Half Sigma political platform

This is my political platform, for people who haven’t figured out what it is.

Immigration

Crack down on illegal immigration. Build a fence to keep them out, go after employers who hire them, all government agencies should report illegal immigrants to immigration authorities when they are discovered.
Severely curtail legal immigration from undeveloped countries.
Seek immigration treaties with developed countries. If France allows unlimited immigration of Americans, then we allow unlimited immigration of French.
Rich immigrants who don’t have to work to support themselves are free to come here and stay as long as they like.

Social Issues

Keep abortion legal and available.
No to gay marriage—the traditional system works fine.

Education

A primary mission of public education for the bottom half of the students should be the teaching of middle class values.
Children should be sorted by their intellectual ability. Smart children should be in separate classes and, even better, separate schools.
A voucher system would be good if it offered any parent money back if they send their child to a private school, but I’m opposed to means-tested vouchers, and the two educational principles mentioned above are more important than vouchers.
Supplement college degrees with tests people can take to demonstrate actual knowledge. Base all government hiring on these tests and ignore degrees. The private sector would follow.
Make student loans subject to bankruptcy protection like all other debt.

Taxes

Increase tax revenue (if it needs to be increased) by closing loopholes rather than increasing marginal rates.
Keep the estate tax
Reform business taxes so partnerships pay the same taxes as corporations,and partners acting like employees are taxed like employees of corporations.
Apply the same tax rules to debt as to equity. For example, if interest payments are tax deductible expenses, then the same should be true of dividend payments. (The existing rules, which favor debt ,led to the overleveraging of the economy.)

Healthcare

If the government is going to provide healthcare, then it should be provided equally for all citizens and not be means tested or age tested. People should be allowed to opt out of the government system, and supplement it by adding in their own money to buy better service.

Copyright laws

After fifteen years, it should go into the public domain. If an author or musician can’t profit from something after fifteen years of ownership, too bad.

Bankruptcy

Repeal the recent bankruptcy “reform” which benefited big banks at the expense of people those banks shouldn’t have lent money to in the first place.

Welfare

Means-tested benefits are bad because they punish for trying to get ahead and reward people for bad behavior such has having children out of wedlock with no way to support them.
Sterilization should be the prerequisite for receiving welfare benefits. This way the innocent child doesn’t starve to death, but the irresponsible mother can’t saddle the taxpayers with more children she can’t afford.

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

Commenters wondering why I don’t make an exception for high-IQ immigration, read my previous post Thoughts on high-IQ immigration.

Comments

[Robert]

100% correct.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Rich immigrants who don’t have to work to support themselves are free to come here and stay as long as they like."

Especially if they have hot heiress daughters!

"Is there no technology that would render a woman infertile for a controlled period of time? Until she was off welfare or something. Just a thought."

There are IUDs for women and (if approved by the FDA) RISUG to temporarily sterilize men over a period of ten years which is being developed in India:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrauterine_device

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance

[not too late]

Census

Add a question about citizenship status.

[dearieme]

"Sterilization should be the prerequisite for receiving welfare benefits." After the first, say, two years?

[dk]

holisticpolitics.org has a bunch of interesting ideas most of which I agree with...In one essay the point was made that since human ability follows a bell curve: to give benefits to the incompetent you also must give benefits to the indolent.

I think the concept of welfare persay needs to be done away with...Humans need a safe place to sleep at night(can be as simple as a tent city with a good police presence, A converted jail or public housing high rise would also do), bathing/toilet facilites, and food and water.

Provide these things to everyone in the major cities on a VERY basic level. Don't have to apply, no questions about income....you a billionare who wants some free nutritous gruel? No problem...

And I think our problem is solved. This has the additional advantage of allowing the poor to accumulate capital by living cheaply. Currently its against the law to sleep in your car in most places. Legalize poverty and people have a easier time getting out of it.

Eliminates the administrators as a bonus too.

This is what the romans did AFAICT...seemed to work well for a 500 years or so....

[Alex]

"Severely curtail legal immigration from undeveloped countries. "

I can't agree with this. What's wrong with high IQ Indians and Chinese migrating to the US and adding to our technically skilled labor force? The US has always benefited from having a skilled labor force.

[Park Slope Pubby]

Agree w/ some of this; disagree w/ some; it's a good list.

[robert61]

Yours would be a better world. I agree with Alex above that high-quality immigrants from any country should be welcome. Also, rather than sterilization, DPMA shots might be required for female welfare recipients. Temporary indigence should not be a genetic death sentence.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"What's wrong with high IQ Indians and Chinese migrating to the US and adding to our technically skilled labor force?"

China is a probable military opponent of the United States sometime in the future.

Do you think it's a really good idea to have a lot of Chinese immigrant engineers working on our stealth fighter and stealth bomber programs?

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Social Issues

Keep abortion legal and available."

Being pro-abortion may be the best way to win over Catholic voters because white Catholic voters support abortion:

http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=3303

Fake fact: Catholics care about abortion more than non-Catholics

snip

Of course, one can object that a lot of these people “aren’t real Catholics.” In some circumstances this is an important consideration, but since I believe all religion is fiction anyhow I will take people at their word as to their religion.

[HS: This post is about what's good for America and not what will get the most votes, although I've pointed out many times before that the Republican anti-abortion platform attracts low-IQ voters while turning away high-IQ voters. Maybe this wins elections in the short term, but it's a bad long-term strategy.]

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"This post is about what's good for America and not what will get the most votes,"

Good policy is good politics!

[Lev]

dk wrote
I think the concept of welfare persay needs to be done away with...Humans need a safe place to sleep at night(can be as simple as a tent city with a good police presence, A converted jail or public housing high rise would also do), bathing/toilet facilites, and food and water.

Provide these things to everyone in the major cities on a VERY basic level. Don't have to apply, no questions about income....you a billionare who wants some free nutritous gruel? No problem...
________

I think DK is 100% right. Good post
however what do you do about the children?
I mean the people living in tent cities will have children - I think no one in our society will be able to accept kids raised in tent cities - so do you offer nicer homes to the women with children ? of course if you do you encourage the production of babies.
some have suggested orphanages for the kids but from what I have heard orphanages don't work that well

so for adults I am all in favor of what you are saying in fact in hong kong i think they have cubes where basically poor people get a six by six foot cube to live in - smaller than a prison cell - so no problem - but again what about the kids?

[M Stein]

"Sterilization should be the prerequisite for receiving welfare benefits."

You should recommend birth control shots which last for 3 months at a time. People might not be on welfare permanently, but this allows a temporary contraceptive.

http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/contraception/contraception_depo.html

[Marla Singer]

Sticking strictly to the Constitution is the way to go.

We might as well overturn Roe V. Wade and let the states decide. Gay marriage should not be an issue, especially if the income tax and social security benefits are abolished.

As for the illegal immigration problem, conduct an operation wetback part II. Round them up, deport them. Problem solved.

As for welfare-eliminate it completely.

[Richard Hoste www.hbdbooks.com]

I like it for the most part. You seem to friendly towards taxation. Keep the death tax? Why the hell should dying be taxed? The state is a thief.

Nothing about affirmative action, diversity training and the civil rights industrial complex? What about foreign policy? Pull everybody out of everywhere and declare neutrality forever.

We should end the federal reserve too, but you're probably a little too lazy to research why.

[HS: http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/why_we_should_k.html ]]

[freak show]

you never mentioned your position on the anti- male divorce laws.

Specifically, do you want to get rid of no -fault divorce? Do you want to allow men who are determined to not be the biological father of a kid that they thought was theirs to continue to pay child support?

[thecraken]

I agree with the greater part of the agenda, but:

If student loans were subject to bankruptcy protection with no other compensatory changes in the system, this would entail an expansion of government subsidization since most of these loans are guaranteed by the Feds. These loans are already heavily subsidized, with much lower than market interest rates. This reform would just encourage people to game the system, extend their education, then find a quick route into bankruptcy to shed their debts. I don’t think the overeducated are the best targets for (expanded) government subsidies. And, remember, this would also function as an indirect subsidy to universities, already bloated beasts and incubators of liberal-fascists.

On immigration, note that an increasing number of immigrants from “developed” countries would be NAMs. Therefore, it should limited. Also, the law granting citizenship to anyone born here ought to be repealed. Ideally, the admittance quotas would be culturally/genetically based, not simply based on the wealth of the source country.

On education, knowledge-based tests tend to be almost as inefficient in demonstrating competence as degrees. Look at the bar exam or the CFA exams: few who take them use, in their professional activity, more than a small percentage of the knowledge they are required to prove. These tests should not be memory games, but demonstrations of the ability to utilize the basic conceptual tools of the trade (ie, how to construct a legal argument, do legal research, interpret case and statute law, etc). Once one’s career is commenced, one will then know what is worth memorizing. Having taken some of these exams, I found it cost me far more time and tedium to memorize the material than to learn how to manipulate it to achieve results in professional tasks. Of course, this form of testing privileges high IQ types over plodding mandarins—and so may be more useful in some professions than others. Maybe it would be best to offer both types of test, with a passing score on either sufficing for admittance, thus rewarding both high intellect and extreme diligence with a chance to compete.

I wonder why you would wish to reform business taxes in the way mentioned.

A Sovietized health care system will make almost everyone worse off. Morale and compensation will decline, quality will follow. It will be a capital destruction machine, warding off talented people and smothering innovation. This is the best solution I have found among those that may be feasible: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

Current copyright laws constitute artificially induced GDP, though 20-30 years might be a better timeframe than 15.

An interesting perspective on the welfare question: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/11/is_there_a_poverty_trap.cfm
From a graph like that you might think that there aren't any poor people in this country. In any case, it would appear that the welfare web does not allow too many families with children to slip into poverty--and not a single senior. For poor women, a child produces a shower of government largesse for herself plus free food, education, medical care, etc for her child. Result: no sense of individual responsibility and rampant single motherhood. But, the socialists presume that the world was an intolerably cruel place before all these corrupting handouts were instituted. It was not. People adapted to their circumstances and had other buffers to guard against misfortune and deprivation: responsibility, foresight, fortitude, reasonable expectations, religion, family, private charity. All of these natural buffers, cultivated and strengthened and refined by our civilization for centuries, have been undermined by the massive socialist-bureaucratic leveling machine. By Burke we were well-warned against this attempt to centralize and rationalize society, which is more akin in its nature to an organic development than to a machine. The only real comfort at this point is that our Constitution has been so little altered in the course of the revolution wrought by FDR and his epigones. But, still, isn't it strange that the government should have suffered such gross alterations as to be rendered unrecognizable--without changing the Constitution? The letter remains, but the spirit is gone.

As to sterilization, however desirable under certain conditions, it will not happen in the foreseeable future. A culturally astute propaganda campaign targeted at the right audience to gear their simple minds to think of having children as “uncool” might actually have some effect. Attempts beckon. Women should also be encouraged to form an abortion collective to provide cross subsidies to each other and thereby enable the poor to receive cheap or free abortions—all in the name of “women’s rights”—though where this sort of organization might lead will be to unknowns bred of internal logic, and they might not please the HBD constituency.

Dk's suggestion sounds like it would morph into a cesspool of crime and disease with a quickness. But, the fundamental idea of decriminalizing poverty is a good one--just not so easy to do without major collateral damage.

[tommy]

Siggy in 2012!

[Sheila Tone]

HS, it's incongruous that you're pro-middle-class values and nonreligious, yet still against gay marriage. Why should the gays be let off the hook?

[DaveinHackensack]

I agree that we should keep the estate tax, but if it were up to me, I would dramatically lower the standard exemption and the rate. I.e., instead of 55% on estates over $2 million (or whatever the current figure is), I'd make it, say, 10% on estates over $50k. That would probably make sense from a revenue perspective -- there are a lot more folks with $100k estates than $2 million estates, and those with $100k estates will tend to be less adept at shielding them from the estate tax -- and from a political perspective (for the right) in that it would build a constituency for keeping the estate tax rate relatively low.

[russ]

No right to take photos of random strangers?

[Alex]

The Undiscovered Jew wrote:

"Do you think it's a really good idea to have a lot of Chinese immigrant engineers working on our stealth fighter and stealth bomber programs?"

I never said that we should let non-citizens work on top secret defense jobs, which is an absurd notion. Anyone getting a security clearence to work on such a job would need to go through a background check, which would explore conflicting loyalties.

In any case, it's not like the only technical work in the country is in the military industrial complex.

[Melykin]

"If France allows unlimited immigration of Americans, then we allow unlimited immigration of French."
=========================
There are a LOT of Muslims in France. Remember the car-burnings, riots, etc. a couple of years ago. But if you want them to move to the US, I'm sure France would appreciate you taking them off their hands.

"Rich immigrants who don’t have to work to support themselves are free to come here and stay as long as they like."
==========================
You should screen them very carefully no matter how rich they are. Lots of people from 3rd world countries are rich because they are related to corrupt leaders. Organized crime bosses are also very rich.

Upscale private schools in Vancouver have recently begun hiring private investigators to investigate the parents of prospective students. Not long ago the mother of one of the students in such a school was killed in a gang-related shooting.

"Betty "the Loan Shark" Yan was found shot dead, slumped over the steering wheel of her grey Mercedes. As facts of her double life emerged, anger and fear recoiled through Vancouver's upper crust.

A violent figure in the Asian organized-crime underworld, Yan also dabbled in international intelligence trading, according to police sources. But on weekdays she was the model mother, driving her three kids, aged five, seven and 13, to Vancouver's prestigious West Point Grey — where Justin Trudeau once taught — even hooking up play-dates with school chums and wowing fellow parents with a year-end party at her opulent Richmond mansion."

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Elite+Metro+Vancouver+schools+screening+applicants+gang+ties/1975107/story.html

Immigration sucks. I wish Canada could go back the way it was before 1967 (the year immigration policies changed). If you let a bunch of people from troubled countries into your country, they bring the troubles with the. Even many who are not actually criminals tend to be shady and dishonest. Many bring with them corruption, violence, and the attitude that life is cheap.

Maybe a country like the US, which has a strong justice system, can keep things in check. But in Canada the justice system is a joke. Criminals come from all over the world come to Canada to set up shop.

I was discussing this with my daughter... saying that Canada needs to get tough on crime. My daughter said getting tough on crime wouldn't help, since the US is tough on crime, but has more crime than Canada. Not wanting my daughter to think I was a racist Nazi, I dropped the argument at that point. I didn't share with her my belief that the higher crime rate in the US is caused by the higher portion of NAMs.

[Aki_Izayoi]

Trade policy... what is your trade policy siggy?

I would agree with the education agenda. In European countries, there is tracking, but the economic inequalities that would result from it are mitigated through high taxes, and an egalitarian distribution of wealth. It does not evoke contempt to be garbage man in Denmark.

[Haumea]

I don't get this either.

What do you mean by "knowledge" tests?

You'd probably want something that weighs at least 60% highly g loaded and 40% technical knowledge, no?

[Bruno Godoi]

If student loans were subject to bankruptcy protection with no other compensatory changes in the system, this would entail an expansion of government subsidization since most of these loans are guaranteed by the Feds. These loans are already heavily subsidized, with much lower than market interest rates. This reform would just encourage people to game the system, extend their education, then find a quick route into bankruptcy to shed their debts. I don’t think the overeducated are the best targets for (expanded) government subsidies. And, remember, this would also function as an indirect subsidy to universities, already bloated beasts and incubators of liberal-fascists.

I believe that, yes, student loans should have bankruptcy protection.

It would reduce loans, but student loans should not exist in the first place. The availability of loans makes colleges rise the price because they know students will crush themselves in debt to pay the bill, no matter how high.

Bankruptcy protection on loans puts the universities in check. As lending gets tough to get, colleges know that, if they charge too much, people would simple drop out. We need a market incentive to lower the price of college.

This kind of lending shouldn´t be motivated because it shoudn´t exist in the first place. Make college cheap enough to be paid in cash.

[Peter A]

"go after employers who hire them"

That's the crux of it. But first Cargill, ADM, Tyson, etc. - all the giant agrocompanies need to busted Teddy Roosevelt style. These companies are the engine of illegal immigration and have been for decades. These companies have hollowed out the Midwest and filled it with Mexicans and crystal meth. We need to reset our agricultural industry back 30 years, and start over.

[The White Detroiter]

It's interesting that you mention abolishing means-tested government benefits. In general I agree with this but I would add social security retirement as one of the means tested programs that needs to be radically changed.

Retirement benefits are based on an individual's weighted average inflation adjusted earnings over their 35 highest earning years. This means that the more you earn during your working years, the higher your checks are in retirement. So a former Wall Steet executive gets larger checks than an average Joe worker and much more than a former Wal-Mart cashier. This is nuts and it causes total social security spending to be much higher than necessary, which leads to higher total taxes. Give all retirees the same monthly check and stop this madness. Canada does this with it's old age insurance program. It's a fairer and more affordable system.

Also, Social Security benefits have always been funded by a regressive payroll tax (currently a tax of 12.4% on wages and self-employment income up to $106,800). The other major source of revenue for the government is a complicated graduated rate income tax on individuals and corporations. I've always thought a simple flat rate income tax system made more sense that two tax systems that are slanted in opposite directions.

[HS: I agree that the two separate tax systems are stupid. SS is set up to create the APPEARANCE of it being a pension system, which is why its set up the way it is.]

[Kevin K]

Do you have an office that you are thinking of running for? I can help hand out flyers or something.

[HS: I lack the charisma to run for office. Maybe David Alexander could run.]

[DaveinHackensack]

"This means that the more you earn during your working years, the higher your checks are in retirement. So a former Wall Steet executive gets larger checks than an average Joe worker and much more than a former Wal-Mart cashier."

Not quite. Social Security is based on earnings up to the Social Security wage base, which is currently ~$100k, if memory serves. This is the flip side of the cap on SS taxes: they limit benefits for high earners. Warren Buffett isn't getting million dollar Social Security checks every month. And Social Security payouts are progressive (see: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/77xx/doc7705/12-15-Progressivity-SS.pdf ).

[Alex]

Have you thought about getting an entry level job at a think tank? Your Wharton degree might qualify you for something.

I also think that you're overestimating the amount of qualification needed to run for congress or house of delegates. You might want to start by going to districts in upstate New York and studying how people get into congress or the house of delegates. How do they get friendly with the party?

If you want to run in the conservative party or something, it will make it easier to move up the ranks, but you'd be taking a huge gamble on the conservative party replacing the Republicans. It's very likely that that won't happen.

I'll also suggest that you should tone down your eugenics positions by a few notches. You should also become Pro-Life, because it is clearly the direction that this country is going in. I think that even the intellectuals and elites will come around to the pro life position, since there are good arguments for it:

http://www.parlidebate.com/recordings.php?id=212

[David Alexander]

*"Do you think it's a really good idea to have a lot of Chinese immigrant engineers working on our stealth fighter and stealth bomber programs?"*

Do you believe in our ability to make Chinese immigrants "white"?

*[HS: I lack the charisma to run for office. Maybe David Alexander could run.]*

David Alexander would rather run for political office in Canada than deal with the parasitic and byzantine nature of American politics. The President of the United States may be the most powerful man in the world, but the Prime Minister of Canada has more power within his own nation than he does. Plus, you avoid that hideous perpetual black political machine that basically traps any black politician with ambitions and dreams.

*I agree that the two separate tax systems are stupid.*

Having the two seperate tax systems makes sense if the SS money had been preserved and left untouched. For what it's worth, I view it as a social insurance system in lieu of a pension. It's basically a base income programme for those who have become disabled, retired, or widowed after 60. Since my mother is about to receive SS due to being a widow when she turns 60, I'm a bit biased toward this aspect of policy. I'd also argue that as an option programme, one should be able to contribute to a wage insurance policy in case one loses work, and they're unable to find high paying work that replaces up to 50 to 75% of one's former wage.

Personally, I'd argue that the federal government pay for 100% of Medicaid costs instead of forcing the states to pay half of it given that it was a program created by the Federal government with no input from state and local municipalities. I'd imagine that would improve the finances of most state governments considerably and allow them to cut taxes considerably.

[M Stein]

"Melykin wrote: My daughter said getting tough on crime wouldn't help, since the US is tough on crime, but has more crime than Canada. Not wanting my daughter to think I was a racist Nazi, I dropped the argument at that point."

Melykin,

You don't need to mention NAM's. Just refer your daughter to this paper by Freakanomics author Steve Levitt which explains why longer sentences/increased incarceration significantly reduces the crime rate.

"Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not ." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1): 163–190.

http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf

[Alex]

David Alexander wrote:

"Do you believe in our ability to make Chinese immigrants "white"?"

Interesting question. First, if we approach race in the style of Rushton, than the traits that we associate with white people are especially pronounced in east asians, so the question becomes moot: Chinese people already have the desirable characteristics of European-Americans.

Secondly, yes. The children of Chinese immigrants will lose the cultural characteristics that they gained from living in China. I.e, I don't think that 3rd generation Chinese in America are any more opposed to the free market than European Americans with similar IQs and living conditions.

HS wrote: *[HS: I lack the charisma to run for office. Maybe David Alexander could run.]*

I second that.

[The White Detroiter]

"Not quite. Social Security is based on earnings up to the Social Security wage base, which is currently ~$100k, if memory serves. This is the flip side of the cap on SS taxes: they limit benefits for high earners. Warren Buffett isn't getting million dollar Social Security checks every month. And Social Security payouts are progressive (see: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/77xx/doc7705/12-15-Progressivity-SS.pdf )."

Yes, I'm aware of all that. Earnings above the Social Security wage limit do not increase future benefits.

What I object to is giving higher benefits at all to people because their average earnings were higher during working years. Social Security is a government program not a private savings plan so there's no good reason to tie benefit amounts to past earnings. Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, etc. don't give greater benefits to those with higher past or present earnings. Why should Social Security? Pick an amount needed to secure a minimum standard of living for everyone and send out equal sized checks each month to all retirees. This would basically be the beginning of citizen's dividend that HS has previously written in favor of (although it would be limited to senior citizens at this time).

[eric]

policy on drug/vice legalization?

[Anthony]

I'd abolish the estate tax, but:

Cash transfers and transfers of personal property become taxable income to the recipient. (Personal property at the actual market value at time of transfer.) Transfers of real property and businesses wipe out the "basis" - if you inherit a house, when you sell it, you pay taxes on *your* gain.

Further tax tinkering: eliminate depreciation. Deduct what you actually pay each year (so if you borrow to buy something, you deduct the principal and interest payments, not the interest plus more than the principal at the beginning). No more depreciation on goods which you pay for out of current income. And, as you advocate, dividends become deductible expenses.

Index capital gains for inflation, but then treat them as ordinary income. (Really index, so if you sell at a 3% nominal gain when inflation over the period is 6%, you book a loss.)

[HS: 100% depreciation in year of purchase would create HUGE opportunities for tax avoidance schemes. Accelerated depreciation is already too good of a deal.]

[Anthony]

HS: Not necessarily - the company can only write off what it actually spends. You could even change things further, and make loans reportable income, which would offset what you're buying with them.

Meanwhile, I'm avoiding a pretty amount of taxes by owning a rental property. I get to deduct the mortgage interest, which is 80%+ of my payments, and I get to deduct depreciation, which is 1/330th of the price of the house (less cost of land), which works out to about 60% of my mortgage payment. So I get to deduct 140% of my mortgage.

[Test Test]

I agree with most of your thoughts, but there seems to be some discord on your views regarding immigration. You're against unskilled immigration. And, you're against skilled immigration as well, but for different reasons.

I'm a programmer as well. My wage has probably been cut in half by the H-1B visa, and I've endured a lot more career instability and a huge loss in social status since 2000. Heck, I was cool back then.

Yet, I would stop short of opposing all immigration. We are a country of immigrants; and rightly so. We just shouldn't be a country of population and market tampering.

The fact is, if Affirmative Action was banned (or limited to African and Native Americans), and welfare was scaled back, unskilled labor would only have one effect on your wage. It would increase it. Cheap unskilled labor helps businesses expand, but does not increase the supply of IT and other professional workers they will inevitably need. In other words, every immigrant restaurant worker who uses a cash register, who punches in and who receives a paycheck increases the demand for supply chain databases, human resource databases and accounting databases. Provided that he isn't demanding that his kids cut in line when applying to college, his presence only serves to better your quality of life and to increase the demand for your services. I SUPPORT immigration--provided that the immigrants aren't asking for special breaks.

As far as high-IQ immigration is concerned, I only support the exact number of high-IQ immigrants that would show up on their own, without any special visas targeting them. In other words, if we were to have a green-card lottery, or a first-come first-serve immigration system with an application deadline each year, I would expect about 2% of immigrants to be in the upper 2% of intelligence.

I don't have this viewpoint for the convulted arguement that skilled immigrants lower the wage for IT workers, thereby discouraging Americans from entering the profession and creating a shortfall of native-born IT workers. My justification is more simple: IT workers are guaranteed equal protection under the law, just like everyone else. It isn't right to expect them to suffer lower wages simply because the rest of the country would benefit. The rest of the economy benefits whenever ANY profession is singled in the visa laws. A visa for plumbers would result in cheaply unclogged drains and increased wages for everyone who is not a plumber. However, such a visa would be constitutionally suspect--just as the H-1B visa is probably unconstitutional.

In short, immigration policy shouldn't target anyone. Open the gates each year and let in the first million people who show up, or use a lottery system.

People will cry that "that means that getting into the US depends solely on luck!" And yes, it would meant that.

However, as thousands of ex-H1B's are now saying--no intelligent person would want to immigrate to a country that doesn't respect their right to sell their skills at the market rate.