"How Inequality of Wealth Destroys Liberty"

Economic inequality has been the topic of much discussion lately. Today while doing some Christmas shopping and thinking about some of the issues, I remembered (vaguely) the book Equality written in 1897 by Utopian Socialist Edward Bellamy. Wikipedia describes Bellamy as:

...an American author, most famous for his utopian novel set in the year 2000, Looking Backward ... He was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, most famous for creating the Pledge of Allegiance to promote the sale of American flags.

His books include Dr. Heidenhoff's Process (1880), Miss Ludington's Sister (1884), Equality (1897) and The Duke of Stockbridge (1900). His feeling of injustice in the economic system lead him to write Looking Backward: 2000–1887 and its sequel, Equality.

According to Erich Fromm, Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America." It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement." (Fromm, p vi). ... This political movement came to be known as Nationalism.

A short story "The Parable of the Water-Tank" from the book Equality, published in 1897, was popular with a number of early American socialists. Less successful than its prequel, Looking Backward, Equality continues the story of Julian West as he adjusts to life in the future. ...

Here's Chapter 12, "How Inequality of Wealth Destroys Liberty," from the book Equality. As noted, the book continues the story in Looking Backward with Julian West, who fell into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and did not wake up until the year 2000, learning about and adjusting to life in the year 2000. He is talking to Dr. Leete, a retired physician in Boston who revived him after his 113 year-long slumber. The doctor is explaining the utopian public capitalism of the year 2000 and comparing it to life in the late 1800s. If you have forgotten what life was like for the poor living in the tenements in New York city and other places at this time, it was pretty bad. See, for example, How the Other Half Lives. Here's the chapter. If you like these historical pieces, Chapter 23, "The Parable of the Water-Tank," is interesting as well:

CHAPTER XII. How Inequality Of Wealth Destroys Liberty: "Nevertheless," said the doctor, "...There is another great and equal right of all men which, though strictly included under the right of life, is by generous minds set even above it: I mean the right of liberty--that is to say, the right not only to live, but to live in personal independence of one's fellows, owning only those common social obligations resting on all alike.

"Now, the duty of the state to safeguard the liberty of citizens was recognized in your day just as was its duty to safeguard their lives, but with the same limitation, namely, that the safeguard should apply only to protect from attacks by violence. If it were attempted to kidnap a citizen and reduce him by force to slavery, the state would interfere, but not otherwise. Nevertheless, it was true in your day of liberty and personal independence, as of life, that the perils to which they were chiefly exposed were not from force or violence, but resulted from economic causes, the necessary consequences of inequalities of wealth. Because the state absolutely ignored this side, which was incomparably the largest side of the liberty question, its pretense of defending the liberties of citizens was as gross a mockery as that of guaranteeing their lives. Nay, it was a yet more absolute mockery and on a far vaster scale.

"For, although I have spoken of the monopolization of wealth and of the productive machinery by a portion of the people as being first of all a threat to the lives of the rest of the community and to be resisted as such, nevertheless the main practical effect of the system was not to deprive the masses of mankind of life outright, but to force them, through want, to buy their lives by the surrender of their liberties. That is to say, they accepted servitude to the possessing class and became their serfs on condition of receiving the means of subsistence. Although multitudes were always perishing from lack of subsistence, yet it was not the deliberate policy of the possessing class that they should do so. The rich had no use for dead men; on the other hand, they had endless use for human beings as servants, not only to produce more wealth, but as the instruments of their pleasure and luxury.

"As I need not remind you who were familiar with it, the industrial system of the world before the great Revolution was wholly based upon the compulsory servitude of the mass of mankind to the possessing class, enforced by the coercion of economic need."

"Undoubtedly," I said, "the poor as a class were in the economic service of the rich, or, as we used to say, labor was dependent on capital for employment, but this service and employment had become in the nineteenth century an entirely voluntary relation on the part of the servant or employee. The rich had no power to compel the poor to be their servants. They only took such as came voluntarily to ask to be taken into service, and even begged to be, with tears. Surely a service so sought after could scarcely be called compulsory."

"Tell us, Julian," said the doctor, "did the rich go to one another and ask the privilege of being one another's servants or employees?"

"Of course not."

"But why not?"

"Because, naturally, no one could wish to be another's servant or subject to his orders who could get along without it."

"I should suppose so, but why, then, did the poor so eagerly seek to serve the rich when the rich refused with scorn to serve one another? Was it because the poor so loved the rich?"

"Scarcely."

"Why then?"

"It was, of course, for the reason that it was the only way the poor could get a living."

"You mean that it was only the pressure of want or the fear of it that drove the poor to the point of becoming the servants of the rich?"

"That is about it."

"And would you call that voluntary service? The distinction between forced service and such service as that would seem quite imperceptible to us. If a man may be said to do voluntarily that which only the pressure of bitter necessity compels him to elect to do, there has never been any such thing as slavery, for all the acts of a slave are at the last the acceptance of a less evil for fear of a worse. Suppose, Julian, you or a few of you owned the main water supply, or food supply, clothing supply, land supply, or main industrial opportunities in a community and could maintain your ownership, that fact alone would make the rest of the people your slaves, would it not, and that, too, without any direct compulsion on your part whatever?"

"No doubt."

"Suppose somebody should charge you with holding the people under compulsory servitude, and you should answer that you laid no hand on them but that they willingly resorted to you and kissed your hands for the privilege of being allowed to serve you in exchange for water, food, or clothing, would not that be a very transparent evasion on your part of the charge of slaveholding?"

"No doubt it would be."

"Well, and was not that precisely the relation the capitalists or employers as a class held toward the rest of the community through their monopolization of wealth and the machinery of production?"

"I must say that it was."

"There was a great deal said by the economists of your day," the doctor went on, "about the freedom of contract--the voluntary, unconstrained agreement of the laborer with the employer as to the terms of his employment. What hypocrisy could have been so brazen as that pretense when, as a matter of fact, every contract made between the capitalist who had bread and could keep it and the laborer who must have it or die would have been declared void, if fairly judged, even under your laws as a contract made under duress of hunger, cold, and nakedness, nothing less than the threat of death! If you own the things men must have, you own the men who must have them."

"But the compulsion of want," said I, "meaning hunger and cold, is a compulsion of Nature. In that sense we are all under compulsory servitude to Nature."

"Yes, but not to one another. That is the whole difference between slavery and freedom. To-day no man serves another, but all the common good in which we equally share. Under your system the compulsion of Nature through the appropriation by the rich of the means of supplying Nature's demands was turned into a club by which the rich made the poor pay Nature's debt of labor not only for themselves but for the rich also, with a vast overcharge besides for the needless waste of the system."

"You make out our system to have been little better than slavery. That is a hard word."

"It is a very hard word, and we want above all things to be fair. Let us look at the question. Slavery exists where there is a compulsory using of men by other men for the benefit of the users. I think we are quite agreed that the poor man in your day worked for the rich only because his necessities compelled him to. That compulsion varied in force according to the degree of want the worker was in. Those who had a little economic means would only render the lighter kinds of service on more or less easy and honorable conditions, while those who had less means or no means at all would do anything on any terms however painful or degrading. With the mass of the workers the compulsion of necessity was of the sharpest kind. The chattel slave had the choice between working for his master and the lash. The wage-earner chose between laboring for an employer or starving. In the older, cruder forms of slavery the masters had to be watching constantly to prevent the escape of their slaves, and were troubled with the charge of providing for them. Your system was more convenient, in that it made Nature your taskmaster, and depended on her to keep your servants to the task. It was a difference between the direct exercise of coercion, in which the slave was always on the point of rebellion, and an indirect coercion by which the same industrial result was obtained, while the slave, instead of rebelling against his master's authority, was grateful for the opportunity of serving him."

"But," said I, "the wage-earner received wages and the slave received nothing."

"I beg your pardon. The slave received subsistence--clothing and shelter--and the wage-earner who could get more than these out of his wages was rarely fortunate. The rate of wages, except in new countries and under special conditions and for skilled workers, kept at about the subsistence point, quite as often dropping below as rising above. The main difference was that the master expended the subsistence wage of the chattel slave for him while the earner expended it for himself. This was better for the worker in some ways; in others less desirable, for the master out of self-interest usually saw that the chattel, children had enough; while the employer, having no stake in the life or health of the wage-earner, did not concern himself as to whether he lived or died. There were never any slave quarters so vile as the tenement houses of the city slums where the wage-earners were housed."

"But at least," said I, "there was this radical difference between the wage-earner of my day and the chattel slave: the former could leave his employer at will, the latter could not."

"Yes, that is a difference, but one surely that told not so much in favor of as against the wage-earner. In all save temporarily fortunate countries with sparse population the laborer would have been glad indeed to exchange the right to leave his employer for a guarantee that he would not be discharged by him. Fear of losing his opportunity to work--his job, as you called it--was the nightmare of the laborer's life as it was reflected in the literature of your period. Was it not so?"

I had to admit that it was even so.

"The privilege of leaving one employer for another," pursued the doctor, "even if it had not been more than balanced by the liability to discharge, was of very little worth to the worker, in view of the fact that the rate of wages was at about the same point wherever he might go, and the change would be merely a choice between the personal dispositions of different masters, and that difference was slight enough, for business rules controlled the relations of masters and men."

I rallied once more.

"One point of real superiority at least you must admit the wage-earner had over the chattel slave. He could by merit rise out of his condition and become himself an employer, a rich man."

"Surely, Julian, you forget that there has rarely been a slave system under which the more energetic, intelligent, and thrifty slaves could and did not buy their freedom or have it given them by their masters. The freedmen in ancient Rome rose to places of importance and power quite as frequently as did the born proletarian of Europe or America get out of his condition."

I did not think of anything to reply at the moment, and the doctor, having compassion on me, pursued: "It is an old illustration of the different view points of the centuries that precisely this point which you make of the possibility of the wage-earner rising, although it was getting to be a vanishing point in your day, seems to us the most truly diabolical feature of the whole system. The prospect of rising as a motive to reconcile the wage-earner or the poor man in general to his subjection, what did it amount to? It was but saying to him, 'Be a good slave, and you, too, shall have slaves of your own.' By this wedge did you separate the cleverer of the wage-workers from the mass of them and dignify treason to humanity by the name of ambition. No true man should wish to rise save to raise others with him."

"One point of difference, however, you must at least admit," I said. "In chattel slavery the master had a power over the persons of his slaves which the employer did not have over even the poorest of his employees: he could not lay his hand upon them in violence."

"Again, Julian," said the doctor, "you have mentioned a point of difference that tells in favor of chattel slavery as a more humane industrial method than the wage system. If here and there the anger of the chattel slave owner made him forget his self-restraint so far as to cripple or maim his slaves, yet such cases were on the whole rare, and such masters were held to an account by public opinion if not by law; but under the wage system the employer had no motive of self-restraint to spare life or limb of his employees, and he escaped responsibility by the fact of the consent and even eagerness of the needy people to undertake the most perilous and painful tasks for the sake of bread. We read that in the United States every year at least two hundred thousand men, women, and children were done to death or maimed in the performance of their industrial duties, nearly forty thousand alone in the single branch of the steam railroad service. No estimate seems to have ever been attempted of the many times greater number who perished more indirectly through the injurious effects of bad industrial conditions. What chattel-slave system ever made a record of such wastefulness of human life, as that?

"Nay, more, the chattel-slave owner, if he smote his slave, did it in anger and, as likely as not, with some provocation; but these wholesale slaughters of wage-earners that made your land red were done in sheer cold-bloodedness, without any other motive on the part of the capitalists, who were responsible, save gain.

"Still again, one of the more revolting features of chattel slavery has always been considered the subjection of the slave women to the lust of their masters. How was it in this respect under the rule of the rich? We read in our histories that great armies of women in your day were forced by poverty to make a business of submitting their bodies to those who had the means of furnishing them a little bread. The books say that these armies amounted in your great cities to bodies of thirty or forty thousand women. Tales come down to us of the magnitude of the maiden tribute levied upon the poorer classes for the gratification of the lusts of those who could pay, which the annals of antiquity could scarcely match for horror. Am I saying too much, Julian?"

"You have mentioned nothing but facts which stared me in the face all my life," I replied, "and yet it appears I have had to wait for a man of another century to tell me what they meant."

"It was precisely because they stared you and your contemporaries so constantly in the face, and always had done so, that you lost the faculty of judging their meaning. They were, as we might say, too near the eyes to be seen aright. You are far enough away from the facts now to begin to see them clearly and to realize their significance. As you shall continue to occupy this modern view point, you will more and more completely come to see with us that the most revolting aspect of the human condition before the great Revolution was not the suffering from physical privation or even the outright starvation of multitudes which directly resulted from the unequal distribution of wealth, but the indirect effect of that inequality to reduce almost the total human race to a state of degrading bondage to their fellows. As it seems to us, the offense of the old order against liberty was even greater than the offense to life; and even if it were conceivable that it could have satisfied the right of life by guaranteeing abundance to all, it must just the same have been destroyed, for, although the collective administration of the economic system had been unnecessary to guarantee life, there could be no such thing as liberty so long as by the effect of inequalities of wealth and the private control of the means of production the opportunity of men to obtain the means of subsistence depended on the will of other men."

Comments

[evagrius]

Will someone write a book describing life a hundred years from now with the same arguments?

Modify Bellamy's terms a little bit, add "globalisation", "free markets","free trade", "outsourcing", "downsizing" and the like and his description would still be accurate.

[save_the_rustbelt]

According to the Salvation Army in Ohio, demand for food is still skyrocketing.

Welcome to the land of corruption and incompetence.

(In March 2004 then Trasury SEcretary Snow came to Ohio and told us that sending Ohio's jobs overseas was good for the national economy. Considering the recent bonuses on Wall Street, I guess he was correct.)

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Applicants line up to fill jobs left empty by Swift plant raid
Darin McGregor © News

"By Fernando Quintero, Rocky Mountain News
December 15, 2006

GREELEY - The line of applicants hoping to fill jobs vacated by undocumented workers taken away by immigration agents at the Swift & Co. meat-processing plant earlier this week was out the door Thursday.

Among them was Derrick Stegall, who carefully filled out paperwork he hoped would get him an interview and eventually land him a job as a slaughterer. Two of his friends had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and he felt compelled to fill their rubber boots. "

Tell me again about jobs Americans don't want!!

[evagrius]

save_the_rustbelt;

Here's the figures from the FRAC web site on Food Stamps recipients for both Ohio and Colorado.

09/01 09/06 Percent change

Ohio 667,234 1,065,764 59.7%

Colorado 158,223 253,166 60.0%

[ken melvin]

STRB,
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2006/12/disappearing-americans-and-illegal.html

"By most accounts, upwards of a million illegal workers have entered the US each year since 2000. It is generally accepted that more than 12 million are in residence. It is generally acknowledged that these illegal immigrant workers make up at least 5% of the US work force, i.e., at least 7.5 million of the some 150 million total jobs in 2006 were held by illegal workers. In other words, the real employment to population ration in 2006 is not 62.2%, [(150/240) x 100 = 62.2%], but rather it is some 59.4%, [(142.5/240) x 100 = 59.4%]. This also means that actual unemployment among legal US workers is greater than 9.5% [(7.5 + 8.3)/(166)] x 100.

Combining the effect of illegal workers with the disappeared; actual unemployment among legal US workers in 2006 is on the order of 12.5%, [(7.5 + 5 + 8.3)/166] x 100.

Beyond taking the jobs of millions of US citizens and other legal workers, illegal workers work for lower wages thus forcing down wages in those industries where they work. The effect of illegal workers on the economy is almost exactly the same as that of offshoring."

[MarkedExcess]

Good stuff. So what does our host propose America do to stem its growing economic inequalities, specifically in the area of trade policy?

Or are these posts made simply to provide political cover? To support his claim that "I don't know that anyone doing this has devoted any more attention to inequality than I have" while he continues to neglect its primary cause, unfair trade?

Why isn’t our host a proponent of strong trade reforms?

[ken melvin]

The missing link

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2006/12/disappearing-americans-and-illegal.html

[Peter Schaeffer]

save_the_rustbelt,

But you don't understand... These are jobs Amerian's won't do... Jobs American's aren't available for...

Just ask Bush. Ask Kennedy. Ask McCain.

Your you need to understand how important unskilled labor immigration is for the economy. Just ask (former) Senator DeWine. Ask the folks at Shiller's dinner party.

[adam]

for how equality destroys liberty see "gulag archepelago"

[evagrius]

adam ;

Don't quite see your point there. The people running the gulag were certainly not equal to the people being runned in the gulag.

You might want to use another example.

[adam]

well my point was the extreme to which one must go to enforce true equality. it required trampling on liberties of those that questioned the 100% redistribtion model.

[Dick Harmer]

Discussions of inequality can easily veer off track into territory that's quite unproductive.

Aren't the key questions something like
1. *How much* inequality makes for a healthy society?
2. What factors should the *optimal range* of inequality derive from (differences in effort, talent, personal discipline, entrepreneurial risk taking, and choice of parents with all the advantages/disadvantages that flow therefrom)?
3. Are there limits to absolute well-being (availability of threshold levels of shelter, nutrition, education, health care, etc.) beyond which equality issues should not be of public concern -- like, for example, the growing inequalities between the top 1%, the next 4%, and the next 40%?
4. What are the best vehicles to employ in moving a society to the optimal range?

[fiskhus_jim]

To "enforce" true equality?

You must mean something like the way I am forced to contribute to the well-being of the Rockefellers every time I drive to and from work?

Or do you mean "equality" in the sense that my tax dollars form welfare payments for Dick Cheney - but that they are NEVER used to save the life of a single starving person?

[Dan Hirschman]

I'm confused how a discussion on inequality and the brutalities of "naked capitalism" quickly turned to talk of illegal immigrants. The capitalist system discussed in the book knows no national boundaries - workers in Mexico are just as subject to the pressures of "work or die", if not more so.

Moving to the case of the Swift Co. workers and the effect of immigrants on unemployment: It's not so simple. Yes, immigrants do "take" some jobs Americans used to do - like hand-harvesting crops, working in slaughterhouses, and etc. But they also create many jobs - the classic example being the massive drop in the price of manicures and pedicures due to immigrant labor creating a larger demand. The native women who used to work in nail salons now run them, or work in higher-priced ones, while immigrant women have expanded the lower-priced segment of the market. Similarly, it's quite possible that without immigrant labor, many farmers would have simply stopped growing fruit and vegetables, unable to compete with imports, or that the price of fruit and vegetables would have risen substantially, causing ripple effects throughout the market.

The data on wages and unemployment is muddled and contested - but not even the most pessimistic (Borjas et al.) think that immigration had a huge effect on either. Check out David Card, "Is the new immigration so bad?", The Economic Journal, 115:507, November 2005 for the pro-side, and most anything written by George Borjas for the con.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Dan Hirschman,

Let me try to answer you two ways. First, logically and then empirically.

The logical argument is simple. If immigration wasn’t substantially reducing wages (and eliminating unions, see Unions Weakened) why is corporate America so fanatically in favor of Amnesty, guest workers, Open Borders, etc. Do you really think these folks are bleading heart liberals concerned about downtrodden poor people in third world countries seeking a better life in America?

Do you think corporate America would hire non-English speaking workers in preference to natives (of any ethnicity) if $$$ weren’t the real issue?

Do you think corporate America wants a nation divided by language? Prefers higher tax burdens over lower ones? An every expanding pool of voters likely to vote against corporate interests? The only reason the WSJ/Wall Street crowd ignores these obvious points is a desire for cheap labor for business and cheap servants at home.

However, let’s look at this empirically. There is abundant data showing that wages in construction, meatpacking, janitorial services, etc. have plunged since immigration enforcement stopped. Overall wages for production workers are now down to the 1959 level according to the BLS. See Average Weekly Earnings 1947 – 2005 for a chart.

In the case of the specific trades, the connection to immigration is obvious. For the overall economy less so. However, take a look at California Incomes Since 1967. The decline in wages/incomes in California is much more severe than the national downtrend. What makes California different? That should be both obvious and indicative of what is driving down wages nationally.

Much of the immigration literature is flawed in several respects. The Card methodology amounts to drainingg water from one end of a pool and then measuring the pool level at both ends afterwards. Since they remain the same (the pool doesn’t slope), removing water had no effect.

Peri is in some ways worse. He claims that inflated housing costs from immigration driven crowding are actually a benefit…

However, the biggest problem is than none of the literature takes into account the impact of immigration on prices (save for claiming that less affordable housing is a plus). California once offered the highest real wages in America. Now, adjusted for the local cost of living its ranks at the very bottom (actually California just edges out Hawaii). See Standard of Living by State. Can there be much doubt that this is due to immigration? Note that Americans are fleeing California in droves. What does that say about the merits of Open Borders? Shouldn’t the “benefits” of immigration be attracting Americans into the state?

The question of immigrants and farm produce has been extensively studied. Take a look at How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy. Agricultural economist, Philip Martin, estimates that produce prices might rise 3% in the summer and 2% in the winter. Take a look at Labor’s Skinny Slice for a graph showing how little wages contribute to produce prices. It amounts to a few dollars a year per family. By contrast raising the wage/per-worker GDP ratio back to the same level as the 1960s would produce income gains of tens of thousands of dollars per worker.

There is an abundant recent literature showing the highly adverse consequences of the current immigration. See Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks and Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States and
Hispanic Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass
and BADILLO LASHES LATINOS RIPS HISPANIC VALUES.

[evagrius]

Peter Schaeffer;

You're focusing on the "end product" rather than the beginning product.

What I mean is that you're so focused on the immigrants present in the U.S. that you're forgetting why they are there in the first place.

Focus your energy on why immigration is occuring.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Evagrius,

"You're focusing on the "end product" rather than the beginning product."

True.

Corporate greed in the US? Third world poverty abroad? War/violent conflict in a some cases?

What am I missing?

Years ago I met Russian Jews who told me that they did rather well (considerably better than in the US) in the USSR but left because of discrimination. Given that they were senior managers in the oil ministry over there and driving cabs here, they might have been telling the truth.

[evagrius]

Peter Schaeffer;

You could examine the role of U.S. corporations and "free trade" in those countries where emigration from and immigration to the U.S. occurs.

[evagrius]

Peter Schaeffer;

EDITORIAL

Putting children behind bars in Taylor
EDITORIAL BOARD

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

There has to be a better way. It cannot be right to imprison children guilty of nothing more than following their parents into the United States illegally.

The American-Statesman's Juan Castillo recently reported on a private prison in Williamson County where families of illegal immigrants are held to await disposition of their cases. It is one of two Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the United States holding non-Mexican unauthorized immigrants on noncriminal charges.

The facilities also are living testimony to a broken system for adjudicating immigration cases. There are 215 federal immigration judges serving in 53 immigration courts across the country. Last year, they handled more than 350,000 specific matters, including 270,000 individual cases.

The backlog is so strained that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, noted: "The department and the federal courts are straining under the weight of an immigration litigation system that is broken. Under the current system, criminal aliens generally receive more opportunities for judicial review of their removal orders than noncriminal aliens."

In short, illegal immigrants who commit crimes get speedier legal attention than these children, who have done nothing wrong other than follow their parents.

Nothing will change until reforms are initiated, and Congress has done little to fix a broken immigration policy and the machinery to enforce it. The result is the private prison facility in Taylor and a smaller one in Pennsylvania.

According to those familiar with the families in the private prison, children of those apprehended are dressed in prison jumpsuits and receive only one hour of schooling and one hour of recreation a day. The trade-off is that they get to remain with their families.

Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.

News of the 400 people — 200 of them children — being held in the T. Don Hutto unit in Taylor has sparked protests from several groups interested in immigrant issues. They are concerned about everything from care and feeding of those being held to the psychological effect of incarceration on children and families.

Federal authorities began detaining all unauthorized immigrants last summer. The reason for the detention was that so many who were charged with unauthorized entry into the United States never appeared for their court dates. They melted back into the population.

It is understandable in this age of terrorism that authorities want to keep tabs on illegal immigrants and ensure their appearances in courts. But there should be a way to see that they have their day in court without imprisoning their children.

Keeping families intact would appear to be a humane policy, as well. But the result of the new detention policy has been to jail children, and that is not acceptable. Those who have visited the detainees, some of whom are seeking political asylum, say the detention is damaging.

Little kids in prison jumpsuits and nametags presents a sad picture. Children are truly at the mercy of their parents, and incarceration cannot be good for their physical, mental or emotional health.

For reasons of security and the law, a close watch on the nation's borders is warranted. But what isn't acceptable is jailing mothers and children awaiting a hearing on their status.

There has to be a better way.

[Ninjaplease]

"Children are truly at the mercy of their parents, and incarceration cannot be good for their physical, mental or emotional health."

Sounds like an untapped low cost labor source to me! Dell would love them to assemble PCs that you can buy to watch your Exxon stock and look at pictures of birds in central park while spamming the day's Vanguard funds' returns.

[anne]

There we have the lunatic intimidator, intimating because that is all intimidators can do. Always intimidate women for again that is what intimidators do. Notice how intimidated I am.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=7025&exhibition=7&ee_lang=eng&u=68243,19

Monk Parakeet Building Nest
New York City.

[anne]

Tra la, tra low, I am so intimidated by the lunatic intimidator. Imagine that. Tra la, tra low.

[anne]

http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName

Vanguard Fund Returns
12/31/05 to 12/21/06

S&P Index is 15.6
Large Cap Growth Index is 9.2
Large Cap Value Index is 21.8

Mid Cap Index is 13.5

Small Cap Index is 15.1
Small Cap Value Index is 18.4

Europe Index is 32.9
Pacific Index is 11.0
Emerging Markets Index is 26.5

Energy is 19.8
Health Care is 11.0
Precious Metals is 32.2
REIT Index is 32.8

Long Term Bond Index is 3.9
Intermediate Term Bond Index is 4.7

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3191&exhibition=3&u=433%7C11%7C...

Great Egret in Flight
New York City Central Park-Turtle Pond.

Edward Bellamy, by the way, is pleasing.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Evagrius,

Haven't I? How many times have I discussed the role of NAFTA in undermining rural Mexico? I was even banned from SDJ (Brad Delong's blog) site for doing so. The funny part is that my opinions on immigration didn't raise too many eyebrows. But when I started attacking NAFTA it was "Bye Bye Charlie".

I think you can find a copy of my fatal post over at Has neoliberalism failed Mexico? . Note the statement “Of course, it is much easier to blame US subsidies than to question whether free trade in farm products is actually beneficial for Mexico or other countries...” along with several others.

I find it both revealing and somewhat hilarious that I was banned for questioning NAFTA. Given that Brad DeLong promoted NAFTA while working for Clinton, he may be somewhat sensitive to the issue. However, banning people for challenging NAFTA?

Anne,

Sure there is a better way. Release the kids (and the moms) to the care of the Mexican government. Mexico has a GDP of over $1 trillion. Mexico can provide for its own. Of course, that would mean making the Mexican elite pay taxes. Can’t have that you know.

[evagrius]

Peter Schaeffer;

"It is one of two Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the United States holding non-Mexican unauthorized immigrants on noncriminal charges."

"Anne,

Sure there is a better way. Release the kids (and the moms) to the care of the Mexican government. Mexico has a GDP of over $1 trillion. Mexico can provide for its own. Of course, that would mean making the Mexican elite pay taxes. Can’t have that you know."

I don't think Mexico is responsible for these kids or their moms and dads.

As for NAFTA, I was never in favor of it coming as I do from a union background.
Good to se that you have some understanding of the immigration issue.

It's, by the way, not the "cosmopolitan" elite that favors "open borders" etc; it's the elite, period and I don't think political affiliation has much to do with how the elite views its interest since those interests trump politics any time. That elite is not necessarilly the latte sipping, cultured one either.

That's what makes the entire discussion over cosmopolitans, locals or elites so fruitless and misleading.

It's a big stew and it takes time and reflection to pick out the basic elements.

But "closing the borders" is not an option right now, ( kinda like pulling out of Iraq). The fat's in the fire and you can thank the elected and unelected politicians, businessmen etc; for it.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Evagrius,

Where have I ever argued that only the “cosmopolitan” elite favors Open Borers? You read my posts. Haven’t I argued tirelessly that it is the alignment of elite factions that is responsible for Open Borders and “free trade”? And no I am not try to define/redefine/argue about what “cosmopolitan” might mean or how Shiller used it or meant to use it.

[Real Person from the Real World]

Inequity also causes *magical* changes as to who are friends and enemies. I see a number of comments about illegal aliens, and that basically equals MEXICANS amd seemingly, only Mexicans. With the economy down, a lot of people single out Mexicans or Latinos. They seem to forget that In the 1800's we grabbed a lot of our southwest from Mexico. Today there are Mexican place names in our southern states, and a border with Mexicans on both sides of it. Basically, they are economic refugees. It's bad here, but it's been worse on the other side, for a longer time. It is telling, that now when things get tight, the easiest mark is the closest rather than looking at the people corporate America imports on purpose. When you had a middle class, Mexicans were pretty much OK: they were nannies, and mowed lawns, or bused tables. Now, with the Global Elites enjoying their lush times, and 80% of us LOCALS are hitting the skids, they want to build a wall, like the Great Wall of China, across the southern US to keep the Mexicans from taking the jobs at the bottom. Well, the wall in China didn't keep the Mongols out, and it's doubtful this wall will keep the Mexicans out. Frankly, I think we have more in common with Mexico than many countries overseas, and they are a helluva lot closer.

[anne]

Real Person and Dan Hirschman and Evagrius,

Thank you so much for the fine comments. For some lunatic reason I was attacked having never made a comment, but let the attacks come for there is surely a lunacy about.

"Hispanic Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass and BADILLO LASHES LATINOS RIPS HISPANIC VALUES."

Notice the lunacy of prejudice.

[anne]

Be afraid, be very afraid, Hispanic values are coming right after Asian and European and African and Antarctic values (penguins have values too, you know). Antarctic values for all; penguins rule. I know, you will say the problem is penguin runaways, and especially penguin runaway illegitimacy-macy-macy. Penguins just can't help it, however.

Penguins forever.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Anne,

Herman Badillo is a racist. I am sure that is news to him.

Real Person from the Real World

China's wall(s) were quite successful for centuries. I will settle for the next 50 years. By the way, Israel's fence has been a stunning success.

Immigration is a cause of inequality, not an effect. See the charts over at Polarized America. Note the striking correlation between inequality, immigration, and political polarization. Hat tip, Paul Krugman.

[anne]

"Hispanic Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass and BADILLO LASHES LATINOS RIPS HISPANIC VALUES."

Notice the luinacy of prejudice and the notice the lunatics who spread such prejudice.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Anne,

Please try to address the issues at hand rather than screaming racism when you are confronted by facts you find distasteful. Your approach amounts to PC McCarthyism. Rather than shout “communist”, you use “racist” in same way, with the same intended goal; to suppress debate rather than promote it.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Anne,

Please try to address the issues at hand rather than screaming racism when you are confronted by facts you find distasteful. Your approach amounts to PC McCarthyism. Rather than shout “communist”, you use “racist” in same way, with the same intended goal; to suppress debate rather than promote it.

[anne]

Yes; we must stop the runaway penguin illegitimacy before we are all capture in the web of illegitmate penguinism. Penguin values are, well, the values of penguins, and not the values of, well, parrots. Parrot have completely different values than penguins and never ever would socialize with illegitimate runaway penguins and, I say, who coulod blame them. Parrot power forever.

[Real Person from the Real World]

Mexican culture is based on a Western European culture, and they have been *Americans* longer than the US. Anywhere there are borders, there will be people crossing those borders as in the southern US. A good percentage of the US population is and has been Latino. We have places with Spanish names, and tex-mex food is eaten daily in the US. Why suddenly pick on Mexicans and Latinos for problems? The problems did not develop overnight, and the Mexcans were there before there were problems anyway. Why bring Muslims, Hindus, and Budhists to the US To work in hi-tech, then scream about the Mexicans mowing the lawns and busing tables? Some non-christians are better Christians then the Christians, and some Christians hate other Christians.

[anne]

Now, just so that we understand. There was a terrific post reminding us of Edward Bellamy, which I read and di not comment on. Then, I find for some bizarre reason I am obliquely addressed and intimidated about child labor (who could ever understand why). Then, I am addressed about the obligations of the Mexican government to children and moms (who could ever understand why).

Then, and here is the important part, we are told the problem is:

"Hispanic Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass and BADILLO LASHES LATINOS RIPS HISPANIC VALUES."

Imagine though, there must be no response because if we respond to such prejudicial craziness we are, well, what are we?

Parrot Power forever.

[anne]

Imagine telling us about runaway penguin illegitimacy, which troubles me terribly because I have been neraly trampled several times by runaway penguins and they were not even the illegitimate ones. Then, telling us about penguin values, which are read heathen values as we all know.

Then when we point out that this is crazy prejudice against, say, penguins, we are told to promote penguin debate. Say what?

Parrot Power forever.

[anne]

"Penguin Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass and BADILLO LASHES Penguins RIPS Penguin VALUES."

Beware illegitimate runaway valueless penguins needing lashing. Parrot Power forever [Oliver Conure always agrees]. Get it?

[evagrius]

Peter Schaeffer;

While you correctly identify the "intellectual" and political source for the current immigration crisis, ( the economic elite, ( of many countries besides the U.S. and Mexico by the way)), you don't seem to have grasped the exact nature of why this immigration crisis is occuring.
I read, glanced actually, at the sources you cited. While they are quite good at describing the crisis, they fail in asking the question, why is it occuring?

Can we say "outsourcing"? Can we say that what's happened is a massive shift of a poor population from one area to another? Can we say that what's going on is similar, ( though not at all as brutal) to what Stalin did in the Soviet Union, that is, transferring whole nationalities from one end of the Soviet Empire to the other, ( Chechnya comes to mind)?

Mexico's elite, with the collusion of the U.S. elite, has decided to shift the poor peasants from the rural countryside, ( where the old Indian/Catholic culture kept them reasonably intact in social mores, in religious values as long as they weren't starving which they now are due to agri-business ), to the cities in Mexico and from those cities to the U.S. The same phenomenom is spread throughout Latin America, mainly due to U.S. economic policies, for the same reason.

Removing the population from the countryside is the easiest way to create large agri-businesses that will produce massive amounts of cheap food and a very large profit for the owners of such businesses.

Further, the transfer of population ensures a cheap labor pool guaranteed to last quite a while.

The social pathology of the peasant immigrants is easy to understand. Removed from traditional cultural restraints, placed in a culture that emphasizes immediate gratification, faced with temporary and unstable employment, it's easy to act without thought and restraint. Hence the high rise in illegitimate births, single mothers etc;

The elites don't care. They're the top 1% and they don't care.

They like the polarization, the anger directed at immigrants, the fact that people want to build a wall or increase immigration enforcement. After all, they're not the ones being "popped". They're not the ones being forced out of low-paying jobs by someone willing to work for even less.

Didn't you notice that the Swift Co. executives were not arrested? Not one? Don't you think it quite telling?

Your concern is sincere but your focus is misplaced.

Don't you think the undocumented immigrant would rather be back in his or her small village rather than the U.S.? Isn't that why there's little ghettoes that try to reproduce the small villages and towns where they came from? Don't you know that these immigrants self-segregate by region and state and town since each one of these is different, with different foods, music etc;( I'm from Tabasco, I'm from Oaxaca )?

The whole situation is a tragedy. Unfortunately, it's the poor that are paying the price, not the elite.

And....you can tell how extreme the crisis is by looking at the latest election in Mexico.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/international/americas/09mexico.html?ex=1270699200&en=002dab476b252724&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

April 9, 2005

At 15, Dreaming Big Dreams: Oh, to Be a Scholar
By TIM WEINER

MEXICALI, Mexico

ALICIA ÁLVAREZ lives two miles from the American border and light-years from the American dream.

Growing up in Mexicali has made her a realist at 15. She has no taste for romances and soap operas. Harry Potter stories and a horror movie at the mall are as far away as fictions take her from her city's heat and dust.

Alicia has a fierce intelligence, and it fires her only soaring ambition: to get a decent education, schooling that could lift her up and out of her surroundings into a better life. It looks to her as likely as a trip to Mars.

"It seems impossible," Alicia said with a shy, distant gaze. She has started high school, having proved herself one of the brightest girls in her city, a straight-A student with an exceptional aptitude for math.

"My family has no money for college," she said. "I probably will never get to a university, though I would love to.

"My education has been hard. My teachers are trained in teaching, not in math and science. It's a struggle for them to teach me what I need to be taught. To learn what I want to know. And I want to know so much."

She finds herself, like her country, poised with one foot in the door of opportunity and one stuck in the poverty and powerlessness of the past. But with her fine mind, the idea of having a better life than one's parents, while distant, is still a shimmering possibility.

Her father, David Osuna, 46, works part time selling used cars. He has good weeks and bad weeks. Her mother, Alicia Álvarez, 48, keeps house. They have provided their children with the basics of life: food, clothes, shelter. Their slender, dutiful, deep-thinking daughter is a bit of a mystery to them.

Alicia's brothers, David, 21, and Luis, 16, are in awe of her intelligence, respectful, sometimes distant. David is the one in whom she sometimes confides her dreams.

ALICIA'S uncle and godfather, Abel Álvarez, 56, knows her aspirations. He grew up behind a plow, and then crossed over the border when he was her age to work the fields of the Imperial Valley in California. He now earns a good living in construction, a self-made man who builds malls in El Centro, Calif., 15 minutes north of Mexicali.

He has watched Alicia grow up with a mixture of pride and worry.

"It's not a lot easier growing up in Mexicali now than it was 40 years ago," he said. "The pie's a little bigger, but a lot more people want a slice. Growing up here, you go up against all that, and with the United States and all its riches just over the line."

Mexico's economy has been flat for almost five years. Poverty is ever-present. The middle class is small; it has been shrinking for a generation. Stealing into the United States is often the only way out.

Alicia has seen what is over the line, having traveled with her uncle and cousins on short trips to Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside, halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. "I love Riverside best of all, it's so pretty," she said. "So much greenery, so many trees. It's the cleanest, greenest place I've ever seen."

But Alicia says the idea of sneaking across the border to live and work holds no attraction for her. "I don't want to migrate," she said flatly. There is no legal path for her, and she does not want to be an outlaw.

She is a bit better off than many other young Mexicans, especially the millions living in the countryside whose families struggle for enough to eat, and she would not risk what little she has for a gamble in a strange land.

Still, Alicia sometimes feels the walls of her cinder-block house closing in on her. The heat rises above 100 degrees in Mexicali for almost half the year. The house is crowded, and the closeness sometimes chafes at family life and familial love....

[Ninjaplease]

The US will probably need another 150,000+ troops to invade Iran if Gates has his way. If we were to offshore a privatized army, like the Hessians, except from say, Mexico, and offer them $15.00 per hour I think Iran would be no problem--After which we could tell the new Privatized Army that the houses they seize in Iran they can keep---the wages over there are much higher with all that oil money.