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Mona and Jay have a guest, Russ Roberts, the economist and podcaster. He talks about, among other things, immigration. There is hardly any topic today that generates more liveliness. Roberts is lucid on the subject, and Mona and Jay contribute their own lucidity, in their fashions.
Then Mona pays tribute to Marco Rubio, who has just ended his campaign. Jay agrees entirely, except for a jot or tittle here and there. Then the topic is the fate of America: What’s it all about, Alfie? How will it turn out?
They also discuss Obama and the Supreme Court, new music at Carnegie Hall, and other matters. This is a serious episode – an episode filled with grave subjects – but it’s also a lot of fun. Listen in, as America continues its wild ride.
The closing music is Renee Fleming sings “Panis Angelicus” by Cesar Franck, which was sung during the funeral mass for Antonin Scalia.
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What was the Muppet voice at 2:13?!
Mona, I love you and your good hearted nature, but could I ask you to invite Mark Krikorian or Mickey Kaus to educate you on the real world implications of let ‘er rip immigration to counteract the dreamy rhetoric of the brilliant but totally uninformed Mr. Roberts. I had spent the first 20 minutes of your podcast grinding my teeth listening until he turned to you and asked if you knew anything about if illegals could get welfare. [reality check – they are officially barred but with so many loopholes that the prohibition is just the preamble of the list of exemptions]
You once spoke of how affected you were when you drove through West Philadelphia and saw the level of poverty and desolation there. If you realized that that impact is what unfettered immigration is bringing to us you would change your Pollyanna views.
Can you recommend a good primer on this topic? I’m inclined to agree with Russ Roberts and Mona Charen on this topic, while also agreeing with Milton Friedman that open borders are not compatible with the welfare state. However, I am fairly ignorant on the topic of immigration, and I expect I would be more of a hard-liner if I knew more.
I so love Mona… And look forward to those dulcet tones and whip smart mind. But I couldn’t get past the first 3 minutes. (…add a chair in a public school class? Bit of a tin ear on this issue.)
Here is VDH weighing in on the immigration issue – from the perspective of what it really looks like versus Humanist abstract.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=victor+davis+hanson+mexifornia&&view=detail&mid=3840EB347908BD2231283840EB347908BD223128&FORM=VRDGAR
So if I understand this correctly Mona says the white people use more benefits than immigrants. Seems she is for throwing all the lazy whites out and replace them with hard working immigrants.
Report from Center for Immigration Studies–
Census Bureau data reveals that most U.S. families headed by illegal immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare programs on behalf of their American-born anchor babies.
The majority of households across the country benefitting from publicly-funded welfare programs are headed by immigrants, both legal and illegal. States where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62%), Texas, California and New York with 61% each and Pennsylvania(59%).The study focused on eight major welfare programs that cost the government $517 billion the year they were examined. They include Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the disabled, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a nutritional program known as Women, Infants and Children (WIC), food stamps, free/reduced school lunch, public housing and health insurance for the poor (Medicaid).Food assistance and Medicaid are the programs most commonly used by illegal immigrants, mainly on behalf of their American-born children who get automatic citizenship. On the other hand, legal immigrant households take advantage of every available welfare program, according to the study, which attributes it to low education level and resulting low income. The highest rate of welfare recipients come from the Dominican Republic (82 %), Mexico and Guatemala (75%) and Ecuador (70%), according to the report, which says welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents.
….just ‘sayin.
I’ll stay out of the immigration debate, but just wanted to thank the producers for waiting until “Panis Angelicus” was completely finished before firing the Rico-shot.
It’s like she doesn’t understand her statement doesn’t only prove her point about the relative impact of illegals on welfare. It also works for us: those American citizens should have an incentive to get off welfare and get a job, a job not basically stolen from them by a scofflaw from another country who is willing to work for less than minimum wage. (And that is also a reason to repeal minimum wage laws).
And the Social Security tax thing really irritated me. Talk about a false choice: we should respect the fact that illegals supposedly pay SS taxes with SS#s they obtained illegally after coming to/remaining in the nation illegally, while working jobs they work illegally for illegal pay.
Maybe we should applaud a robber who tossed a stolen dollar bill at a bum.
There is not enough of a range of views in my opinion amongst the podcasters and editorial staff, especially on immigration issues. As others have said, it would be far more lively and educational if you had Mickey Kaus and Mark Krikorian to push back on immigration, perhaps Andrew McCarthy to push back on how the Republican leadership did not fail the base, Mark Levin to defend radio talk show hosts, and heaven forbid, Pat Buchanon to push back against our foreign adventures the last 15 years. Starting to feel too monolithic on many issues where there is a range of opinion on the right.
I just heard this so have to comment. There is no such thing as too much Roberts, but like most economists, his take on immigration and open borders misses a lot of economics. Trade’s benefits do not occur in a cultural vacuum, nor does anything else. Economists focus on private goods transactions and ignore the collective goods that are even more ubiquitous and essential to civilization and human flourishing than private goods transactions. A Hayakian like Roberts should know better. A flood of immigrants from certain non western cultures can and is overwhelming an essential set of public goods, i.e. frequently called culture. While open borders would require the elimination of welfare in all it’s forms, such a flood would still do more harm than good. It would create material wealth, at least until the rule of law was totally undermined and we started to reflect the legal systems and politics of the countries these immigrants are fleeing from. Or not, we can’t know, but limited government and decentralization of power were unique in history so the probability is that we would lose those attributes even more rapidly than we are now. Like a lot of social and physical scientists, they focus on abstractions as if the models were reality. The models are useful tools, not reality. Reality is flesh and blood and comes in forms that can’t be modeled.