I'm shocked, shocked to discover that Robert Samuelson doesn't know what he's talking about.
« Be Afraid | Main | Divide and Rule »
Greenstein Versus Samuelson
18 Sep 2007 02:14 pm
Comments (11)
The "normally careful" line stood out for me, too. I prefer to read its inclusion as a kind of ritual genuflection before the fiction that Washington Post columnists are very wise and serous people, and probably a prerequisite for getting one's devastating take-down of one of them published in its pages.
It is not so clear that Greenstein really puts Samuelson in his place even if one might naturally be rooting for him.
Samuelson's main claim is that comparisons of poverty rates that ignore that we do not have a static population can distort the poverty picture. This seems to be a real enough claim.
Greenstein responds with data suggesting that poverty is decreasing among hispanics and hispanic immigrants in particular. But that does not really undercut Samuelson's point.
If hispanics (particularly first generation immigrants) start with a higher poverty rate than the general public, and their numbers increase while their rate of poverty goes down, they will still drive the overall poverty rates up (assuming that the drop in their poverty rate is not out of scale with the rise in population).
This is fully consistent with a picture of a nation which is decreasing poverty rates for the non-immigrant population but still seeing a rise, both in percentages and total numbers, of its poverty rate. Of course, as Samuelson tries to downplay, even this is really only true if one lops off the Bush years from the period under consideration.
The question of what one does with this information is another matter, and Samuelson's proposals are not particularly radical here, and not ones that are greatly undercut by Greenstein's way of presenting the data.
The one claim of his that is undercut by Greenstein's data is that the large size of current immigration is interfering with assimilation.
I don't know the history. Why does Matt consider Samuelson a crank? He seems to me a moderate conservative who calls out both sides for their failure to face up to certain big issues. I certainly don't agree with him all the time, but I don't see him as part of the enemy camp (Krauthammer, Novak, etc.)
Economics makes me wish I was riding my bike, as do so many other things. So, let's look at the wider issue.
How much would MattY suggest that the average household gains on a monthly basis from illegal labor? Would he go as far as, say, $30 a month?
Now, what percentage of Americans would forego that $30 or whatever per month if they were aware of all the costs, such as increasing public and private corruption and giving foreign governments political power inside the U.S.
Maybe MattY should stick with heartwarming tales about illegal aliens as the MSM is wont to do, because the economic argument just isn't there (assuming, of course, honest economists.)
This is fully consistent with a picture of a nation which is decreasing poverty rates for the non-immigrant population but still seeing a rise, both in percentages and total numbers, of its poverty rate.
I don't think it's consistent with a rise in the poverty rate. It is pretty clearly consistent with a poverty rate that isn't declining -- but that's not the same thing. For the most part the poverty rate hasn't budged very much either way since the early 70s. Now, it most certainly is true that the total number of poor people is increasing in America, as is the total number of rich people. And middle class people. And the number of households. And cars. And restaurants. And school teachers. You tend to get increasing numbers of everything when you have a growing population.
So, while the immigration of poor people replenishes the ranks of the poor, it's misleading to imply that the same person who was poor in, say, 1987 is still poor now. Sometimes this is the case. And sometimes not. It's not clear to me though, as a non-poor person, why I'm supposed to worry about this one way or another. I mean, if somebody from Latin America finds conditions in the United States better than in, say, Peru, why is it a net negative if, by US standards, said immigrant is officially "poor"? Obviously he/she must think it's an improvement over Lima.
I don't understand this bit at all:
"Nor was poverty the only issue on which Samuelson's focus was too narrow. He noted, correctly, that Hispanics accounted for 41 percent of the increase, since 2000, in the number of Americans who lack health insurance. That sounds alarming, until you realize that Hispanic population growth accounted for 51 percent of total U.S. population growth over this period."
Is Greenstein arguing that we should expect that population without health insurance is predominantly made up of the new population? That's making Samuelson's point stronger, not weaker.
Would the Wall Street/BushCo axis of greed be so supportive of massive immigration if didn't drive wages down?
Did Matt actually read the op-ed? It is a pretty weak rebuttal to Samuelson, for reasons others have already pointed out.
Right, Greenstein did a lot of hand-waving, but didn't actually present data rebutting Samuelson's central points.
It's all about the mustache.
Comments closed October 02, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
The last part of the op-ed says the following:
"We should not oversimplify a complicated story, as the normally careful Samuelson has done here."
So the author calls Samuelson "normally careful," while Matt's "shocked, shocked" potshot reflects his view that Samuelson is a know-nothing.
Sorry, Matt, this wasn't the best op-ed to cite in support of your bizarre view that Samuelson is wrong to worry about the long-term cost of entitlements.
Posted by Chris | September 18, 2007 2:30 PM