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| Spring 2004 |
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A Criminal Immigrant Policy To the editor: My hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, has become a haven for illegal immigrants and continues to appear on a list of the 25 most dangerous cities in the nation. In my local newspaper’s police blotter, over 80 percent of all crimes in which the perpetrator is identified are committed by individuals with Hispanic names. One must assume that a significant portion of these are illegal aliens. Have we forgotten that several of the September 11 hijackers went to illegal aliens to learn how to obtain driver’s licenses? Michael Cain To the editor: Don James To the editor: Chris Bell went on to Congress, but redistricting left him in a majority African-American district, and now he’s gone. Houston has a new mayor and police chief, and we’ll be looking for a change. Larry Lane To the editor: In our San Diego suburb, two middle-school girls were attacked and molested on the way home from school by Hispanic males—one wielding a knife. You don’t see this in the newspapers, so parents don’t even have the information to get outraged. Gloria Wolf To the editor: How can this be? you might ask. Hint: the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence—the official certifying agency for U.S. auto mechanics—admits that there are more “Hispanic” mechanics than all other races combined. Wayne C. Harriman To the editor: Gary Arrington To the editor: I myself am a European immigrant to the U.S., a Hungarian from Rumania who came here at age 12 with an ethnic and a national identity that I still maintain—despite having acquired an American one as well. I also have a strong sense of European identity, as I know many on the Continent do. Yet Hanson dismisses this reality in a single sentence: “[F]or most people being a European could never be as meaningful, have such rich cultural and historical resonance, as being a Frenchman or a German.” I beg to disagree. As a Central/Eastern European who also lived as a refugee in Austria for two years, I identify with the broad Western tradition. I think that two millennia of mostly shared history contribute more powerfully to modern European identity than post–World War II politics. I lived under communism, completely isolated from the notion of an EU—which seemed a good and reasonable idea from the first time I learned about it in college, here in the U.S.—and yet I felt European as a natural result of my education and upbringing. So am I just another mad utopian, or a natural European? Overall, I thank Hanson for a very enlightening article. Emil Bogdan To the editor: First, Hanson should note that, when speaking of international politics, words like “good” and “evil” don’t have any meaning. Second, he should remember that in his democracy par excellence, only half the population bothers to vote. About Israel and Palestine, he should read some Noam Chomsky—who has a point, when he is not speaking about economics. Last, when Hanson notes that the U.S. doesn’t believe in utopias, he should recall the “drug-free society” that your “War on Drugs” is supposedly building. These criticisms aside, his article was entertaining and insightful. Jari Mustonen To the editor: Angelo Mannino Victor Davis Hanson responds: I am sorry that I could not take Jari Mustonen’s comments all that seriously—once he evoked the disingenuous and now discredited Noam Chomsky as someone relevant to discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pace Mr. Mustonen, good and evil mean a great deal in international affairs—at least for Americans, who have always thought a Hitler to be different from a Churchill, Mao’s China unlike Taiwan, and North dissimilar from South Korea. These contrasts are not mere “differences,” but the manifestations of evil versus good discernible to anyone who can dismiss the now-popular canard that “power” alone adjudicates morality in international relations. The regrettable laxity of some Western citizens in not taking full advantage of their own participatory government is a far cry from the coercion and tyranny of a totalitarian society. Count the corpses. Finally, all free societies engage in idealistic rhetoric, but a simple comparison between the American and proposed European Union constitutions elicits my concern about the desire of continental elites to acquire enough power to change the nature of man for the good—a desire that has been the prerequisite for almost every pernicious -ism and -ology of the twentieth century. A Quantum Leap for Iraq?To the editor: It took thousands of years and some of humanity’s most brilliant minds to develop classical physics and pass it on to subsequent generations, who would improve on that work. Now, in a single year, a mediocre physicist can teach a fair amount of that physics to university students. Ilan Levine To the editor: Allen K. Stewart To the editor: But we also have no income tax. We have a booming housing market, 4.5 percent unemployment, and well-paying jobs aplenty. That is why 5,000 people move here each month, most of them from the “trendy” Bay Area, and why the wait at the DMV to exchange out-of-state plates takes over three hours, six days a week. And as I write, while it is five degrees in Boston, it is in the sunny mid-60s here. If I lived in New York or San Francisco, instead of owning a new 2,300-square-foot house with a pool, I would be living in a one-bedroom apartment in a 40-year-old building and paying more in rent than my current mortgage payment. It would be nice to have more cultural amenities here, but should I choose high taxes and high rent just so I can go hear live music every now and then? I don’t think so. Mr. Florida is entitled to his opinion, but thousands of new Las Vegans are voting with their feet that his theories are pure bunk. Ed Dordea To the editor: James Harris To the editor: Brad Armstrong To the editor: Those cities have slow job and population growth because they are crowded and thus expensive. Many growing businesses can’t afford to pay the wages that workers in “creative” places earn. This is certainly a flaw with implementing the creative-class idea everywhere: it seems a stretch to think that Winnipeg will compete for workers with a lot of choices on where to locate. But that does not mean that cities where “creatives” now congregate should discontinue the policies that have led to their leadership position in wages and wage growth. Rich Kleinman Steven Malanga responds: Mr. Kleinman’s contention that cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco have slow job and population growth because “they are crowded and thus expensive” is a common misconception—one that has lingered for years, despite the fact that Jane Jacobs demolished it in The Economy of Cities over 30 years ago. Size for cities is relative. Geography alone does not explain why New York’s population grew to 8 million, while Boston’s has largely peaked at 585,000, and San Francisco’s at 775,000. Population and employment peaks have more to do with the efforts of the cities themselves—both intentional and unintentional—to limit growth through zoning, high taxes, and other policies that make them more expensive—though not necessarily crowded. These policies don’t merely limit growth; they limit economic efficiency. New York City, for instance, which began instituting its most damaging economic and tax policies starting in the late 1950s (when the city boasted a population equal to that of today), has a labor force–participation rate that typically runs 6 or 7 percent below the national average—and that is currently about ten points lower. That means that even with its current population, New York City’s economy should be supporting hundreds of thousands more jobs that simply don’t exist now. Under Richard Florida’s “creative” regime, cities produce jobs only along narrow income bands: high-end jobs that can be supported in places where it is expensive to do business, and the low-wage jobs necessary to provide services to those at the high end. What is missing from this equation is the rest of the job market: the solid middle. That’s why, as my article shows, these “creative cities” wind up producing jobs at a pace that lags the national average. Their economic model, with big wage gains along narrow bands of jobs, is not a recipe for increased economic opportunity. The rising tide that lifts all boats does more for arts patronage and urban quality of life than the most well-intentioned government-sponsored redevelopment plan—which is why Mr. Dordea can expect cultural amenities to proliferate over time in low-tax Las Vegas. From Left FieldTo the editor: Susan Sherman
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