Mayor Bill de Blasio: The Perfect Ayn Rand Villain [Podcast]

Reason editors talk immigration, affirmative action, and why the "Pharma Bro" witch hunt should concern everyone.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio: The Perfect Ayn Rand Villain [Podcast]

If the GOP succeeds in making it even harder to become an American, other nations "are going to be eating our lunch," says Reason's Nick Gillespie. The fact is the U.S. is no longer the "default destination" for foreign talent.

On today's podcast, Gillespie joins Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Andrew Heaton to discuss the latest Republican plans to restrict immigration, the recent challenge to affirmative action on campus, and why the the trial and conviction of "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli should frighten all Americans.

And Mangu-Ward explains why New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is the perfect Ayn Rand villain.

Audio post-production by Ian Keyser.

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Comments

[$park? leftist poser]

If the GOP succeeds in making it even harder to become an American, other nations "are going to be eating our lunch," says Reason's Nick Gillespie.

Really? You think there's going to be a huge swath of refugees fleeing to... where?

[Hugh Akston]

Turkey. Western Europe. Canada.

[$park? leftist poser]

I guess it will be ironic if Turkey starts "eating our lunch".

[mad.casual]

Especially when they start licensing their falafel carts and their McDonalds burger-flippers start demanding $15/hr.

[Juice]

Would it be ironic if I ate turkey for lunch?

[Mickey Rat]

Canada, a country that markedly does not do open borders. In fact, has immigration restrictions that are quite simimar to the ones thst being proposed by tge Trump admin.

[SKR]

Canada's immigration rate is about double the US.

[BestUsedCarSales]

May I ask to see the data? A quick search isn't getting me any recent numbers and I always love stats.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It's important to note that 'making it harder' to become an American often means "making as hard as it is everywhere else'.

I think it should be easy to become an American, because we want to attract that foreign talent. But once you start reading about the immigration policies that most countries in the West have, they tend to be a bit protective about their domestic jerbs. Canada is an excellent example of that. As one Canadian poster here put it, Canada doesn't want to bring in a lot of retired people and pilates instructors.

[Akshar]

Not sure what you smoke. The average waiting time for green card for Indians is 12 years. Your entire life is gone as you cant change jobs often or your wife cant work.

[Uncle Jay]

Mayor Bill de Blasio: The Perfect Ayn Rand Villain

Ah, yes. Mayor Bill de Blasio.
What a wonderful progressive he is.
Makes it practically impossible for the unwashed masses, especially minorities, to attend private charter schools. I wonder if his kids went to private schools?
Plus, he didn't attend the funerals of two murdered police officer because participating in an anti-G20 conference in Berlin was much more important.
Gee, if only other mayors were like this.

[Rhywun]

He is the gift that keeps on giving.

De Blasio on Saturday revealed his new plan for the "millionaire's tax" to pay for repairs to the failing subways, improve the bus system and to subsidize half-price MetroCards for about 800,000 low-income New Yorkers.

It wouldn't be a Deblasio plan without some good old fashioned class warfare.

[Darth Soros]

To me, it's just interesting how, when she was alive, Rand's novels were criticized for their allegedly cartoonish and unfair depiction of "liberals." Yet as the decades pass, real-life "liberals" themselves (and by "liberals" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators") have become more and more caricatures of themselves.

[Sevo]

If you find some old National Lampoon magazines, you'll also notice that what was satire at the time is accepted as normal today.

[dchang0]

Gillespie loves to point out that illegal aliens consume welfare at a lower average cost than US citizens do, but the problem is that the illegals do not replace the US citizens. That is to say, if an illegal alien consumes $10,000/year in welfare and the native-born US citizen consumes $20,000 on welfare, together they consume $30,000/year on welfare. It is not that the US citizen goes off welfare when the illegal alien signs up.

Los Angeles County just paid out $1.3 billion in welfare to illegal aliens:

http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....years.html

That's $1.3 billion that would not have been paid out from LA County taxpayers had these illegal aliens not been on welfare. I'm not saying "had they not been here." I'm saying, "had they not been on welfare."

[dchang0]

Re: the illegal alien not being a robot that doesn't consume anything, let's say in this thought experiment I can freely donate $1000 to an illegal alien or an entrepreneur OR be forced to give $1000 to the illegal alien by gov't via taxation then welfare. The illegal alien spends the money at Walmart on food, so it goes to Pepsico and Kraft. The entrepreneur spends the money hiring a temp worker, who then shops at Walmart, so the money goes to Pepsico and Kraft.

What's the difference? The temp worker creates a tiny bit of extra value that didn't exist in the world prior to his working for the entrepreneur. But let's say no value was created. Then the only difference is that in one case, I choose to give freely to either the illegal alien or the entrepreneur, and the other case, gov't made me give the illegal alien $1000.

So Gillespie is essentially supporting the gov't picking winners and losers.

[Sevo]

"That's $1.3 billion that would not have been paid out from LA County taxpayers had these illegal aliens not been on welfare."

Any idea what they added to the economy? Only seeing the debit side of the ledger really doesn't tell us much.

[Jim Walsh]

I think Elliott Spitzer is a better Rand heavy: he combines the arrogance of Floyd Ferris with the cluelessness of Jim Taggart. And Bill Maher adores him! Talk about your kiss of death...

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