I normally avoid discussing specific elections, but Matt Yglesias is so well-calibrated here that I’m going to make an exception:
Trump’s accession to the presidency alarmed liberals on two levels.
On the one hand, there was the policy damage he might wreak. That policy worry doesn’t go away with the House in Democratic hands, since control over the judiciary and the administrative state still matters. But in truth, the GOP’s legislative accomplishments in 2017-’18 were quite modest, and Tuesday’s results mean that there will be no further Republican legislative agenda. If you were worried primarily about a new round of regressive tax cuts offset by cuts to the social safety net, you should breathe easy today.
Of course, my primary worry about Trump is that he would engineer the adoption of even stricter immigration legislation than we already have. But I too breathe easy today. As the 1965 Act shows, major legislation often endures decades, even if its effects are unpopular. Executive action is mild, ephemeral, and symbolic by comparison.
READER COMMENTS
D. Francis
Nov 7 2018 at 5:38pm
According to Wikipedia, as of 2015, the US had almost 20% of the world’s foreign-born population accounting for 14.3% of the US population. For such a big country that’s incredible.
The nearest country in comparison was Germany, which accounted for 5% of the world’s foreign-born population. In other words, no other country comes remotely close.
As of 2018, adding in illegal aliens and those numbers go up by at least 10-15 million. You can say a lot of things about US immigration policies and legislation but being “restrictive” is absurd.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 7 2018 at 7:34pm
http://lenkiefer.com/2017/05/28/housing-supply-house-prices/
Tghhe link is interesting as it looks at new housing stock minus that which becomes obsolete.
So the US produces less than 1 million net new housing units per year. Property zoning plays a major role in restricting new supply.
Scott Sumner has opined that the US is so bad at building infrastructure, that it should not even try.
Okay, so we have limited new net housing stock and we hold infrastructure steady. But as a patriot and not a nationalist, I am supposed to clamor for more immigration?
In fact many US cities are beginning to look like Third World cities, in particular Los Angeles. Not because of the people, but because of the crowded run-down infrastructure and living standards.
Bryan Caplan: Until you eliminate property zoning in the United States and develop programs to robustly and effectively build infrastructure, I do not see how you can posit that more immigration is positive.
There is always a dose of fantasy in libertarianism, but it should only be a dose.
Thaomas
Nov 7 2018 at 8:19pm
The deficits created by the tax cut plus the one still left from the GWB tax cuts mean that we are running a surplus as we ought to. That’s a structural problem that will not go away easily.
Thomas Sewell
Nov 8 2018 at 2:51am
Your theory of the causes of the deficit has a major logical flaw in it. Deficits aren’t created by increased revenue over time.
In constant dollars per capita, federal total revenue has gone up 3x over the last 60 years. Spending measured the same way over the same time period has gone up almost 4x.
The federal deficits aren’t a revenue problem, they’re a spending problem. Federal government revenue per person is essentially flat (actually a minor increase) over the last 20 years, but spending is up almost 50% over the same 20 years. Congress spends more and unless you believe we’re getting incredibly better government services each year, in the process the government manages to waste more.
We should be cutting federal revenues much more, but also cutting federal spending even more.
Niko Davor
Nov 8 2018 at 4:34pm
On every issue other than immigration, the Trump Administration and staffers seem generally aligned with Caplan’s ideologies. They aren’t full AnCap advocates, but Bannon’s call for “deconstructing the administrative state” is as close as you can reasonably expect. The Trump Administration isn’t going to eliminate education subsidies but they would make moves in that direction. I’m disappointed that Caplan doesn’t find more common ground there.
Caplan said that Republican voters’ anti-immigration bias is greater than all other policy preferences combined. It similarly seems that Caplan’s immigration preference is also greater than all other policy preferences combined.
Joe
Nov 12 2018 at 10:27am
You are forgetting the over 200% increase in civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria in 2017 compared to 2016, the tariffs, the increased farm subsidies, the support for Saudi Arabia and their genocide in Yemen, the large military spending increase, the removal of restrictions on providing local law enforcement with military equipment, the support for civil asset forfeiture, and may other anti-libertarian policies and views.
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