The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a bunch of downloadable guides to tell cashiers and tellers (and ordinary folks) how to identify genuine currency.
So now seems like a good time to mention that a couple of new U.S. currency note designs came out while I was writing for Wise Bread, and each time I wrote a post or two about them:
Many Americans want fewer immigrants, primarily because they worry that immigrants are competing with native-born U.S. citizens for jobs. There are of course other reasons. Some people are racists. Some people imagine that immigrant populations will include radicals or terrorists. But I think the jobs one is the big one.
I think I see a good way to fix this particular problem. A good enough way that we probably don’t even need to have visas, or immigration checks at the borders. Most important, we wouldn’t need to have a police state with ICE agents sweeping up brown people and demanding to see their papers.
My idea is simple: add a tax surcharge—perhaps 15%—on companies, on the payrolls of immigrants, legal or not. (Plus a twist I’ll mention in a minute.)
This fixes several problems at once.
First, it means people can quit arguing about whether companies are hiring immigrants because of their skills, or just because they’re cheaper or more willing to work long hours, or whatever. If companies are willing to pay an extra 15%, they’re definitely in need of the skills. (Maybe the ideal rate is 10% or 20%. It should specifically be enough that companies will hire native-born workers if they’re capable of doing the job, because they’re cheaper than foreign-born workers after taxes. A bit of experience will show us the ideal rate.)
Second, it’ll raise wages and salaries for Americans, because even a big raise would be cheaper than hiring an immigrant.
Third, it’ll greatly reduce the cost and trouble of the numerous visa programs. In fact, we can probably just get rid of visas. Anyone can come to the U.S. and work, as long as their employer pays the surcharge.
Of course this only works if employers actually pay the surcharge—and why would they do that, if they’ve been cheating on employing illegal immigrants all along?
Well, the twist I mentioned above is to solve that: Make the statute of limitations on this tax ridiculously long. Maybe 35 years. Add on some severe penalties for non-payment as well—double the original bill, plus interest and the ordinary penalties for unpaid taxes.
Oh, and spread the liability around. If the immigrant is technically employed by a contractor, but he or she works at your site, you’re also liable for the surcharge. (I don’t expect it would be possible, but I’d like to see the CEO be personally liable for the surcharge, in cases where the corporation went bankrupt somewhere along the line.)
With a policy like this in place, employers—instead of looking the other way when they suspect someone is an illegal immigrant—now really want to know. Because they either have to pay the surtax now, or else they’re on the hook for double that money for years into the future.
I’m thinking of 35 years, because it’s long enough that the immigrants might be reaching retirement age about then. If we throw in a little incentive—perhaps 10% of the tax collected—they might be willing to report all their former employers when they’re ready to retire. Remember: They don’t owe any extra tax—the liability is all on their employers. But they can collect that little 10% as a boost to their retirement by ratting out three decades of tax-cheating employers.
I think this solves everything.
Since everyone is legal, there’s no need to worry about whether someone is “documented” or not. No need to worry about visas. No need to check anyone’s papers.
Oh, there’ll still be a need for papers—employers will want to be sure a potential employee is a citizen—there’s just no need for the police to check them. And of course, some citizens might have trouble coming up with papers. But those problems are no worse than they are already, with the bonus that they can be sorted out at leisure in ordinary courts, rather than in special immigration courts with people in detention. Citizens can show they’re native born all sorts of ways, just like they do now if they need to get a passport, but don’t have a birth certificate. Naturalized citizens have naturalization papers, plus there are other records.
Companies can copy and maintain the documentation to show that their employees were citizens, or else pay the taxes.
Nobody is “illegal.” Anybody can call the police, get a drivers license, get car insurance, send their kids to public school, go to the doctor, all without any worry that they’ll be deported. (Of course, they might not stay long, if they don’t have skills that justify their employer paying an extra 15% tax to employ them, but that’s okay too.)
We can save a bunch of money on border security, because anybody can come into the country, as long as they’re willing to compete with the locals at a 15% disadvantage.
My main interest here is in getting rid of the need for police-state behaviors on the part of the government. If everybody is legal, there’s no need for them. My secondary interest is in living in a more diverse community. I like having foreigners around. I like living among a diverse ethnic population. I think it could be awesome.
As a bonus, those extra taxes will fund quite a bit of extra government spending. Maybe even makes some headway on the national debt.
I had completely forgotten about this post, written more than 20 years ago, even though I went on to write about exactly this topic for Wise Bread for years.
This post was about the difference between playing at being poor (which gives you a bunch of psychic benefits) versus actually being poor:
Playing at being poor means living in a cheap apartment, eating cheap, healthy food prepared at home, having only one car (and not a new one), and so on. It’s really only a matter of giving up stuff–and not even all stuff. You can easily justify an extravagance or two. You might give up cable, but have a cable modem. Give up movies, but go to plays. Give up coffee shop coffee, but buy Jamaican Blue Mountain for home. In many ways, it’s the way I live now. But I try not to be smug about it. I know the difference between what I’m doing and being poor.
Being poor isn’t frugal or safe or healthy. Being poor means skipping an oil change because the alternative is skipping lunch for ten days. Being poor means living in a dangerous neighborhood. Being poor means wearing shoes that hurt your feet.
The difference is a matter of capital. Having capital is frugal. If you have capital you can play at being poor and actually live more cheaply than a real poor person. A frugal person’s car lasts a lot longer than a poor person’s. You can buy when things are cheap, instead of paying whatever price they happen to be when you simply can’t do without them any longer. Similarly, it’s safer and healthier.
Our plan is to publish science fiction and fantasy stories. You can read our planning blog here: https://blog.elegantlich.com/
We spent some time looking into creating an Illinois LLC, but are currently leaning against that idea. It would be a lot of work to get it all done and to keep the paperwork right going forward. And although (in Illinois) it wouldn’t be too terribly expensive, it would still cost a large fraction of the cost of putting out an issue of the magazine. So instead we’re thinking we just won’t call it a business, but rather just a hobby. There are some things we wouldn’t want to do if it’s just a hobby (such as sell stuff), but it’ll save us time, money, and trouble.
Our tentative cover art is by Hermann Paul, who did this woodcut as well:
Normally I want to respond to every report that suggests that cannabis has very few studies backing up its effectiveness to point out, “That’s because doing such a study was illegal for most of the past century.” But this time I’ll just say, “Point to a few approved drugs with ‘real benefits’ that aren’t ‘limited to only a few conditions.'”
A major review finds medical cannabis widely overestimated and potentially risky, with real benefits limited to only a few conditions.
I’m not so sure that there isn’t some hay to be made around insisting that AI firms should be distributing half their profits to the writers whose works they stole to train their models, but I also agree with Cory that it’d be a mistake to do that in a way that broke using the internet to provide citations for dictionaries.
If you’re interested, like I am, in how and why copyright might not be the best tool for helping writers make a living writing, you’ll definitely want to read Cory’s latest at Pluralistic:
The AI copyright fight isn’t being fought to protect your wages – it’s being fought to see whether your lost wages end up in the pockets of a tech boss or a media boss.
My brother @stevendbrewer, (who shared this with me) and I are not AI natives, or even AI immigrants. I guess we’re AI foreigners. Maybe AI refugees.
(My brother warns me “People get offended when you say ‘refugee,'” so I was all, “Ooh! I’ll post that immediately!” He claims to be more an AI refusenik, while suggesting that I’m more AI-curious.)
