Down goes another GOP talking point

[GG]

$11 per family is not smart, it's fuggin stupid. Do the math, unless you are counting all the families of the world.

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Using Euclidian math, $1.1 billion divided by 100 mil US households = $11.00.

 

What math are you using?

[Johnny Coli]

Using Euclidian math, $1.1 billion divided by 100 mil US households = $11.00.

 

What math are you using?

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His own math doesn't even work. Using his formula of four people to a family, and 260 million ppl, that's 65 million families. And that's if everyone has two kids. So, even using his completely out of the blue numbers, the cost would be $17 bucks/family.

[Chef Jim]

Because not all of you can get the Journal article without purchasing it (which isn't uncommon, most aren't free), I wil paste the study methods.  The data is summarized nicely in the press release that I linked to in the fourth or fifth post, that apparently some of you didn't bother to read.  (If Ken or Darin think this is pushing the copywrite limits I'll delete this post.  This is the methods only, though.)

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Next time can you fax me a copy?

[Chef Jim]

His own math doesn't even work.  Using his formula of four people to a family, and 260 million ppl, that's 65 million families.  And that's if everyone has two kids.  So, even using his completely out of the blue numbers, the cost would be $17 bucks/family. 

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What you're arguing (sorry discussing over burritos, tequila and painkillers) is, in my mind, irrelevent. The question is if $1.1 billion is not too much to pay to take care of illegals, what is? And if it isn't too much why not? What would be the economic loss if they were not here. That's what it really boils down to. But if you do that you must include ALL people here illegally, not just hispanics aged 18-64. Otherwise it is all meaningless.

[Bungee Jumper]

I give peer-reviewed journals less credence

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Less credence than what?

[Chef Jim]

Less credence than what? 

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Than papers that back his opinion.

[bills_fan]

Also, the US has 300 mil people, not 260. I don't know the number of "Families."

[X. Benedict]

I give peer-reviewed journals less credence because of their beliefs that pedophilia isn't wrong if the child consents, and other great findings of the idiots running this country into the ground.

 

Go shock yourself and read the American Psychology Association peer reviewed studies and tell me if you agree with them. Then go through each spending bill approved by peer-reviewed studies and tell me how 50% make any sense as far as what should be spent and what is spent.

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Good points. No more peer-reviewing to see if methods are sound.

Much better to throw out arbitrary figures like 50%.

[Bungee Jumper]

Than papers that back his opinion.   

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You mean the papers that publish press releases about the peer-reviewed journal articles?

[GG]

What you're arguing (sorry discussing over burritos, tequila and painkillers) is, in my mind, irrelevent.  The question is if $1.1 billion is not too much to pay to take care of illegals, what is?  And if it isn't too much why not?  What would be the economic loss if they were not here.  That's what it really boils down to.  But if you do that you must include ALL people here illegally, not just hispanics aged 18-64.  Otherwise it is all meaningless.

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Stupid simple easy math:

 

10 million illegal workers save their employers $1/hr for 2,080 hrs in a year would provide extra $20.8 bn in additional profits to the employers, leading to $6.2 bn in extra tax revenue. The $14 bn of net additional profit, at a 15 P/E multiple would translate to a $200 bn+ equity increase in capital.

 

(Note I'm not even going down the road of the impact of an economic slowdown if suddenly you didn't have the supply of low skilled workers)

[Johnny Coli]

What you're arguing (sorry discussing over burritos, tequila and painkillers) is, in my mind, irrelevent.  The question is if $1.1 billion is not too much to pay to take care of illegals, what is?  And if it isn't too much why not?  What would be the economic loss if they were not here.  That's what it really boils down to.  But if you do that you must include ALL people here illegally, not just hispanics aged 18-64.  Otherwise it is all meaningless.

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Hispanics were used, I believe, for sampling reasons for the area they used as their model, Los Angeles. I'm sure they could have used some other ethnic group clustered in some other part of the counry, but for statistical analysis the hispanic sampling would give a better data set to estimate from when scaling up the rest of the country. Had they only used somalians from Lewiston Maine as their model they would have been crucified for using a poor sampling technique.

 

The 18-64 age group is the predominant age group that makes up the population of undocumented workers. I believe they said this age group constitutes 97% of the undocumented workers. That's a large enough number to assume that the remaining 3% wouldn't have a significant impact on the results.

 

Thirdly, the study only disproves that "illegals" are more of a burden on the health industry than native-born people are. In fact, they are far less of a burden. It makes no mention of estimating the cost to educate, feed, etc. In fact, it states that those are the policy areas that should be discussed when looking at total economic impact.

[Bungee Jumper]

Stupid simple easy math:

 

10 million illegal workers save their employers $1/hr for 2,080 hrs in a year would provide extra $20.8 bn in additional profits to the employers, leading to $6.2 bn in extra tax revenue.  The $14 bn of net additional profit, at a 15 P/E multiple would translate to a $200 bn+ equity increase in capital. 

 

(Note I'm not even going down the road of the impact of an economic slowdown if suddenly you didn't have the supply of low skilled workers)

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In government budgetary terms, $6.2B total cost (all-inclusive, not just health care) would be the break-even then. Considering that 16-20% of the US GDP goes to health care, we can naively estimate (i.e. using stupid simple easy math) based on 1.1B in total illegal alien (aside: they're not "undocumented", they're !@#$ing illegal) costs to be in the neighborhood of $5.5-6.8B.

 

Which would mean that, from a macroeconomic perspective, $1.1B in costs isn't all that unreasonable at first blush. Of course, what I just did was a back-of-the-envelope order-of-magnitude estimate and not the most accurate number.

[The Avenger]

The thing that gets me is that everyone screams about the illegals who don't have healtcare being a drain on the system and not looking at the impact of all 48 million uninsured people have on society.

 

By most accounts, there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. - hard to get a real accurate number. Of the 48 million uninsured people in the country (yes, the folks using your local emergency room as their family doctor), at most 12 million of these people would be illegal. Accordingly, the other 36 million uninsured people are here legally - what's their cost to the average taxpaying family? Call me simple, but I'd think these folks would cost each taxpaying family 3 times what the illegals are costing you.

 

"Yeah - but the legal residents are paying their taxes and the illegals aren't" - don't be so sure. Not all legal residents provide much tax revenue (especially if they're poor - and if you don't have health insurance I think it's likely you are unemployed and/or are poor). Not all illegal residents skip out on taxes - many do pay because they have forged SS numbers and have this deducted from their checks. They also pay things like sales tax - no meaningful way to continually avoid that if you buy goods and services.

 

The cost to the taxpayer for uninsured people is what it is (people can argue over the numbers) but I don't think there's anyway to say that illegals are costing the taxpayer MORE than legal residents. The difference seems to be that legal residents are more likely to be members of the tax-paying public from which these funds are plucked (but remember, too, these folks consume more taxpayer dollars as well).

[Orton's Arm]

Just a small fraction of America's health care spending is used to provide publicly supported care to the nation's undocumented immigrants, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

 

Overall, immigrants to the United States use relatively few health services, primarily because they are generally healthier than their American-born counterparts, according to the study by the nonprofit research organization.

 

The report – which appears in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs – estimates that in the United States about $1.1 billion in federal, state and local government funds are spent annually on health care for undocumented immigrants aged 18 to 64. That amounts to an average of $11 in taxes for each U.S. household.

 

In contrast, a total of $88 billion in government funds were spent on health care for all non-elderly adults in 2000.

 

“Our findings show a relatively small amount of tax money is spent on health services provided to undocumented immigrants,” said James P. Smith, the RAND chair in Labor Market and Demographic Studies and an author of the report. “Costs will be much higher for educating the children of undocumented immigrants, so that's where debate should center, not on these relatively small health care costs.”

 

The other authors of the new report are: Dana Goldman, chair and director of health economics at RAND; and Neeraj Sood, an associate economist at RAND.

 

Smith also was an author of the often-cited National Academy of Science publication on immigration titled “The New Americans.”

I'd like to point out a flaw in the way this study's conclusions are being used. The total size of the pie that the study is looking at is $88 billion of government healthcare spending. Of that $88 billion, supposedly only $1.1 billion (1.25%) goes to providing healthcare for illegal aliens.

 

However, U.S. healthcare spending for 2003 wasn't $88 billion. It was $1.7 trillion. The study is looking at only 5% of total U.S. spending on healthcare. That's fine from a methodology standpoint, but you can't rightfully conclude that illegal immigrants only create $11 in heathcare costs per household until you've examined the 95% of U.S. healthcare spending that the study apparently ignored.

[Orton's Arm]

I beg you please don't continue, as you're starting to show the same acumen in economics as you do in statistics.

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Wraith--who does statistics for a living--agreed that my explanation of regression toward the mean is fundamentally correct. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to comment on my knowledge of either statistics or of economics.

[Bungee Jumper]

Wraith--who does statistics for a living--agreed that my explanation of regression toward the mean is fundamentally correct. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to comment on my knowledge of either statistics or of economics.

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And a dozen other people who do statistics for a living agree that you're fundamentally an ignoramous.

 

But go ahead and argue economics with GG...this should be just as much fun to watch.

[Bungee Jumper]

I'd like to point out a flaw in the way this study's conclusions are being used. The total size of the pie that the study is looking at is $88 billion of government healthcare spending. Of that $88 billion, supposedly only $1.1 billion (1.25%) goes to providing healthcare for illegal aliens.

 

However, U.S. healthcare spending for 2003 wasn't $88 billion. It was $1.7 trillion. The study is looking at only 5% of total U.S. spending on healthcare. That's fine from a methodology standpoint, but you can't rightfully conclude that illegal immigrants only create $11 in heathcare costs per household until you've examined the 95% of U.S. healthcare spending that the study apparently ignored.

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Holy Christ, you're a !@#$ing moron. The study looked at the cost to government budgets, not overall cost. So they looked at government spending on healthcare, not overall spending. The study's not "flawed", you just don't understand the study's purpose.

[GG]

Wraith--who does statistics for a living--agreed that my explanation of regression toward the mean is fundamentally correct. Don't embarrass yourself by attempting to comment on my knowledge of either statistics or of economics.

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Me embarrass myself, when you introduce Medicare spending into a study that specificallystates that it sampled adults 18-64?

 

Keep it coming, genius.

[Chef Jim]

Stupid simple easy math:

 

10 million illegal workers save their employers $1/hr for 2,080 hrs in a year would provide extra $20.8 bn in additional profits to the employers, leading to $6.2 bn in extra tax revenue.  The $14 bn of net additional profit, at a 15 P/E multiple would translate to a $200 bn+ equity increase in capital. 

 

(Note I'm not even going down the road of the impact of an economic slowdown if suddenly you didn't have the supply of low skilled workers)

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As I mentioned I don't have a problem with the people that are here illegally to work. It's those that come for work, find none, stay here, and live off the system. The cost associated with those is a 100% net loss to the system.

[Orton's Arm]

Holy Christ, you're a !@#$ing moron.  The study looked at the cost to government budgets, not overall cost.  So they looked at government spending on healthcare, not overall spending.  The study's not "flawed", you just don't understand the study's purpose. 

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You didn't understand my post. I said that it wasn't a methodological mistake to look at only a 5% slice of healthcare costs. I also said that because the study only looks at that slice, it can't be used to support the conclusion that illegal aliens only impose $11 per household in added healtcare costs.