Supporting unprecedented increases in immigration levels, as those who have taken up arms against the House’s “enforcement only” bill in favor of the Senate approach do, strikes me as a clever way to support laissez-faire economics while posturing as a high minded liberal—and the highest minded of the piously liberal at that, the egalitarian anti-racist.
Nowhere is that more in evidence than in the text of the “Open Letter on Immigration” offered by Greg Mankiw (I’m not sure if he originated it or is just a signatory, but he seems like a nice enough, if fatally mistaken, fellow to link to), and boasting of five hundred signatures from economists around the country. Here it comes to the fore, flexing the puffed up gym muscles of its moral superiority while proudly flaunting its sock-stuffed-in-the-crotch endowment of five hundred eminent signatures. Probably many of these signatories are more simply liberal individuals than libertarian economists. So it’s hard to imagine that if they were relieved of the considerable pressure to appear sublimely egalitarian they would sign off on something that proposes dispensing with the concerns of the poorest Americans because their concentrated pain is spread out to the benefit of their mostly better off fellow citizens in the form of lower consumer prices:
In recent decades, immigration of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to have been small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.
While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.
Perhaps one has to be an economist to understand how something that costs so little in the form of lower wages at one end (maybe nothing at all; it’s the rebirth of Bush Sr’s “voodoo economics”), brings significant benefits to the whole of the gargantuan American economy at the other end in the form of lower consumer prices. I was under the impression that all the well documented expenses from the public purse emanating from low-skilled immigration amounted to a subsidy of those lower prices, and then some.
Of course, one of the “restrictionist” points of view on immigration is that we should allow ourself the right, and more importantly the self-preservative concern, to place a premium on skills and education; hence the need for border security and a re-evaluation of immigration levels, as well as educational and skill levels of immigrants. Saying “many immigrants bring skills, capital, and entrepreneurship to the American economy,” is not just making things more vague by lumping all immigration into one mass, it is an obfuscation of just what the debate is. By all means let’s talk about skills and entrepreneurship, but let’s be frank about it; some immigrants bring these things, many more don’t. Why on earth wouldn’t we allow ourselves the right to, brace yourself now, discriminate on the basis of these things? Perhaps the author doesn’t understand that’s what he is in fact arguing against. As for immigrants bringing significant capital with them, it’s been a long time since Ferdinand Marcos touched down in Hawaii.
The author blunders through a couple of fatal fallacies here, not the least of which is that labor–human beings–can be viewed as not vastly different from “goods and services.” Here is yet another instance of ideology running aground on the shoals of human nature. Of course, the captain is telling us that as soon as the tide turns and the children of all these unskilled laborers that are flooding the holds below suddenly reverse the trends of the past two generations and all become Silicon Valley entrepreneurs we’ll be okay. Meanwhile, us rabble in the crew are bailing water like mad. Time to mutiny.
As is so often the case, the most egregious elitist callousness is lurking behind the facade of liberal concern, “a small percentage of native born” will be harmed; “vastly more” will benefit. The “benefit” claimed has never been coherently proven, other than in the form of lower consumer prices. Some would hold our civilization hostage to the price of lettuce.
In the totemic hierarchy of psuedo-liberal ritual, the poorer, the more foreign, and the less white one is, the higher the position. Dirt poor Latin American mestizo trumps native born working class every time. And pay no attention to the decidedly un-proletarian appearance of the priesthood, as they count their tithes in units of money and political power.
The author would have you believe that the costs are isolated and nearly insignificant but the benefits are spread out and magnified. Unless the nation really is struggling with a significant labor shortage, this is bunkum. Notice that the open borders argument takes for granted industry claims to this effect, despite long standing stagnation in wages in the industries that rely heavily on unrestricted immigration. Many who wouldn’t dream of, say, taking General Motors at their word if they complain about the effects of CAFE standards (and I don’t know anything about those claims; my point here is to illustrate the hypocrisy of certain otherwise reasonable people when it comes to this highly loaded issue), are now looking off and away, blithely whistling like a bribed umpire while certain industries are allowed to call their own strikes.
I suspect it’s clearer if you’re one who stands to gain more directly; if you’re Big Agriculture, the fast food industry, a major political party (that somehow both think they’re going to ensure their dominance well into mid-century by a sort of reverse gerrymandering of the electorate as a whole), or an economist ensuring his well feathered place in respectable punditry (now there’s a positively affected income).
They just keep laying it on thicker and thicker:
Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system, that enable Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.
This is a rhetorical head fake, albeit not a very good one. We’ve been grappling with disturbing trends in education for a couple of decades now. We might want to be a bit more prudent, and not sell ourselves on policy that confounds the situation further by promising we’ll get around to doing something about it later. Saying we should do something about education means absolutely nothing in this context, unless you are addressing the effect of broad, low skilled immigration upon it. And we know that education is adversely affected by massive inflows of poorly educated, foreign language immigrants. The author would have you leap from a plane, promising he’ll throw a parachute down after you. Come to think of it, it takes a lot of nerve to offer then we’ll just have to do something about education as a sort of throw-away line. Bravo.
Of course the costs of illegal immigration on education are one of many issues left unaddressed in the letter. Since the letter makes only a few general assertions (perhaps that’s how you get five hundred signatures) I’m assuming that this is an appeal for the Senate’s mass amnesty combined with a doubling or trebling of legal immigration, as proposed in their bill.
Now someone tell me if I’m crazy, or ill-informed, or just plain mean, but this next line might be the silliest thing produced by the beneficiary of an Ivy League education (or this guy is just reaching way out of the strike zone):
We must not forget that the gains to immigrants coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid.
When coming upon a lunatic thought like this, I advise sneaking up behind it. That’s why we’ll start at the ugly rear of the thing, the least of it yes but this thing is a doozy so let’s be careful; “a truly form of effective foreign aid” he says. Is it? Would we consider direct payments to individual citizens in impoverished nations “effective”? Would anyone ever propose such a thing? I’m assuming of course that we’re still talking about the best policy for this nation.
If the writer were really so convinced of the entrepreneurial nature of all of these immigrants then he would be, in his oh-so-global concern, fretting about our continually draining our fellow nations of their human capital, and its hobbling effect on their perpetually underperforming economies. Of course, no such thing is happening. Mexico doesn’t spend money printing out handbooks on how to sneak into the U.S., nor does it send its president on tours of apple orchards in Washington State, because skills and entrepreneurialism are migrating here. If one considers Latin American migration into the U.S. clearly, it soon becomes apparent that countries like Mexico export their least employable to the United States. They recieve back remittances and net savings on social programs. Perhaps most importantly, they export potential political strife.
This silly argument reminds me of a guy I once heard describing his educational grant as an effective form of economic stimulus, because he was going to go out and spend the money after all.
Remittances (and I think we see where much of that “0-8%” in lost wages is going) represent capital flowing out of the economy. As in not spent here. It’s nice that this money ends up in the hands of the needy, after all, but if one is concerned with preserving this remarkable economy that is such a “beacon”, then it helps to understand that this money going abroad is no different, really, from capital lost to trade deficits. Or to increased spending on schools. Or on crime prevention, or on uninsured health care, or on welfare benefits, or on environmental costs…
untethered 
Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system, that enable Americans to be more productive with high-wage skillsTruly insane. The biggest barriers to improving the educational system are the education bureaucracy and the teacher\’s unions-presumably leftist allies of the signatories to this absurd document. And even if we were to improve the education system to Finnish or Korean levels, how would this provide \”high-wage skills\” to the average native-born US black with an IQ of 85? You could probably expand that query to include the entire left half of the bell curve of the native-born US population.
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Dale,I bounced over here via the link at Parapundit. I cannot express how much I appreciate your words. I have surely found another kindred spirit in the desire for this nation to remain foundationally the same as the one entrusted to me by my ancestors. You hit the nail on the head so many times I can hear it whining…\”no mas, no mas!\” Say hello to my blogroll…
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You could boil down all of this pseudo-scientific verbiage as follows:\”An endless supply of dirt-poor workers means lower-cost production.\”That means we make more money.\”Oh, and you get a taste. Cheaper consumer prices.\”I doubt that the vast majority of Americans believe, or at least care about, arguments for immigration as an \”anti-poverty program\” (benefiting people in other countries) and immigrants supposedly bringing skills to the economy. The hook that the Open Borders crew are counting on to reel the fish in is the cheaper prices. I\’m afraid it will work.Because there\’s undoubtedly some truth in it. Without los illegals, McDonald\’s and Wal-Mart would have to raise prices. And while corporate profits go merrily along, running up huge profits, wages haven\’t risen in parallel. The average American is mortgaged and loaned and credit card balanced up to the cranium. Nevertheless, the overwhelming message sent out by the media is buy, buy, buy. To argue that mass Third World immigration really hurts the majority of people, you have to get across the difficult idea that the lower prices at Wal-Mart are more than wiped out by the costs to society (i.e., taxpayers — and everyone pays one kind of tax or another, even if it\’s only sales tax) of health care, social programs, and welfare for all those immigrants and their mostly unproductive, large families. You have to argue that people might need to reduce their consumption in some non-essential areas in exchange for a coherent society, better wages for the native-born working class, and manageable population density. Another tough one: spending produces immediate gratification, while the alternatives are big-picture abstractions to most people.No matter how hard they are to convey, compared to the simple mantra of \”lower consumer prices,\” these are the most important truths we have to keep front and center and hope that enough of our countrymen can take them on board, and that they still have some ideals higher than buying as much as they can.
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In summary (you do take while to make your point, don\’t you?), your position is, you have chosen not to believe the economic fact that immigrants are good for the American economy.You are wrong. First, it is disingenuous to say the benefits of immigration have never been proved. You\’re either being wilfully dishonest, or are sadly uninformed. This topic has been one of the favorites of economists for decades in every country around the world. Ten minutes on Google will dredge up a welter of economic studies of immigration. The inevitable conclusion and consensus is, immigrants bring net benefits to their new countries, whether they are computer programers or construction workers.You don\’t need to be an economist to see that if they didn\’t pay their way, nobody would employ them. Nobody, from Microsoft to the smallest restaurant, employs a person for $10, who will not make at least $10 in revenue. To pay $10 for a laborer who contributes only $8 is to throw away $2. To fire that labourer is to save $2. If there are jobs for illegal immigrants, it is because they bring economic value equal to or greater than what they cost. Not to hire them, or to send them home, is to lose these benefits they bring. Human capital is simply moving around to where it can be most efficient. This is what all capital does- factories move to China, money moves from stocks to bonds when interest rates are high. The fact that we have created artificial borders that human capital has to cross means nothing in economic terms. Money knows no nationality. Outsourcing work to India is another manifestation of the same principle that drives economic migration: companies are sourcing human services at lowest cost. It wouldn\’t happen if it didn\’t make American companies- and thus the American economy in aggregate- more wealthy. This relentless drive for higher productivity is what makes the US the world\’s richest country. To oppose economic immigration is simply to hamstring the very thing that made American capitalism the beacon for the world.By marginally depressing wages, immigrants also benefit the economy in other ways. GDP is the difference between revenues and costs. Labour is a production factor. Lower labour means higher profits and lower prices. Higher profits means America in aggregate is wealthier. Lower prices means each American can buy more- including those whose wages are depressed by competition with foreign workers. Everyone gains, nobody loses, inflation is curtailed.Even if a welter of economic studies did not prove this, common sense arguments like those above do. Your xenophobia or economic nescience may move you to ignore this tidal wave of evidence, or to pick holes in economic theories you don\’t understand. But you are wrong. Deal with it if you can.http://www.amusis.com
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I don\’t think I take long at all Hakeem, in fact my point is stated in my opening paragraph. I would apply it to your analysis as well.(But if I do seem to meander before making my point I ask you: does a great lover rush to the finish?) There is one phrase that betrays the fatal flaw in your technically sound logic: \”human capital.\” Human beings are a profoundly different form of \”capital.\” Indeed, the phrase, while certainly valid, always carries with it the slight smirk of its inherent irony and insufficient nature.\”Money knows no nationality\” you say. But of course. I thought we were talking about people, because they certainly do. Sorry, but I find your argument simplistic.Of course I understand that immigration has long been a subject of economic theory. I defer to those who have studied recent U.S. immigration per se, and find their arguments convincing. Forget ten minutes on Google; read Milton Friedman, or, for someone on the other end of the ideological spectrum, Paul Krugman. Either of those I find more convincing on the subject than any of the signatories of the risible \”Open Letter.\” \”If they didn\’t pay their way nobody would employ them\” you say. They are employed because they work harder for less; employers take advantage of this, as do consumers. But we are also citizens and taxpayers. They wouldn\’t be employed if it wasn\’t beneficial to those employing them is what you mean (or at least is what is true). That\’s not the same as saying their employment is a net benefit to the economy as a whole. Your assertion ignores the great Leviathan of our welfare state and myriad social programs; it ignores the fact that this employed immigrant brings along dependents; it takes no account of what becomes of his offspring, who aren\’t willing to work for the bargain basement wages he accepts. Things get complicated in the real worldMy concern is with low-skilled immigration, of which we are importing way too much. As for paying their way, I ask, do they? They use public services at higher rates, they are often incarcerated, they are overcrowding communities and stressing local municipalities, they are using public assistance, and they are overwhelming public hospitals by using emergency rooms for primary care. You and I pay their way; businesses take advantage of that subsidy. There is also a \”welter\” of studies demonstrating how these costs are socialized. It\’s a proven fact that low skilled immigrant labor costs more in public services than it contributes in taxes; this is something you and the author of the letter like to obscure by lumping low skilled immigrants in with the skilled.The same goes for your $8/$10 argument. The costs are deflected onto social services and magnified into the future. These are human beings, they bring families, and their children tend to do poorly in school, even up to the third generation. The nominal savings in construction and agriculture due to your eight dollar an hour laborer will be paid for in orders of magnitude for generations hence, by an ever growing underclass. Consider how all this feel-good globalist dogma failed certain regions of the world in the last decade. Parts of Asia, Latin America, Africa, post-Soviet Russia. They too heard these lines about capital and the pesky inefficiency of borders. They were pillaged. And don\’t believe for a moment that any of the major economies fully practices what they preach. They employ all kinds of restrictions on the flow of capital. Hell, China is very nearly a command economy in many important aspects. Google that.Greater freedom of markets and capital tends to work in advanced societies; Europe, East Asia, the U.S. It has thus far proven disastrous for the developing world. Because I\’ve decided to seek the truth above liberal piety, I\’m leaving open the possibility that the people of these regions are less amenable to this more \”advanced\” system. I therefore think it prudent to limit the numbers of people migrating from places like Latin America. This is the great unspoken concern of many who worry about the growing Hispanic underclass in the U.S. They are not \”racists\” or \”xenophobes\”; Americans may be the most open and tolerant people on earth. But they can\’t help noticing that the barrio doesn\’t produce much, other than violence and racial polarization. That\’s why, contrary to what some would have you believe, a vast cross section of Americans are concerned about high levels of immigration from south of the border (and this includes about half of native born Hispanics who live in directly affected communities).This is the fundamental problem with trying to treat human beings as capital, something many wouldn\’t be doing if they had the cajones to overcome their need to be politically pious.Keep in mind, I don\’t seek an end to immigration; I seek its reasonable regulation. America takes in far too much unregulated immigration.As for our \”dependence\” on it, that\’s a crock. We became the pre-eminent economy in the post WWII era without anything like the immigration levels we unleashed with the immigration reform of 1965 (levels which current proposals would treble).Boiled down, you\’re argument is merely this: any limit on immigration harms us economically. Excuse me, but I say hogwash.Reasonable limits on immigration will not \”hamstring\” the economy. The slack labor market created by unsustainably high levels of unskilled immigration is in fact a disincentive for agriculture to mechanize, and if you really believed in the inevitability of labor progression you would understand that mechanization is the natural and beneficial process that agriculture should undergo to arrive at the next stage of productivity, yet they never will as long as there is a continual flow of desperate workers to take advantage of. Furthermore, there is a point at which these levels of immigration will naturally tail off, and our economy (which you seem to think will immediately falter under the pressure of not having a million-plus desperately poor arriving annually) will have to adjust. Better we do that now, before creating a massive underclass in conjunction with the effects of efficiency, productivity, and foreign competition shrinking the labor market in manufacturing. By the way, have you noticed that the old saw \”immigrants create jobs\” doesn\’t seem to work for manufacturing, or other industries that have no choice but to grow less labor-intensive due to foreign competition? If you take your argument about \”relentless productivity\” a bit further you see that innovation can in fact be hampered by slack labor. Your use of globalist boilerplate in combination with charges of xenophobia betrays you, my friend. You aren\’t thinking this through; you\’re resting on the politically proper position.\”Marginally depressing wages\” is not the free ride you think it is, again, because of costs deflected onto the public, and they don\’t end with the individual worker. For each of those workers who displaces a native born there are dependents who don\’t work. With chain migration this is a problem that grows generations hence. The employers pay less for labor and pass along lower prices; okay, but let\’s not go all wobbly now because we\’re afraid of being \”xenophobic\”, because you and I both know things don\’t end there.These are people we\’re talking about, and I find it laughable that there are so many false moralists with libertarian arguments treating human beings as \”capital\” and calling me names.People are considerably more complex than material capital; this is where theory tends to fail us. Things are more complicated than your econ 101 argument would have us believe.While I think the economics of it should be enough and are only ignored because so many wish to be seen as egalitarian, this is a profoundly larger question than that. There are social and cultural ramifactions into the future that aren\’t even being discussed because of political correctness and the fact that both political parties are counting on gain. This is shameful.I might be mollified if the children of Latin American immigrants were taking to education. They are not; we are now witnessing a third generation of Hispanic children of immigrants dropping out at higher rates and going to college at lower rates, while experiencing incarceration and using welfare at substantially higher rates. These are the costs, and they redound through generations. \”Human capital\” is not the same as other forms of capital, obviously. Human beings require certain things; health care, education, police protection, welfare, unemployment, political representation, etc. They reproduce, and their children tend to have their parent\’s traits. They have resentments, sometimes going back centuries, and they don\’t always behave rationally (this is of course where economic theory so often fails us). Human nature trumps ideology. Don\’t get me wrong. I would like to drink the globalist kool-aid with a clear conscience. Things would be much easier that way. Perhaps if we didn\’t have a progressive income tax system and (relatively) generous welfare state. It has been proven that the current generation of immigrants takes more out of the economy in the form of public services than they pay in taxes. This is not in dispute.Your argument is sound as far as it goes, but it doesn\’t go very far after all. It is hopelessly flawed because it refuses to consider all the variables. It doesn\’t take into account the true complexity of the problem; furthermore, it refuses to acknowledge that this is a problem that goes beyond economics.Your libertarian formulas about labor costs and inflation don\’t work in an economy that provides the slate of public assistance and welfare that we do. That\’s why Milton Friedman says high levels of immigration don\’t work in a welfare state. And they aren\’t working right now.Thanks to everyone for the comments
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El Hakeem,Dennis has answered your case in far greater detail than I would have been able to. I\’ll simply add that people like you worry me when you talk about policy, because you think only in intellectual abstractions like \”human capital\” and \”GDP.\” The Church of Economics has no room for quality of life factors. Even if your arguments were all correct — and I think Dennis has shown that they are not — you are overlooking the human dimension. Life is about more than maximizing production and consumption. Overpopulation and unassimilated subcultures degrade the environment and social interaction in ways that no amount of buying more stuff can make up for.
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Dear RickNo, Dennis has not answered my case at all. In his habitually long-winded manner, he has made only two points; first, that these issues are too \’complex\’ to be simplified- which simply means he doesn\’t understand them, being a self-confessed amateur at everything.His second point in summary is, immigrants are a drain on social services, so even if they contribute economically through the jobs they do, they take out more from the system.I can\’t do anything about his neglect to acquire economic knowledge. However, the second argument is easily demolished with a simple analogy.Tom and Dick work on a construction site. They are paid $10. The reason the builder pays them $10 is because they contribute more than $10 to the value of the building and thus the economy. This will have a multiplier effect: real estate dealers, landlords, local property tax authorities, and eventually the public purse- all will gain from the work these humble construction workers have done.They both receive social services: their children attend public schols, they receive medical treatment, they are protected by the cops. Tom is a legal citizen, Dick is an illegal alien. By what mathematical sorcery does Tom\’s contribution to the economy cover the cost of his social services, while Dick\’s does not?Therein is the absurdity of the whole \’social services drain\’ theory. If legal Americans are not a drain on social services, then how can illegal workers- who contribute just as much to the economy (and maybe more since they do the same work for less) be a drain? This is not a rational argument- it is the product of xenophobic racism.As for your own description of \’human capital\’ and \’GDP\’ as \’intellectual abstractions\’, I suppose that\’s just a fancy way of saying you have no idea what they mean. Never mind. The Fed Reserve Chairman knows what they mean. Every Wall Street banker knows what they mean. Every Fortune 500 CEO knows what they mean. Your economy is managed by people who know what they mean. Your ignorance doesn\’t decrease their relevance.This is why outsourcing, offshoring and employment of illegal economic migrants continue unabated, and why the politicians who would love to pander to xenophobes like you and Dennis are not clamping down on illegal aliens. They know that they are good for the economy. They\’re not dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot to pander to people who hate other people ebcause they look or talk different.For those on the fence (I don\’t expect you guys to be convinced), the argument is simple. Every country has a fixed stock of capital- money, machines, resources, men. The \’quality of life factors\’ you mention are enhanced when the country is rich. The more profit businesses can squeeze out of this fixed capital stock, the wealthier everybody is on average. If a company can earn $100 while spending $80, it has made America richer by $20. If it can reduce it\’s costs to $70, America is richer by $10. Lower labour costs make America a richer country. Immigrants bring economic activity and productivity with them, even if they\’re only waiters.As for your emotive but clueless evocation of the \’human dimension\’, how is this addressed with poverty? Human life is enhanced under wealth. Wealth is maximised under productivity. Increased productivity results from higher production and lower cost. These immigrants are making America richer, and therefore improving the human dimension of life.As for the other two racist arguments here: (1) That unassimilated subcultures \’degrade the environment\’, my answer to you is you are vile for being able to even think of fellow human beings that way. (2) Dennis\’s assertion that less advanced countries are too stupid and backwards to understand or practice liberal economics, I will ignore the racist condescension and point out that America wasn\’t always an advanced economy. It was its ab initio free markets that enabled it become the world\’s richest nation.Tell the Indians or Chinese now outperforming the US that they are \’too backwards\’ to appreciate free amrket capitalism. Guys like you two are already dinosaurs in a flat world.I won\’t even address the silly reference to \’overpopulation\’.http://www.amusis.com
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Having visited many a site, sometimes you just have to cheer when you see a real argument on the Web. Well done, gentlemen.
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Allow me to quote from free-maket economist Thomas Sowell: Immigration ‘solutions’ (…)Intellectuals\’ ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be. Some free-market advocates argue that the same principle which justifies free international trade in commodities should justify the free movement of people as well. But this ignores the fact that people have consequences that go far beyond the consequences of commodities. Commodities are used up and vanish. People generate more people, who become a permanent and expanding part of the country\’s population and electorate.(…)Unlike commodities, people in a welfare state have legal claims on other people\’s tax dollars and expensive services in schools and hospitals, not to mention the high cost of imprisoning many of them who commit crimes.(…)
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It\’s funny, El Hakeem, how you attempt to discredit Rick Darby for not knowing what \”human capital\” means when you clearly have no idea yourself. You confuse human capital with labor when, in fact, it is far more than that. The concept of human capital could actually be used more effectively against those who advocate Mexican immigration. Mexican immigrants have less human capital than just about any other immigrant group. As low-skill laborers, Mexican immigrants are essentially coolies. Their human capital endowment is minimal when compared with, say, Latvian computer programmers. Hence, their human capital contribution to this country is proportionately pathetic. Incidentally, I checked out your blog and read that racist joke about Alabama \”hillbillies\”. All in good fun when we\’re slamming poor whites, right? Seriously, after putting your own racism on display, who the hell are you to call anyone else a racist?
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