My Extreme Opinions.
Here is an especially self indulgent post. I think the useful part is this link to a Data For Progress poll showing current US public opinion is way to the left of the inside the beltway Overton Window. Most US adults support proposals which are seen as fringe left in official Washington. The presentation is verbose. A good write up by Eric Levitz is here
This is interesting and raises the question of how a Congress which totally disagrees with a majority of the electorate got elected. I think the reason is that most voters don’t know the facts — that is don’t know what current policy is.
OK self indulgence after the jump
I was talking to myself. I do this often. I had an imagined dialogue with a Republican who claims that Democrats favor open borders. If I met a Republican, I would note that this is not true of any Democrat who matters. I don’t know if any elected Democrat supports open borders, but I am sure that, if they are any, they are elected to say the Berkeley City council. The proposal to open borders is not on the agenda.
However, the qualifier “who matters” is necessary. I can’t deny that I am a Democrat because I am an officially registered Democrat. I support open borders. My view is that people should be allowed to move to live where they want and become citizens of a country if they live in it for 5 years. This is my view, because I believe all people are created equal and have the same rights. I therefore oppose hereditary privileges such as birthright citizenship.
Don’t worry. I really don’t matter. I have no influence.
I then tried to think of other extreme opinions which I have. Here as always, I define extreme as at the extreme of public opinion, and I rely on polls.
1. Foreign Aid. A solid majority wants to cut US foreign aid spending. I want it to be increased tenfold. But oddly I agree with the median voter on what share of the US Federal budget should go to foreign aid. When asked the median answer is about 5%. That is roughly what I propose, because foreign aid is currently about two thirds of one percent of the budget. My extreme opinion is the opinion that foreign aid is currently about two thirds of one percent of the budget. When people are polled on that question, the median answer was much higher. So in a Kaiser Foundation poll the median guess of the current level was 26%. My answer 0-1% puts me in the fringe extreme 5%.
So extreme opinion 1, foreign aid is less than 1% of the US Federal Budget.
2. I recall a poll where only a minority reported believing that there was no conspiracy to Kill John Kennedy and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I see opinion has shifted, but in 1992, I was a member of the small fringe minority who were no-conspiracy theorists.
3. Welfare. I think the word refers to TANF which is an even tinier share of the US Federal budget. I believe much more goes to the working poor through the EITC. I believe that programs which give cash to the able bodied no working poor are dwarfed payments for Social Security disability benefits. I believe most of SNAP (food stamps) spending goes to the working poor, the elderly, and the disabled. I think cash assistance to the non working able bodied poor is a tiny part of US government budgets especially the Federal Budget.
The point is that most of my extreme opinions are opinions on matters of fact. (the open borders advocacy is definitely an exception). When asked the median poll respondent supports policies far to the left of the DC Overton window. For example a solid majority thinks that workers should elect some members of the board of directors of corporations (as they do in Germany which somehow manages to export a huge amount even though workers’ total compensation is immense and they work very few hours a year).
On open borders I am for much more than we have, but think maybe a minor modification of 19th century rules might still hold. They did not let people in with serious illnesses. I am not sure about crime, but I think keeping out people guilty of serious felonies and who are seriously viewed as terrorist risks is OK. But beyond those, open borders fine with me.
Complete agreement about welfare, which, as you note is mostly a matter of public not knowing the facts.
Mostly the same on foreign aid, although I don’t think I would go as high as 5%. I take people like Easterly on corruption and waste regarding foreign aid in many places to think we should be careful and somewhat limited in handing it out, although I would support reducing the military part, which is the majority, and increasing the civilian part.
I did have a period when I took the JFK assassination conspiracy theories at least somewhat seriously, knowing some staff people from the House committee that investigated and came to no conclusions. But there was serious support on that comm for the mafia theory.
However, I basically stopped believing in it after I visited Dealy Plaza in 1987, where it is obvious that the infamous grassy knoll is a nothing. No way there was a second shooter on the ground there. I also know economist Paul Gregory, who knew the Oswalds well and is convinced it was just Oswald, a messed up jerk who was good at only one thing, accurately firing military rifles.
Only 20 percent of voters see themselves as liberal, but (as were saying) most voters support liberal positions on much of what DC finds contentious.
You may not know many Democrats who favor open borders but a majority of the candidates at the debates raised their hands that they would not deport undocumented people unless they were guilty of serious crimes. That amounts to open borders.
Although I understand the moral argument for open borders and in fact I am an Australian with British grandparents living in Germany (a beneficiary of liberal migration laws). With the enormous differences in wealth and education that have developed, I don’t think it is practical in the modern world to ignore the rate of migration. I also worry about how you can have community support if there isn’t a stable concept of community. And lastly, I worry about the environment and social evolution, the danger that large flows of people could bring could undermine societies and develop unsustainable economic systems (i.e. hostile takeovers, idiosyncratic policies directed towards alternative goals could be overwhelmed and stopped). So I somewhat reluctantly think that so long as the world is so unequal and unstable, slowing down flows to what is manageable might be a good idea. Of course a corollary of this, I believe is much higher flows of development assistance . . . higher still than what Robert does.
JackD
If you prosecuted EMPLOYERS for, employing undocumented immigrants, many would end up leaving voluntarily. It is the way many other countries in dealing with the situation.
I am not sure of this by the way, but I do speculate that a universal basic income with a longish legal residential qualification period, could allow countries to have an open borders policy.
Universal basic income probably is a bad idea with respect to borders unless restricted to citizens. If you are a Guatemalan and you get offered $300 a year, but doubt you’ll reliably get it while the US is $900/month with near certainty of collecting you could put the residency requirement at 70 years without changing the bottom-line considerations much. In fact, it would prove another incentive to leave.
I too believe in “the lone nut squared theory” because I am very mature now.
Reason: I have no problem with prosecuting employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. If we started doing that, our immigration laws would be reformed very quickly. Those employers need those workers. Still, I do not believe our electorate would support open borders.
Eric,
have you ever heard of the term money illusion? You have it.
A lot of comments. Thanks Barkley for thoughtful comments. I will address our one point of disagreement $ 200,000,000,000 a year of foreign aid. I agree that there is a very serious public corruption problem in most countries. I understand the analogy of a foreign aid curse analogous to the natural resources curse (I’d cite Angus Deaton too, although I suspect that Easterly is even more expert on the topic).
My answer is that we must go directly to the poor bypassing government officials (only where they let us). That’s part of why it my proposal is so expensive. It requires frankly first world semi volunteers working for less than they could otherwise make but still godawful expensive by third world standards (the aim is a governmental NGO and maybe a fantasy).
If the aid is cash grants to poor households (strong experimental evidence that this works) then the overhead doesn’t have to be too high.
So I have two problems with current US foreign aid. There isn’t enough of it by a factor of at least ten and two conflicting aims are combined. It is an effort to win friends and help people. The foreign policy use of aid to win powerful friends reduces its effectiveness (possibly to negative effects on balance if the friends are ruthless dictators, Thieu (don’t bless you — really more incompetent than ruthless) Al Sisi etc. etc etc etc.
OK on open borders. I have no fantasy that opening the borders is consistent with having first world countries recognizably similar to the one’s we know. Also I know for sure that it is politically impossible. But I still support open borders. I will make an offensive analogy
@ Reason thanks for the thoughtful comment
One might argue that courts and trials imply criminals known to the polic getting away with it. I am fairly sure there have been times (when crime rates were more terrifying) in which a US majority would support indefinite pre-trial detention, and in effect, let police act as judge and jury and lock people up. But I also think that people have a right to a trial, and so the question is not correctly decided by utilitarian calculus (also the police state would be a nightmare). Similarly, I think people have the right to move where they choose to move. I don’t claim it would be easy and can’t prove it wouldn’t be a Pareto worsening. This to me is another Pareto liberal paradox
@JackD that would be a return to the Obama administration policy which was not one of open borders. I guess the question is semantic, but it sure wasn’t what I have in mind. The undocumented population was stable (with more going to Mexico than coming from Mexico). Undocumented aliens did not have the rights of permanent residents. It was (in theory) illegal to employ them. This makes a difference. They contributed to social security but didn’t get pensions. The laws, as enforced by the Obama administration were very different from the idea that anyone who wants to can be a citizen. If I didn’t respect privacy, I could tell you about the struggles of a McKinsey Partner to get US citizenship.
You can call it open borders if you want, but that implies that “open borders” refers to a range of policies so broad that the phrase is almost meaningless.
I mean that’s the way things were for years and nothing much happened. I honestly don’t even know for how many years. I have to google OK I found a date “November 2014”. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
I honestly had only a vague idea that it was after 2012
I do have some expertise. I spent a year as an undocumented alien in Italy with no trace of permission to live and work here. Nobody complained about this at all. I had a job, sortof, it was a fellowship which didn’t involve actual work, but I was paid with no trace of a work permit. That was almost open borders.
Notably Italy’s currently most popular party is focused almost entirely on fighting illegal immigration. I know a good bit about the inevitable backlash to my extreme proposal.
Damn this series of replies was too long. Sorry
Having been around a bit out there myself, I hate to say it, but especially given the degradation of the American brand thanks to Trump, Catholic Relief Services and the Mennonite World Relief Organization are a whole lot better at getting directly to poor in developing nations than is (or was, frankly) US AID.