One of the best kept secrets of the 21st Century is how large a role Diversity (in its various manifestations) played in housing bubble and bust of the last decade. So I’ve been slowly collecting studies by economists of the subject, such as how much worse the default rate was among minorities and immigrants. Last week in “Immigrants Delinquent on Mortgages 3.6 Times as Often as Natives,” I wrote about a recent study published in Real Estate Economics entitled “Immigrants and Mortgage Delinquency” and written by Zhenguo Lin, Yingchun Liu and Jia Xie.
Although Lin, Liu, and Xie toss in some boilerplate at the end about how obviously immigrants aren’t to blame for the bubble and bust, they had clearly read up on this question that fascinates me, citing Michelle Malkin as representative of the “media” and asserting that George W. Bush had “famously” said something at his 2002 White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership, which is famous mostly to my readers. It was a good study, showing a much greater curiosity about this crucial question than is considered seemly these days.
And it made me wish economists did more studies of the impact of immigration. Instead, we mostly see big name economists just dogmatically endorsing immigration as obviously something that all smart people know is Good.
Why, you may ask? Because immigration is Good. If you were smart, you’d know that.
So why are famous white American economists so publicly stupid on immigration? I’m using the word stupid not to mean “disagree with me,” but to mean “ignorant,” “poorly read in the literature,” “using obvious logical fallacies,” and “incurious.”
It strikes me that one big reason for the shameful behavior of most brand name economists on the analysis of immigration is the demographics of the economics profession at present, with white American economists at the top of the pyramid lording it over a lot of immigrants. The wealthy old white guys seem to assume that their immigrant underlings don’t want the immigration question studied honestly, so they discourage intelligent discussion.
But who knows? Maybe the immigrants would actually like to study immigration? Perhaps in the future when all the old white American professors have been put out to pasture and people with names like Lin, Liu, and Xie completely dominate the American economics profession, discussion of immigration won’t be so intellectually stilted.
Comments to Steve Sailer:
* The question in the title of your post seems easy to answer – nobody else studies immigration in an objective way, so why should economists? They know that any honest conclusions they come to on immigration will in effect be statements on racial differences, whether they say so explicitly or not. No other field of study faces up to the question of race either, not even biology. Many biologists start to sound like creationists when they’re cornered into making any comment on racial differences.
* Why should anyone expect Economists not to be left-wing ideologues – or pushers of globalization – like almost every other branch of the “social sciences”.
We need to get over the idea that economists are Mr. Spock’s seeking the truth. They’re driven by politics, fear and ambition, just like everyone else.
* Even Michael Whitney and Michael Hudson are completely silent on immigration. Both men speak out against the impoverishment of the American worker, the FIRE economy, the bankstas, and the stagnant wages we have suffered for forty years, yet the “I-word” never passes their lips.
A million immigrants with an average IQ something like 85 flooding Germany, 15 million equally stupid Latinos, yet they see Keynesianism as the only cure. As though Mexican and Afghani peasants and their progeny will ever be anything other than hewers of wood and carriers of water in a fully automated post-industrial economy.
I appreciate them both for what they do, but even angels fear to tread I suppose, and particularly ageing children of the sixties. They have been suckled on white race guilt and pathological altruism their entire lives. It must be impossible to break the mental shackles their upbringing has forged.
* Because the immigrants are non-white and the Earth travels thru an aether of HBD denial — political correctness makes you stupid — remember, ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ has a clock where it’s always “3 minutes to midnight” — that’s how close we are to the next ‘Holocaust’ — because nationalism and racism.
* Economist Thomas Sowell: “Questions about immigration and citizenship are questions about irreversible decisions that can permanently change the composition of the American population and the very culture of the country — perhaps in the direction of the cultures of the countries from which illegal immigrants have fled.”
“During the era of epidemics that swept across Europe in centuries past, people fleeing from those epidemics often spread the diseases to the places to which they fled. Counterproductive and dangerous cultures can be spread to America the same way.”
* If you look at the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, you can check that the fraction of US Ph.Ds in Economics going to US citizens has ranged between 30% and 40% in recent years. Throw in PhD’s from Canada and Europe and Sailer has likely underestimated the number of non-US origin economists in the sample.
On the other hand, the rate of default by national origin seems more like sociology than economics. For instance, an interesting factoid was reported in the NY Times during the trial of the management of Abacus Bank of Chinatown, NYC. Loan originators at Abacus made a practice of encouraging Chinese immigrant borrowers to lie about their incomes and job titles in order to get Fannie Mae guarantees. They were not alone in that obviously. The interesting factoid was that the rate of default on these liar loans was actually minimal, less than the national average on all mortgage lending. So why do Chinese immigrants make their payments when other nationalities do not?
* In academia if you do not toe the multiculti line, your career will suffer: you will not get the grants, the promotions, the tenure.
The grants go to those who scratch the back of the big money establishment.
Quid pro quo…you give with the multiculti propaganda, and they give you grants and promotions.
Big money wants economic growth, and if you want career success, you give big money what they want. You come up with studies that show that diversity is strength, that immigrants bring jobs with them (“rain follows the plow!” and jobs follow immigrants, dontcha know!).
Quid pro quo–something for something. Academia, like government, is coin operated. Coins go in one end, and propaganda studies come out the other end.
Plus, after decades of propaganda demonization of those who will not toe the multiculti line, many average americans see these dissenters as evil.
No one wants to be seen as evil. No one wants to be poor.
So you toe the line.
* Economist Thomas Sowell writes in 2013:
Britain’s late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it all when she wrote that the world has “never ceased to be dangerous,” but the West has “ceased to be vigilant.”
Nothing better illustrates her point than the fact that the West has imported vast numbers of people who hate our guts and would love to slit our throats. Political correctness has replaced self-preservation. The Boston Marathon killer who set a bomb down right next to an eight-year-old child is only the latest in an on-going series of such people.
Senator Patrick Leahy has warned us not to use the Boston Marathon terrorists as an argument against the immigration legislation he advocates. But if we are not to base our laws on facts about realities, what are we to base them on? Fashionable theories and pious rhetoric?
While we cannot condemn all members of any group for what other members of their group have done, that does not mean that we must ignore the fact that the costs and dangers created by some groups are much greater than those created by other groups.
Most members of most groups may be basically decent people. But if 85 percent of group A are decent and 95 percent of group B are decent, this means that there is three times as large a proportion of undesirable people in group A as in group B. Should we willfully ignore that when considering immigration laws?
It is already known that a significant percentage of the immigrants from some countries go on welfare, while practically none from some other countries do. Some children from some countries are eager students in school and, even when they come here knowing little or no English, they go on to master the language better than many native-born Americans.
But other children from other countries drag down educational standards and create many other problems in school, as well as forming gangs that ruin whole neighborhoods with their vandalism and violence, and cost many lives.
Are we to shut our eyes to such differences and just lump all immigrants together, as if we are talking about abstract people in an abstract world?
Perhaps the most important fact about the immigration bill introduced in the Senate is that its advocates are trying to rush it through to passage before there is time for serious questions to be explored and debated, so as to get serious answers.
Anyone who suggests that we should compare welfare rates, crime rates, high school dropout rates and drunk driving arrest rates among immigrants from different countries, before we set immigration quotas, is likely to be stigmatized as a bad person.
Above all, we need to look at immigration laws in terms of how they affect the American people and the American culture that gives us a prosperity that has long been among the highest in the world.
Americans, after all, are not a separate race but people from many racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Yet most Americans have a higher standard of living than other people of the same racial or ethnic background in their respective ancestral home countries. That is even more true for black Americans than for white Americans.
Clearly, whatever we have in this country that makes life here better than in the countries from which most Americans originated is something worth preserving. A hundred years ago, preserving the American way of life was much easier than today, because most of the people who came here then did so to become Americans, learn our language and adopt our way of life.Today, virtually every group has its own “leaders” promoting its separate identity and different way of life, backed up by zealots for multiculturalism and bilingualism in the general population. The magic word “diversity” is repeated endlessly and insistently to banish concerns about the Balkanization of America — and banish examples provided by the tragic history of the Balkans.
We are importing many foreigners who stay foreign, if not hostile. Blithely turning them into citizens by fiat, rather than because they have committed to the American way of life, is an irreversible decision that can easily turn out to be a dangerous gamble with the future of the whole society.
* Q: Why am I getting punched in the face?
A: Because someone wants to smash your face in.
That’s the answer to your question, Steve. That’s the answer to all your questions.
As you yourself have noticed with respect to Muslim immigration to Europe, among other things, “is it good for the Jews” isn’t always a good predictive model for determining which way the wind will blow. It has its limitations. Happily, my model is both simpler and more accurate.
Try: “is it bad for the goys.”
* I think the problem started at the very origin of Economics as a field of study, with its progenitors Jean-Baptist Say, Adam Smith and David Ricardo being committed classical liberals.
Their enlightenment influences precluded them from making any fatalistic inferences about the different levels of development and wealth creation found in different nations. According to them, any nation that followed their advice on free trade and minimal state interference would achieve substantial economic development, regardless of race, culture, religion and so on.
Nearly all other economic theories that propagated in the West since then are derived, in one way or another, from classical economics, including Marxism.
The only fundamentally different economic theory that came later and had a powerful influence on some nations is the German Historical school. As you would expect from Germans in the 19th century, their school does not share the optimistic attitude of its Anglo counterpart, adopting instead a very cautious view of economic governance. Ironically, it had a major influence over the US during its vital industrialization period.
European and Oriental economists who express skepticism about mass immigration and other topics considered sacred cows nowadays might have been influenced by the Historical school.
* The suggestions that there is some coercion of conformity is absurd. “Open Borders” super champion, Bryan Caplan, for example, is about as contrarian as you can get. He is anti-liberal establishment on almost every issue except immigration. Even this crowd doesn’t question his intellectual independence. Tabarrok and John H Cochrane are in similar buckets.
My theory on why has three points:
Point #1: While there is no overt coercion, people are shaped by their work culture, and people who live/work most of their lives in academia are deeply shaped by it. Academia accentuates strictly individual merit with group academic loyalties (school colors, school symbols, etc). Group affiliations of religion/race/ethnicity/nationality are allowed but institutionally downplayed. What is perceived as a negative of destroying the ethnic distinct character of a nation like Italy/France/Japan/Germany is a debatable point to much of academia. Bryan Caplan argues that destruction of Italian/French/Japanese ownership of their nations is a strict positive, which is extreme even for academia and definitely not coerced conformity.
Point #2: Even those that agree that unwanted mass immigration imposes a real cost to host societies, the benefit to the immigrants is still larger, and basically justify taking from one group to give to the other. To quote Bryan Caplan, “But hard evidence that immigration has major drawbacks is not enough. The proponent of immigration restrictions also has to show that there is no cheaper or more humane way to mitigate the evils of immigration.”
Point #3: The benefit to an immigrant is much more visceral, visible, and measurable than the loss of the host population. The loses aren’t obscure, even President Obama wrote of the intense grief faced by white communities in Michigan and Illinois on the receiving end of black migration from inside the US. But watching masses of immigrants risk life and limb to escape Africa and enter Europe is more powerful.
Addendum: John Cochrane writes, “In the Soviet era, there were walls and guards with guns, and we deplored that people were not allowed to cross the border. Is it that different that the guards with guns are on the other side of the walls?”. As the same Cochrane would say when debating other issues, this is a “silly argument” fabricated to back a debate agenda. Is locking random strangers inside of your home the same as locking your doors to prevent random strangers from entering? That is completely absurd. Many of these Open Borders arguments, especially those made by Bryan Caplan, Cochrane, and Tabarrok are well beyond bounds of reason and logic. They probably don’t even believe their own arguments, but they are just so deeply committed, and professional debaters that push their cause no matter what. Almost all of the Open Borders arguments apply directly to an Open Doors policy of eliminating private property ownership, which none of the libertarians support.
