Your psychology stuff is great, but this post just comes across as weird. I think you should check out the front page article in this current edition of Foreign Affairs

John Smith’s last blog post: immigration delusions.

Tell that to the vikings

there would be fewer incarcerated illegal aliens if they didn’t get thrown in jail for not having driver’s licenses, which they can’t get because they are illegal.

if an illegal is no longer illegal, they can work “on the books” and receive and pay into benefits, meaning they will become a part of the system as opposed to benefiting from it.

i wonder how many illegal aliens you know Jeanne. It’s easy to talk about what you think, or mass media thinks, they are here for or want. have you actually ever talked to one yourself?

and you’re crazy if you think companies are all of a sudden going to stop outsourcing because there are more skilled visas available. the whole point of outsourcing is to pay LOWER THAN US WAGES. if you bring an immigrant here, you can’t pay him less just because he’s from india.

ps…most of the inflationary pressure in food prices have been caused by the gubmint’s lame ass ethanol policy.

I’ll skip the immigration stuff. There are smart, informed people on both sides of the divide, and besides it’s lunch time.

I’ll also skip responding to your ad hominem attacks. They’re mostly accurate and also irrelevant. It reminds me of when Hillary wanted to suspend the gas tax and when told that no economist thought it made any sense her response was along the lines of “well economists are rich, so they can’t appreciate the poor person’s situation.”

The constant deflation of the kinds of things most poor people buy aside from food and gas (cheap clothes, cheap furniture, cheap housing, etc.) means that many of these price rises are offset. More importantly, when things you have to buy go up in price (gas/food), you have less money to spend on discretionary spending, so it’s actually deflationary because, as you noted, demand goes down.

Michael – well, little cubicle man. You must be quite the go to boy at work. I’m stunned that your employer does not realize what a gem you are and give you enough work so you don’t have time to post comments to this blog 20+ times in one work day.

So the problem with your naive amnesty plan is that not all illegal aliens want to be registered. California had an amnesty plan 20 years ago. A small percentage of illegal aliens made use of it. Not the 100% you imagine in your la-la- land.

There is no incentive to voluntarily register and pay taxes when they currently work for cash.

Illegals DO benefit from government entitlements. Any hospital with an emergency room MUST treat and stabilize any patient with medical emergencies. They can not turn someone away because he is an illegal alien or does not have the ability to pay. Go to the CDC website and look up the statistics for how many babies are born to illegal aliens. You can even obtain data by hospital and see which public/county hospitals are providing care to illegal aliens.

Additionally, if incarcerated, illegal aliens are cared for by the government. The feds have the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program in place to try and help subsidize the huge cost of housing, feeding, educating and providing healthcare to incarcerated aliens.

Educationally, school districts are required to educate illegal aliens through secondary school. Again the aliens are benefitting without contributing.

Of course, they also drive on our roads, benefit from our water and sewage systems, etc.

So smart boy, do you think you have more experience than Alan Greenspan? Greenspan is not for unlimited immigration.
Actually he is for increasing the immigration of SKILLED aliens only. If jobs are outsourced to them anyway, might as well bring them to this country, have them spend the money here and reduce the discrepancy in pay between skilled and unskilled workers.

How many months have you been off of mummy and daddy’s financial aid? Yes American’s spend money on a lot of things besides food. But food is a NECESSITY. Plasma screen tvs, Starbuck mocha frappucinos and a PS3 are not necessities. They are discretionary spending and can be eliminated. So if you were living in reality, you would be concerned with the price of food going up and not placated by the fact that your Wii games still sell for $49.99 at Target.

Side note: Are you a man or a woman? Cause from your numerous catty comments, I was sure you were a woman. We’ve got bets going on this and on how many posts a day you’re going to make.

As for the dollar boost, first of all Bush will be president at the end of the year, and regardless Obama will institute policies that are not pro-growth (higher spending, higher taxes, higher trade barriers) so while he may have an effect on our currency it will be down not up. Finally, of course a Fed Chairman can impact the currency because he controls it’s cost. I specifically made the distinction between President and Fed Chairman.

And on a side note, an MBA is a MANAGEMENT degree (aka a joke degree), not an economics degree, although I see your point and agree with it.

For the others, here’s a short and very good explanation of why the Fed should NOT base monetary policy on headline CPI.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

“I expect president obama to give the dollar a boost at the end of the year”

Is he going to lower the price of oil too? Are you an idiot? The President is going to lower the dollar? What, by magic? Some sort of executive order? Is he going to fellate Bernanke in exchange for higher interest rates? Is he going to cut spending? Seriously, stick with girls. You don’t know shit about the economy.

I only ask because while you can certainly debate whether or not core or headline is more important, if you’re just assuming headline is more important because that’s what the NYTimes or the Post says, well then you’re not very informed.

The reason why it’s a valid opinion to only look at core is because gas and food account for a very small portion of the average American’s spending (something like 7-10% but I don’t have those statistics in front of me).

More importantly, central banks have to worry about inflation they can control and ignore inflation they can’t. If gas and food is going up because of peak oil and the rapid rise in living standards in the developing world, raising interest rates won’t quell that demand. People still have to eat and drive and that’s that. However, if the rise in those two prices starts to feed into the general economy because of a lax monetary policy (i.e. demand is strong relative to supply and thus companies can pass their higher energy costs on to consumers) then higher interest rates can reign in that demand and help take inflation out of the system.

I can talk more about the dollar as well if you’d like but frankly it seems like all of this is a waste of time. Based on your 3:2 animated smiley face-to-sentence ratio, you’re clearly less interested in facts, logic and debate than in snarky argument and scoring “points”. That’s cool, it’s your blog, but it kind of defeats the point.

Core inflation is tame

:laugh:

you mean when you don’t count gas and food? so you listen to the BLS instead of stepping outside your house?

I expect president obama to give the dollar a boost at the end of the year, but in the long run….

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-08-02-deficit-usat_x.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7566052

European Central Bank may raise interest rates this year pushed down the U.S. dollar.

Most of you have jobs with fresh money coming in every two weeks, but when your money pile is not changing in absolute terms but everything is going up and a vacation one year ago is much cheaper than now, you realize how much you’re getting screwed and are more likely to do something to protect yourself.

The problem with open flowing immigration is that public resources get overwhelmed.

You can’t have a influx of low level labor drownd a city. Go to Miami. Go to South Texas. Check out Southern California.

The strain is overwhelming. I’m a liberal. Bleeding heart Dem. But you can’t just open up the borders and allow the whole world to walk in. It would sink the local infurstructure. The clog the hospital emergency room. They overwhelm the school system.. The put enormous pressure on state social services.

Its like these business entities just think Jose shows up in December to help pick oranges and then leaves. Nah. Jose gets sick and doesn’t have health insurance. Jose’s kids need to go to school. Jose needs to get around so he drives a car on the road. Ever been to Miami?? Its a freakin cluster fuck. Ever been to Houston, Galveston etc..

Hospitals are literally suing the feds for lost revenue.

some of us read roosh’s book, so we can bang economists, professors, and doctors… and learn all kinds of interesting stuff from them as a bonus

Ava V’s last blog post: Wal-not.

Sean, I watched that movie and I liked it before I found out how many errors there are in it. I’d suggest anyone that watches it do the same.

It’s definitely worth watching though, it does point out some interesting coincidences. Don’t confuse coincidence with reality though, you will forever be disappointed with the truth if you do so.

dchero’s last blog post: Girls? Clothes.