Policy is hard. Some policies are particularly hard. Tax policy is hard. I have studied enough economics to not have a clear position on how I would design a tax code. That latest bill was stupid because it was exploitable, which is what happens when you don't go through the normal committee/hearing/mark-up process, and ya' know, stop to think before legislating, but over-all, tax policy is hard. It is, however, amenable to math. Economists have overly high opinions of themselves because they do math, but this is where I give my version of the Gordon Gecko speech:
Math, for lack of a better word, is good. Math is right. Math works. Math clarifies, cuts through...
It also gets rid of those pesky, stupid things that cloud our judgment. Like fear. Fear of things that won't happen to you.
Fear of getting shot. You aren't going to be shot. The full 2017 report isn't available yet, but here is a link to the full FBI crime report for 2016. You are not going to be shot.
Every once in a while, I have to remind everyone of what I call, "the paradox of news." If it is newsworthy, that's because it isn't actually that common. Popular dialog right now discusses mass shootings as though they are rampant and common. They are not, on any properly measured scale. There are 327,205,000+ people in this country, as of this morning, according to the Census estimates.
Here's what will really kill you.
Even as far as shootings go, what doesn't make the news is suicide. Why not? Too common. Paradox of news. You see/hear/read about the mass shootings, but don't see/hear/read about the suicides because they are too common to be considered news.
Hence one scares you, and the other doesn't.
Math, for lack of a better word, is good. Math is right. Math works. Math clarifies, cuts through...
And never forget how many people die of waterborne pathogens. Don't be like Donald Trump, just because they die in... the wrong kind of country.
Are you really afraid of guns? Do the math.
Then, there is immigration. The Senate won't pass anything on immigration. My assessments have been that the House was the stumbling block, but apparently, even the Senate won't do anything. So... fears.
Let's be blunt. You know who, historically, had the most legitimate reason to fear illegal immigrants? The native Americans.
Immigration and crime? Yeah, kind of a bullshit thing. Why do people think there is some crime link? Because there has always been a segment of society who has thought that. Whether it was the Chinese, Italians... or now Mexicans... it doesn't matter.
Economically, illegal immigrants take the jobs that we Americans would never take anyway, at wages that Americans wouldn't accept. So the economy benefits. They don't go to the government for taxpayer-funded benefits because they want to stay hidden.
Oh, and DACA? Here's an unmutual opinion. Anyone who came out of the shadows for DACA was being a fool. Hi! I'm an illegal immigrant! Come and get me, next president, if you happen to be a racist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual "white nationalist!" ('Cuz we're going with euphemisms now...)
Would I have gone for DACA protection? Hell no. Would I have advised anyone to do it? Hell no.
It wasn't obvious that the next president would be as vile as Trump, but the risk was always there.
Anyway, is there a real reason to fear immigrants, illegal or otherwise? No. Not if you think rationally and go through the actual numbers.
Oh, and by the way, this even touches on one of my hobbies! Remember Freddie Gray? That young African-American guy who was beaten to death by racist pigs for having the wrong skin color? No, not that one, the other one. No, the other one.
Nope. Not that one, the...
Damn. There have been a lot of those, haven't there?
Anyway, Freddie Gray was the one in Baltimore who was hassled by the cops for having what they called a "switchblade." Why are switchblades legally restricted? Serious answer: fear of ethnic gangs, and... um... not kidding here... West Side Story.*
Yeah, scary ethnic people. We have a long tradition of this particular fear. And it is a fear borne of... not doing the math!
You aren't going to be shot. Immigrants aren't going to come for you, or your job.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky won a Nobel for their work on probability and the ways in which people fail to assess probability correctly.
Yeah. No kiddin', fellas.
*I wrote a long post on this a while back. Reminder for those in Cleveland that Cleveland-proper has some very restrictive laws, even aside from the Ohio state messiness! And if you have too much melanin in your skin, you really need to be careful, because that's what this stuff is really about.