Oh Lord! Again with this ivory towered theorizing without looking at the evidence of real life. Take this guff about lactose intolerance, for example? I grew up in a 90% black community, where all the locals kept cows and raised their infants on cow's milk and still do. We have had a higher than 90% literacy rate, tertiary level education incidence rivaling the USA, better infant mortality rate and life expectancy than the USA, but a lower IQ score than one would expect for such an outwardly successful community. What does this prove? Well first there are the social sciences, which some natural scientists still call, pseudo-sciences, and then there's truth, and the truth is that the Watusi tribe in AFRICA would be amazed to hear all this guff about lactose intolerance. I can tell you this I am bothered more now with intestinal gas than I did as a boy when my mother was sending me down the road to purchase our daily ration of fresh cow's milk. What my opening paragraph indicates is not anecdotal but part of the history of a modern nation. It suggests that the correlation between IQ scores and national performance is specious, or at leas forced at best.

Writing on "The Bigger Bell Curve," Intelligence, National Achievement, and the Global Economy, Rushton acknowledges that: “Some of the countries with a higher per capita income than would be predicted from their average IQs are Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, and the U.S. Except for Qatar, South Africa, and Barbados, all of these are technologically highly developed market, (and) … Some of the countries with lower per capita income than would be predicted from their average IQ: Bulgaria, China, Hungary, Iraq, South Korea, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Thailand, and Uruguay.”

This is a significant discrepancy out of only 245 countries registered with the UN. What it suggests is that the link between IQ scores and national performance is bogus that Rushton and ilk are confusing coincidence with causation. This can easily happen when the analyst is examining a slice of life, things as they are at a relative moment in time, and even a century is a moment in the life of a nation. It’s like trying to beat the stock market by playing the news in the morning paper; technically, using horizontal data to make longitudinal projections. Any statistician will tell you that it can be done but only in cases where you have ALL the variables in hand.

Here’s Rushton’s weak attempt to explain away the correlative discrepancy in the case of Barbados, which is not “technologically highly developed.” Even the latter claim is debatable since technology these days is often carried out right here at the keyboard. The island has it’s share of home-grown computer analysts, courtesy of UWI, (Cave Hill, campus.), as my nephew who runs his own computer company will attest. His brother is an architect, that’s technology too.

“Barbados's above average wealth comes from its well-established tourist industry and financial services, which are owned, controlled and managed by American and European countries,” claims Rushton. This, first hand, is evidence of the kind of academics Rushton and his sort are able to get published, without proper peer review, or disclaimers by their publishers who ‘get off’ financially on the controversy. Social sciences are often dismissed as pseudo-sciences because of the difficulty of establishing laboratory controlled conditions, and Rushton’s science explains why the charge is so often renewed, because he seems to be exploiting this lack of a control factor to get away with shoddy science.

His failure to mention these salient factors in Barbados’ success, most of which explain, the interest foreign investors have in the tiny state, is a case in point.

(a) Barbados has had a literacy rate above 90% since the middle of the last century.

(b) Barbados became self-ruled in 1966, the first thing the new prime minister did was to tell the banks they could not do business there if they continued to discriminate against black borrowers as they had been doing in the past. This action alone resulted in an economic boom from which, ironically, the 10% white business owners benefited no less than did the rest of the population.

(c) Barbados has superior longevity and infant mortality rates to the USA, goes to quality of life, and health services. Health services are free, but the wealthy are free to pay for upgrades.

(d) Education in Barbados is free for all citizens from Kindergarten to PhD level studies courtesy of the government, so its incidence of tertiary education is on a par with that of the developed nations.

(e) Crime rates are lower than the USA.

(f) The population is 90% descendants of African slaves, as is the Prime Minister, and the entire legislature.

(g) A sizable portion of the country’s Gross National Product is in the form of remittances from citizens overseas, educated free at home, courtesy of the brain drain.

(h) Anecdotally, perhaps, the country has also produced the greatest cricketer the world has ever seen and the current reigning checker champion of the world.

(i) Even economists often miss the fact that in spite of the glamour of big corporations the greatest portion the GDP of most developed nations, including the USA, and black run Barbados, comes from small businesses.

(j) The country has been following for several years now a developmental model pioneered by Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewis, (a black West Indian). (This model has been faithfully adopted by the group of small Asian countries called “The Asian Tigers” by economists, and some say is being adopted in modified fashion by their giant neighbor, the Asian Dragon of China. America beware, study and adapt, or else.)

“Barbados' above average wealth comes from its well-established tourist industry and financial services, which are owned, controlled and managed by American and European countries,” (Rushton). How valid does Ruston’s facile explanation seem in the face of the above facts now? Chicken and egg again. So Barbados itself, though tiny has been described as a model and a beacon of hope for black led predominantly black nations worldwide. Rushton meanwhile uses similar gymnastics to explain away the fact that other nations with higher IQ mean scores than USA have not fared as well. Well pick a theory and stick with it, win or lose, you stand to make a lot of money because there’s always a market for porn, because that’s what this abuse of perhaps valid data amounts to, intellectual self-abuse.

Generalizing from the case of Barbados which I use as a model to deny Watson and Rushton's claims I feel I must add:

• Economists refer to an economic phenomenon they call critical mass (density) required for economic take off. The high density of population on the island is comparable to that of "The Asian Tigers" such as Taiwan etc.. The close interactions possible between an educated populace with access to current information may have more to do with wealth development and consequent than the doubtful measurements and pompous conclusions of Rushton and his ilk. This critical mass, (density), is not attainable in nutrient poor equatorial forest lands.
• The uspsurge of KKK/Nazi type violence such as reported in today's press in NYC may be sympotmatic or even encouraged, or both, by their irresponsible generalizations, OR, there may be a common social causative phenomenon and
• I may be doing as they have done and confusing causation with coincidence, Just as a doctor may confuse the headache as causing the stiff neck whilst ignoring the common cause of which they are both symptoms, the meningiococcus bacteria.

Nice work and impressive writing.

I often wonder why scientists make such absurd claims from sketchy data using improper methods, and I wonder even more why people gobble it up. Your metaphor gives me a new insight into both phenomena.

Fitzpatrick:

Nice work and impressive writing.

I often wonder why scientists make such absurd claims from sketchy data using improper methods, and I wonder even more why people gobble it up. Your metaphor gives me a new insight into both phenomena.

"[s]cientists" as it were, in quotes, wink wink etc. make such absurd claims because people gobble it up. People like to read what they believe even more than they like to believe what they read.

Yes, without waxing political, because of the times, what I was trying to suggest with my analogy of a meningitis patient who goes in to the doctor with a headache, and stiff neck, is that the doctor may decide that the stiff neck is causing the headache or vice versa and prescribe a muscle relaxant, so the patient goes home and dies.

The comparison is simply, the ever present white bigots are suddenly getting a big response preaching white superiority and suggesting that blacks are a hopeless case so spending government money to make them more productive is a waste of tax-payers money.

Similarly, black leaders who play the race card are suddenly getting a big response suggesting that "whitey" is moving the goal posts, and that blacks in general have to go out and fight for their rights as a group to get a fair shake.

Pundits can view these dangerous interactions and blame the demagogues on both sides according to their personal preferences and loyalties. The truth is that there is no causation between the groups, neither demagogue is responsible for his sudden popularity, and neither demagogue is the cause of the new level of friction between the groups. The demagogues have been always there. This is an example of coincidence from a common cause. This doesn't make the danger of an explosion between the groups any less, but that's the result not the cause.

I personally believe that the recent upsurge of race baiting is the result of social tensions caused by a widening gap between rich and poor. That is the common cause that is causing more and more people to begin acting out their frustrations. A growing feeling of hopelessnes and inadequacy caused by a growing threat of imminent poverty, or loss of wealth. "It was the best of times it was the worst of times," writes Charles Dickens, in his "Tale of Two Cities." That was before the French Revolution.

Politicians need to address this root cause or the unrest of the 60's will begin to build again.

Re: "Politicians need to address this root cause or the unrest of the 60's will begin to build again."

And how should they do that?

Social tension may seem to be between rich and poor, but it is really between smart and less smart, regardless of color. It didn't used to be like that before French Revolution, but it is so now in America.

What should the right side of the curve do that they don't do already? And don't forget that when the extreme right side gives too much to the left side, the middle and the middle-right side get angry at the "liberals." We need good ideas. Do you have one?

Your assumptions are simplistic. “Social tension may seem to be between rich and poor, but it is really between smart and less smart, regardless of color.” Yes, but only because smart is not smart enough to do all that is needed to keep the economic environment healthy. If a government takes care of only the suppliers, then bogus goods get marketed whilst consumer confidence (demand) goes down. I hope I have started you thinking that it also might make good sense to take simple measures that protect the consumer thereby increasing his buying power.

The less smart are also the greatest resource any nation can have, the manpower, the sheep that can either be scattered by the wolf, or tended by the shepherd. Now tell me who gets the most meat, and wool, and cash, and peace, the wolf or the shepherd? As Italians integrated into the society many who followed the way of the organized street criminals went legit with their operations, thank God. However, many businesses still operate like lone (loan?) wolf predators. That’s the slash and burn attitude that’s presently crippling the housing industry, the way of the street, get in and get out, how smart is that? That’s street smarts but not if you want to start an institution that will last.

"It didn't used to be like that before French Revolution, but it is so now in America."

I hate to do this to you in public, but I must. As an experienced teacher (formerly) I can tell from your sentence structure that you are not well read, but I can also tell from the tone of your post that you are an earnest and intelligent person, who will continue to learn fast.

I say all that not to be hurtful, but because it is so frustrating for me to notice that President Bush's lack of popularity is probably 60% or so due to his lack of communication skills. Read Churchill's addresses, one to the US Congress, "I believe there's a purpose being worked out here below," or "If we fail ...." and you get a sense of what a master craftsman can do to inspire a nation to make the right hard choices. Every day we see what a demagogue can do to persuade people to make the wrong choices, so why not the right ones.

Health, education, infrastructure, and care for the dysfunctional, are not charitable expenses that governments hand out to win votes. They are a necessary investment in the structure of society that protects the interests of rich and poor alike. “So how can handing my money to a stupid woman who doesn’t have enough sense to restrict the size of her family benefit me, a pundit like Jay Severen might ask?” Several ways, perhaps she spends the money with your sponsor who is thus more able to pay your fat salary. OR, the government doesn’t have to spend ten times more of your money to house her in jail for selling dope, and housing her seven fatherless kids as wards of the court. OR, if the government spent some of your money getting her an education then she would make a better mother and then she and all seven of her kids would become net buyers and tax payers, or at least come off the dole, you dolt! I could go on … but I think you are smart enough to get it.

In an earlier post, Intellectual Self-Abuse, I stated: “the first thing the new prime minister did was to tell the banks they could not do business there if they continued to discriminate against black borrowers as they had been doing in the past. This action alone resulted in an economic boom from which, ironically, the 10% white business owners benefited no less than did the rest of the population.” The truth is that the businesses which had previously persuaded the banks to discourage black competitors actually benefited MORE from the burgeoning of economic activity than did the rash of new entrepreneurs who also benefited.

In another post I mentioned an initiative which any US government with the will could easily put in place with zero cost. (When I retire in January I’ll have ample time to send detailed copies of my plan to every candidate still in the presidential race.) It will probably not be taken up because it is an adaptation of Hilary Clinton’s plan to give every newborn a $5000 check; a plan which was laughed to scorn.

· I suggested that rather than give every baby any money at all, that all the government had to do was to lend $7500 of funds earmarked for education or training to every baby at birth for eighteen years, after which the deadline for payments could be extended to as much as thirty years as long as the individual continued to study with passing grades.

· The money would be invested at any financial institution willing to guarantee a return of about 8%, to gross a return of about $25000, in 18 years. The money could not be used as collateral or borrowed against in any way, nevertheless guardians, or the student after the age of 18, would have control of the investment to seek the greatest guaranteed return, but only at approved institutions.

· Where people failed, for whatever reason, to take up the challenge the proceeds would be returned to the Social Security fund in 25 years, or earlier in case of death.

· Upon graduation, instead of having to repay a debt of more than $25,000 the student would be expected to repay the original amount adjusted for inflation. These repayments would go directly into the Social Security fund which should be needing the money desperately at that time. The only cost to the government would be the opportunity cost, and governments are not in the business of exploiting business opportunities anyway.

The inducement of having personal funds on tap for every individual for education and even for training would be a huge boost for the economy. Regulation of fees (but only those receiving these funds, in the interest of the free market) at approved institutions should take care of the inflationary tendency availability of such funds could engender.

Another fillip to the economy would come from the deflation of wage expenses across the board for skilled employees, wages presently inflated by these huge student loan bills new skilled employees have to meet. Even the housing industry would benefit since mortgage lenders would be able to remove that from their tally of a borrower’s debt burden. Of course the lending agencies could look forward to this steady and continuous flow of funds from the government for reinvestment at their usual rates, so this plan takes care of both the supply and the demand sides of the national economy as every good plan should.

I would also introduce this plan only after bringing the troops home from Iraq, so that the drop in government spending doesn't tend to fuel the usual post-war recession that tends to follow the end of all our wars. Of course this would only be about one tenth of the cost of the war, or less, and the money would ultimately be returned to government coffers,

Guaranteed health care for all is another plan that would have a net beneficial effect on the economy by deflating wage expenses. Again, ironically, those who protest loudest are those who stand to gain the most in the long run, the supply-siders.

So these are the kinds of initiatives, that I could discuss more at length, if I had the time to, which would go a long way to remove some of the imbalances that are causing huge tensions in our society as evidenced by these increasing outbursts of random violence.

If we view the consumers as the demand side of an economy, and the investors in industry as the supply side, then it becomes obvious that they need each other. My apartment is littered with shoddy goods that didn’t live up to the hype of the suppliers, on the other hand there are things that I need that I don’t yet have the funds for, or cannot justify in view of future or other expenses.

Dear brerlou,

Re:

"It didn't used to be like that before French Revolution, but it is so now in America."

I hate to do this to you in public, but I must. As an experienced teacher (formerly) I can tell from your sentence structure that you are not well read, but I can also tell from the tone of your post that you are an earnest and intelligent person, who will continue to learn fast.

--

Oh my. If I am not well read, you'll have to go to the moon to find someone who is. While English is a second language for me and I make plenty of mistakes, they do not necessarily mean that I don't read. But your comment does mean that you are a bit arrogant.

Also, I appreciate your good wishes for my continuing to learn fast. I hope to be a genius when I die.

--

Re: "The less smart are also the greatest resource any nation can have, the manpower,"

Well, this may be true in China, but it is no longer true in America. We need educated people, at least high-school educated people. To finish high-school, one needs to be of certain minimum level of intelligence, but many of the poor kids are not capable of graduating high school. It is not their fault. It is not the society's fault.

If these less smart kids are our greattest resource, as you say, where should this resource be used? What can they do? What industry (if we still have industry left) can they work in? Construction?

Construction is hard work. Is there a reason I see only Mexicans doing massive construction projects near me? Is there a discrimination going on against the native born who could be doing construction?

Have you heard of any case brought against builders or contractors for denying employment to African-Americans?

--

"It didn't used to be like that …” Forgive my arrogance, you're right of course. It didn't occur to me that you could be using English as a second language, but that clumsy construction is one that most language arts teachers automatically encircle with red ink, and one that creative writers often use to depict someone who is not well educated, (or using English as a second language. My second language, Spanish, is much worse.) It's much easier to say, "It was never like that," or even "it never used to be like that?"

"Didn't used," is just bad grammar.

We have 10 Million illegal aliens in the country, and that's not even counting the guest workers who come in legally to pick our crops. Economists call this a demand pull, because the economy needs all kinds of workers, even trained monkeys, if we could find them. How do you think the blacks got here in the first place? I understand this dynamic because it sucked the girl I was in love with, (a trained nurse,) right out of my arms across 3000 miles of ocean.

Here's the economic reality. Every modern civilization eventually so enriches its citizens that they no longer want to perform essential tasks that keep the economic system working. Rome, for example, reached the point where it was paying foreigners to populate their armies, for goodness sake. The barbarians didn’t storm the city walls to sack the city. They were already there. Eventually they began demanding higher wages, then tribute, and then they staged a full-fledged insurrection. After 200 years of the “Pax Romana” the walls of the city were not even being maintained any more. Is this beginning to sound like somewhere we both know?

Now to present day realities: There's a book called “The Peter Principle?” It has to do with the downside of high employment. In times of high employment the demand for labor means that people get hired into jobs they are not qualified or properly trained to do. I’m beginning to see that effect even in some of the programs Microsoft is putting out these days. It’s worse in most of the other high tech service industries. Our economy is showing all the signs of overheating.

Apart from the waste, there is also a lot of wage inflation. If we sent ten million illegal workers home tomorrow or even over the next four years, our economy would collapse. Right now, and former governor Romney would attest to how insidious this is, supervisors are being fired for firing illegal workers or for checking their bogus credentials.

Here’s the simple math. 10 million people earning $10,000 a year would be a sizable hit to take out of the consumer market and I’m adjusting for the money they send back home as well as the fact that most of these people are workers not families, but it gets worse.

There’s the multiplier effect. Each dollar a worker earns grosses about 7 times that in direct business activity for his employer, sometimes much more but rarely much less, most of which the employer spends on keeping the business afloat.

We can’t afford to take that much activity out of the nation’s economy. Just think, the cost of losing even one million workers earning just 10,000 a year is 10 billion dollars in consumer buying, PLUS more than 70 billion dollars in economic activity. Now I’ve kept my income estimate low to make it easier to grasp, BUT: “The average illegal immigrant earns a gross income of $19,566 (Passel).”

“Well, this may be true in China, but it is no longer true in America. We need educated people, at least high-school educated people.”

In passing let me tell you, (a) You just explained why every light industry product, including our toys, I pick up has “Made in China” stamped on it. (b) You just explained why more American dollars go into China to pay for products made there than Chinese dollars come into America. It’s called a balance of payments deficit. When small nations run out of foreign exchange to buy essential products from overseas, like oil, for example, they become another international charity case for the IMF to handle.

Our credit is good, we’re rich in resources, but foreign exchange poor, so China becomes the banker, issuing us credit cards to buy their goods. Now here’s the clincher. China is NOT a democracy, so they can turn the credit screws on us off and on at will, at least for a while. We ARE a democracy, so we can’t tell our merchants what to do with their money, especially when they have plants all over the world. What does that do to national security? I’ll bet you understand my analogy of the Romans better now.

I could continue to explain to you that many of the kids who drop out do so to earn more money, in the underground economy, not less money, in the short term. Without education they blow through their ill-gotten gains in a flash. I could also explain that even those who can’t make it through high school, or especially those, can benefit from training, if not academic education, and more importantly, the economy needs these trained workers desperately, no matter how dumb. I could point out to you that those highly visible black kids you see on the streets are not really, most blacks.

As a person with dual citizenship, I could also point out to you that in my country of origin most blacks are middle-class citizens doing all the jobs that whites have traditionally reserved for themselves over here. The Prime Minister, 2 years my junior, once sat in a class I taught. I was at college with two prime ministers, two attorney generals, on governor general, head of a union … (recently knighted), speaker of the house of parliament, they’re all black, and I could go on.

As a lad I played in the streets with some of the poorest in the village, I was pleased on returning home to see how most of them had elevated themselves, with their children becoming professional people of all kinds. These are all black, of the same diaspora as the blacks here, with the blacks here being emancipated from slavery only thirty years after us. We demanded our civil rights in the 1930's, like clockwork, one hundred years after emancipation. Thirty years later, like clockwork, the civil rights marches began in America, one hundred years after emancipation. Culture changes take time, so don’t give up on black America yet. I could go on and on with your free education, but I’m not so sure you could take it in ;-). (Couldn’t resist the dig, actually I’m getting sleepy.)

"What should the right side of the curve do that they don't do already? And don't forget that when the extreme right side gives too much to the left side, the middle and the middle-right side get angry at the "liberals."

The country can spend twenty to forty thousand once to turn a kid into a taxpayer, or it can spend thirty thousand a year to keep him in jail. Forget that sh... about smarts, it's a lie, but it's also irrelevant. Even a chimpanzee can be trained to do a wage earning job, besides training is cheaper than education. Furthermore if his education is free you can pay him less. And, if his health services are free, you don't have to pay for his coverage. Forget that sh... about lower quality services, the rich can always pay for superior quality. Just think, if I owned a business with a hundred employees, and I didn't have to pay for their health coverage the money I saved could go towards my own special treatment many times over, even with a 1% increase in taxes to pay for it.

What people are taught by the 5% super rich to see as giving to the poor, people in other democratic countries rightly see as investing in the country's or state's or local government's human resource. This is not an ivory tower economic concept. I've seen it work. It's beating our industries over the head at this very moment in terms of competing with foreign products.

For example, take as our model a small community with a plant making and designing say laser printers for sale here and abroad. Within four years or so in terms of education, one year in terms of training, of making computer education and training free for all qualified entrants at the local college college, the CEO of the plant could make a case for lowering or tamping down the wage spiral for qualified new hires. The whole town would benefit far in excess of the taxes paid. The people who paid the most taxes would benefit most because they own the businesses that the wage earners patronize. The town would begin to grow, because it would be attracting more and more of the right kind of people who could take advantage of the new freeness. All the town council would have to do is throw in a clause saying that the scholarship recipient would have to show that they were paying back in local taxes the cost of their education, or they would receive a bill for the remainder.

Admittedly this model would be difficult to administer in a small community, but on a state or national level it would be wholly workable, even without the payback clause, because when an individual leaves a geographic area after living and working there for some time he usually has aquired all kinds of obligations which he leaves behind when he goes, property, offspring, parents, and debts. He continues to meet these obligations after he has gone, (taking our proposed expensive education with him ... the brain drain), but then since he has gone to better opportunities he continues to send back remittances, which are a large portion of the economic activity of any area. There's a a stream of American foreign exchange going overseas back to countries who funded their students tertiary education only to have them skip the country to live in America.

Eventually, many if not most of these people repatriate to their country of origin, where everything is cheaper, taking their sizable tax sheltered pensions with them. This is an enormous burden on American foreign exchange that is going to get larger when the baby boomers start to retire. The cost of living index (COLI) is much lower in these countries, because wages are lower, no one has to pay for education or health services, unless they can afford special treatment. My sister and her husband are staying here during retirement, I have to go because half of my pension, and some inherited property, is coming from overseas and I can't risk getting sick here, on a fixed income, even with the prospect of medicare, and I like the prospect of no more winter expenses, like heating bills, but I'm taking the other half, in American dollars, with me. It's mine I worked for it, but people who didn't take care of their retirement, or were unlucky, are being reminded by those ads every day, that American dollars are worth a lot more overseas than here. You've seen the ads Costa Rica, Panama, The Dominican Republic, gated communities, they're tempting.

I'm not straying from the point. I'm making a case for free education and free health care, not as handouts, but as an investment in the competitive economic health of America in the new global economy. Why am I so sure, I've lived and benefited from such a transformation, I've seen it work. I've seen it contradict Rushton and Watson's ivory towered fallacious racist interpretations of obviously biased data masquerading as science.

• brerlou:

"It didn't used to be like that …” [...] but that clumsy construction is one that most language arts teachers automatically encircle with red ink, and one that creative writers often use to depict someone who is not well educated, (or using English as a second language. My second language, Spanish, is much worse.) It's much easier to say, "It was never like that," or even "it never used to be like that?"

"Didn't used," is just bad grammar.

Dear brerlou,

It is strange when someone tells you that a phrase everyone around you uses is somehow wrong. However, it does happen. Language evolves, too. And it evolves in different directions in English-speaking societies. An island of Manhattan has neologisms that wouldn't be understood without explanation on Barbados. And vise versa.

Even verb tense usage in British and American English diverge, where Brits tend to use more perfect tenses than Americans.

When I looked into the phrase you underlined as bad grammar, I came up with this discussion in Chicago Tribune <link>

If you read the article, you'll see that the case is undecided. For example, "Bryan Garner, in Modern American Usage, rules flatly that "He didn't use to be a bore" is wrong. In his view, it should be "he didn't used to be," which appears in print four times as often as "didn't use to be." Further into the article: "Finally, let us hear from Merriam-Webster's authoritative Dictionary of English Usage. The editors begin unequivocally: "In writing, 'use to' in place of 'used to' is an error." Then they back off. "The problem becomes a little trickier in constructions with 'did.'" Here, the correct form following "did" is "use to," as in, "He didn't use to wear spats."

Please notice that neither of these authorities even mentions “it was never like that,” nor even "it never used to be like that?"

Furthermore, numerous books are devoted to English language usage in various places. For example,

Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage By Richard Allsopp, Jeannette Allsopp ("ISBN 9766401454)``` In reference to the rest of your post (on the nature of immigration and the laws of economics), all I can say is that I don't know what your point is. Since the details are not preceded by a topic and not concluded by a summary, they seem like a list of some interesting information that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Yet, it could be that the problem is all mine. I failed to infer your point from the details you had provided.

I was responding to your claim that China may need the less

smart citizens and they are not needed here. The point is we

DO need them here otherwise we wouldn't be employing 10M

illegal aliens who can hardly speak the language, furthermore

training can turn anyone into an economic plus for the nation,

even the not so bright, besides:

"They ain't going nowhere!"

Hi, brerlou,

Got it. While the scenario of training our own people to perform jobs done by illegals would solve many of our problems, it is not going to work unless something is done to make these jobs attractive to Americans.

Why? Because we can't force people into training in something they are not interested in. We are not a totalitarian society.

Furthermore, there are two additional issues:

Minimum wage pays more than some American workers are worth, so a business either hires illegals or goes out of business.

People are not automatically suitable for all jobs. If you put me in a meat packing plant, I'll fail miserably. When illegals were let go at a chicken packing plant (reported by The New York Times) and the plant hired replacement workers (mostly African Americans) the problems I have just described surfaced quickly. Here's the link: <link>