Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 28, 2021 Samuel Moyn, co-author of this article, on the reactionary history of the Supreme Court and how to democratize it • Deepak Bhargava, one of the editors of Immigration Matters, on immigration policy, historical, current, and future
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 18, 2018 Leandros Fischer on German politics, with an emphasis on refugees (Jacobin page here) • Samuel Moyn, author of this article, on why the Supreme Court sucks and what can be done about it
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: February 2, 2017 Mae Ngai and Avi Chomsky(separately) on Trump’s immigration decree • Joel Whitney, author of Finks, on the CIA, the cultural Cold War, and particularly the Paris Review
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archives: February 20, 2014 Richard Walker, co-author with Suresh Lodha of The Atlas of California, on the Golden State’s physical and social geography, history, economy, ecology
Immigration: more evidence in its favor
I reviewed a lot of the studies of the economic effects of immigration in LBO several years ago: Economics of immigration. Bottom line: on balance, it’s quite good. Not popular these days, so it’s more important than ever to make the point. Just in, a new study from the San Francisco Fed. Quoting from the abstract: Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants… Read More
Recessions & politics (cont.)
Hans Peter Grüner has posted the paper that he and Markus Brückner wrote about the electoral effects of economic recessions to his website: here. It makes eminent psychological sense that a crisis might lead people toward conservative responses—a feeling of impending scarcity encourages selfishness, not generosity. It’s been ages since I read Erik Erikson, but as I recall the identity crisis, it leads the sufferer back to remembered moments of security and happiness, not toward an uncertain transformative future. That helps explain why immigrants are so often the target in an economic crisis:… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 