... are going to get worse. Dig this.
For the fiscal year ending September 30th, southwest border apprehensions at average levels are on pace as the third worst year ever. The numbers would be even more dire save that the Biden administration enjoys a tailwind from comparatively favorable apprehensions numbers during the October 2020 to January 2021 stretch of the Trump administration.
Notwithstanding, the worst years are tightly clustered. If the last three months of the fiscal year came in only 80,000 above forecast, the Biden administration would hold the absolute record for the worst fiscal year at the southwest border.
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| The dash-dot line is pure fantasy. It assumes a magical reversion to the mean. |
Going back to the suggestions in my Inflation Crouch post, where I pondered what might be the optimal strategies for an environment where government-spending inflation took off, we have this:
I've spent some time researching various crashes throughout history, looking for a theme in profitable investments. If there is one, I can't find it. The problem is that society becomes unstable. Markets and exchanges cease to function in an orderly manner. While you can own stock and property and wait out the mayhem, it's getting through the mayhem that is the real problem. Thus, the best course of action is one that helps you ride out the storm...
The goal would be to reduce your expenses to as small a number as you can. Here are just a couple of thoughts along those lines.
- Pay off your mortgage.
- Pay off all loans.
- Learn how to fix your cars.
- Learn how to make repairs on your house.
- Learn how to cook.
- Learn how to grow and preserve your own produce.
I'll add one more, perhaps the most important of all.
7. Get as far away as you can from unstable and morally degenerate neighborhoods.
Note: Yeah, I'm just going to go there. If you're murdering a large percentage of your babies through abortion and abandoning the women you get pregnant if they do give birth, then morally degenerate is a solid description. All of the attendant pathologies are lumped in as well - murder, theft, poor school performance, drug use and the like. That's degenerate and there's no point in hiding it with nice words.
The people who currently live in bad neighborhoods will suffer the most. We're going to import about 2 million unskilled illegals who will happily work under the table for less than minimum wage. I've seen it in the lives of the gardener and maid who used to work for my parents. The gardener can't find a landscaping job and is having to work in Las Vegas, installing windows. It doesn't take Nostradamus to foresee that those jobs will soon be taken by the illegals as well.
The illegals are going to devour Federal money, too. The deficit isn't coming down which means our inflation drivers will remain or get worse. Federal social spending won't keep up with inflation, so the living standards of the poor, read: those living in degenerate neighborhoods, are going to decline. If you think they're violent now, just wait until their real household incomes decline because of inflation.
This amplifies what I'd said before about society becoming unstable. It won't be uniformly distributed across the country, so there will be places that escape the unrest. The key is to find those before you need them.
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| I'm no fan of cold weather, but Idaho has its advantages. |
So, I am confused about what I am supposed to take away from that graph. It says it is "apprehensions". Isn't that the number of illegal immigrants who are caught and sent back, not the number who actually succeed in getting into the country?
ReplyDeleteWithout some idea of the fraction that actually get caught, I don't know whether that curve is going in a good direction or a bad direction. I mean, on the one hand, if they catch a constant 30% or so of illegal immigrants, then the line going up indicates that there are more of them coming in, and that's what you don't like. On the other hand, if there have always been about 200,000 illegal immigrants per month[1], and they used to only catch about 40,000 to 60,000 of them, but now are catching more like 170,000 of them, then that would mean that the number of immigrants getting through is actually reduced, and that's what you do like.
But, from that graph alone, I have no idea which case it is, or if it is somewhere in-between (maybe there are more trying to get in, but more are also being caught, and so the total number making it through is more or less constant?) So, do we actually know whether the net number of successful illegal immigrants is going up, going down, or staying constant? That graph by itself certainly doesn't seem to tell us.
[1] These numbers are per month, right? Really this should be a bar graph that makes it clear what the time interval is, not a line graph.
Incidentally, what makes the dash-dot line "pure fantasy"? The blue line that peaked highest shows pretty much the same degree of decline, so clearly it can happen.
ReplyDeleteTim, no one is being sent back. If apprehended, they are given a court date which they ignore. They are then moved on to the interior of the country.
ReplyDeleteThe dash-dot line is pure fantasy because it implies the government enforcing the border in some way. I bet it will go up instead of remaining flat.
As for the rest of the post, it's relentlessly downbeat, but it was just the thought exercise for the day. I was trying to ponder what happens to the folks shooting each other in Philly, Chicago and Oakland as inflation kicks in and more illegals come into the country.
Good blog! Here via a link from Big D (Don Surber). Cheers mate…
ReplyDeleteK T Cat,
ReplyDeleteTim, no one is being sent back. If apprehended, they are given a court date which they ignore. They are then moved on to the interior of the country.
Among the ones claiming asylum/refugee status, the percent that make their court date is in the high 90s. The ones not making such a claim usually don't get a court date at all.