Attempting Solutions to Societal Problems

Sometimes it helps, in understanding an overwhelming or controversial issue, to boil it down to its very essentials. Conversely, though they can be summed up by a single catchword, it is dangerous to assume that there are very simple solutions to many-faceted problems. A photograph, on a back page in yesterday’s newspaper brought these principles, which I believe in and try to use to guide my life, suddenly to a focal point.

The issue in question is important and controversial. People do not agree on a solution. But they each believe they have the solution. The catchword that sums it all up is immigration. How ironic that among a populace whose very presence, most of them, is due to the migration of their ancestors to the land of opportunity, that it has come to this. I boil it down to it essentials: opportunity has become controversial.

In a past blog posting I gave my ideas on something that would seem to be enjoyable to all: fun. Yet even that brings out selfishness in people. They want to have fun, their fun, but have trouble sharing it. It is the same with opportunity, a universal good that people, for various reasons that seem justifiable to them, cannot share easily.

At the right is a photo taken as U.S. Marshals Service deputies direct several suspected illegal immigrants from the federal courthouse in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to a waiting van for transportation to an overnight holding facility, Tuesday, August 26, 2008. The immigrants were detained in a raid on a manufacturing plant in southern Mississippi the prior day. Over 600 suspected illegal immigrants were picked up during the raid.

Photo courtesy Associated Press/The Press of Atlantic City Media Group

Look at this picture in its essence. These people have broken the law. They are being detained by law enforcement officers. That part makes sense. But there is more… Remember, they are being arrested for working! That defies reason. Also they are being seized as persons, in contravention to our Constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus, and will be precipitously placed on airplanes to foreign countries which they had left for good reason. Thus they are immediately terminated from employment, and separated from their families plunging them into grief, poverty, and loneliness. Their punishment has already begun. This is being done in a country whose justice system forbids “… cruel and unusual punishments”.

Above, however I warned of the peril in assuming there are very simple solutions to many-faceted problems. Unlike Cuban refugees who must risk a sea voyage and thus arrive in small numbers, Mexicans, who comprise the majority of these immigrant workers, make a land entry to the USA. Also their country is very populous ,very poor and has a high unemployment rate. Last, American companies have outsourced jobs to Mexico, which reduces the domestic labor market. In hiring illegal immigrant workers here companies drive down domestic wages, a fact not lost on citizens competing for these jobs.

Immigration has replaced abortion as the new fixation of conservative voters. Great emotion is expressed by blue collar folks about what are euphemistically called “guest workers,” for example “they are taking food off our tables!” The common man or woman does not see that the chain of events leading to the situation that so scandalizes them is actually created by business executives, not Mexicans.

Another wave in the anti-immigration faction concerns the "life boat” concept of the United
States. Eventually the boat will be loaded to the point where no more can come, metaphorically, to the land (boat) of opportunity. Ironically the birth rate is the highest in the nations that can least afford to feed and raise the children. This strikes a nerve among Americans who believe in family planning. They say “they keep having more babies, who grow up and cross the border and then we have to find jobs for them. Why should we have to solve their problems? Seal the border.”

There is no question that this is a complex social issue, but I want to introduce even another complication. All these efforts by government agencies, foremost Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), costs taxpayers about $20 billion annually. However even illegals pay income tax – there is no avoiding it as employers must withhold tax amounts from all workers' pay and forward it quarterly to the IRS. Since most illegals use false Social Security numbers these funds never gain them any pension benefit, but fills the federal coffers at about $25 billion a year. So there is actually a net gain of about $5 billion because these workers will never see any benefit from their withheld wages. Adding to that is the fact that they pay sales tax on their purchases like everybody else thus, in some places, partially offseting the cost of education of their children and other municipal services in the towns where the illegals live.

To put this in perspective the latest estimate of the societal cost of drug abuse is a staggering $220 billion a year, including law enforcement costs, losses due to drug-related thefts and other crimes and medical services directly related to substance abuse. The government never sees any of the money paid for the drugs as all transactions are in the black market. In citing this I am not suggesting free reign at our borders. Far from it. As I said there are never clean, simple solutions. To the essence: government cannot do everything and society cannot possibly solve all its problems, so let’s make a comparison as if we were doing triage: where should the greatest efforts go?

Problem 1, illegal immigrants working in this country. Societal costs including law enforcement $20 Big ones, “free” income from taxes collected but not ever credited to the worker $25 B, a net of $5 B. Problem 2: drug abuse ruins health, propels addicts to steal to support their habits, involves drug dealers and customers in violent conflict, and is a scourge in neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. The societal cost is about $220 B, there is no monetary return. Back to the original question: go after people and arrest them for working, a net contributor to the country, or step up efforts to stem the flow of drugs that are sapping the strength and health of our nation?

Meditation on the Galaxy

It was fairly late in the evening and we had reduced the number of lights on in the house, as was customary to help get in the mood for sleep. My wife went out on the deck for a while. I read at the dining room table. A few minutes later she came in smiling and spoke as if she was sharing a great little secret: "Come on outside. I have a surprise for you!"
I could only guess that it was some kind of sky sight, as she knows how much I like astronomy. When I first went out I said "I can't see a thing. It will take a few minutes for my eyes to get dark-adapted." Meanwhile in this oblivious state I mused: aurora? meteors? Slowly, magnitude by magnitude ever fainter stars came into my vision. When it clarified down to the fourth magnitude I saw it: the Milky Way in rare dark-sky splendor.
Once she got me out there, nobody could tear me away. I sat way back in a lounge chair and tried to remember what had attracted me so early in life to the stars.
Lacking any new insight on that topic, I decided to take an imiginary star trip. I felt no particular attraction to any one star, so I tried to imagine the sight before me for what it really was: the foreground stars are like nearby trees, the fainter ones can be imagined as a look into the woods, finally the Milky Way is like the deep forest, a general blur in which individual trees cannot be distinguished. It was not long before I succeeded in perceiving the heavenly sight that way. (The illustration at the left is intended to help visualize stars of farther and farther distances showing as fainter and fainter individuals and finally, the most distant ones blending into the distant general blur.)

What we call the Milky Way is actually a view of our own galaxy seen edge-on, since we are near the outer edge looking in to where the majority of our "neighbor" (astronomically speaking of course!) stars are.
It then recurred to me that every night we are privileged to look out the window of Spaceship Earth. And what a sight it is. It would be easy to assume that everything in the Universe is lined up the same way. But the reality is that the relative angles of planetary orbits in solar system is way off from the plane our Milky Way galaxy. The illustration at left is adapted from an image in a page by blogger Plantigrade. Imagine that you are on the little Earth globe, looking up. The red line represents the Ecliptic, the plane in which everything in the Solar System travels. Our galaxy is tilted about 123º to that plane. That is why our summer view of the Milk Way is over our heads.These nights it is actually running from horizon to horizon passing directly overhead, not at all aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation.

I suppose that if the motion of Earth as the Sun drags us around and around galaxy's center were like a train, then we would be riding sideways in our seats, like guy on the right!