Willingness to spill blood. 
Posted on 09/29/2007 7:27:46 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
A Mexican migrant to the U.S. is five times more productive than one who stays home. Why is that?
. . . It is because the average American has access to over $418,000 in intangible wealth, while the stay-at-home Mexican's intangible wealth is just $34,000.
. . . [Intangible wealth is] factors - such as trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective government [and education].
. . . Once one takes into account all of the world's [land and] natural resources and produced capital [such as buildings and machinery], 80% of the wealth of rich countries and 60% of the wealth of poor countries nations is of this intangible type.
. . . In the U.S., according to the World Bank Study [Where Is the Wealth of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century], natural capital is $15,000 per person, produced capital is $80,000 and intangible capital is $418,000 . . . [whereas] oil-rich Mexico's total natural capital per person is $8,500, produced capital is $19,000 and intangible capital is $34,500.
. . . The big question is . . . How can the people of the developing world rid themselves of the kleptocrats who loot their countries and keep them poor?
Uh . . . certainly that is and always has been the $64,000 question. One thing that doesn't help is the Newspeak designation of nations whose governments systematically suppress intangible wealth as "developing" countries. When what they are is nondeveloping countries. Truth is part of intangible wealth, and kowtowing to those who demand that no one tell the truth is the very last thing that will help.This is in the dead-tree op-ed page, but didn't show up in opinionjournal.com and so I typed this in. It may likely exist in WSJ.com, but I don't subscribe to it and thus wouldn't know.This is IMHO an important article.
Look for some presidential candidate suggest we’re guilty of something for having these intangibles...
Actually corruption or no, the intangible wealth of the developing world has been rising very quickly. I’m really interested to see how the $100 laptop changes the developing world. I expect it to lead to very rapid economic growth.
I think this article is significant.Not only is it clear why Mexicans might emigrate to the U.S., it is clear why Americans who have no desire to persecute people who live in straited circumstances abroad are adamantly opposed to allowing them to export their culture to the U.S.
Got a link?
This is of course on WSJ.com, is copyrighted just like all the other Wall Street Journal content, and is therefore covered by their prohibition on our posting it on FR.
I don’t believe that changes simply because you typed instead of cutting/pasting.
That are just "cut-and-run" cowards that won't "stand and fight" to fix the hell-hole countries they run from.The illegals are quite patriotic. Just for the wrong country. Illegals suck 10.5 billion from America each year and send it to Mexico. They're also, slowly but surely, occupying this country. Raising the mexican flag over New Mexico University wasn't an accident. They intend to take *all* the back into Mexico.
This is of course on WSJ.com, is copyrighted just like all the other Wall Street Journal content, and is therefore covered by their prohibition on our posting it on FR.
I don’t believe that changes simply because it was typed instead of cutting/pasting.
An important article, indeed: but what are some other forms of intangible wealth here in the U.S.?
A generally honest police force that does not accept bribes.
Gun rights: if I don’t have a gun, other citizens do, and the criminals don’t know the difference.
A sound currency, banking and financial system.
A military defence which makes foreign invasion a near impossibility.
A generally responsive democratic form of government.
I’ll think of more, later. Maybe a week spent in Mexico will help.
Look for the Democrats to suggest that we tax these intangibles.
We can have WSJ excerpts here. Just not the entire article or column. I later noticed the poster’s comment about typing it from the dead-tree edition.
We make more money here in the US so we should share.
Socialist redistribution of wealth philosophy.
Mexico has a lot of opportunity for it’s citizens.
Corruption has limited the ability of citizens to impove their economics. So it is easier for them to violate the laws of the US by working here illegally.
BTTT
That is all too much libertarian for todays entrenched political class. Any action anywhere without the elites say so is verboten. No telling where it might go. Too bad, Mexico could be liberated in weeks by Mexicans in the US. However the Mexican elite throw such good parties, and they have such nice clean houses, and are light skinned and their kids went to the same New England prep schools as Muffy and Chad. That kind of thing gets in the way, not to mention we wouldn’t want a hiccup in supplies to GM/Ford or payments to Citicorp... Bush, et al think that American 'Soft Power' will work. Yeah right. Just like Euroweenie Soft Power will work in with Saddam, or in Iran, right? I guess the Mexican Joe Shmoe will just have to eat it. Or come to the US and fight in the dirt for an American Joes job mowing the lawn of the elites who have more in-common with their Mexican counterparts.
It's worse than that. Although the following source lists two different figures for remittances sent to Mexico last year, it's still way more than $10 billion.
Migration News
Vol. 14 No. 3, July 2007
That $418 K dollars of intangible wealth is a direct result of the Constitutional government we have inherited from the founders of this nation, and of the moral foundations they laid.
Response to your #12:
Sorry. I realize then that you will have to pull my posting, #16.
So let this be the substitute for it:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120764.html
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/columnists/2007/09/peter-franklin-.html
Yes, it’s easier to produce wealth if most of your effort does not have to be diverted to fending off thieves, envious neighbors, and other threats to your life and livelihood. A brilliant flash of the obvious.
More discussion of this at
http://www.poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp
and
http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/gnus.pdf
in chapter 8, entitled “Magic, Envy, and Foreign Aid”, beginning at page 273 (p 351 in the PDF paging).
It's worse than that. Although the following source lists two different figures for remittances sent to Mexico last year, it's still way more than $10 billion.Doing the jobs that Americans won't do and getting rid of the money Americans won't spend.
ping
LOL.
Willingness to spill blood.
Or, set an international conference to divide our intangibles with others.
Simple. As mentioned, there is a problem with property: set up a nationwide property recording system as the USA did over a century ago. Mexico is hardly a poor country, but few have the power to go to a bank for a business loan since they lack collateral even though everybody on their street knows they own their house and it's a good house. It's the third-world's main problem.
They don't exactly "suck" the money away. They provide their labor for it, at a rate lower than would otherwise be available, so in that sense it's a net gain for "us" (more accurately, for the employer). They do, however, typically evade income and payroll taxes, which is a problem; the federal government therefore shorted that amount, which we get to make up, while also paying to provide government services to them.
Not at all. It is the result of the Pennsylvania Railroad lawsuit that gave private property rights to Corporations and led to the creation of a nationwide property recorders office system.
That's the essential problem. The wealthy stay wealthy there BECAUSE only they have access to credit, and it's hard for anybody but them to start a business or own property. If just anybody could own property and businesses, the current elite would no longer be an elite, which is why they will oppose such reforms to the death
But, even if the wealthy elite know that and don’t oppose opening a nationwide recorders office system, the Communists are still strong enough to disrupt the attempt. Odd that the elite and the commies fit so perfectly together.
What are the senior Communist Party members of a Communist country? Are they not the "elite" that control their country, and expropriate riches for themselves at a level that the Elites of Mexico can only envy?
The common enemy of the elites, oligarchic or Communist, is the Middle Class.
Yeah, it was just a stray thought, nothing new. Mexico should apply for annexation to the USA, excepting Chiapas, and demand a countrywide system for property recording. So should Canada, excepting Quebec.
The sad thing about this situation is the political mentality of the US and Mexico. The US celebrates the accumulation of private wealth - which inevitable spills over into the public sector - which Mexico for years was ruled by a political elite that proclaimed the necessity for a more equal distribution of the nation’s wealth. And all the while the same Mexican elite was lining its own pockets, a situation that is inevitable when politics controls the economy.
If you come here legally, it’s yours to share. Americans are generous.
We just don’t like our wealth to be ‘taken’.
If you come here illegally, breaking a basic law of society, what’s to make us believe you will embrace our justice system? (This talk of ‘you didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed you’ indicates you view yourself different than a citizen of America.)
I transcribed it from the dead tree edition. Most likely it’s on wsj.com, but I subscribe only to the printed edition.
Not really. I'd suggest that it may be helpful to divide people into three classes:
Another often ignored item: the Futurists were Fascists who liked war for aesthetic reasons.
Agreed. The rich, especially old money, finance the Democrats as a way of patronizing the poor; the middle class refuses either to patronize anyone or to be patronized - and the proper mission of the Republican Party is to protect the middle class from patronizing from above and from envy from below.
BTTT! Thanks for the ping.
The inadequacy of the traditional Lloyd Warner-Chicago Tribune five-class breakdown to effectively capture political groupings coincidentally occurred to me earlier today. Your model seems to offer a better fit.
- Upper Class (0.9 percent of population). This was defined as old families (upper-upper class) and the socially prominent new rich (lower-upper class). This group has been the traditional leader in the American community. Most large manufacturers, bankers, and top marketing executives belong to it. It represents, however, less than 1 percent of the population. Being so small, the two upper classes were merged into one in this study. In some of the Chicago Tribune studies, these two classes are broken out separately, and a six-class breakdown is used.
- Upper-Middle Class (7.2 percent of population). These are the successful businessmen, professionals and top salesmen. The advertising professional usually is part of this class, reflecting the tastes and codes of the first two groups. Yet, combined, groups 1 and 2 still represent only 8.1 percent of the population.
- Lower-Middle Class (28.4 percent of population). These are the white-collar workers- small tradesmen, office workers, teachers, technicians, most salesmen. The American moral code and the emphasis on hard work has come from this class. This is the most conforming, churchgoing, morally serious segment of society. We speak of America as a middleclass society, but the middle-class value system stops here. Two thirds of our society is not middle-class.
- Upper-Lower Class (44.0 percent of population). These are the factory production workers, the union labor groups, the skilled workers, the service workers, and the local politicians and union leaders who would lose their power if they moved out of this class.
- Lower-Lower Class (19.5 percent of population). This group includes unskilled laborers, racial immigrants, and people in nonrespectable occupations.
The other thing, which I’ve posted here many times before, is to quit bringing all the smart, entrepreneurial foreigners here illegally.
Imagine if the 12 million illegal hispanics were back in their homelands trying to change their system rather than being here trying to change ours.
Point.
I wouldn't spread this fact around too much. The Dems will try to take that away as well.
...the average American has access to over $418,000 in intangible wealth...I wouldn't spread this fact around too much. The Dems will try to take that away as well.
Considering that that intangible wealth consists in large measure of the rule of law and good education, it's perfectly clear that the Democrats are already trying mightily to destroy it.
That's been a major point of mine for years.
Another problem is, we get a lot of the grifters.
The corporations are driving the recording of private property. They see considerable benefit even if the average private citizen is kind of hazy on the concept. Capitalism is conquering the planet whether Chavez and Iammadjohn and other footdraggers like it or not. I can see that Chavez has some reasonable grievances, but he has chosen a dead end loser position in his Communism.
Wealthy parents.
Thanks, excellent link for completeness.
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