Cthulhu's Mirages #645298 - The Terrible Burden of Migrants

One of the more wild mirages is the notion that migrants are a burden on America, taking welfare, and not paying back into the systems, it sounds simple, and it is, too simple. It has been a long-running theme in the mirages of Cthulhu, essentially as Cthulhu sees deluding vertebrate species into self-destruction as a labor-saving device for his vision of cosmological de-populism which is the removal of all living species from the cosmos. Fear of the "other" weaker members of a species cohort is often injected into a population through leadership figures who proclaim strength, but whose weak minds make them exceptionally malleable to Cthulhu's will, not just in human society, but also in other primate societies, which may be readily observed. So the instinctual responses are there and all too easily exploited. A similar a set mirages were induced in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s until Europe exploded into war just 2 decades after "The Great War", "The War to End All Wars". Once Germany had lost The Great War, reparations were sought and imposed on Germany to recoup the cost of defense for the nations that defeated them.

Measures of austerity imposed on Germany collapsed the German economy, by extracting wealth from the Germany economy in a manner that resembles loosely the IMF and world bank loan conditions that have lead to the collapse of many modern economies since, that have also seen radicalization and terrorism. America is also subject to austerity, as successive governments, at the behest of billionaires and corporations, have cut social services, neglected to raise minimum wage to keep up with rising costs of living, executing stock buybacks, and hoarding around USD31 trillion in tax havens and other "instruments"(see https://www.wealthx.com/report/world-ultra-wealth-report-2018/), while decreasing the tax burden for a very few who would not imagine any person to be interesting with less than $100m.

So really, are migrants a burden? Not so much according to the National Bureau of economic research, which shows migrants return $21k after 20years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23498). Another study has been reported as showing a lifetime benefit to the American taxpayer of approximately $80k.
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The work the low wage jobs Americans can't do because of inertia created by the normal pressures of family, community, holding multiple low wage jobs keeping them too busy to look outside the box. Without migrant workers, crops would rot in the ground, in fact, agriculture is experiencing a labor shortage, and crops are being left to rot, because of the lack of harvest time labor.(See https://agamerica.com/farm-larbor-shortage/) Sure, low wage Americans might take jobs in this industry, but it's seasonal nature, and the generally high cost of living, finding work beyond the season labor creates gaps in income which are intolerable for families, with most American families unable to sustain a $500 unplanned expense. (See https://allthatsinteresting.com/american-savings).


There is more data pointing to how migrants offer economic benefit to the American economy and treasury but also data pointing to migrants having a lower rate of criminal behavior than native-born Americans. The effect is strong enough that the imprisoned migrant population has been falling since 1990, (See https://www.businessinsider.com/immigrants-commit-less-crime-than-native-born-americans-trump-speech-2017-3//?r=AU&IR=T)

Net migration across the Southern border has been southward for more than 10 years. Liberal and Left criticism of the Obama administration included the notion of "Deporter in Chief" as a reference to the 44^th president. Barriers, are actually slow this migrant as people increasingly need to save money to travel south rather use cheaper modes of movement. (See https://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/)


It seems that amid wild promises to "Make America Great Again" some of the people working hardest at such a lofty goal are really not appreciated for their contribution, but are instead being demagogued, libeled and slandered while living very modest lives, centered around hard work for low pay, and very little influence, while others laugh all the way to their Cayman Island shell companies, DeutcheBank, and other tax-havens.

There are better sources and more research on these topics, I'd like to know about them, and may include them here. So please make suggestions below.

As always, stay noodly, Play nice ok, and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly. Ramen.

On banning offensive racist publications

Many calls have been made in in recent times to ban publications for racist or offensive content. The highest profile target among  these is Charlie Hebdo. Such calls have been wrong for reasons not the least of which because Charlie Hebdo is has a pro-immigrant political position.

If we are to ban publications for racist or offensive content, then to be consistent, we must also ban The Bible and the Quran.  Woah! That's a big claim there!  And if you're offended, you're welcome, let us be united in our offence, because there is plenty to go around. Let's take a look at some of the worst ideas in human history.

Bible: Foreigners are chattel

The following passage shows that slaves are clearly property to be bought and sold like livestock, furniture or equipment.

    However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
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Bible: human trafficking and sex slavery.

The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery.  How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave? Additionally, it is not really improved much by the restraint against slave trading with foreigners.

    When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.  (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
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    Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp.  But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle.  "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded.  "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor.  They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people.  Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man.  Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.- Source

Bible: Stone Women for extra marital sex

Sex is a natural and human act, fulfilling psycho-social needs and supporting healthy states of mind. yet this backwards text offers one of the most barbaric practices available to the human species in order to put an end to it.

    If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her ... and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say ... these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. ... But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.(Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

Bible: The mark of Cain

This meme referring to Genesis 4:16 points to black/brown people being excessively violent, or at least that annoying them could have severe consequences. A meme that today for some, associates ethnic minorities with a propensity to violence. It is basically nonsense, but if one powerful ethnic group puts enough energy into disempowering another ethnic group, there will be blow back in the midst of the genocide. This is a human response it has little to do with ethnicity, or religion, except for what the oppressor group chooses to make of it. Just as American Christian settlers liabled indigenous "red skins" and "savages" for "manifest destiny", or as the Nazis liabled the Jews for the "The Creator" and "father land", and now as the far right wing liable Muslims for "racial purity", "Sovereignty" or "cultural preservation".

Koran: Jews are pigs, Christians are monkeys:

In Chapter five the Koran discusses the relationship Muslims should have with Christians and Jews, and goes on to use pejoratively compare them to other species. Demonstrating a version of the arrogant "chosen people" meme which earlier appeared in Judaic texts.

    O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.  (5:51)

    Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah ? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road.  (5:60)
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Koran: Beat your wives

It does not matter that the associated haddiths say to beat her lightly, and to not leave a mark, the fact is, at the very least, this is psychological abuse, if we ignore the physical behaviour. This comes from the ideas like "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will"(2:223) (ploughable land), chattel and to be managed and cajoled like children.

    "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." 

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Conclusion

These much venerated texts certainly contain content that is racially and religiously charged as well as misogynistic and the above is just a miniscule sample of the horrors available to the easily offended. So these texts must also be excised from the public square if we are to avoid hypocrisy as we seek to ban cartoons dealing with issues of race religion or even their relationship to women.  It is likely critics will moan "Oh, you're cherry picking verses" or "you are taking it out of context". Even if this is so, presenting certain Charlie Hebdo Cartoons like the four Boko Haram sex slaves chanting "hands off our allowances" without the context of Marine Le Pen's comments that immigrants were having babies to get welfare benefits is also "taking it out of context". If you want to live in a society where ideas can be censored simply by having them misrepresented, you can, if you will stride into a functionally illiterate society ruled by near total ignorance, resembling  the 7th Century.

The plain fact of the matter is that in the centuries since these texts were written, many have learned to protect people and not ideas, but not everyone has caught up. Even the Pope has talked about giving his good friend a beat down for talking smack about his mother. It may be hard for anyone to hear "your mother is a whore", but if she is getting paid to entertain customers in a bordello, it is a fair call, and it doesn't necessarily mean there is anything wrong with her chosen profession, and if the person hearing these words is a borderline geriatric virgin in a frock, it about time they grew up and their mother is an impressive woman.  The debate over "offensive" cartoons is a distraction, one that extremist groups would perhaps like to paint as a clash of civilizations, whether this is wholly true is debatable, yes there is a clash of values, and of ideas, but censorship is no way to address these, such calls for censorship are like the calls of the child who says "shut up, stop saying Darth Vader is Luke father, it can't be true." (I knew that child a long time ago, he grew up and wrote this blog). I was recently asked about the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi era. The answer I gave at the was not the best answer to be offered, I spoke out of my preference, which is to not have lies, liable, fabrications publish for the generation of hysteria, however my considered position is essentially "publish and be damned", and damned the Nazis would have been by an incredulous, more sceptical populace such that we see in France today. The Nazi regime was seeking to control it population by emotional manipulation. This is something a sceptic culture would be more immune to, when we examine issues of free expression, we cannot ignore freethought they go hand in hand. Credulity, as we say, is not a virtue and this is where the Nazis "lost it" so enthusiastic were they in anti-Semitic dogma of the church and their "Aryan" pseudo-science that failed to understand the real enemy was fascism and bigotry - left over from WW I and codified in the war reparations.

Let us entertain the notion of perspective. No one is saying satirical cartoons represent truth, meanwhile billions claims these holy books represent truth on a daily basis, with some willing to kill and die for that "truthiness"(sic). Satire is merely a tool to expose truth behind comments and opinions of the day, with many such comment frequently lies in service to ignominious agendas, such exposure serves a vital function. This function is of course despised by authoritarians. Regardless of the historicity of the Bible and the Quran, about which there are some serious questions to be asked, or even of their relative truth value, there are things of greater concern to humanity as a whole. How do we learn to live side by side in a globally connected world? How do we stop neoliberal fascism from extracting the wealth of the many only to be concentrated in the hands of the few(as Oxfam tells us this week, by next year, to world's wealthiest 1% own over half of all wealth). How do we stop poverty acting a recruiting tool for violent extremist ideologies? Not just that followed by Al Qaeda or ISIS, but also Stormfront, US patriot militias, KKK.

Real estate and dog whistles

One of the problems the New Zealand economy has is a lack of investment in the manufacturing sector. This begs the question why do investors shy away from such an innovative and world beating sector? The same reason that they invest in any thing, the get a better return somewhere else.

It turns out "somewhere else" is property investment. We have here no capital gains tax, we are one of the last developed nations that hasn't yet put capital gains in place.

Another issue is that overseas based investors seem to be entering the property market further driving up market prices. In some areas like Auckland, prices are inflated because of lack of land approved for residential development.

All this creates big problems in the New Zealand economy. First home buyers are increasingly being locked out of the market and the latest suggested move that banks tighten lending criteria to cool the market only makes this worse. More over Auckland is becoming a city in which it is too expensive to live in, the transport system is under pressure, as local bodies debate the inner city rail loop and traffic congestion flood main arterial routes in to and out of the city on a daily basis.

Seeking to position itself for the election in November 2014 the New Zealand Labour Party is offering to pass legislation to block real-estate sales to parties resident over seas. This may remove some portion of 7% of the market. Labour has also reaffirmed its position that will bring in a capital gains tax.

The responce from our Primeminister is pretty slimey, calling the proposed block on foreign real-estate investment "racist" particularly pointing to Asian investment. However the policy offered is blind to nationality or ethnicity. It would block Bono, or Bill Gates as it would block the CEO of Foxxcon.  Neoliberals will of course hate this policy because it defeats the progress of globalization. Globalisation is of course, a con. It inflates corporate profits by making the 1st world middle class compete with the 3rd world. This has devastated the US manufacturing sector over the last forty years. New Zealand's manufacturing sector too has been adversely affected, Today we continue to lose manufacturing jobs, 40,000 in the last five years. And with the failing fortunes of the manufacturing sector, so fortunes of the middle class who rely on manufacturing have suffered.

The effect of these policies will be two fold. Reducing speculators in the property market will reduce inflated property pricing and busts leading to mortgagee sales. Also the policy will make it more possible for first home buyers to enter the market. New Zealand will never be competitive as long as it is content flip real-estate among its 1%ers.

The second major effect is that manufacturing becomes a more attractive investment. We have people researching and developing new technologies. New Zealand is poised to do very well exporting clean energy technology.  Such technology will need investment to help bring it to market. More over these new technologies will add up to a brand new major industry sector.

The sector already has players. For example Zero Emission Vehicles manufactures electric busses. ZEV recently made headlines when it provided Kapiti Counsel with an electric rubbish truck.

Like America, New Zealand needs a plan to grow our manufacturing sectors. What we don't need is a failing ideology that's only successful at making the super-rich richer while making everyone else impoverished and livid.

Zimmerman Acquited

Well the news of the jury verdict is out, George Zimmerman has been acquitted of being Hispanic. Defence counsel were celebrating the victory saying just examine is name he's clearly a European Jew. Media commentators observers and the prosecution claimed the 29 year old Florida man has DNA, complexion, and skeletal features that are clearly the stamp of his Hispanic ethnic origin.

Observers of the case say the prosecution started strong saying "Just look at him, if you knew nothing else about him, you'd swear he came to Florida on a speed boat with half a tonne of cocaine." But later Jury experts say the jury got confused after a prosecution expert witness testified to being a scientist and appeared to be considering convicting the witness but did know what for as the witness was of Caucasian descent, and as one juror put it "those people never do anything wrong, except that one time in Boston."

Many protests have happened through out America, and despite predictions by rightwing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, most protests have been peaceful. The President has called for calm which seems at odd with Limbaugh's assertions that an acquittal would see the announcement of a final solution to rid America of the scourge of white people running Wall Street and stealing homes from working Americans like Homer Simpson who once became so obese he had to work from home and collect disability but eventually had to leave the grunt work to a bobbing bird toy.

See Also
   The Guardian