Earlier, by Peter Brimelow: A Guilty Elite: Immigration Beyond Economics

There has been a major outbreak of the Toilet Paper fallacy—the misconception that an increase in U.S. GDP caused by immigration is automatically a Good Thing for all Americans.

As long ago as June 1992, in his National Review essay “Time To Rethink Immigration.” and again in his 1996 book Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow noted that the consensus among  economists was that immigration brought no net gain to Americans as a whole. What benefits which were not appropriated by the immigrants themselves went to the owners of Capital.

America, in other words, was being transformed for no economic benefit to most Americans.

On reflection, it has become apparent that the powerful income redistribution effect of immigration within American society is politically extremely important. Peter Brimelow laid this out in during the Obama Amnesty Wars: Schumer-Rubio To Transfer Half-Trillion Dollars Annually From People To Plutocrats. John Derbyshire recently found a micro example: New Solution For Haitian Illegals—Maid’s Jobs In Brookline, MA.

About this time, understanding of the fatuous nature of crude GDP euphoria began to spread: Powerline’s Hinderaker: GDP Per Capita Key To Amnesty/Economic Growth Claim (Or, The Toilet Paper Fallacy).

Hinderaker declared:

The relevant question, with respect to the economic impact of the Gang of Eight’s legislation, is what impact it will have on existing American citizens.

To which I added:

I call this the Toilet Paper argument. A 20% increase in the population will mean more toilet paper is used. Good for toilet paper vendors, but not necessarily for the wellbeing of the American people.

Faced with the backlash to large numbers of funny-looking strangers being subsidized to swill around the streets of so many American cities and towns, the MSM has swung into disinformation mode. The Toilet Paper fallacy seems to be their main argument.

Particularly egregious is Immigrants Make America Stronger and Richer, by Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 5, 2024.

Krugman on why we need more immigration and hilariously never uses the word "illegal"https://t.co/FeTyI5uOlE

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) February 5, 2024

Krugman spends no time considering if the influx has made Americans better off.

Happily the sometimes erratic Michael Lind has done the definitive job of refuting in detail this piece of propaganda, both on professional and ethical grounds: Krugman vs. Krugman, Tablet, February 19, 2024, accurately subtitled

New York Times columnist tries to memory-hole his prior views on immigration.

This documents that Krugman has completely reversed his position from a NY Times column of March 27, 2006, when he was employed denouncing the Bush ’43 Amnesty:

Way back in 2006, Paul Krugman agreed that the benefits to the U.S. economy of mass low-skilled immigration were negligible: “Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.”

Lind asserts

… nothing has changed in the field of labor economics over the last two decades to refute the views that Paul Krugman held about immigration in 2006. 

Krugman has performed an intellectual somersault. 

Besides understanding the Economics, Lind grasps the Politics:

Why the shift? Well, if Krugman wrote that in the political climate of 2024, he would be denounced in the overwhelmingly Democratic prestige media as a racist, xenophobic Trumper who is ignorant of economics.

As he documents, the swing to the Left on immigration by the Democrats since the early 2000s has been dizzying. And he understands why:

Within the last generation, however, the Democratic Party has lost the allegiance of most white working-class voters, along with a growing share of working-class Black and Hispanic voters. Meanwhile it has become the home of affluent, educated whites, a dwindling number of nonwhites, and most immigrants, along with many large corporations and the billionaires who profit from them.

[VDARE.com emphasis] He is being optimistic about nonwhites.

Lind’s conclusion on Krugman

…he is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who believes that the truths his discipline has to offer are less significant than the work of being a partisan Democratic opinion columnist.

So Krugman wants to stay within the Democratic crowd. In the case of MSM Princess Catherine Rampell I believe the motivation is different.

Rampell used her Washington Post column to assert The surge in immigration is a $7 trillion gift to the economy, February 13, 2024.

"A rise in the number of people ready and willing to work is not the only economic benefit," @crampell writes.

Immigrants are also associated with other positive growth effects, including higher entrepreneurship rates. https://t.co/6YCgCUt8tg pic.twitter.com/NisQyA9Xso

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) February 17, 2024

This is a pure statement of the Toilet Paper fallacy. A higher GDP is an absolute good, rah-rah. No mention of the impact on wage levels. Nor of the degrading of living conditions for American workers as their cost of housing is bid up, their schools swamped and their access to health services impeded. I laid this out in NYC Mayor Adams Has Migrant Crisis “Solution”: Attack Living Standards Of N.Y. Working Class.

There is, however, a sneering reference to opposition to cultural change:

GOP lawmakers scaremonger about the foreign-born, characterizing immigration as an invasion. As Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) dog-whistled last week, “Import the 3rd world. Become the 3rd world.”

Even a comfortably employed black Boston Professor can grasp that, well-placed as he may be, excessive immigration hurts others: Valiant Black Academic Sacrifices Career To Protest Turpitude Of Black Congressional Caucus About Immigration’s Damage To Blacks.

Catherine Rampell displays no compassion for Americans not as well situated as she—only economically illiterate immigration enthusiasm.

Why?

I am sorry to say the answer is found in Not your mother’s Princeton,  by Catherine Rampell ’07, Princeton Alumni Weekly, April 6, 2011.

Rampell was a Princeton legacy—her mother was ’75 and her father is also a Princeton alum. By 2011 she was already established at the Journalism Olympus of the New York Times. She says:

In my time at Princeton, I remember a student body that seemed hyperaware of socioeconomic distinctions—and in many cases the need to show off, and pursue, wealth.

My mother remembers her time at Princeton much differently. There were plenty of rich kids and children from famous families with Roman numerals appended to their surnames, sure. But she really didn’t know who was rich and who wasn’t.

…my mother said. “And so if anything, people downplayed that they came from wealth, because the wealthy were part of the establishment.” And it showed in the way people dressed, too...Girls didn’t get manicures or wear makeup or go shopping at expensive Nassau Street boutiques on the weekends, as seemed to be common when I was on campus. 

Punchline:

…there were other things people did to impress their friends, but identifying with WASP culture wasn’t one of them.

In 2021 Rampell posted a significant X/Tweet.

.@MonicaHesse: "My family values are fine. The country’s are not. For many years I did not have children because, in policies and practices, the United States is hell for mothers." https://t.co/CcHg204hbW

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) June 15, 2021

So there you have it. Despite the pampering she has received, Catherine Rampell hates the Historic American Nation and favors the Great Replacement. Hence the moronic immigration enthusiasm.

Ask Catherine Rampell to explain herself. Email [email protected] or Tweet @crampell.

Please be polite.

Email Patrick Cleburne.