Who will pay the costs if the thousands in the caravan are allowed on American soil?

LINK

JWK

Illegal immigration is now costing American citizens over $18 billion a year in healthcare costs alone! Far more than the measly $5.7 billion asked for to build a wall! LINK

Short term trends are not taken seriously by statisticians when they conflict with much longer term trends. I make that observation confidently, having studied statistics at the doctoral level. Variations occur all the time, but you cannot base policy on every short term blip.

[quote=“H_Arendt, post:212, topic:49676, full:true”]

Two quibbles. The word “capitalism” first appeared in English in a novel by William Thackeray, who offered criticism of the free market system in works like "The Way We Live Today.’ Marx and Engels used the term capitalism three times in the three volumes of Das Kapital, while using terms like “capitalist” and “capitalist mode of production” more than 2000 times.

As to why people don’t refer to our current system as a free market system, given the extent to which government subsidizes certain industries (energy, agriculture), provides tax incentives to industries (such as the carried interest and home mortgage deductions), and regulates industries (in matters such the current net neutrality decision) our system does not operate as a free market and it would be naive to call it such.

We very much have a government purchased by capital (enshrined in the Citizens United decision) that works to favor certain types of capital over other types of capital or labor. Domestic policy making in the Trump Administration is entirely dominated by industry lobbies so there is no reason to think this is in any way a free market.

Capitalism is also an incorrect description the monopoly state capitalist system we operate under.

You are using inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning. Statisticians evaluate the cause of sudden changes and trends to intelligently assess their significance. They do not dismiss them as you inaccurately suggest. For example, in the medical world, a newly discovered vaccine can cause a sudden change in death rates that is permanent. Likewise, improvements in roads and bridges connecting to an isolated geographical area will more than likely create a permanent and increasing population in that once isolated geographical area. I learned this when studying statistics 101.

Aside from that, the fact is, we are currently experiencing a significant surge in illegal border crossings, and that surge is inflicting significant and undesirable social and economic consequences upon American citizens.

JWK
Illegal immigration is now costing American citizens over $18 billion a year in healthcare costs alone! Far more than the measly $5.7 billion asked for to build a wall! LINK

So you are advocating for a solution without knowing it’s effect.

You are describing events that have no historical data – the intervention of a newly found vaccine or a new road and bridge improvement. This confuses one type of analysis – assessing a dramatic intervention, with an entirely an entirely different type, the assessment of variation in a variable measured over time. As someone who might have taught your Statistics 101 course, I would have explained that to you. It would have been on the final exam.

Those are people apprehended. Sounds like what we have is working.

I have asked questions which you fail to answer.

Illegal immigration is now costing American citizens over $18 billion a year in healthcare costs alone! Far more than the measly $5.7 billion asked for to build a wall! LINK

You are correct that you have posed questions that I have failed to answer. Your questions are rhetorical; the research on the cost of illegal immigration is highly variable because accurate sampling is nearly impossible. You have chosen the most strongly partisan anti-immigration research. I don’t feel obligated to respond to a series of questions based on poor data. But I’ll give you a general sense.

Some of these needs will be paid for by undocumented immigrants.

Some of these needs will be paid for by charities and church groups. I know this because i do volunteer work with legally admitted refugees and asylum seekers and the network of people who feel generosity towards the needy is broad and deep, though it is largely based on religious belief.

Some of these needs will be met by the government through taxation. You will respond angrily that you don’t want working American’s tax dollars used to provide services to people whom you don’t approve of. I will respond that this is an example of the state capitalism I spoke of in a different response – the government supporting a low wage workforce for businesses that the same government largely receives of taxes and places burden of that taxation on ordinary working Americans.

At that point, I believe you will be angry that undocumented immigrants are benefiting from taxes on your labor. I will be angry that corporations and businesses that want to pay low wages are benefitting from taxes on my labor.

That’s where we disagree. You are very angry with the victims of this system. I am angry with the victimizers and more sympathetic to the victims. To each their own choice, mi amigo.

You are indeed a very presumptuous individual. Not a good quality for a statistician. But aside from that, I have often recommended that those who hire illegal entrants in order to earn a profit from “cheap” labor, ought to be fined with an extremely high fine. And should they be caught a second time, they should be given a jail sentence and their business profits confiscated.

And yes, in general, it is an abuse of government’s taxing power to tax one individual for the personal economic needs of another. It is even more of an abuse for American citizens to be taxed for the personal economic needs of illegal entrants.

Unlike you and many others, my beliefs are grounded in our nation’s founding principles. One of our forefathers spoke to this very issue:

"Under a just and equal Government, every individual is entitled to protection in the enjoyment of the whole product of his labor, except such portion of it as is necessary to enable Government to protect the rest; this is given only in consideration of the protection offered. In every bounty, exclusive right, or monopoly, Government violates the stipulation on her part; for, by such a regulation, the product of one man’s labor is transferred to the use and enjoyment of another. The exercise of such a right on the part of Government can be justified on no other principle, than that the whole product of the labor or every individual is the real property of Government, and may be distributed among the several parts of the community by government discretion; such a supposition would directly involve the idea, that every individual in the community is merely a slave and bondsman to Government, who, although he may labor, is not to expect protection in the product of his labor. An authority given to any Government to exercise such a principle, would lead to a complete system of tyranny."

See Representative Giles, speaking before Congress February 3rd, 1792

JWK

“……with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities“. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

As I have observed in several other threads, it is a sure sign the someone has run out of arguments when they resort to name calling. Not much point in trying to have a discussion with someone who is calling you names I have found, though I do have to observe that hypocrisy of Jefferson’s quote, coming from a man who profited from the labor of slaves.

Good old Thomas Jefferson, the leading anti-federalist, who executed the largest expansion of federal power in our history (the Louisiana Purchase). You can place Jefferson on any side of any argument – slavery included. If I had the time, i would look up the essay in which he suggested that the difficulty of transport across the Appalachian Mountains, suggests the US should become two countries: one based on Atlantic transport, the other on the Mississippi.

Name calling? Please explain.

JWK

Those who reject abiding by the text of our Constitution and the intentions and beliefs under which our Constitution was agree to, as those intentions and beliefs may be documented from historical records, wish to remove the anchor and rudder of our constitutional system so they may then be free to “interpret” the Constitution to mean whatever they wish it to mean.

When you called me “presumptuous”.

Now wait a second. Was it not you who presumed that I “will respond angrily that [I] don’t want working American’s tax dollars used to provide services to people whom [I] don’t approve of…? And was it not you who presumed I am “… very angry with the victims of this system”? I dare say those comments are presumptuous and not the name calling as you have charged.

JWK

"The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property." ___ Butchers’ Union Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U.S. 746 (1884)

Are you suggesting I misrepresented you? Your characterization of the undocumented population has been consistent and unmistakeable. As you wrote: “poorly educated, low skilled, disease carrying and criminal populations” which is a far cry from “your huddled masses yearning to be free” IMHO

Illegal immigration was never considered a good thing by either party, hence the word “Illegal”.

So now, instead of admitting your two explicitly stated comments were in fact presumptuous, you now decide to insert new subject matter into the mix as if it exonerates your original name calling charge and is applicable to the explicitly stated charge you originally made.

:roll_eyes:

JWK

It was 2019 when an ongoing invasion of America’s borders swelled to tens of thousands a month, not a shot was fired to defend the borders of the United States, and America’s domestic enemies, many socialists and communists in Congress, pushed forward with their attempt i n conquering a prosperous and freedom loving people.

At this point, I have no idea what you are talking about. It seems you are complaining about my bringing material into the thread… which seems odd given the volumes of points you bring into the threads you start. But it reminds me that I should have just stuck to my thought a few posts back, that once a conservative starts name calling they have run out of ideas and it is time to look for more productive discussions. Enjoy the rest of your day johnwk.

Name calling?

Now wait a second. Was it not you who presumed that I “will respond angrily that [I] don’t want working American’s tax dollars used to provide services to people whom [I] don’t approve of…? And was it not you who presumed I am “… very angry with the victims of this system”? I dare say those comments are presumptuous and not the name calling as you have charged.

JWK

Just Call it a we owe everybody around the world tax, and give citizenship, food
stamps, and welfare at the border.

That way we can save the hassle of arguing with the Democrats over more
things that they wish to force upon Americans, and then they can move
onto what else they want to tax next??? lol.