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"We don’t generally disagree about the most fundamental premises of our politics, we disagree about how to prioritize them, and therefore where to place the emphasis when confronted with a particular challenge or choice." nationalreview.com/corner/growth-…
I still disagree a lot with Cass' and Salam’s views on immigration a lot. They assume that we can centrally plan the society according to the values of the current establishment, denying the fact that it is impossible to fully predict future.
We can have a Burkean or a Madisonian argument on why to keep a structure that is stable and everyone knows it well. Enforced and enforceable laws. But dictating which type of immigration (or no immigration at all) is social engineering 101.
We can and should strive to reduce everything that keeps Americans from working, but it is much more on reducing the welfare traps and giving people incentives to move to where work is than forbidding people who want to work to move to the US.
When e.g., for some social engineering purposes, we make detasseling corn cost 5x more, everything else in the chain will become more expensive and lower wage Americans will be terribly hurt. The same lower wage Americans that Cass and Salam were trying to help.
There is no amount of wage subsidies that can compensate for that -- the same can be said for reducing/banning automation, and implementing tariffs. Additionally, they are falling hard on the broken window trap. They only see one thing and ignore possibilities on the side.
The same technology and trade that lead to rural unemployment in late 19th century, created cities that were the centers for development and progress. So, we don't know what will happen when we're in a middle of a change.
We can and should try to understand the changes, and propose paths that people voluntarily can take. But to use the force and the coercion of the state to implement our utopias is far from something desirable.
