So in response to my side comment about my dinner with Kevin Drum in the post below, Kevin posted something puzzling on his site:
As I recall from that dinner, “fire all the teachers” was #1 on the list, and not as a joke. That was followed by raising the California sales tax and repudiating every interest group that actually supports the Democratic Party. Oddly enough, I didn’t think that was an especially inspiring strategy for liberal Democrats to get behind.
I sent him a “Huh?” email, and he responded with a comment that our talk had been kind of stream of consciousness and I didn’t really set out bullet points for California policy (which is a fair description but hardly a fair critique – it was cross conversation at a dinner, not a lecture by anyone).
So let’s go to the points in his post first and foremost:
I didn’t say ‘fire all the teachers’; I said that reforming education was going to be so hard that it might be necessary to simply fire everyone and start over. I’ll discuss education reform in more detail in a bit.
And yes, I do support raising the California sales tax – and rebating a healthy chunk of what’s raised to pay the Federal and state payroll taxes of low-wage workers, giving them a pay raise they’d see every two weeks – is something I believe would be a good idea.
And repudiating every interest group supporting the Democratic Party is a little strong; I suggested that the three interest groups driving the Party off a cliff were a) state and public employees; b) The gambling interests masquerading as Indian tribes; and c) Hollywood and the media companies, who never met a subsidy they weren’t greedy enough to demand. I think that all three of those interest groups – as opposed to, say real working people – have interests that lie in opposition to what ought to be core Democratic values which I expressed at dinner in a simple test:
What benefits does the Democratic Party bring to a 35-year old single mom, who’s trying to raise her two kids as best she can while living three paychecks from homelessness? Or a working couple who collectively make $70k year, and are officially ‘middle class’ but can’t afford decent childcare, health care, or to live anywhere near where they work? Or an immigrant family, trying to live on $40K year?
For far too long, the Democratic Party has handed away the interests of the working class (which certainly includes large groups of middle-income workers) and the working poor in favor of a collection of interest groups who have the ability to mobilize large donor pools. The Kossaks are simply the latest investor group hoping to mount a hostile takeover of the party.So here (cribbed from an email I sent Kevin this morning) are some of the policy points I raised at dinner:
First goal: Grow jobs. Ideally, grow middle-income as opposed to minimum-wage jobs.
Policy: Review all regulation to minimize compliance costs while retaining regulatory goals. I.e. make the paperwork simple to fill out. Structure the regulatory agency to be more service oriented and more results oriented, rather than paperwork and process oriented. Note that isn’t a Chamber of Commerce crack fantasy – when we did this in constructing the new Bay Bridge, accidents fell by at least 50%.
Policy: Build infrastructure, and fix the infrastructure we’ve got today. Sewers, water systems, electrical grids, generating capacity, roads, railroads, airports. The environmental impacts will be significant, and have to be managed, but will be offset by a) greater efficiency in the new stuff (less leaky water systems, better sewer treatment, more efficient electrical transmission and less polluting new plants and upgrades to old ones).
Policy: Portability of health and pension benefits. Pooling of small business pension plans (lower admin cost) and health plans (lower cost). Kevin may be right that a French-style national health insurance scheme could work; I don’t know enough yet to comment.
Second goal: Fix education, from preschool through grad school. the issues here are first, true equality of access; next, the burden placed on households by expensive and low-quality childcare; and finally, the need for a highly educated workforce at all levels.
Policy: Free or low cost public preschools. The French actually do this very well with the creche programs. (Note that I don’t support meathead’s plan to fund this by raising, again, the taxes on high-income Californians) This has two goals: First, helping prepare all children for school. Second, providing high-quality child-care to working families. Look, let’s face it. Having a parent stay home is the ideal child-rearing environment. But it’s not a realistic one for families who are trying to make ends meet in an increasingly expensive world.
Policy: Break up all large school districts. I’m not sure what the upper limit ought to be, but I’ll suggest that somewhere around 10,000 – 15,000 high school kids is probably the maximum size. Here in Torrance, I can directly interact with my school board members, and residents have a lot to say about how the schools are run. At the scale of LAUSD, you have to be a professional lobbyist to get traction. That alone may be enough to balance the power of the teachers unions at the local level.
Policy: Reinstate vocational education in the schools, as well as counselors and school support for extracurricular activities. Elite high schools find ways to do these things. Average ones should as well. Access to even sub-elite colleges requires massive investment in time and activities outside the high-school classroom; make sure that all high schools have the tools motivated students need to make that investment.
Policy: Make schools the center of social-service delivery in neighborhoods. Poor-performing schools are all in poor neighborhoods. The problems of students who don’t have core skills to function in the classroom because they aren’t given them at home, and where success in the classroom is made impossible by failure at home, have got to be addressed. We’re spending a boatload on social services in a haphazard and overlapping way. Why not target them on families via the kids in school? Go Google ‘Full-Service Schools’.
Third goal: Figure out a way to pay for all this.
Policy: Start by looking hard at the state budget. In 2004, the state employed 316,000 employees – down from a peak of 324,000 in 2001, but up from 296,000 in 1999. In addition, the total compensation package for state employees continues to increase. When I was a State employee in the late 1970’s it was explained to me that we made about 90% of the market wage for our job, but we got awesome job security and benefits.
Today, many state employees make more than the market wage for their job, and still get awesome job security and benefits. They get these because their unions are the single most powerful advocacy group in Sacramento.
Policy: Enact controls on labor union and corporate advocacy spending without direct employee and shareholder assent.
I’ve written before about the problem that we face when we adopt a ‘well, let the rich guys pay for it’ attitude toward state funding. There’s an additional problem is that as long as people think they can/should vote for policies that they have no financial stake in, they won’t work very hard to vote for effective policies.
Policy: Raise the state sales tax about 1.25% and use a portion of the funds collected to make the employee portion of Federal and State payroll tax payments for employers of low-wage workers. Those employers will then pass the former tax payments on to the employees as an increase in take-home pay. The State will get extra income that isn’t as volatile as income tax income, and as a benefit, those working ‘off the books’ will be disproportionately taxed.
Policy: Require all property held in corporate or partnership names to register the majority owner with the local Assessor’s office, and register any changes with the Assessor’s office. On a change of ownership exceeding 51%, reassess the property.
So – Kevin – that’s pretty much what we discussed at dinner, except for my plan to abolish skyboxes at stadiums and arenas, and force the rich and powerful to sit wit hthe rest of us if they want to come to a game.
I’ll happily hold up my vision of a Democratic Party against the present one – even with the bonus of a national healthcare program and a higher minimum wage, as you suggest.
A.L.,
My father had the No. 3 position in the California Dept. of Education when he retired twelve years ago – he was the chief political guy, i.e., the one in charge of prying money out of the legislature & governor, and the federal government. He had been the political consultant for several Superindents of Public Instruction starting with Wilson Riles.
When Superindent Bill Honig finally persuaded Pop to go legit and take a full-time position in the Dept. (as its No. 3), Pop moved in with an old friend of his in Sacramento named Bill Cunningham, who he had met in 1950 when Bill was a newly appointed school principal in (I think) Mendocino and Pop was a school furniture salesman.
Cunningham was then Governor Pete Wilson’s Education Secretary. Cunningham neglected to inform Wilson that the chief political operative for Wilson’s major political rival was now rooming with Cunningham. For about 18 months Cunningham and Pop would come back from their offices, have a few drinks and chat about how to nudge their bosses into doing what’s right for California education.
Eventually Pop said this would look bad if it ever came out, and moved into his own house. When Cunningham retired (the second time – Governor Wilson had called him out of retirement), Wilson appointed one of Pop’s assistants, Republican Maureen DiMarco, as his new Education Secretary because she knew how Pop thought.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere how Pop’s last hurrah as a Democratic Party operative was plotting in D.C. with Leon Panetta on how to screw the California GOP using Wilson’s 1994 errors in identifying the GOP with anti-immigrant policies over Proposition 187, etc. And how Pop told me in loving detail how he was doing it because I was a Republican and he knew it would drive me nuts.
But I also kept telling him how all of his wonderful ideas for California education entailed further centralization of all power with the unaccountable Dept. of Education bureaucracy in Sacramento.
Marc, IMO the real problem with California education is lack of accountability and local control caused by overcentralization of funding, and therefore power, in a single statewide office. It starts with Serrano v. Priest (1976) 18 Cal.3d 728.
Think back to your undergraduate political education at UCSC and in particular what you learned from Professor Schaar.
A.L.,
A significant part of the problem in education is created by the judicial branch having an Animal Farm definition of the U.S. Constitution – some parts of the Constitution are more equal than others, especially section 1 of the 14th Amendment.
Wow, you said all that at dinner? You really must’ve been shitfaced near the end.
…Or Kevin Drum was, which would at least explain how this got redacted to the lunatic one-sentence summary he wrote.
The alternative explanation – and I’m not sure which is less charitable – is that Kevin is deeply incurious about what’s going on beyond the inside baseball world of politics, and so is simply uninterested in anything that isn’t an attack point vis-a-vis the GOP. This is my assessment of how he usually covers foreign policy (Michael Totten being a good example of someone at the opposite extreme modus operandi), and it’s not unreasonable to suppose that his domestic policy coverage might be similarly skewed.
Other explanations may exist, of course, and ptrobably do. Peering into another’s mind is an inherently hazardous affair. But the Grand Canyon sized discrepancy between what’s here and what’s there calls out for an explanation of some sort.
An easy way to discern liberals from lefties online is the latter’s fondness inclusion of obscenities in posts devoid of information content.
A.L., here’s a volunteer for IP blocking.
AL — all this is nice but begs the question.
How can working class people make a living when wage pressures are constantly downwards due to illegal immigration?
Answer, they can’t.
Republican groups want cheap labor, Democratic groups want lots of poor people. Neither of these objectives are compatible with raising the living standard of working class people.
Now you know why Flap is a Republican.
Tom, no offense, but, your pop was and his policies still are what has ruined California public education.
Marc you failed to mention the one issue that drives all of your Dimrat buddies’ budgetary problems: ILLEGAL ALIENS.
And please……French pre-school. France’s government is about to collapse – can’t take care of their own immigrants.
Marc, let’s set up dinner. Patterico and I will set you straight. :o)
Flap
Helping the poor by giving them money is not a permanent solution.
Making their labor worth more is the way to go.
Which goes to education. Which is a very left leaning organization. Except for economics and engineering.
Anyway. The left controls K-12 and dominates 13-16.
See anything wrong with this picture?
Your point about firing a lot of people is a start.
Vouchers. Like we do for college.
==========================================
BTW I applaud California Government’s efforts to strangle business and trade.
Illinois has gone left lately and we need all the help we can get.
There is an economist (probably many) who thinks that tax rates above 20% do not produce more revenue. They produce evasion.
I mean seriously. Wouldn’t California be better off attracting wealth to the state instead of punishing it?
Discounts for rich people. Or low costs for every one if you are a strict egalitarian.
Just a thought.
The Mexicans are coming.
Immigrant labor has always been cheap. With minimal education what are you going to do?
If we do a good job educating their children the problem is solved.
It is how we have always done it.
Jim,
Illegal immigration is not going to break on standard party lines. Check the left-wing blog sites, you’ll see real misgivings precisely on the cheap labour/working class isue. And the fissures in the GOP are deep, too.
Solving the illegal aliens problem is not a necessary block to Marc’s proposals.
As a final note, France’s pathetic excuse for a government is only an argument against Marc’s proposals if you can show that this is an area of failed policy, or that it’s contributing to France’s overall failure. Simply shouting “French!” is a contentless objection.
Joe,
Do you live in southern California?
And illegal immigration is not a stumbling block to Marc’s policy proposals?
Illegal aliens and their kids drive the Los Angeles County and LAUSD budgets – big time.
County healthcare spending is out of control. How many times have different county medical facilities been bailed out by the feds or simply closed?
And LAUSD? How many schools has Romer built in the past three years to accomdodate immigrant hispanic kids? Answer: MANY…..
Have you been to Van Nuys lately? How about Panorama City? Any English billboards there?
Ok, on to the French.
Their society is collapsing. How can one possibly consider French pre-schools when they have their immigrant communities with 25 % unemployment and rioting in the streets? Were not these youths educated in these socialist government provided education/childcare shops?
It seems that Marc and Kevin Drum should outline these programs and how they can handle all of the hispanic kids here while redistributing everyone else’s income to pay for it.
Come on…….
A proposal for discussion: What about a way to make immigrant labor immediately eligible for minimum wage, immediately taxable, their employers immediately taxable through payrolls, the workers immediately protected by fair labor stadards and practice laws, and immediately able to form unions? Illegal labor would stop being an issuse of price competition for their labor, and it would give the government some real leverage to go after the employes: payroll tax evasion.
Tax revenue right there, for the hospitals and the schools.
Is that practical? Is it being researched? Are there any numbers on it?
And finally, what last son of Krypton is gonna get that done?
I meant that it is not a barrier insofar as it is thinkable for a Democratic Party administration to deal with it and thus remove it from the long-term equation.
If I had to bet, of course, I’d bet that they’re going to be suicidal again, just because that’s the safe bet. Which is fine by me, as I’m a Republican. But it would be foolish to assume that this must be the case.
You need to get rid of prop 13 and reassess constantly like evrybody else does. In Ohio the tax rate is reduced by the percentage that the general level of assesments is increased, which circut breaks unvoted increases.
No price competition for labor?
How exactly do you plan to accomplish this?
The USSR went at it for 70 years. It destroyed them.
They were a little more ambitious than just no price competition for labor. They wanted no price competition for everything.
There is price competition for everything. You cannot prevent it.
Think of the illegal drug market. The government has tried to shut this one down for longer than the Soviet Union was in existance. No luck so far.
And we are looking now at the illegal labor market.
I mean seriously. Neither the left nor the right is clear about the economics of the situation. Pathetic.
The right wants to disrupt business to fix the problem. The left wants higher taxes. Thus sending more businesses to Mexico or China. Some how the market will clear. You cannot prevent it. What is the lowest cost way? What is in our best long term interest?
1. It is our best long term interest to have a lot of Mexicans schooled in American values.
2. Border control is the job of the Feds.
3. Punishing business (removing labor) is not a good idea
4. Punishing local taxpayers for a national problem is a bad idea
So I propose
1. Instant amnesty
2. Easier Entry
3. A fence
4. More Federal compensation
BTW we are going to have significant transition problems. No way around it.
However, we really do not want to create a labor shortage at the peak of the business cycle do we?
What do we get out of this? Fresh blood. More Americans.
It could all be paid for by ending drug prohibition.
So there you have it: end drug prohibition. End labor prohibition.
Could some one explain to me again why price fixing is a good idea?
And I’d like the black market lecture too.
Folks have this funny idea that laws written by legislatures will function as well as the law of gravity.
i.e. with the right laws we can eliminate price competition for labor.
Well actually no. You can create a black market (we are so fond of this in America). You cannot eliminate price competition for labor.
Income redistribution gives an incentive at the margin to remain poor.
You misunderstand. Not price fixing. If there is some kind of way to change the status of the illegals, (guest worker or probationary citizenship, or hell who knows, this isn’t my strong point), then the workers themselves can gain access to the factors that drive the price up.
Part of what makes their labor so cheap, is that the workplace doesn’t have to be safe, because an illegal immigrant can’t report the employer. There doesn’t have to be any regularity of pay. Sometimes the employer will pay cash at a certain location, and for the last payday, calls INS to the scene. There is no way that the workers can file a grievance for malicious denial of pay. So, if all those safeguards are there for the advantage of American workers, and that drives up the price of American labor, why not open up those benfits to the illegal workers.
If the illegal workers have access to those protections, I would wonder if that wouldn’t drive the price of labor up. I imagine that there would still be illegal laborers, but then if they are dealt with in an illegal manner, they have some legal recourse against the employer. Then the workers make more money and more money is spent and taxed.
I could be wrong, but right now, less money is spent, and none taxed. So, the size of the populace is held apart from support an infrastructure that normally comes with it: more taxes equalling more schools, more hospitals, more police. Hell, illegal workers can’t even pony up to pay taxes, or really even help out the cops. Any form of legitimate service or outlet for social responsibility has to be given to them on a excepted status (you aren’t protected by the police or Federal Governmentand it’s against the law for you to be here, but we’ll look the other way to give you a driver’s licence, and we’ll force hospitals to treat you even when you have no cash).
Clarification would be appreciated. Again, this isn’t my strong suit, so I make the proposal to further the discussion.
_County healthcare spending is out of control. How many times have different county medical facilities been bailed out by the feds or simply closed?_
_And LAUSD? How many schools has Romer built in the past three years to accomdodate immigrant hispanic kids? Answer: MANY…._
I left LA in 1990. Two years later I had a chance to chat with a senior advisor to the Philipine government, a specialist in public health initiatives. His take on LA *at that time* (and it’s worse now):
_Third World conditions in a First World country_
There were, at the time, some 55 languages spoken as the primary language of LA school kids. Diseases like tuberculosis were active in immigrant neighborhoods. And hospital emergency services were collapsing under the weight of uninsured people, mostly immigrants and many here illegally, for whom the ER represented the main / only medical care channel, because they could not be turned away.
Serious issues here. And that was 16 years ago.
Victor Davis Hanson speaks of latinos who refuse to assimilate. He is probably right. But it’s also the case that we as a society have neither insisted they assimilate nor provided help in doing so.
It’s a mess and it will be a headach to sort out. Better now than later, though.
And one reason for not attempting to deport them all: send them back and their countries of origin might well collapse into economic and political chaos, resulting in even more pressure on our borders.
When my wife and I married, the 9 special needs kids in her classroom spoke 7 different languages as their primary languages. That was more than 20 years ago.
> You need to get rid of prop 13 and reassess constantly like evrybody else does.
No thank you.
Prop 13 provides stability. It keeps local govts somewhat in line.
By forcing govts to make some choices, it reveals that they they make mindbogglingly dumb ones. (Do you really want to argue that the current spending priorities make sense?) As long as that’s true, why should the get more money?
> If there is some kind of way to change the status of the illegals
Which illegals?
If the cost of employing Joe suddenly goes up because he’s made legal, why wouldn’t Sam, a new illegal, take Joe’s place?
The distinction between “fire all teachers” and “fire everyone” doesn’t reflect a more nuanced stance on your part than what was reported by Drum. It actually makes you seem even more extremely anti-public education. And you affirm that raising the sales tax was, as Drum said, something you would support.
But saying you favored repudiating every lberal interest group was obviously an exaggeration. It’s hard to understand in what ways you think Democrats are NOT goood for 35-year old single moms as compared to Repubs who would, you know, start from the position that her BEING a single mom means there’s something wrong with her, and go on from there.
If ever there was an example of a reply proving the oposite point from what the respondent thought, you just wrote it. Not that you might not have some good ideas among your remaining meanderings, but you have generally affirmed that The Drum’s take on your message was pretty darned accurate! And I would agree with Drum–wrong.
Radio Head – but the distinction between the descriptive “This is such a hard problem we may wind up having to fire everyone” and the policy proposal “break up large school districts to a set size cap” appears to be one that escapes you.
As does the distinction between “raise sales taxes” and “rasise sales taxes and use the money to lower payroll taxes”.
Thanks – but I’m more interested in reading critiques of what I really wrote.
A.L.
_It’s hard to understand in what ways you think Democrats are NOT goood for 35-year old single moms as compared to Repubs who would, you know, start from the position that her BEING a single mom means there’s something wrong with her_
Setting aside moral issues, there is the simple financial issue involved in voluntary single parenthood: namely, that in most cases a significant part of the burden of raising that child is pushed off onto the public. Welfare, subsidized school lunches, medical support services … all provide the safety net that helps a single mother raise a child.
As a long-time Democrat I don’t have any problem doing that for widows, the victims of rape etc. I do have a problem having that support taken for granted by women who choose to conceive a child out of wedlock. And I’m not thrilled about doing that when the single parenthood is the result of relatively casual marriage followed by divorce.
It’s off-topic for this thread, to some degree, but it would do the Democratic party leadership a great deal of good if they understood that this issue is symptomatic of the reason a lot of long-time Democrats have been voting for Republican candidates lately. What started as social safety nets rapidly evolved *with the encouragement of Democrat partisans* into ‘rights’ demanded by recipients of services, without corresponding contribution or responsibilities. That is an outrageous imposition on hard working taxpayers and, crucially, not exactly good in the long term for many communities who have developed an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with the State.
#24 Andy Freeman,
If I was grading on economics you would get an “A”.
But isn’t the prime component jobs? They aren’t really clogging the system with applications or stressing ESL classes. If there are more slots of some recognized status that give them leverage against an employer than jobs that the employer is offering…
[counting on fingers]
[counting on toes]
Nope, still doesn’t work. So how do we reverse a labor market trend that has a demand for people who can be screwed with impunity?
To equalize the wages of folks at any level, you want to remove any artificial distinctions (such as legality). However, those “equal wages” are lower than wages in the presence of such restrictions.
If you want to raise the wages of folks on the bottom, you’ve got to reduce the supply or increase the demand. (If you reduce supply too much, substitution occurs.)
There is no free lunch. Taxes decrease supply and subsidies increase it, no matter how much you’d like otherwise. (Subsidizing poverty….)
Since A.L.’s critics are so hungry for radical proposals that they can get all apoplectic over, I volunteer to draw some of their ineffectual fire.
My proposal is to abolish all college Education Departments, exempting only those devoted to Special Education for students with disabilities. Persons currently employed by these proscribed institutions will be FIRED. Fired, escorted to the door, and cavity-searched.
Universities who refuse to comply will be stripped of accreditation, and will have their water and electricity cut off.
Andy asks:
bq. “So how do we reverse a labor market trend that has a demand for people who can be screwed with impunity?”
Trend? Some of us would call that a fixed characteristic. There is ALWAYS a demand for such people. The question is whether public policy should help to provide that – and my response is no. But that’s exactly what it’s currently doing.
The base question is a fairly straightforward problem that the politically liberal tradition has answered for over 100 years: regulation + collective bargaining.
What makes that approach impossible, of course, is a continuing influx of illegal labour that will undercut any attempts to improve the situation of existing workers. Your comment in #24 nailed that.
This is why choking off the inflow is the essential first step – and it is so obvious that even a number of Democrats can recognize it. Some of the more far-sighted also recognize that if the border influx can be choked and employers held accountable for hiring illegals, the result may well be the conversion of a large, unorganized force of illegal workers into legal and unionized workers.
Re: #32
“Andy” didn’t ask how to stop people from trying to buy at the lowest price, Blair did (in #29).
In the future, I am willing to pay more for my
hamburger / toy / strawberry / chicken breast / mowing / etc.
because
McDonalds / Wal-Mart / the farmer / Perdue / the landscaping co. / etc.
* no longer have access to illegal workers, and so
* are forced to offer their lowest-paid workers the wages, protections, and benefits that the law requires–thus forcing prices up.
I understand that company managements want to build their competitive advantages by keeping costs down. I understand that wealthier Americans want less-expensive nanny care. But I don’t think that these are compelling moral arguments. These trends are bad for the economy and bad for American society.
At the least, let’s have an honest policy debate. Plutocrats, illegals, leftists, and the WSJ can jointly propose legislation that legitimizes today’s facts–a two-tier workplace with lesser wages and rights for those at the bottom.
Or perhaps they’d prefer to do away with minimum wage, due-process rights, unemployment insurance, workman’s comp, and health insurance altogether?
If, instead, their proposal is, “include everybody by granting citizenship to all who are in-country”–fine. Just so the “lots of cheap labor, depressing wages” argument is made openly. And as long as this question is answered: What’s to stop a replay of 1986, where employers attracted a new wave of illegal immigrants and re-established the two-tier system anew?
I notice Kevin Drum has now assembled a list of policies most liberal bloggers would (mostly) agree on. “Here.”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_05/008769.php At a glance, the main difference between that list and AL’s might be their view of regulations.
> In the future, I am willing to pay more for my
Why wait? One can do those things now.
> What’s to stop a replay of 1986, where employers attracted a new wave of illegal immigrants and re-established the two-tier system anew?
Does AMac scream “racism” when the INS shows up?
(Most comments about “white illegals” will pretty much prove my point.)
Andy Freeman:
>> In the future, I am willing to pay more
> Why wait? One can do those things now.
Yep, many times I do. My comment was on the incentive for businesses to lower costs by employing illegals. I think this is unethical–if enough voters agree, perhaps we’ll pass laws that make it impractical.
> Does AMac scream “racism” when the INS shows up?
Um. No?
>(Most comments about “white illegals” will pretty much prove my point.)
Um. What comments? If the point is as expressed in #24, I agree.
> My comment was on the incentive for businesses to lower costs by employing illegals. I think this is unethical–if enough voters agree, perhaps we’ll pass laws that make it impractical.
In the US, such laws have existed for decades. When they’re enforced, the race-warriors come out.
In other words, laws aren’t the problem, so passing more of them can’t be the solution, especially when the proposed laws are exactly the same as current law. (I find that most people who propose “new” laws don’t know the existing law.)
However, I note that if “enough” voters actually agreed, those laws wouldn’t be necessary. Biz that behaved that way wouldn’t have customers. (It doesn’t matter how low your costs are if you have no sales.)
> In the US, such laws have existed for decades…
Taking a step back, some people (you and me among them) believe that illegal immigration is an important part of an important issue. Others say, “what problem?,” or define the nature of the problem in ways I wholly disagree with. (Examples being the “need” for cheap labor, or a program to establish Aztlan.)
The current two-tier labor system looks much less attractive when its characteristics and effect are discussed explicitly. Its proponents prefer to speak vaguely and evasively.
Re. new laws: yes. The first meaningful step is to establish that it is in the US’s national interest to control its borders, which means building a wall. Better lives for today’s illegal workers could and should be one consequence of that decision.
I think you guys have touched on the heart of it. Without a political maelstrom that would overturn our entire government and massively rework campaign financing in ways incompatible with the constitution and democracy, there will never be a realistic or effective crackdown on business for employing illegals.
It is a fantasy, those who propose that as the solution arent thinking it through. Who will enforce it? There is simply no governmental organization remotely the size and funding to attach this problem in a meaningful way. But even more importantly, once those businesses start screaming bloody murder to the politicians they finance, what exactly do you think will happen? When the CEO of ADM calls up Senator X because the INS, or customs, or the FBI (again, who is going to do this?) is bugging him for his illegal pickers, what do you think happens?
Build a wall first. Thats simple and the only major interests opposing it are out there literally in favor of continued law breaking. Not a smart wall, a big dumb cement wall.
Mark:
I hear that Chicago’s influx of illegal immigration is coming from Russia and Poland. Is that true? And if so, how are they getting there?
Mostly they overstay their visas. Thats something we certainly need to deal with, but at least they went through some sort of vetting once. Im all for cracking down on visa violations and building a fence on the Canadian border as well. First things first however. When the damn is bursting you dont stop to fix the leaky sink.