Illegal Immigration discussion

[Jonas!]

What is there to understand?  I don't have a number to give you, and choose not to make a number up.  I am stating we need more immigration. 

There is a lot to understand. Clearly we don't need more than a quarter
million per month in illegal immigrants.

"Border Patrol officers have encountered record numbers of migrants trying to
cross the southern border during the past year, with 239,416 recorded last
month and 235,478 the month before that.₁"




1. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/migrant-encounters-southern-border-record-may

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas! 

[Lon]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

you are making a joke again?

[Jonas!]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

you are making a joke again?

I say let's put them to work!   We have a 'train to nowhere' here in California that needs to be worked on.
In the old days the Chinese built our railroads, we are pretty incapable nowadays so let these illegals get the work done for us.  Why waste our limited resources sending workers away when we can have them work and improve, the country in some way! 
Jonas!

[WestCoast]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

you are making a joke again?

I used to think of Jonas as an old time Berkley liberal, especially when he was Father Time at that other place. I imagined him at protests wearing a Che Guevara shirt demanding Open Borders and immediate US citizenship for any people crossing the southern border. Perhaps going out into the desert near the southern border and leaving packets of food, water and maps to the nearest US border station and/or nearest US town.

When I heard he owned a business I thought he'd be employing illegals and paying them at least $US25/hour in cash with full medical, dental, vision coverage. Now he's told me not only doesn't he employ illegals, he doesn't even get full medical.

If this is true Jonas might not even qualify as a California liberal let alone an old time Berkley liberal. Next thing Jonas will say is he not only voted for Ronald Reagan for California governor and for president but he worked as a volunteer on Reagan's campaigns. 

[Jonas!]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

you are making a joke again?

I used to think of Jonas as an old time Berkley liberal, especially when he was Father Time at that other place. I imagined him at protests wearing a Che Guevara shirt demanding Open Borders and immediate US citizenship for any people crossing the southern border. Perhaps going out into the desert near the southern border and leaving packets of food, water and maps to the nearest US border station and/or nearest US town.

When I heard he owned a business I thought he'd be employing illegals and paying them at least $US25/hour in cash with full medical, dental, vision coverage. Now he's told me not only doesn't he employ illegals, he doesn't even get full medical.

If this is true Jonas might not even qualify as a California liberal let alone an old time Berkley liberal. Next thing Jonas will say is he not only voted for Ronald Reagan for California governor and for president but he worked as a volunteer on Reagan's campaigns.

I'm Jonas!  Who is fecal-time? and what other place?   

We need labor!  We have willing laborer's begging to work!  Perfect...except we use our limited labor &resources to shuttle them back without using their muscle at all.

Jonas! 

[Lon]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

you are making a joke again?

I say let's put them to work!   We have a 'train to nowhere' here in California that needs to be worked on.
In the old days the Chinese built our railroads, we are pretty incapable nowadays so let these illegals get the work done for us.  Why waste our limited resources sending workers away when we can have them work and improve, the country in some way! 
Jonas!

oh good, I thought you were serious about the canal from Mississippi to the west.
but I still do not agree with illegals coming into America

[dorbradavid]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

"Nutso" and "batshit" (from Perun) labor comments  aside. I'm morbidly interested in the idea of a pipeline from a western tributary of the Missouri to an eastern tributary of the Colorado. 

[Jonas!]

All the captured ones can give us payback before deportation by working 30 days labor digging us a water way from the Mississippi river to our drying lakes here in the west. 

Jonas!

"Nutso" and "batshit" (from Perun) labor comments  aside. I'm morbidly interested in the idea of a pipeline from a western tributary of the Missouri to an eastern tributary of the Colorado. 

I'm not sure what is really feasible, but I would think the Feds have been studying ideas for a while now and show know...If his were China they probably would have already had projects done.  ....
I don't know if we have the ability to get grand infrastructure projects like this done nowadays. 

Jonas! 

[andrewfi]

A few years ago, I recall reading an article about GDP and how it related to the 'real economy'. The article was referring to Russia and came following one of the famous and fatuous comments by a western leader about the size of the Russian economy.

The piece gave me pause for thought. I know and understand that GDP or even GDP at PPP are poor measures of the size of an economy.

In essence, the writer was asking the question: how can Russia implement so many vast infrastructure and other physical projects if the economy is as small as it is claimed to be? As I recall, the author talked about the Kerch bridge project, Russian space programs, military redevelopment, the huge road-building projects, the urban renewal and regeneration projects taking place across the country and others that I cannot recall.

On the converse, we have the United States as an exemplar of a nation and economy that cannot manage infrastructure projects, cannot build high-speed railways, cannot maintain its roads and bridges, has problems maintaining and growing its military infrastructure, and must import most of what it needs other than raw materials and much of its energy.

While it is becoming clear that the 'real economy' that is the manufacture of physical goods is much more important than many economists and politicians had thought, how do we measure it?

For example, I cannot get my head around the scale of work that Russia is implementing. I could not understand where the money was coming from. How do we measure it?

GDP was, IMHO, a workable measure decades ago when most economies were dominated by manufacturing and extraction. It is much less useful in a world of FIRE economies where GDP is created by rentier operations, where little or nothing is made, where wealth can be created by buying a house and flipping the same house at an inflated price.

The United States 'should' be able to carry out large-scale infrastructure investments - without using the slave labour of illegal immigrants - but even the slave labour mode does not seem to be possible.

[Jonas!]

GDP was, IMHO, a workable measure decades ago when most economies were dominated by manufacturing and extraction. It is much less useful in a world of FIRE economies where GDP is created by rentier operations, where little or nothing is made, where wealth can be created by buying a house and flipping the same house at an inflated price.

The United States 'should' be able to carry out large-scale infrastructure investments - without using the slave labour of illegal immigrants - but even the slave labour mode does not seem to be possible.

Well said!

We don't have the born and bred workforce to get much done.  We don't have enough young people, and we use a portion of the physically fit ones for our bloated military. 

Right on about the GDP, currently it is a joke of a way to measure an economy.   As you stated with flipping example.   $400 dollar textbooks that might cost 10 bucks in China.   Tons of similar examples.  Yet we do like to shoot ourselves in the foot. 

Jonas!