My weekly reading for June 2, 2024

Here are some highlights of my reading for this week.

by Steven Calabresi, RodeJune 1, 2024.

Extract:

President Donald Trump was convicted yesterday of allegedly altering business records to conceal his alleged payment of money to porn star Stormy Daniels in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. But altering corporate documents is a crime under New York State law only if it is done to conceal the violation of another law. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that the documents were allegedly improperly altered to conceal a monetary contribution that violated federal campaign finance laws or to win the 2016 election by defrauding voters of information they were entitled to . Neither argument passes First Amendment scrutiny.

by Ilya Somin, The unpopulistMay 28, 2024.

Sanctuary laws are often compared to “nullification” – the idea that states can nullify federal laws in their territories. Nullification, of course, has a terrible reputation because of its association with the defense of slavery and (later) segregation in the Southern states. But there is an important distinction between sanctuary laws and destruction.

Nullificationists argue that the federal laws in question are completely null and void, and that states have the right to actively obstruct their enforcement in their territories. Sanctuary jurisdictions, on the other hand, do not necessarily claim that the laws in question are void. They merely deny them assistance from state and local governments, especially law enforcement agencies. For example, they refuse to help enforce relevant laws themselves, or to provide information to federal law enforcement agencies engaged in enforcement efforts. But the FBI remains free to attempt to enforce these laws, using only their own resources and personnel.

by Bryan Caplan, Bet on itMay 27, 2024.

Extract:

I believe that the USall the poor of the world”? It depends on the time horizon. Poland’s population grew by 6% in just a few weeks it was fine. The US population grew by 1339% between 1800 and 1900, and that was fine too. There is no reason why the modern American population couldn’t grow as fast or faster. From 330 million today to 1 billion tomorrow would be disastrous, but from 330 million today to 1 billion in 50 years is absolutely feasible. And thanks diaspora dynamicsthe latter scenario is empirically relevant.

Unless, I freely admit, immigrants and their descendants remain on welfare until the end of time. Fortunately, this is not what normally happens under the status quo. And the countries closest to open borders – the Gulf monarchies and Singapore – do pretty much the opposite, for obvious reasons: both geniuses and janitors are worth welcoming, but only as long as they pull their own weight lay.

DRH note:

Given Bryan’s statement in the last sentence of the first paragraph above, I don’t understand why he advocates open borders. If the empirically relevant fact is a threefold increase in fifty years, why not argue for limiting immigration to 7 to 8 million per year? Why 7 to 8 million instead of what the simple theory would show, which is about 13 million? [670 million divided by 50 = 13 million.] Because immigrants have children. And if I’m too optimistic about the number of children, that’s fine. For example, we would reach 800 million inhabitants instead of 1 billion.

Let’s take my lower limit of 7 million. If the government were to price that at $50,000 per immigrant, it would generate $350 billion per year. If it doesn’t waste that money on other spending (admittedly a big “if”), then it would be close enough to future deficits that the federal debt as a percentage of GDP would actually remain stable or decline slightly. Would there be seven million buyers of $50,000 each? Absolute. If anyone wants to see it, I will write a special blog post on this topic.