State of Friday: Cato Publishes Yet Another Cooked Study, This Time On Immigration
Foreigners who don’t assimilate and come from radically different cultures are a net drag on the economy
Greetings, Dear Reader,
I have class to teach basically all day starting at 8:30, so we have to keep this one short and sweet.
In my regime, they might not be first on the list for the camps, but they’re high up there.
COOKED
When Trump rose to take over and reorient the GOP, Libertarians were given a choice.
Certainly don’t give up your beloved, often literally gay, principles. But on the Venn diagram of Libertarianism, you can choose the stuff you share with the MAGA right – deregulation, gun rights, skepticism of military adventurism. OR, you could choose the stuff you share with the left – unchecked immigration, globalist economics, free drugs for everyone, defund the police, non-existent sexual morality that includes transing children and dressing them up in provocative clothing.
Perhaps shockingly, the doofuses chose the left, and the results were resounding.
Libertarians found themselves out in the wilderness. The one right-wing principle they kept was freedom of speech, which meant they didn’t meet the rising purity test and viciousness of the illiberal left. And the right was unwilling to budge on immigration, crime and open-air drug use.
As a result, they withered up and died. Storied libertarian organizations that spent tens of millions of advocacy dollars a year closed up shop. No longer relevant to either side in the political test of wills. No room in any wing for globalist dorks who party naked, smoke pot, dress in drag and demand the right to say anything.
The idea of libertarianism is fun in college but then most folks come to their senses.
One org that’s hung around despite the unpopularity is Cato. They most recently made waves for a post-Kirk killing study that insisted political “violence” was more a problem of the right than the left.
Obviously, this study made them very popular on the transing kids half of the Venn diagram they chose, the left, which — as they frequently cited this Cato study — made sure to tell their readers that Cato was “right-wing.” (They aren’t.)
Like many studies out of Cato, it suffered serious categorical and methodological errors. By that I mean, first of all, they failed to take into account violence that wasn’t fatal. So, the two attempts on Trump’s life? Excluded. Summer of love? Riots? Burning down cities? Attacking campus speakers? All excluded. They also rather brazenly simply categorized stuff that was non-political as right-wing, and stuff that was left-wing as non-political.
Easy to call right-wing violence a huge problem when you don’t even count the left, eh?
Well, Cato’s out with another cooked study. Guess what, Dear Reader? Infinite Third World immigrants is good actually! The usual suspects are all talking about Cato’s study in the same exact way. Look, principled right-wingers actually agree with us! Infinite immigration good!
The Cato study concludes that immigrants are net positive on the economy for a number of flawed reasons.
Firstly, they don’t count the resources – health care, education, welfare – immigrant children use. That seems like a rather huge omission. Secondly, and I almost respect the balls it takes to attempt this one, they counted rising property taxes on all Americans as a result of the housing crunch as a fiscal CONTRIBUTION from immigrants!
Yes, John Q. Public, your skyrocketing real estate tax is Javier’s contribution to the economy! Also, he raped your daughter at a bus stop!
There are other issues with the study. Conflation of both legal and illegal immigrants. Biases between old and young going unaccounted for and uncontrolled. At one point, they basically admit the entire thing hinges on assumptions.
There are other, more accurate, comprehensive and worthwhile studies to draw on, if you’re interested, Dear Reader. Denmark is probably the best and most recent. They conclude what you can probably see with your own two eyes: Foreigners who don’t assimilate and come from radically different cultures are a net drag on the economy, to the tune of millions of dollars over a lifetime.
Libertarians can keep cooking studies, but we know better in these parts.
In any case, as I said earlier: You won’t be first on the trains, Cato, but you’ll be in line on day one.
That’s it for the free portion of today’s State of the Day.
The full subscriber edition continues below with my forbidden takes.