Here are some highlights from the books I read this week.
By Stephen Calabresi reasonJune 1, 2024.
excerpt:
President Donald Trump was convicted yesterday of falsifying business records to hide payments he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels with the intent of influencing the 2016 presidential election. However, under New York state law, falsifying business records is only a crime if it is done to conceal other violations of law. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that the documents were falsely altered to hide contributions that violated federal campaign finance laws or to defraud voters of information they had a right to know in order to win the 2016 election. Neither argument passes First Amendment scrutiny.
By Ilya Somin Non-populistMay 28, 2024.
Sanctuary laws are often likened to “nullification” – the idea that states could nullify federal laws within their own territories. Of course, nullification has a bad reputation because of its association with the Southern states’ defense of slavery and (later) segregation. But there are important differences between sanctuary laws and nullification.
Nullifiers argue that the federal law in question is completely invalid and that states have the right to actively obstruct its enforcement within their own territories. In contrast, sanctuary jurisdictions do not necessarily argue that the laws in question are invalid; they simply refuse to assist state and local governments, especially their law enforcement agencies. For example, they may refuse to cooperate themselves in enforcing the relevant laws or provide information to federal law enforcement agencies engaged in enforcement activities. The federal government, however, retains the freedom to attempt to enforce these laws using only its own resources and personnel.
Brian Caplan Let’s take a gambleMay 27, 2024.
excerpt:
The United Statesall “The world’s poor”? That depends on the time frame. Poland’s population grew by 6% in a few weeks, It was fineThe US population grew 1,339% from 1800 to 1900, which was also a good thing. There is no reason why the modern US population couldn’t grow just as fast, or even faster. It would be tragic for 330 million today to become 1 billion tomorrow, but it is entirely possible for 330 million today to become 1 billion in 50 years. Diaspora DynamicsIt is the latter scenario that is empirically relevant.
Unless, of course, immigrants and their descendants remain on welfare forever. Fortunately, this doesn’t usually happen under the current circumstances, and the Gulf countries and Singapore, the countries that have come the closest to opening their borders, have effectively done the opposite, for obvious reasons. Geniuses and janitors alike are well worth welcoming, so long as they do their bit.
DRH Comment:
Given what Brian said in the last sentence of the first paragraph above, I don’t understand why he advocates for open borders. If what matters empirically is a tripling over 50 years, why not advocate limiting immigration to 7-8 million per year? Why 7-8 million, and not simply indicate that it’s about 13 million? (670 million divided by 50 is 13 million.) Because immigrants have children. And if I’m overoptimistic about the number of children, that’s fine. We’ll have, say, 800 million residents, not 1 billion.
Let’s say the floor is 7 million. If the government set it at $50,000 per immigrant, it would bring in $350 billion per year. If the government didn’t squander that money on other spending (a big “if,” admittedly), future deficits would be roughly reduced and the federal debt as a percentage of GDP would actually stabilize or decline slightly. Would we have 7 million people receiving $50,000 each? Sure. I could do a special blog post on this issue if anyone wants to see it.
