National Review bizarro world

National Review does not live within the reality-based community -- check out the parenthetical at the end of their subscription-only editorial on immigration:

We are constantly told that the American economy depends on the arrival of more than a million new low-skilled workers every year -- that they fill "jobs Americans won't do." Thus we must implement a guest-worker program and refrain from enforcing our immigration laws. Yet no other economy in the world has required such large-scale immigration to avoid collapse. Almost every job category in America is already filled mostly by native-born Americans. Curbing illegal immigration, and curbing low-skilled legal immigration for that matter, would cause some industries to raise wages, others to substitute machines for people, and still others to move some work abroad. Markets would clear. Our GDP would do fine. Slightly higher wages for America's high-school drop-outs would not be the worst thing in the world. (It's a sad day when Paul Krugman has a clearer view of the economics of an issue than the editors of the Wall Street Journal.)

If "[i]t's a sad day when Paul Krugman has a clearer view of the economics of an issue than the editors of the Wall Street Journal," then the people at NR must be sad 365 times per year. Let's see: Paul Krugman, a John Bates Clark medal winner, or the editors of the Wall Street Journal, who frequently claim that tax cuts increase revenue. Regardless of your politics, there's just no discussion here.

(PS In the same issue, the editors refer to Tom DeLay as "a man of principle.")

Comments

[DBL]

Krugman used to be a respected economics professor. Alas. I don't think he's written anything honest - as in dispassionate, objective, scholarly - in several years. He is an unfortunate victim of an extreme case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Perhaps after President Bush returns to private life in 2009, Professor Krugman's sanity will be restored. Let us hope.

[Jonny]

Mr. Nyhan,

I thought you were a better judge than that. Just b/c some of the NRO people think that cutting tax rates can increase revenue doesn't mean that all the arguments they make are bogus. By thinking thus, you shut your mind off to arguments and positions that they espouse which might be the most convincing available. Thus, your intellectual growth is shunted, unless of course you have already reached a perfect understanding of the world.