I almost a little bit agree with something Kaus wrote.

One of the best ways we Americans can help our middle class and manufacturing sectors is to help people in other countries get the freedom to unionize.

Because desperation should not count as a comparable advantage. Take that, Mickey.

Desperation is the default human condition. You have to pull your bootstraps to avoid it.

In a country where most people are poor, wages are low but they will rise as the economy grows. You can't magically get from A to B without doing what is necessary to get there.

It doesn't work that way. One look at Russia and its history tells us that. In fact as the economy grows and income and asset disparity increases, the RATE of growth stagnates (see the work on optimal GINI indices) - which leads the wealthy to hoard their resources and export their capital to countries with greater rates of growth. This in turn starves the local economy of resources and causes a downturn that in turn reduces the power of the poor.

This is EXACTLY the boom/bust cycle the USA was on until the early 1900s. It was only with the advent of a redistributive tax policy (70% top rate during the biggest econmic expansion of the time) that stability and middle class growth came to the USA.

So it isn't a case of "bootstraps". It is a case of national policy.

In the early 1900's there was also the anti-trust law.

I'm guessing that such redistributive policies may be part of the solution, but that there are also many other necessary prerequisites, like reasonable rates of corruption, crime, etc. As well as a strong work ethic among the public, and public morality. So you need a critical mass of moral, hard-working people to form the backbone of society. Too many criminals and freeloaders and it won't work.

Culture matters.

If criminality is part of the mexican culture, why then do undocumented migratants run about 1/3 of the criminality rate that US Citizens do? (1.7% vs 4%)

Criminality is part of every culture. I'm not suggesting that criminality is a bigger part of mexican culture, because I simply don't know. I have heard news reports that there is a lot of police corruption in Mexico. Leaving aside the fact that 100% of "undocumented migrants" are criminals, by definition, I suspect that the 1.7% and 4.0% rates that you refer to are conviction rates. It is impossible to know true rates of "criminality" because not every crime is discovered or criminal caught. A higher conviction rate in one country than another might just indicate more effective policing.

I concede that some amount of redistribution is necessary, but you need a productive economy to have goods to redistribute in the first place.

Nice duck and weave on the "I'm not suggestiong that criminality is a bigger part of mexican culture".

Bullshit, of course you are. And the circular definition of all undocumenteds as criminal because they are undocumented is silly and you well know it.

Similarly your arguement about the "true rates of criminality" are bogus too. Unless you believe that Law Enforcement Officers look the other way WRT crimes involving meztiso three times as often as they do with US Citizens (btw how does a LEO tell the difference between a US Citizen meztiso and a non-citizen?) Are there unindicted, undetected crimes? Sure. But for your argument to have any legs, you would have to make the claim that undocumented residents are better than the average US Citizen criminal in hiding their criminality. And that just doesn't hold any logical water at all.

So that leaves you with police corruption in Mexico based on domestic news reports. IOW you don't know the actual stats. You don't know the actual data, and you don't know the other factors involved. But from this you conclude things about "mexican culture". And that's not bigotted,... uhuh..