Saturday, February 03, 2018

Are immigrants superior to Americans?

David Brooks in a NYT's piece claims that immigrants are superior to Americans--they "outhustle" us. Is this true?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asks non-retired participants about their work status. Let's use full-time employment status as our measure of "hustlers." According to the data, 61.3% of white and 53.4% of black Americans work full-time. For immigrants of all races, it's 56.3%.

Where exactly is the mind-blowing hustle Brooks is referring to? I think Brooks is doing what liberals often do: take a black reality that's troubling and then pretend it's whites who have the problem. For example, private gun ownership is portrayed as scary, and images of white rednecks are drummed up, but progressives are actually afraid of blacks having firearms.

People like Brooks have an instinctive dislike of ordinary whites because this group is seen as actually being capable of organized nastiness, while brown people are not. He is wrong about this. I'm no historian, but I do seem to remember something about whites not doing very well in Haiti around 1791.  

Are gun owners mentally ill?

  Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...