America's Special Mission
Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants. America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024. We are all immigrants, in a constantly changing country.
Wednesday, November 20th, 2024
Bill Bonner, writing today from Baltimore, Maryland
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parking meters
—Bob Dylan
Like icebergs in the North Atlantic, the risks posed by Trump’s policies do not threaten just a slowdown in the shipping channels... but a catastrophic sinking of the whole damned fleet.
We looked at tariffs yesterday, and saw how they might cause a worldwide depression, much as they did in the 1930s.
Today, let’s look at deportations.
We spent last weekend at the farm... where our family has been for nearly 400 years. The first settlers, in the 17th century, simply came up the bay from their Virginia colonies and established themselves on the shores of the Chesapeake. And we are still here.
But there are some new folks here too.
On Saturday, the manager of the farm next door, who is from El Salvador, came over to say hello. Next came a middle-aged woman from Guatemala, who helps clean once a week. And then, a whole team of six Latinos showed up to put a copper roof on our new gypsy wagon.
The wagon began as a project to keep the grandchildren occupied two Thanksgivings ago. The children lost interest after a half an hour; it’s kept us busy ever since.
“Hay mucho trabajo. No hay mucho tiempo,” the foreman said to his crew. (There’s a lot of work... but not a lot of time.)
“Where are you fellows from?” we asked.
“We’re all from Mexico,” came the answer.
“We’re the people Senor Trump wants to deport,” he added with a laugh. “But I like Trump. I think he’ll be good for business. And I think he’ll just deport the criminals.”
“Well, if he deports you... ” we began a sympathetic reply, “I hope you get my roof finished first.”
This is Maryland. Not Florida, Texas, nor California. And yet, even here, much of the real work... the hard work... is done by Latinos. And while there are a lot of people we’d be happy to send back to wherever they came from, they don’t include the people who mow our lawn or fix our roof.
“America is for Americans,” said Stephen Miller at a pre-election Trump rally.
What sense this makes, we don’t know. Latinos are Americans too. They’ve been in the Americas longer than we have. But “if Americans have a special gift,” we wrote in our 2003 book The Idea of America, “it is a talent for ignoring irony and ambiguity and going on with their special mission: getting rich.”
The early settlers also ignored a lot of other things that bothered them in the Old World. Religion, for example; in the US, you could worship whatever god you chose. In 1649 Lord Baltimore decreed that:
“No person... shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested, or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof.”
Race didn’t matter either: the country was open to immigrants — voluntary and involuntary — from Europe, Asia and Africa. And language? It was none of anyone else’s business what language you spoke. In 1890, there were more than 1,000 German-language newspapers published in the US.
Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants. America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024.
We are all immigrants, after all, in a constantly changing country. Hardly anyone here speaks German anymore, but millions now speak Spanish.
And while it may be a good idea to control the flow of new immigrants, sending existing immigrants back home could leave some serious holes in the US economy.
Donald Trump says these new immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood,’ of the native population. He says he will deport 15 million of them or about one quarter of the entire Latino population of America. While this seems unlikely, it would represent almost 10% of the US labor force... and 5% of consumers. And since 70% of GDP is consumption, that alone suggests a 3.5% cut to GDP... putting the US in recession. Or, if you imagine that all US output is proportional to the labor that goes into it, you can assume a drop in output of about 10%.
While GDP goes down... consumer prices are almost sure to go up. Who picks the apples? Who shingles the roofs? Who unclogs the toilets and trims the hedges?
Without immigrants, costs go up and the population falls.
Illegal? Legal? Either way, hamburgers don’t get flipped and gypsy wagons don’t get roofed. And then, our ponzi-like Social Security and Medicare systems... that depend on the contributions of the new arrivals to support old people -- what keeps them from going bust?
Combined with the losses from Trump’s proposed restraint of trade and rising long-term interest rates, we could see much higher consumer prices, bankruptcies, shortages, crashing asset prices, and a depression that is almost impossible to escape.
But we still haven’t gotten to the Biggest Loss Ever. Tune in tomorrow for the ‘worst case’ scenario, the End of the World as We Have Known It.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Bill, It is nice that you can get your grass trimmed and gypsy wagon fixed by illegals - I am sure you paid them cash as well, leaving the rest of us to pay the taxes for them. You forgot to mention the other side of the coin. Most of the new jobs in the past few years have been filled by illegals - not because American born people will not do the job but because the illegals are cheaper. In most cases no need for the employer to worry about all of those pesky payroll taxes, benefits and Obamacare costs. Meanwhile a friend of mine (black man with low skills) has not been able to find someone to hire him for the past 12 months - so he sits on Gov assistance. So, you pay cash to get your wagon fixed, we pay the taxes so that my friend can be paid Gov assistance? I don't see an economic net gain there? Except you save a little while the rest of us pay the bill. That sort of sounds like that 1% model the Fed has been propping up for the past several decades.
Well, I'm sure the Democrat-controlled Federal Government planned on allowing, without limitation, as many illegals as possible into the US because we're in such dire need for workers. We have no one to wait tables, wash dishes, mow grass, trim trees, shovel snow, plant & harvest, build homes, install an electrical grid, and on and on. Until those illegals arrive, are provided with housing throughout the "red states" (building voting blocs) and taught how to do something other than steal, the Feds will provide food and shelter. And while we're at it, let's send another (borrowed) $500,000,000 to Ukraine. Talk about a fast track to bankruptcy - almost like it was planned!