not be voluntary on the part of the consumer. On top of that there's rather limited information and extensive state regulation about what can and can't go into an insurance premium. This reduces competition, the freedom and the efficiency of the market. There is often competition, but it's inaccurate imo to paint over the gross deficiencies in the auto insurance market. For instance, many (most/all?) states have resorted to providing high-risk pools for drivers that the marketplace won't cover at all. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

At what cost have their lives been spared? When does it become too expensive to spend incrementally more money to save incrementally more life? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It seems there's at least one US judge who you'd agree with: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2006/12/drunk_drivingpo.html My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Some names are deductive. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

would you really take legal advice over the internet from someone with a name like "skydiverjerry" and whose credentials consists of his post count? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I dunno, my bullshit alarm went off reading that website. It doesn't look totally fake, but the dearth of numbers leads me to suspect the effect is small under ordinary circumstances, and probably in comparison to their asking price. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Uh-huh. Once again painting Hispanics with a broad brush. 'Smatter? Too brown? Deal with it. Imagine that we had a few million Chinese, Asia-Pacific, and Indian subcontinent immigrants in the neighborhood to balance things out. Too bad we stopped letting them in. Seriously. What you are looking at is another failure of octogenarian economic policies. Our grandparents and great grandparents tried to cash out on the human investment that made this country what it is. Proposing to tighten immigration any further is like the Fed clamping down on the money supply in 1930. The economic effects of immigration (iow population growth) take place much more gradually than conventional money supply manipulation techniques, but build over time to enormous proportions. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

How else would you describe how Germans, Swedes, Italians, Irish, Chinese, and now Hispanics all experienced periods of discrimination as they arrived at our borders in large numbers? Offer a better word if you don't like the word racism. Xenophobia works, I guess. PC has nothing to do with it. Nation building has everything to do with it. We've been running our country lean for the past 80 years and now it's starting to show. Even Europe is competitive with us now. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Advil is a medicine. Physiology tells us that overdosing is bad. Immigration is economics ( in part ), and economics tells us we've benefitted greatly from levels much higher than today. You talk about the context of today as though it would be a hindrance to economic growth due to immigration, without explaining what the context is or how it would be a problem. In fact, the economics we have today shows the opposite. That lame argument has been repeated for every successive wave of immigrants since the early 19th C, with varying degrees the same implied basis (racism) and no proper justification. It's been wrong every time, and it is wrong this time. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think the point of immigration, from a societal standpoint, is cost-benefit. Immigrants do our nation and our society more (much more) benefit than they do us harm. Bring them in legions--despite the friction that ensues it's an investment in the future, one whose fabulous past performance is an indication of future success. Temporary workers are migrants to me, not immigrants. I infer from the term immigrant that the persons in question would settle here. Naturalization likely being a part of the process, but not necessarily. If they don't bring their families, migrants are also pretty well beneficial to our society, though not as much as immigrants that bring their whole families and stick around, from a present-value standpoint. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Wait, why do we want them to go home? I want them to stay, to import their lineage to the US so our economy can grow for posterity. Most of the economic advantage comes from the lineage. If you allow just the first generation to come, and then to go home, you'll need to look at restricting their children and parents from joining them, because they'd drive the equation into the red if everybody just packed up and left after the first generation. And if the first immigrants in a family couldn't bring their parents and kids, they'd be much less likely to immigrate at all. What is the point of immigration, anyway? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

We should deport them to Australia, or if the Aussies wont take them then to the penal colonies in the Province of Georgia. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Boo. People are so dumb sometimes. I was in a t-bone accident a couple years ago. The other driver voluntarily helped to push my car out of the intersection. The rear axle was disabled and the wheels were locked--it took several people to push it. Then he had the guts to file for a back injury a month later. Praise the lawd for insurance companies, mine sorted it out and I've not heard a thing since (other than the claim was closed). My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's an interesting analogy...most people do not pay the full cost of their tuitions, we consider it a societal benefit to have educated people. We subsidize it in numerous ways, directly through taxes research grants etc. Some schools have endowments that pay significant amounts of tuition for their students (Swarthmore was an example I read about recently). Becker and Posner (two of the greatest economists alive) wrote about the cost of college education on their blog recently. But what do they know... So yes...that's a great analogy. I think people should continue go to college without paying the full cost of their tuition. Import them, educate them and make them citizens. Watch them make our nation thrive My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Blatantly racist, limited in scope. KPBS (damn liberals) Did not substantially limit immigration, mainly processed immigrants. Ellis Island My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Apart from the statutory definition (and ramifications such as taxes), what makes an illegal immigrant different from a legal one? Is there any difference? Would the difference evaporate if we abolished artificial immigration restrictions? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

More reading on the subject. It's ill-informed remarks like the above, imo, that characterize the anti-immigration position. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Case in point, that's an ill-informed remark. When hordes of laborers throng across the border, who do you think gets hired to manage them? This paper analyzes the effect of immigrant nannies on wage income on natives. Brush up on your Spanish. Many of the problems are caused by the laws themselves. Our immigration laws are damaging to our economy and to our society. Illegal immigrants are people too, much the same as people who already live here. They suffer many of the same trappings of crime and poverty as existing residents. Would you favor deporting the poor? That's an unsupportable conclusion. Economics applies the same to that time period as today. There are different demographics, different incomes, different politics and different technologies today, but that does not disqualify the economics. Well I suppose the politics will cause some people to just shut off their minds, but such people are ignorant. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What you have is confusion over the statutory and actual incidence of immigration. Statutory distinctions are not particularly helpful, imo, because they obscure the actual effects of immigration (legal or otherwise) on economics, on demographics etc. Before the 1920s there was much less restriction on immigration. There was very little legal or illegal, there were just people arriving on the shores. The laws that have been passed since then don't preempt the reasons that people come here, they just interfere with figuring out cause and effect. That makes the period up until the 1920's very attractive to study, because the laws weren't getting in the way as much. Historically and presently, imo, most of the anti-immigration tripe you see is patent xenophobia. It's unpatriotic, it demonstrates ignorance of our country's history and active malice towards factors that directly contribute to our country's future greatness. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The net effect of immigration is hugely positive. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309059984/html/index.html explains it, and the trappings of how the numbers can be tabulated. Looking at 1st gen adults includes the elderly / infirm and discounts the effect of children and families continuing to grow and thrive in the country past the 1st generation. Looking at the initial points of ingress is also misleading (such as LA), for it overrepresents the costs and underrepresents the benefits--most immigrants have tended to move on past the initial point of ingress after the 1st generation, and the 1st generation is where most of the temporary cost imbalance arises. Think about it for a second, the vast majority of the country is of immigrant stock. Unless you're claiming that native americans drive the economy, you cannot escape that immigrants drive this country and its economy. What's left is to suggest that future immigrants are any different from the old ones...and I see no reason to believe so. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well yeah it depends on the quality of life. It'd be no fun to be a brain in a vat and technically "alive" for infinitely many years or even one. Or trapped inside a frail frame beyond rehabilitation (no offense intended to any irreparably frail people who read this) with no choices about how to conduct oneself. But to be healthy and energetic, to be repairable might make it worthwhile. How many years would you have to work before your investments could sustain both themselves and an entertaining lifestyle? I'm guessing well less than 200 years... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Seriously, wealthy societies tend to have sharply fewer kids--they're much more likely to survive and propagate the genes. economic speculation ensues: The effect on the poor would be negligible--there'd be a short period of high inflation in poor countries and a rapid return to something like the status quo. On a per-capita basis for the recipients it'd be not very much money, and as a lump sum payment they'd be hard pressed to capitalize it* and would probably spend much of it over time rather than investing. The influx of cash in local economies would drive up prices. Goods and housing would become more expensive and would outpace productivity gains for a while. There'd be a period of glee followed by a nasty hangover while productivity caught up naturally. * it's very hard to invest small sums, though it seems to be getting somewhat easier recently The middle class (no not the one that drives SUVs, but the class that's between the 1% that got taxed and the 50% that got paid) would get hosed to a lesser or greater extent. Worst off would be the people in the 51st percentile, just above the mark to have their wealth doubled...they might find themselves in the 20th or 30th percentile afterward. Meanwhile the top 1% would find themselves marginally worse off. Interest rates might go up a little (less savings to go around as loans), and it'd have a depressive effect on the economies they subscribe to--lower investment across the board because savings would be become more attractive. Could quite well cause a recession or two. Basically it would screw over lots of people to hardly any benefit. It was a loaded question...wealth is a terrible vehicle for social tinkering...you almost never see governments redistributing it directly for this reason. btw the paper is here. The per-capita wealth of the lowest 50% appears to be on the order of several thousand dollars per head, guestimating from a brief scan of the paper--it doesn't appear to say outright. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Therefore, anyone who operates a train on time will be dismissed because he is obviously a Fascist sympathizer. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

So if you taxed the wealth of the top 1% at 2.5% and directly paid off the bottom 50%, the bottom half would have twice as much wealth (2% of world wealth). What do you think the effect would be on their quality of life? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's a difficult subject to discuss...your present accounts may sum to a negative but you have intangible assets (your education, your skills, your job etc) that play a huge role. The reason you were able to got a loan in the first place is because your lender believed in them. You'd have to read the study (I haven't) to figure out what the message is...the media seem to be strangling it pretty badly. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?