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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Personally I always thought Texas and other border states were just playing national politics with the border crisis. Creating a crisis as an issue to run for re-election on.

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/07/new-york-adams-emergency-migrant-buses

NYC has received 17k migrants since April. That seems tiny compared to what Texas has dealt with.

Adams said the city is receiving on average 5-6 buses a day. I will assume 40 people per bus or about 240 a day. That’s about 75k a year and he says it will cost the city a billion a year.

Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming. NYC population around 9 million or 1/35 of the US.

He says it’s not an issue they asked for, but they did declare themselves a sanctuary city.

Maybe Adams is actually a Republican. Because his complaining is exactly what Republicans would want from busing them for political reasons. Conversely maybe Texas GOP complaining about migrants was not just politics but a real issue they were having trouble dealing with. I assumed it was politics.

I think this also shows some weaknesses with the blue city state capacity. The basic agreement before was we have some globally competitive people we can tax a lot to fund our local poor plus civil servants. Blue cities aren’t that good at building more housing and infrastructure anymore. It’s about $20k a year for them per migrant. Texas and the south can just give them a mortgage for $20k to buy a used a trailer and use their land which can house multiple people though jobs might be a problem theirs only so many meat processing plant and ranch hands you need.

Honestly NYC should just ship them to Chicago and write a $20k a head check. There’s plenty of abandoned property on the southside that needs people (though has violence issues but better than where they came from).

If Adams was going to be a good Democrat he should just pay the tab and tell Abbot he will take his proportional share.’

I don't know how much of a burden migrants are to border states, but you can't just assume that the burden is commensurate to the burden in NY, because migrants don't necessarily settle in border states. They go to existing communities, which are mostly not the states in question

As for Adams, his complaint all along has not been "don't send migrants" (I mean, come on, it is NYC; the city estimates that immigrants make up 37.2% of the NYC population and 44.2% of the labor force). but rather "coordinate with us before sending people." The city could probably use those types of workers; (unlike on the South Side of Chicago); the NY Times recently had an article about all the restaurants that have reduced hours compared to before the pandemic, because they can't find workers to fill all the shifts. There are certainly fewer places open 24 hours.

The state of emergency relates to the fact that NYC guarantees a spot in a shelter for all homeless persons, including the newly arrived migrants, and "The mayor’s declaration allows the city to open emergency relief centers more quickly by exempting them from the normal land-use and community-review process that often slows the opening of shelters.". Obviously, 17,000 people since August is nothing relative to the city's population, but is a lot relative to the current capacity of the shelter system, which is about 61,000.

Finally, $1 billion per year amounts to only $50 for every resident of NY State, so hardly much a burden.

but rather "coordinate with us before sending people."

Yeah man, that's all Texas wants too, but somehow it's racist when they say it.

Actually agree with a lot of your critiques which is why I made a tangent on housing. And the minimum wage in NYC is an issue. Texas housing and wages not as much of an issue. If NYC had SRO and no minimum wage then you could just put them to work at cheap rent.

My counter to you though is his speech is made to be meme in his tone. From a national politics perspective it sounds like they can’t handle them. When I agree in a labor shortage world they should be useful.

I’ve always been a Friedmanite and gave up feelings. But clearly there’s a 2-sided market here where there are migrants you can use for cheap labor who are also better off being used for cheap labor than their other options. But in the progressive labor standards world on housing and labor markets that’s not ok. And in that world it feels better to not do the trade and keep the problem away from you.