TimesWatch, With A KausWatch Bonus

The NY Times assesses the fifty year War on Poverty, so we are commencing an immediate KausWatch for aneurysms and coronaries. Among the laugh lines from the Times we especially liked this (my emphasis):

The more important driver of the still-high poverty rate, researchers said, is the poor state of the labor market for low-wage workers and spiraling inequality. Over the last 30 years, growth has generally failed to translate into income gains for workers — even as the American labor force has become better educated and more skilled. About 40 percent of low-wage workers have attended or completed college, and 80 percent have completed high school.

Economists remain sharply divided on the reasons, with technological change, globalization, the decline of labor unions and the falling value of the minimum wage often cited as major factors. But with real incomes for a vast number of middle-class and low-wage workers in decline, safety-net programs have become more instrumental in keeping families’ heads above water.

No one the Times spoke to suggested that immigration impacts the incomes of low-wage workers? Lower the Cone of Silence!

Maybe the Times writers could chat with Paul Krugman, who touched this progressive Third Rail back in 2006. From his blog:

Immigration is an intensely painful topic for a liberal like myself, because it places basic principles in conflict. Should migration from Mexico to the United States be celebrated, because it helps very poor people find a better life? Or should it be condemned, because it drives down the wages of working Americans and threatens to undermine the welfare state? I suspect that my March 27 column will anger people on all sides; I wish the economic research on immigration were more favorable than it is.

Well, that is why we had a liberal take-over of academia; eventually, they will figure out how to produce the "right" answer. While we wait:

My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand: we’re talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages. Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz have to go through a lot of number-crunching to turn that general proposition into specific estimates of the wage impact, but the general point seems impossible to deny.

Impossible to deny but easy to ignore!

Krugman lauds Borjas, so let's take this from his current work:

• Although the net benefits to natives from illegal immigrants are small, there is a sizable redistribution effect. Illegal immigration reduces the wage of native workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion a year, and generates a gain for businesses and other users of immigrants of $107 to $128 billion.
  
  
• The above estimates are generated by the presence of additional workers in the labor market, not by the legal status of those workers.

That doesn't even factor in low-wage legal immigrants. So more broadly:

Even though the overall net impact on natives is small, this does not mean that the wage losses suffered by some natives or the income gains accruing to other natives are not substantial. Some groups of workers face a great deal of competition from immigrants. These workers are primarily, but by no means exclusively, at the bottom end of the skill distribution, doing low-wage jobs that require modest levels of education. Such workers make up a significant share of the nation’s working poor. The biggest winners from immigration are owners of businesses that employ a lot of immigrant labor and other users of immigrant labor. The other big winners are the immigrants themselves.

The low-skilled workers, whether native, legal, or illegal, earn less; the bosses take him more. Why would the Times want to dwell on that?

ANEURYSM WATCH: This will be the one that kills Mickey:

In some cases, government programs have helped fewer families because of program changes and budget cuts, researchers said. For instance, the 1996 Clinton-era welfare overhaul drastically cut the cash assistance available to needy families, often ones headed by single mothers.

“As of 1996, we expected single mothers to go to work,” Professor Ziliak said. “But if they’re shelling out most of their weekly pay in the form of child care, they can’t make sense of doing it.”

That would be especially interesting if the Times could explain why the serious, economist-adjusted measure of poverty hit its '90's peak in 1994 at around 21% and has bounced around 15% for the last decade.

 

 

Comments

[Frau Armbanduhr]

Keep the aneurysm one. I'll take the Kauswatch.

[matt]

Natives? Are we in some Colonial era time warp?

The issue is not immigration and wages. It is one of people carrying their weight in our society and of government incompetence, waste and fraud.

[Old Lurker]

It always amazes me that these "fifty year lookbacks" forget to mention the doubling-tripling of the share of GDP taken by government, how that spending provides more fish than the teaching of fishing, the exponential increase in public debt and the resulting replacement of liberty with serfdom, ...nor do they ever wonder if that has caused some of this?

[Danube on iPad]

It's hopeless.

[Ignatz]

OL,
When your work product is ideological propaganda intended not only to fool the fools but also to reinforce ones own world view we should be amazed only if reality ever actually pierces their corporatist veil.

[Account Deleted]

"About 40 percent of low-wage workers have attended or completed college, and 80 percent have completed high school."

OL,

Check out the graph from the link in that sentence in TM's post. The likelihood of being poor after putting on a serf collar in order to get a moron credential increased 67% between 1979 and 2011. It increased 71% for those who donned the serf collar but failed to pick up the moron credential and it decreased by 50% for those rejecting servitude to educrats by leaving high school prior to completing indoctrination.

Federal intervention in education has achieved rather remarkable results. The comparative which comes to mind is Yersinia pestis.

[MarkO]

For ye have the poor always with you . . ..
Matthew 26.11

[Frau Armbanduhr]

Yes, MarkO, and the Dems want the government to take care of them because the government is more efficient and caring.
/s

[Old Lurker]

Rick, I did and it is telling.

I often reflect on the change in quality of life that takes a guy who might have had a happy productive but "blue collar" life, sends him instead to a junk school for his credentials and debt, then expects him to find happiness in the dregs of some "white collar" machine for which he is still not competent.

The guy who built the staircase in my Nantucket house became a friend and we often talked about this. He had learned his skills at the knees of an old fashioned cabinet maker and has spent his career studying and perfecting his considerable talent. My builder told me we would be lucky to get him, he worked only for builders and clients he liked, he worked at only one speed, he always worked alone, and at 4pm each day he would be in his kayak in some salt marsh on the island. He spent four months on my staircase then moved on to the next job. $75 per hour in cash, year in, year out. No debt. Really really nice tools.

Reads more books than Daddy and me combined.

One very happy guy.

[Carol Herman]

Poor people don't read the NY Times.

And, what really threw them out of business are computers. People don't wait for Sunday's edition to come out, to read the Want Ads.

And, liberals played with this, too. Because one the want ads were divided among jobs for men. And, jobs for women. But Affirmative Action forced them to be combined. Until they died.

Ditto for lost dogs. And, apartments for rent.

The Times also didn't attract "subway riders." People with factory jobs in and around Manhattan. (Now these factories are lofts. Good investments if you bought in early.)

How far back do you have to go to know a president of the United States had the NY Times, and the Washington Post, spread out to be read over a cup of coffee, at breakfast?

Today? Big-time reading for hedge-fund managers. And, none of them got caught. Or are serving any penalties.

Besides, in today's market,you hire PR firms. You mean you didn't know how the saudi's get such good press?

[JIB]

Boortz once gave a pretty detailed presentation of what poverty can accomplish in America based on results of the latest Census.

I'd love to find it but it was eye-popping how many families living below the poverty level had washers, dryers, plasma TV, cars, more than one bathroom, etc. He also demonstated how a person with extreme wealth can get classified from the census results as living in poverty.

I have seen extreme poverty and it is heart-wrenching but it is not at the levels the liberal academics and media/political hand-wringers want it to be.

[Jane-Rebel Alliance1]

I saw an interview a few years ago of a woman in her 40's in New Orleans who was complaining that her flat screen TV wasn't big enough and she needed more benefits. During the course of the interview she was asked if she had ever held a job. She said she had, for one year, and "it was the worst year of my life".

I almost fainted.

[Account Deleted]

OL,

Look on the bright side. A debt serf barrista enslaved in Pitzer Penury will continue to receive real education long after credentialing. At some point he may even come to realize the depth and breadth of the lies told by the professors who reap the reward for maintaining ignorance.

[jimmyk]

Since we've been discussing weather, one NYC forecast for tomorrow I saw had a high of 50 and a low of 8.

Someone told me DeBlasio had ordered that Brooklyn streets be cleared before Manhattan's on Friday after the snowstorm. There might be a reasonable basis for such a decision, but I doubt BDB had one. Just a first chance to show how he'll stick it to the "rich," and play politics with public safety.

[Stephanie lots of surprises in the BCS bowls]

Jane, if you were to remove her benefits, move her into a brand new furnished apartment with smart technology and a 70 inch tv in 3 months the apartment would have holes in the walls, the floors would be ruined, the tv would be broken and the smart technology would not work.

One thing welfare payments do, is to make many of these folks feels as if they "bought" it and own it and they then treat their things better.

Make her work for her payments and you will find that she will suddenly discover she doesn't need or want a smart house and a 32 inch tv is just fine.

The more invested you are in the source of the largess, the more discerning you get about allocation of its resources.

[dejake]

Recently spotted at Whole Foods in Del Mar.

[JIB]

Another Top Ten we didn't make: Top 10 Diplomatic Success Stories in 2013.

You can bet Old Glory is on top tomorrow: Top 10 Diplomatic Failures of 2013.

"If don't go to school and study hard, you will end up in the Obama Regime as the Secretary of State".

[Danube on iPad]

"DeBlasio had ordered that Brooklyn streets be cleared before Manhattan's on Friday after the snowstorm"

The very first chickens come home to roost among the Manhattanites who voted for this fool.

[Eric Ivers]

Rick, thanks for your input at JOM. I had to google Yersinia pestis, but then got a good chuckle when I did

[narciso]

A correction to 'Abbott' Kirkpatrick;

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-benghazi-whitewash-new-york-times.html

[JIB]

Wait until de Blasio sics the Sanitation Dept. on the Upper East Side. Those toffs have never smelled so bad.

[NKonIPad]

I can personally attest that Arthur and Hughes avenues between 188th street and Fordham Rd were not plowed.

[NKonIPad]

Krugman supports illegal immigration even though it s an empirical loser for the US economy? But... But... They become Dem voters!! End of Krugman paradox.

[jimmyk]

Dat's Da Bronx, idn't it, NK? Must not have been BDB territory, too gentrified.

[clarice]

JiB, I recall Heritage did that study on what poor people in America owned

[Eric in Boise]

Front page story in today's Idaho Statesman:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2014/01/05/2957838/stuck-in-the-medicaid-gap.html

These gosh darned Rethuglicans in this red state refused to expand Medicaid, so it's all their fault.

Strangely absent is an observation about what someone relocating out of state for more handouts says about government programs and dependency.

[JIB]

On Topic: 20 Things The Rich do Every Day

Juxtaposed against what th poor do every day. From Dave Ramsey.

[JIB]

Here's a Breitbart article on what the poor in America own

Wonder how many own a Toyota with a Pitzer College bumper sticker?

[Kathy Kattenburg]

"No one the Times spoke to suggested that immigration impacts the incomes of low-wage workers?"

No, that's because it doesn't. Just because you're convinced something is true doesn't mean it's true. There has to be actual evidence for it.

[Ignatz]

There is a great deal of "actual" evidence, some of it cited by Mr Krugman himself and linked by TM.

I realize it is always easier for a leftist to deny reality than refute it but give it a shot, just once.

[MarkO]

Now, this is rich.

"There has to be actual evidence for it."

[MarkO]

dejake,

Is that pronounced "pisser?"

[peter]

speaking from personal observations, since I drove up to Connecticut last Friday night, Northern Blvd. in Queens was plowed better than in Nassau County.

[trouble with a Curveball.]

Rich Pharisees and Sadds giving the only thing they can spare; advice.

It's the parable of the Good Samaritan circa 2014. Revisionism is not dead, after all.

[Danube on iPad]

But theoretical mofeling will suffice where Gaia is concerned. The need for actual evidence evaporates like the Antarctic ice.

[Prussic Acid]

Kauswatch sounds like.....

Clausewitz.

[Jim Miller]

Tom - Thanks much for this post.

I had done a post three days ago on the conflict between reducing national, or international, inequality. (If you think the first is more important, you will try to keep poor immigrants, legal, or illegal, out of the United States. If you think the second is more important, you will encourage them to come.)

But I hadn't bothered to look for numbers, or even an authority, though I recalled that Krugman had been -- some would say, uncharacteristically -- honest on this subject.

(I have come to one tentative conclusion about this subject: We should stop selling permits to rich folks who want to live here. If they really want to invest here, they can mostly do so by just sending their money.)

[Gmax]

Mickey Kaus Democrat approx. 16 minutes ago:

NYT-96 welfare reform "drastically cut the cash assistance available 2 needy families?" That's not even close 2 right http://nyti.ms/1ho2Aum

TM can you also predict when double zero will come up on the roulette wheel? We could both make some cash if you can...

[lyle]

It should noted that the Idaho Statesman is a McClatchey rag and suitable for kindling, fishwrap, and puppy training. Nothing more.

Oh, and a John F'ing Kerry sighting in Sun Valley last week. Looked like death warmed over. Y'know, his normal mien. The mien of loser pushed way ahead of his paltry talents and by the money of dead men. Also, I'd like to think treason weighs on even a craven asshole over time.

[soul patcher]

"weighs on even a craven asshole over time."

The good die young. How old is Cheney?

[MaryD]

lyle, I used to live a couple of blocks from Kerry on Beacon Hill in Boston. He would occasionally venture down to Charles Street, the shopping district from Louisburg Square, where one of Tee-ray-za's holding companies had bought them a manse. Point is, he always looks like death warmed over. To borrow a locution from Dennis Miller, he could be the lighting double for Ichabod Crane (after the encounter with the HH).

[lyle]

Even taking into consideration of Cheney's ticker, he could still kick your pathetic ass.

[Soul Patcher]

" he could still kick your pathetic ass."

By 'pathetic' I assume you mean he could kick my ass if were an irradiated cancer victim with zero white blood cell count.

Other than that, you couldn't kick my ass with a backhoe and both my hands hog-tied.

[narciso]

Because of people like you, Howie:

http://therightscoop.com/howard-kurtz-asks-why-do-americans-hate-the-media/

[Jane-Rebel Alliance1]

I think Kerry looks worse than usual with that new Jay Leno chin. I keep expecting the swelling to go down but it doesn't.

It occurred to me a few minutes ago that we have made it through the first year of the king's final reign (I hope)and we start the 2nd with his wife leaving him, the entire country not trusting him, and the world thinking he's a wus. I don't know whether to cry or celebrate.

[MaryD]

"I don't know whether to cry or celebrate."

Tough Call, Jane. It's great to see so many formerly deluded people turning on him, but the havoc he is wreaking in the country will take decades to repair, if repair is possible.

I've said this before, but quite frankly, I'm glad I'm old and got to see "the best of it" in my younger days. Sad.

[Marlene]

Jane @5:49..."his wife leaving him." Do you mean Michelle's extended vacation? The excuse is she's staying there with friends for her birthday. Are we supposed to believe that? Something is going on.

[Jim Rhoads f/k/a vnjagvet]

When I have spent my birthday "with friends" over the past 50 or so years, my fiancé/wife has always been included. Is this the new abnormal?

[Porchlight]

No one the Times spoke to suggested that immigration impacts the incomes of low-wage workers? Lower the Cone of Silence!

Women entering the work force in enormous numbers over the last 30 years has just a tad to do with it as well. The labor force essentially doubled in the mid-to-late 20th century. Doesn't do a lot for the average wage.

[lyle]

Ooh. Internet tough guy. Pathetic.

[narciso]

I saw the RightScoop, with Romney accepting the apology, but it rubs me the wrong way, there is no way that Harris Perry, like By Bashir, and Baldwin before them, did not intentionally attempt to injure,

they can call Klansman, Nazis, terrorists, other epithets, and we're supposed to take it, with aplomb, why is that again?

[Jane-Rebel Alliance1]

I've said this before, but quite frankly, I'm glad I'm old and got to see "the best of it" in my younger days. Sad.

I can't tell you how many times I've said that.

I read something somewhere (a place like National Enquirer) that says Michelle is completely fed up, has promised not to leave while they are in the WH (I wonder why) but she's had it. I choose to believe it.

[Beaver Man Gus]

" Internet tough guy.."

Naw. Just than your weak mind comprehends.

[narciso]

Well you signed up for the never pay insurance;

http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/11/05/nyt-obama-exempts-obamacare-fraud-prosecutions

[[email protected]]

Porchlight-

Glad to see you have thawed out. Hope your Christmas and New Years went well.

Women entering the workforce held wages down in the 50's-70's, but immigration and has been the issue from the 70's to today. Which is odd that now income inequality, the minimum wage, and another amnesty are going to be the train wreck in 2014.

[[email protected]]

suppose I should have read the article closely. oops.

[lyle]

You're a pustule whoever you are with the changing names.

[One blackened eye = months of foster care X four children.]

I know someone whose passion against Workfare is fueled by an incident that happened to her children as they were getting ready for school, as she worked minimum wage as a Nurse's Aide. Routinely, the children helped each other get to school, which was close by.

[Porchlight]

Hi Rich! Yes, we had lots of fun in cold MN. Now we are back in "cold" TX.