doj: It’s obviously silly to focus on the single use of government roads in getting to your house, and that’s not what I’m doing. Instead, I am trying to look at the big picture and comparing the case where an illegal immigrant is living in the US with the case they aren’t, since the largest marginal effect of the $40 job is a probabilistic increase in the number of illegal immigrants living in the country.

Well, no, the “largest marginal effect of the $40 job” is that your grand piano is moved, and the worker has $40 more than before.

It’s true, of course, that it also has the effect of increasing the demand for labor not restricted by immigration status; and so it may contribute, on the margin, to the probability that more undocumented immigrants will live in the country. But so what? The only reasons you’ve offered for thinking that there’s anything wrong with having more undocumented immigrants living in the country is the allegation that it involves unspecified “costs” being imposed on innocent third parties—an allegation which has been objected to, since you’ve offered no evidence that this involves more “costs” for those third parties than hiring anybody else in a welfare state does, let alone that either the immigrant or the person hiring him or her is morally to blame for those “costs.” So let’s get down to brass tacks. You claim that increasing the probability of more undocumented immigrants in the country is something that you oughtn’t do. Why? What’s wrong with having more undocumented immigrants in the country, let alone with merely increasing the probability that this may happen?

doj: In principle, I may agree. However, just because one policy is optimal in utopia does not mean that policy makes sense in concert with the messy set of other policies that are currently in place. The welfare state in the US is not going away soon, and wishful thinking to the contrary when setting immigration policy is potentially disasterous. We need to be realists.

How is this any of the immigrant’s fault? There are lots of ways you could reduce the total welfare burden in this country. For example, you could shoot people standing in the queue at the welfare office. Or you could blow up government schools. Or you could implement a forced sterilization / abortion program for the poor. Do you think that these are acceptable methods? If not, why do you think that restraining, arresting, confining, an immigrant, beating or shooting them if necessary, destroying their livelihood, and exiling them from the country, is any more acceptable? Why are they fair game for your policy “realism” but not the domestic poor?

doj: And the reality is, among other things, that most of California’s public school system is shot to hell and can be expected to remain so as long as too many illegal immigrants stress the system.

Who cares? Why are you trying to fix the government school system?

doj: The majority of voters are quite willing to pay more for labor if they can reverse this sort of thing;

Then they are welcome to pay for it. What I object to is when they propose to force me pay more for labor in order to fulfill their demographic goals, which I couldn’t possibly care less about.

doj: … when we refuse to enforce the immigration laws they vote for, that is a subversion of our political process.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Gil: I think it is the case that illegals tend to avoid paying income taxes.

All undocumented immigrants pay gasoline taxes, sales taxes, and (either directly, or indirectly through the rent paid to their landlord) property taxes. These, and not personal income taxes, happen to be the primary sources of funding for government road-building, government schools, and the state and local services that immigrants are said to be using.

Not all undocumented immigrants work under the table, either. Many undocumented immigrants also pay personal income taxes and FICA taxes, because they use forged papers to get a job and are processed like a normal employee, with money withheld from their paycheck.

doj: The illegal immigrant has to live somewhere, use public roads and other services, school their kids, etc. When you provide jobs to illegal immigrants, you profit while imposing these costs on other citizens.

How are the costs “imposed” in this case different from the costs “imposed” by hiring anybody who has to use government roads and services to get to your house? How are they different from the costs “imposed” by you personally when you use these government services?

Are you operating on the (false) assumption that only citizens (or perhaps citizens and documented immigrants) pay taxes?

doj: One of the jobs of government is to prevent this sort of behavior at least in the cases where aggregate utility decreases.

The easiest way for them to prevent freeloading on taxpayers is to stop subsidizing schools and roads and other services. Trying to minimize or contain freeloading by taking it out on immigrants who aren’t, after all, responsible for the subsidies is not a solution; it’s just a diversion, and one that happens to harm a lot of innocent people.

My understanding is that there are some aboveground markets in which organized crime outfits have historically been successful — for example, in vending machines, and in the financing and distribution of pornography.

Pornography is a special case, given that during the period of substantial Mafia involvement, it was constantly under legal threat, and social pressures contributed to a lot of economic features that made the market similar to black markets even when it wasn’t formally one. As for vending machines, I’m not sure where exactly the organized crime element came from — although I’ve heard plausible suggestions that coercive control over restaurants and bars (through various forms of racketeering) played a role, and also that getting into businesses oriented around large amounts of cash in small denominations aided in money laundering.