Raising the Retirement Age Can Help Social Security, But It Is Not Enough to Save It

As we come to the climax of this presidential election, I think about Social Security and how neither presidential candidate intends to cut Social Security benefits. As I brought up last year, Social Security is not sustainable. The Social Security Trustees' Report calculates that the Social Security trust fund is to be depleted in 2035. Afterwards, there will be a statutory reduction in Social Security benefits. 

One commonly recommended policy alternative to help save Social Security has been to raise the retirement age to 69. It was a topic I explored back in 2013 and one you can explore further with this Congressional Research Service primer. While I was in favor (and still am) of raising the retirement, there was a concern of mine: cutting the retirement age would not be enough. Over a decade later, it looks like my concern was justified. An analysis from the American Action Forum brought my attention to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) letter published last month. Two main findings were 1) raising the retirement age would reduce benefits (which the Left-leaning Center for American Progress pointed out in July), and 2) it would not be enough on its own to extend the life of the trust funds. 

Per the CBO letter, Social Security spending would be 0.5 percent of GDP less than under current law, which is not bad considering that CBO predicts that Social Security spending will be 5.4 percent of GDP in 2054. But 0.5/5.4 is still less than a reduction of 10 percent. That simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows how it barely scratches the surface. Even with variations of options about changing Social Security retirement age, as is presented by a September 2024 analysis from the Brookings Institution (see below), it still has a ways to go. 

Do not mistaken my analysis or any of these cited analyses as saying that we should abandon tinkering with early retirement ages for Social Security. As a pointed out with my analysis of the France case study last year, there are too many retirees pulling funds with too few workers contributing to public pension funds. When you have more money going out than going in for an extended period of time, a financial system cannot remain solvent. That is what has happened with Social Security in the United States. Plus, raising the retirement age is shown to improve economic growth by the fact that workers stay in the labor market longer and make more money in the process. 

Social Security is out of whack enough where it is going to take multiple policy alternatives in addition to altering full retirement age (e.g., lowering benefits, altering the formula) to make a difference with Social Security. Hopefully, it can add up to either making Social Security solvent once more. Or even better, the American people realize that privatizing retirement accounts brings them a better return on investment (ROI) and therefore is better for their retirement. 

Trump's Mass Deportation Idea Is As Massively Lousy As When He First Proposed It, If Not More So

There has been no shortage of terrible policy ideas to criticize and scrutinize during this presidential election cycle. Vice President Harris wants to implement such inane ideas as taxing unrealized capital gains and price controls on groceries. Trump has cranked out multiple absurd ideas, including, but not limited to, absurdly high tariffs and a temporary credit card interest rate cap. Today, I would like to cover one of Trump's longest-standing policy proposals: mass deportation. It is long-standing enough where I criticized the idea back in 2015. I did not like the idea back then and I certainly do not like it now. Here is why I think it is a terrible idea. 

Mass deportation is costly. There is the matter of how much this would cost. Think about what would go into enforcement. The government would need to identify, locate, detain, and legally process, and then remove 11 million unauthorized workers. Then there is the matter of creating and expanding upon detention facilities, courtrooms, and other infrastructure, not to mention hiring additional personnel. According to the American Immigration Council's October 2024 study on Trump's deportation plan, that would cost an estimated $967.9 billion over the next decade. 

Mass deportation would harm the U.S. economy. Immigrants are a net gain for the economy, and yes, that includes low-skill immigrants. Aside from the labor they provide, undocumented immigrants pay about $100 billion in taxes annually. Also, as this policy analysis from the Brookings Institution points out, unauthorized immigrants typically take different jobs from low-skilled U.S.-born labor (e.g., housekeeping, construction, caregivers), not to mention contribute to the long-term fiscal health of the U.S. 

As such, removing these laborers that are positively contributing to the economy would harm the economy, a concept I explored earlier this month with the housing construction market. The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) found that deporting 8.3 million unauthorized workers would brings the GDP to be at 7.4 percent below the baseline by 2028. The Wharton School of Business, which is the premiere business school in the U.S., similarly estimated a negative trend regarding GDP: a reduction of GDP per capita by one percent between now and 2050. 

PIIE also found that deportation would decrease the number of employee hours worked by 6.7 percent. That makes sense, especially since deportation has been shown to lower the employment and hourly wages of U.S.-born citizens because of an increase in labor costs and reduction of local consumption (East et al., 2023).

Mass deportation would not solve crime-related issues. During the Vice Presidential debates, J.D. Vance said that a Trump 47 administration would start by deporting the undocumented immigrants who are criminals. Trump also said he wants to target migrant criminal networks. The idea is that by deporting migrant criminals, it would lower the crime rates because there are fewer criminals. Forget for a moment that immigrants are 60 percent less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens (Abramitzky et al., 2023).

Theory gets in trouble with practice here because the U.S. government has already tried this before. Secure Communities was a program through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that targeted unauthorized immigrants with the cooperation of law enforcement. A study from the Institute of Labor Economics found that the SC program did not reduce property or violent crime (Hines and Peri, 2019). Why would that be the case? Enforcing deportation is a labor-intensive endeavor. It does not make police more efficient in solving cases and it ties up resources that could be used to solve cases. 

Not only does deportation do nothing to lower crime rates, but it also exacerbates the victimization of Hispanics. Why? They are less likely to report crimes because there is lack of trust in law enforcement to do their job when the possibility of deportation is looming over their heads (Gonçalves et al., 2024). 

Mass deportation would violate a lot of civil rights, as well as destroy lives and erode civil society. This would destroy the lives of migrants and have migrants that have yet to be detained live in a climate of fear. As for the Constitution, it does not take much to see how much abuse of Fourth Amendment and Sixth Amendment constitutional rights would take place if Trump were given the green light to deport immigrants. 

Worksites, immigrant neighborhoods, and Catholic churches would be raided. The amount of surveillance to carry this out would be staggering. Police officers knocking on doors at the middle of the night would be reminiscent of the Stalinist regime. In the meantime, detaining Latino migrants would come with human rights abuses that FDR committed against Japanese-Americans during World War II. I would be worried about the detainees in detention camps. As a September 2024 report from the Office of Inspector General already lays out, ICE already has issues being able to "maintain a safe and secure environment for staff and detainees."  

If you look at history and such examples as Argentina in the 1970s, the Pinochet regime in Chile, or Stalinist Russia, detaining and deporting people is not the hallmark of a free society, but of an authoritarian one. 

What is the likelihood this would actually happen? On the one hand, Trump talked a big game about deportation for his first term but did not carry it out. 

On the other hand, Trump is better poised to implement mass deportation should he be elected. For one, he appointed 245 judges during his first term, thereby being fewer legal obstacles. Two, this idea is more popular than I thought. According to a U.S. Today/Suffolk University poll conducted earlier this month, 45 percent of American support the idea of mass deportation. 

On the other other hand, our immigration system is already dealing with considerable backlog. Going door-to-door to detain people is labor-intensive. It is not something our current immigration system can handle and would require cooperation from state and local police, which is not a given. Plus, it would require cooperation from the migrants' native countries, which is tenuous at best. 

Postscript. From a political lens, it makes sense why this is popular. People are getting fed up with what is taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border, not to mention how endemic and normalized crime has become. From a policy lens, deportation makes zero sense. Deportation is a costly endeavor that will harm the economy (including U.S.-born workers) while doing nothing to lower crime. Meanwhile, the U.S. government would have to trample constitutional rights and ruin millions of lives in the process. It is not only anti-immigrant, but anti-American.

It would take a lot of violence, force, and taxpayer dollars to make this a reality. Why should we deport largely peaceful, non-violent, hard-working people who are contributing to the economy and paying taxes? Why create a culture of distrust, paranoia, and division? Why pay so much money and derive no benefit? I agree that this country could use considerable immigration reform, but mass deportation is not the answer. For all of our sakes, I hope that this policy proposal is nothing more than a campaign gimmick and not a reality in which this country becomes more despotic and tyrannical, a prospect that would have the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves. 

Harris' Plan to Expand Medicare to In-Home Long-Term Care Is Nothing to Write Home About

The actress and comedienne Betty Davis once said "Old age ain't no place for sissies." She wasn't kidding. One in five adults over 65 cannot manage such basic activities as eating, bathing, or cooking without assistance. That figure goes up to half for the 85-plus crowd (Heimbuch et al., 2023). Acquiring long-term services and supports (LTSS) is costly. According to the life insurance company Genworth, the median assisted living facility costs $5,350 a month, whereas the median semi-private room for a nursing facility costs $8,669 a month. Given that the median retirement savings is $462,410 for the 75-plus crowd, it is no joke. 

Costly elderly care is the problem that Vice President Kamala Harris would like to address with her proposal to cover long-term home care. Her idea, which was proposed earlier this month, is to fund Medicaid to subsidize in-home long-term care to provide the LTSS that older citizens need to function and live without requiring assisted living. That is because Medicare currently does not cover home care, not to mention that only 4 percent of seniors have private long-term care insurance. 

Harris' cost of estimate comes from a study from the Left-leaning Brookings Institution, and even they specify that the $40 billion estimate is for a "very-conservatively designed universal program." I very much doubt that such a program would be conservatively designed. I have two cost estimates that show how rosy her estimate is. 

1) A study commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) found that Medicaid spent $115 billion on home-based care in 2021, or $15,407 per person (Wysocki et al., 2024). Assuming the per capita cost holds constant and that 14.7 million individuals would be eligible (per Kaiser Family Foundation estimates), that would be a back of the envelope estimate of $226 billion. That $226 billion might be low considering that the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a home health aid working 40 hours a week costs $68,640 a year, which is over $30,000 more than the median income of a Medicare beneficiary. 

2) In 2020, the Left-leaning Urban Institute proposed a similar program in which there would be a $150 per diem cap on in-home expenses. Urban Institute estimated that it would cost anywhere between $250 billion and $394 billion annually. To think that the cost of home aides has increased by a third since that study. 

On top of those cost estimates, research shows that including home care in health insurance will create the moral hazard to boost demand (Konetzka et al., 2019). Especially without a corresponding increase in home health aides, what this means is that home care will become more expensive as a result. In other words, what we will see is that Harris' policy could easily cost over half a trillion dollars annually. 

What makes the proposal even more ridiculous is that she claims that she can fund the $40 billion by cutting $40 billion in Medicare drug spending without denying benefits to anyone. I am skeptical that she would succeed. For one, the Medicare drug-price controls used in the Inflation Reduction Act managed to increase premiums by 20 percent in 2024 while limiting consumer choice and raising out-of-pocket costs (Council for Affordable Health Care). No surprise there since I predicted in 2022 that the IRA would have such negative effects on drug pricing. Second, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in its report on reducing prescription prices that CMS would only be able to make a cut somewhere between $0 and $4 billion, which is nowhere near enough to cover the conservative estimate of $40 billion. 

Source: CAHC

Even if Harris could magically cut $40 billion from Medicare without affecting benefits, think of what that implicitly means. As Cato Institute scholar Michael Cannon pointed out in his analysis on the proposal, Harris is tacitly admitting that there is at least $40 billion of waste in Medicare. And that is not too far off the mark considering that CMS admitted that there was over $31 billion of improper payments in 2023. 

It is not only the waste that bothers me about Medicare, but the quality of healthcare that Medicare provides. The nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission concluded that "the [Medicare] payment system is largely neutral or negative towards quality," a conclusion that is also in Cato Institute research on the topic. This begs the question of why we should trust the government to expand Medicare and not expect the same inefficiencies and low quality.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust is already projected to be insolvent by 2036. Why should we add more promises that we cannot fund? Medicare is one of the three largest budgetary drivers of the federal budget and the out-of-control spending. The United States is going to reach a $1.9 trillion deficit this year, has already reached a 99 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, and have that ratio increase 122 percent in the next decade. 

Plus, as the Right-leaning Heritage Foundation points out, the Biden administration increased the deficit well beyond what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected. The debt increased from $27.8 trillion at the start of Biden's term to $35.8 trillion, or an increase of $8 trillion in debt. If Harris had brilliant ideas to keep costs down, don't you think she would have at least presented some of those ideas to the President in the past four years?

We have seen that Medicare or price controls will do nothing to help save costs here. What Harris' plan would do is increase healthcare costs considerably, do nothing to address Medicare waste, and all the while provide the elderly with subpar in-home care. This is not compassionate or fiscally responsible. It is nothing more than a feeble attempt to buy the votes of Medicare enrollees in the hopes that she can beat Trump come November. Money does not grow on trees; you cannot solve a problem simply by throwing money at it. I wish more people would see that Harris' plan is one proposal out of many that does not exist to help people, but rather buy votes in the hopes of winning come Election Day.

"Islamophobia" Is Far From Being the "New Anti-Semitism": Stop Minimizing Anti-Semitism by Equating the Two (Pt. II)

Since Hamas carried out the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, I have been appalled as to how kidnappers, rapists, murders, and génocidaires could possibly get the sympathy of the world. I had to question how the Far Left became so anti-Semitic (read here, here, and here). I also wrote about how the entity known as Palestine needs to put the victim card back in the deck but probably will not (see here, here, and here). It is not only the Palestinians playing the victim card. It is Muslims throughout the Western world. I find the victimhood audacious enough where I started writing about how "Islamophobia" is nowhere near the bigotry that anti-Semitism is. You can read Part I here.

The first inconvenient truth I pointed out is that anti-Semitism has existed for three thousand years, whereas the concept of "Islamophobia" has only existed since 1997. This led to my second inconvenient truth, which is that "Islamophobia" is so new because Muslims spent much of their history oppressing, persecuting, and colonizing. Now I continue more inconvenient truths, including continued oppression, a lack of attempts to systematically wipe out all Muslims on the planet, and that Jews are significantly more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than Muslims. 

Muslim-majority nations continue to oppress. The non-profit Freedom House provides detailed analysis on political freedoms and civil liberties by country. The vast majority of Muslim-majority countries are ranked as "Not Free," whereas none of them are considered "Free." In the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2024 annual report, you will see multiple Muslim-majority countries detailed as being problematic for religious freedom, including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkey. If Islam were really a religion of peace, you would think at least one Muslim-majority country would be tolerant of non-Muslims, yet such a nation-state does not exist. On the other hand, there is only one Jewish-majority state, Israel. Guess what? Israel allows Muslims, Christians, and Druze to live peacefully and practice their respective religion within Israel's borders. 

People have not tried to systematically wipe out Muslims. The closest that there has been to systematic extermination is the Chinese government's persecution of the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority of about 11 million living in Western China. While a reprehensible violation of human rights, this repression of the Uyghurs has not been determined to be an act of genocide. As I pointed out when refuting the pro-Hamas' accusation of Israel being genocidal, genocide has a specific legal definition. To quote Spiked Online:

Muslims are not facing the intimidation that Jews now face daily on the streets. There are no demonstrations calling for the destruction on any Islamic nation or protests demonizing Palestinians as 'child murderers' or 'genociders.' Nor are there influential initiatives calling for a boycott of Arab institutions or individuals. 

There has not been a nut job like Hitler that wants to systematically exterminate all 1.9 billion Muslims with a "Final Solution" for all believers of Islam or has succeeded. Unfortunately, Jews have not been spared that fate. Hitler managed to wipe out a third of the world's Jewish population with his Final Solution. If only that genocide were a thing of the past for the Jews. It is 2024 and it is difficult to talk about a two-state solution when the government representing the Palestinian people is pushing for a Final Solution against its Jewish neighbors in Israel.

Furthermore, you do not see thousands of protestors across the globe calling for the extermination of Muslim people. It is thousands of people in the so-called "civilized world" denying the atrocities of October 7, cheering on raping, murdering, genocidal terrorists, all the while chanting for the extinction of Jewish people in the name of anti-Zionism and "freeing Palestine." Too bad these bigots cannot call for freeing Palestine from Hamas or denounce the atrocities of October 7.  

Jews are more likely to endure a hate crime than a Muslim. Harassing, threatening, or committing violence against Muslims is unacceptable because no one should undergo that sort of treatment. At the same time, there is a disparity between the dangers a Muslim faces versus what a Jew faces. 

In the United States, we can see those rates with the FBI's Hate Crime Statistics. According to the FBI Crime Data Explorer, there have been 821 anti-Muslim hate crimes while there have been 5,424 anti-Jewish hate crimes between 2019 and 2023. There are 4.45 million Muslims in the United States in contrast to 7.5 million Jews. When adjusting for population, a Jew in the United States is 3.9 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a Muslim. 

Outside of Israel and the United States, the countries with the largest Jewish populations are France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I will start these non-U.S. countries with the United Kingdom. 

In London, anti-Semitic hate crimes have overtaken the number of anti-Muslim crimes since October 7, 2023. This does not even factor in that there are 1.32 million Muslims versus 145,466 Jews in London, or there are about 9 Muslims in London for every Jew. Merely by eyeballing the graph below (Telegraph), you can see that multiplying the blue bars by 9 to get a sense of the rates show that a Jew in London is much more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a Muslim, especially since October 7, 2023. In 2022-23, the likelihood is about five times as likely.  In 2023-24, that is about 12 times more likely. 

Canada does not fare better. B'nai Brith Canada has shown a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada from 2022 to 2023 in its annual report. Looking at hate crime figures from Statistics Canada, there were 1,496 police-reported hate crimes against Jews versus 576 against Muslims between 2018 and 2021. There are about 1.8 million Muslims in Canada versus the 393 thousand Jews, or about 4.6 Muslims for every Jew. When adjusting for population to understand rates, a Jew in Canada is 12 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a Muslim. To think that these figures were before October 7, 2023! 

And finally, there is France. First, I will show the number of anti-Muslim crimes recorded by the Central Territorial Intelligence Service [Service Central du Renseignement Territorial; SCRT] (per here and here).

Then there are the anti-Semitic crimes reported (see here and here). You can read the most recent report here from the French government's SCRT (in French). What we see with historical data is that there are more anti-Semitic hate crimes than anti-Muslim crimes. That is before October 7 when anti-Semitism nearly quadrupled in France. That is also not factoring in the fact there are 550,000 Jews versus 5.7 million Muslims in France, or more than 10 Muslims for every Jew in France. In 2022, that would mean that a Jew in France was 22 times more likely than a Muslim in France to be a victim of a hate crime. 

Moral of the story: what we see with government data from the countries with the largest Jewish populations (excluding Israel) is that Jews are significantly more likely to be harassed, terrorized, and victimized than Muslims are. The fact that there are more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims in these countries signals that anti-Semitism is a bigger scourge than "Islamophobia." 

Postscript. I hope to address one additional aspect of this debate in a future blog entry, mainly that "Islamophobia" is a cudgel to silence legitimate dissent against Islam or Islamists. In the meantime, I will say this. Treating "Islamophobia" and anti-Semitism as equals and lumping together is insulting to Jews because it diminishes what the Jewish people have endured not only since October 7, 2023, but over the centuries. It also ignores the fact that Muslims have oppressed and persecuted others for centuries and that those who run Muslim-majority countries still oppress to this day. 

Denunciations of anti-Semitism are diluted when lumped together with other forms of bigotry. When George Floyd was murdered, people did not denounce "racism, homophobia, transphobia" or scream "All Lives Matter;" the chant was "Black Lives Matter." Equating "Islamophobia" with anti-Semitism is giving Jews the "All Lives Matter" treatment, which apparently is an unacceptable mantra for the Woke Left except for when it used against Jews. "Islamophobia" is nowhere near the problem that anti-Semitism is. Anyone who does not treat anti-Semitism as a separate, legitimate form of bigotry is part of the problem. After all, anti-Semitism has been the canary in the coal mine far too many times in history. Let us hope that the Western world can learn that important lesson before it slips into decadence.  

Trump's Tariff Plan Would Harm Small Businesses and the Voters He Claims to Want to Help

Like any other presidential candidate, Donald Trump is trying to pander to as many people as he can so he can win the presidential election. He wants to appear pro-business by lowering the corporate tax rate. It is certainly better than Kamala Harris' proposal to hike the corporate tax rate. He is also trying to appease the working class with a tax exemption for tips and a tax break for overtime work, neither of which are good ideas. There is one policy idea where Trump thinks he is protecting domestic industries while simultaneously helping out everyday Americans by keeping their jobs here: high tariffs. Specifically, he wants to impose a 10 percent tariff on all goods and a 60 percent tariff on goods from China. You can read my critiques of the universal tariff and the Chinese-specific tariff for yourself, but I will be repeating some of those arguments here today. 

As an analysis published last week from the Brookings Institution illustrates, there are multiple costs to firms. Any firm that sells imported goods will be scrambling to receive an exemption from the government. Unfortunately for small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is the largest enterprises that are best poised to receive the exemptions. Not only that, it is the larger firms that can better absorb the costs of tariffs. Because as much as I hate to burst Trump's bubble, it is not the other country that pays the tariff, but it is the domestic country (in this case, the United States) that pays. It is the consumer of those goods that pay. That can be an everyday worker, but it can also be a business that uses imported goods as an input of their business. On top of the administrative costs, Trump is going to cause greater strain on supply chains. 

Because tariffs increase the price of doing business, it means that production is depressed and employment drops, especially for imports from countries that decide to retaliate against the United States with tariffs of their own. How bad would the impact to employment be? According to a Tax Foundation analysis of Trump's tax proposals, it would cost 674,000 jobs. The Tax Foundation found that the tariffs would also reduce the GDP by 0.8 percent in the next decade. If Trump increases the universal tariff from 10 percent to 20 percent, that would decrease the GDP by 1.3 percent. 

In addition to jobs, what would it cost the everyday American? Looking at research from the Peterson Institute, the average household would lose $2,600 if Trump implements the tariffs and the permanent tax cuts from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which, as you can see below, would hit the poorest households the hardest in terms of percent of after-tax income.

I have been critical of Trump's tariff proposal since before he entered the White House. Why? You can read this primer from the Cato Institute on tariffs if you want, but we saw what happened with Trump's tariffs during his first term: a GDP reduction of 0.21 percent, wage reduction of 0.14 percent, a net loss of 166,000 jobs, and costing the average household $831 a year. To think these were the effects of tariffs that were much smaller. The impact of larger tariffs that would affect nearly 10 times the amount of trade would, as already illustrated, be even more harmful. 

If Trump takes his tariff plan seriously and succeeds in implementing it, it will be the worst tariff plan since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which not only reduced the GDP by 3 to 5 percent (Bernstein, 2008), but also caused other countries to retaliate and reduce their imports by an average of 28-33 percent (Mitchener et al., 2021) to the point of spiraling the U.S. economy into the Great Depression.  So there are geopolitical ramifications in addition to the economic ramifications. 

But let us bring it back to the economic aspects. Tariffs cost everyday workers their jobs, decrease  their personal income, lower the GDP, and have the cost of the tariff ultimately passed to the consumers by making goods and expensive more for all. Through his "America First" shtick, he will make this country poorer by making it more expensive to do business and burden the everyday consumer. You would think we would have learned are lesson from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act or even when Trump implemented his tariffs. I truly hope that lesson sinks in for whoever is in the White House in 2025 because if not, it will be the American people that pay the price. 

How Dwelling in a Sukkah During Sukkot Can Help in Living More Modestly and Humbly

Having completed Yom Kippur, I pivot from the fasting and chest-thumping of Yom Kippur towards celebrating the time of joy that is Sukkot. Traditionally a harvest festival (Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 16:13, 15), the Jewish holiday of Sukkot has two main mitzvot (commandments), one of them being sitting in an dwelling in a sukkah (Leviticus 23:42-43). A sukkah is a temporary booth or hut covered with vegetation that commemorates the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness after the Exodus. You can read more about the particular legalistic requirements of what constitutes as a sukkah here. I do not want to get into the details today because I want to ask a more fundamental question of why Jews dwell in a sukkah in the first place. 

The great rabbi Moshe ben Maimón, also known as Maimonides, gives us an answer. In his text The Guide for the Perplexed (3:43), Maimonides states that Passover teaches us about the miracles which G-d wrought in Egypt, whereas Sukkot teaches about the miracles wrought in the wilderness. The moral lesson is "to remember his evil days in his days of prosperity. He will thereby be induced to thank G-d repeatedly, to lead a modest and humble life." Maimonides then goes on to say that Jews "leave our houses in order to dwell in tabernacles (a sukkah), as inhabitants in the dessert do that are in want of comfort." 

To recap, Maimonides opines that the end-goal of dwelling in a sukkah is to teach us to live modestly and humbly. The two ways we go about that is to remember the past miracles along with leaving our own homes for a temporary dwelling that is less comfortable than our current homes. So how does dwelling in a temporary hut lead us to be more modest or humble? 

In the Mussar text Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda teaches that "All virtue and duties are dependent on humility." Another Mussar text, The Ways of the Righteous (ארחות צדיקים), the author teaches that humility is the root of Divine Service. Upon examining various character traits, I found truth in these statements when tying it to the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah: 

Gratitude. Having Sukkot be during the harvest time teaches that there are fat years and lean years, much like the story of Joseph teaches. A farmer can control for technique and taking care of crops, but cannot ultimately control for what the yield is or whether there is a drought that year. We are to be humble enough to be grateful for the bounty, regardless of its size. Shifting from pride in our possessions to recognition of the blessings we receive humbles us. To quote Pirkei Avot (4:1), "Who is rich? The one who is satisfied with their lot."

The Jewish philosopher Philo (1 c. CE) takes the gratitude concept further. Maimonides actually got the idea of being in a sukkah to remember the "bad old days" from Philo. Philo says remembering the "bad old days" is a reminder of how far we have come. It can be challenging to appreciate that concept when we are dealing with the worse anti-Semitism since the Holocaust, but recognizing the progress in the overall arc of history and praising G-d for the good in life helps us remain more humble. 

Our relation to material wealth. With regards to being modest, the very nature of a sukkah leads to a more modest mindset. Here you have a semi-flimsy structure that is intentionally exposed to the elements of nature. It is designed as to not be luxurious. Modesty is in contrast to luxury because modesty in part is about avoiding excessiveness or extravagance. 

As Maimonides points out, entering a sukkah means leaving the comforts of home. The sukkah teaches a lesson about not being obsessed with material wealth. The sukkah is a manifestation of minimalism and a lesson on how to be satisfied with less material wealth. After all, Pirkei Avot (2:8) teaches that "the more possessions [you have], the more worry." Sukkot gives us a spiritual time out to de-emphasize the material to focus on what truly matters. This is not to say that we need to forego material comfort of any sort, but rather that we do not need material extravagance or to be materially focused or obsessed to live a good or happy life. Our actions, character, values, and experiences are worth more than our material wealth. 

Impermanence. The Rashbam taught that the sukkah's temporary, fragile structure teaches us about the fragility of our lives, which includes our mortality. Per the previous point, we ultimately are not going to care about how much material wealth we amassed. Most likely, we will care more about the experiences we had and the people with whom we shared those experiences. Realizing how short our lives are is meant to give us pause, as well as a sense of humility. 

We are small in comparison to the vastness of the universe and time itself. The sukkah reminds us that even the most seemingly secure and solid aspects of our lives are ultimately temporary. This realization of permanence does not only give us humility. In 2021, I wrote a blog entry about how meditating on death (memento mori) paradoxically brings us more joy because we are more likely to enjoy life's experiences with intensity and motivation when we are aware of how short life is. 

Adaptability in the face of vulnerability. Death is not the only form of vulnerability we deal with during Sukkot. Dwelling in a sukkah means being exposed to the elements of nature. What does this teach? No matter what we do to prepare or protect ourselves, there are always forces beyond our control. Reminding us of our limitations amidst the vulnerability teaches us to be more humble and accepting of whatever may come our way. Six years ago, I wrote about how we adapt our environment for optimal performance when things go awry. A couple years later, I wrote a blog entry on how nasty weather during Sukkot gives us an opportunity to expand our comfort zone, thereby enhancing our experiences. Both blog entries came with the theme of learning to adapt to conditions that we previously deemed sub-optimal. 

Dealing with ego and arrogance. One beautiful lesson I found from Slovie Jungreis-Wolff from Aish HaTorah is that there is a height limit for a sukkah of 20 amot, which is about 37 feet. Why the height limit? Because when you are so full of yourself, the arrogance does not make room for anyone else in your life, even G-d. She goes on to say that "if you want your life to be filled with love and meaning, discover the gift of humility." Per a quote misattributed to C.S. Lewis, "Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it's thinking of yourself less." The world does not revolve around you. This is not woo-woo spirituality talking. The longitudinal Harvard Study of Adult Development is a good example of showing how social connections and community can be the single most important factor determining happiness and long-term health. 

Another aspect of dealing with ego comes from the Rashbam's commentary on why we sit in the sukkah. For him, it is a matter that one's wealth ultimately comes from G-d (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). Rabbi Yitzhak Haboab went as far as saying that this is to remind us that we ultimately should not put our trust in man, but G-d. 

Even if we want to make the insight less theocentric or make it completely secular, the sukkah can still provide that lesson that we are not capable of providing or creating everything we need. We can never be truly independent or self-sufficient in the strictest of terms, short of going off the grid and living in the wilderness as a hermit. No one is so talented or has the time to be a mechanic, author, welder, doctor, professor, farmer, flight attendant....you get the idea. The beauty of living in a market-based economy is that we can use comparative advantage in a way where we mutually benefit from voluntary exchanges. By recognizing how interdependent the economy is, it helps us come to terms that we cannot do it all on our own, thereby instilling a sense of humility. 

Compassion. A couple of years ago, I argued that one of the spiritual benefits of fasting is that it helps create greater empathy for those who deal with food insecurity. For those who do not experience housing vulnerability year-round, living in a sukkah gives a taste of what an unstable housing situation feels like. That humility can lead to compassion towards those in need (Rabbi David Golinkin).

Is J.D. Vance Correct in Blaming Immigrants on Rising Housing Prices?

Last week, two Vice Presidential candidates went head-to-head on the debate floor: Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz. As two Midwesterners, the debate has been the most civil during a U.S. election cycle in a while. One of the topics that they debated was immigration. More specifically, J.D. Vance claimed during the debate that "you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes." It makes for an interesting form of interdisciplinary politicking because Republican politicians tend to harp on immigration. Plus, housing costs rising relative to income (see Harvard data below) is a concern for those who are struggling to "live the American Dream," thereby making his assertion more palatable to voters. I have to wonder how true Vance's claim is. 

Intuitively, it sounds plausible. Housing supply has become more constrained in recent years. I pointed out that reality in 2017 when criticizing land use regulations. There has been an increase in unauthorized border crossings since the pandemic. There is a report from the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that points out that there have been 5.6 million crossings from January 2021 from August 2023. 

Conversely, as I pointed out last year when scrutinizing Trump's Title 42, the number of repeat crossings increased considerably under Title 42. Pew Research found that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States increased from 10.2 million in 2019 to 11.0 million in 2022. 

With an increase in population, it puts stress on an already constrained housing market that cannot expand quickly. After all, immigrants need a roof over their head like everyone else because they are human beings deserving of dignity, too. An increase in demand increases costs, which is a reality you can find in an Econ 101 textbook. 

As the Cato Institute points out, "Even immigrants who work in construction increase housing demand first before they can construct more housing. That increase in demand drivers up prices and incentivizes new supply through further construction, renovation, or increasing the supply of rental units through other means." Two questions that come to mind are "Does immigration drive up housing prices in the long term?" and "How much of an impact does immigration have on housing versus other factors?"

Similar to other markets, there are multiple factors that contribute to rising prices. To name a few that come to mind: high housing demand; low housing supply caused by such government obstruction as land use regulation, zoning laws, and permitting delays; inflation in the construction industry and economy generally; stagnant wage growth; the mortgage interest deduction; increased mortgage rates; and rent control in certain U.S. cities. Going back to the Cato Institute, "over 90 percent of housing prices comes from other economic factors and immigration has become less important since 2015."

While the undocumented immigrants increase the demand, they also contribute to the housing supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25.3 percent of construction laborers are foreign-born, which is higher than the 16.8 percent for the entire labor market. It is higher in other parts of the country. Per National Association of Home Builders data, that foreign-born percent is 40 percent in California and Texas; 37 percent in Florida, New Jersey, and New York; and 33 percent in Nevada. 

As such, it would not be surprising to find research from professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Utah showing that deporting undocumented construction workers worsens the housing shortage (Howard et al., 2024). This finding of "immigration lowers housing prices in the long-run" is confirmed with research from the United Kingdom (Braakmann, 2013; Sá, 2011) and Italy (Accetturo et al., 2014). Economically speaking, that finding makes sense and it is another reality you can find in an Econ 101 textbook. When you reduce the number of available workers, the price of construction increases. The increased construction costs reduce residential housing output, thereby exacerbating the housing shortage.  

Postscript

To conclude, is Vance correct in saying that immigrants contribute to increasing housing prices? Yes, because an increase in demand increases costs. However, he is only correct to a point. Immigrants contribute both to the demand and the supply of housing. Immigrants help fill these labor shortage gaps, whether it is in construction, healthcare, agriculture, or other service-based industries. When you reduce the supply of labor, you end up increasing prices of the good or service in question. Plus, there are other factors that act as larger drivers of the increasing housing prices. 

On some level, Vance is technically correct, but not nearly as much as he or anti-immigration nativists think. As research organization New American Economy illustrates, immigrants have created $3.7 trillion in housing wealth, thereby stabilizing less desirable communities that would have otherwise declined. All this research reminds that whether it is in the housing market specifically or the economy more generally, immigrants creates more benefits than they produce costs.

"Islamophobia" Is Far From Being the "New Anti-Semitism": Stop Minimizing Anti-Semitism by Equating the Two (Pt. I)

One year ago today, Hamas terrorists snuck into Israel's borders and carried out the worst pogrom against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Israeli civilians were raped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and decapitated. The death toll from this horror was over 1,200 civilians. Some of those murdered that day were not even Israeli. They were young adults attending a music festival that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

What should have been a time for the world to rally in support of Israel ending up being a wave of global anti-Semitism. The innocent lives lost were barely cold in the grave and the anti-Semites were already protesting against Israel. The moral inversion in which "rape is resistance," kidnapping Holocaust survivors is social justice, or "the situation in the Middle East is complex" justifies parading unconscious women or decapitating babies is astonishing. Do not be at all surprised if there are protests across the globe today cheering on the murdering, raping, genocidal terrorists who carried out the atrocities on October 7, 2023. 

Another aspect that has been astonishing is lumping together anti-Semitism with "Islamophobia" in response to October 7. Any response given in October 2023 by the Biden White House about anti-Semitism included a caveat for "Islamophobia." The European Parliament has made a similar grouping, and Human Rights Watch did something similar in December 2023.

I imagine you have noticed my objection towards equating anti-Semitism with "Islamophobia." I do not deny that discrimination against Muslims simply for being Muslim exists. I will explore those data in Part II of this blog series. Abusing citizens for merely believing in Islam, vandalizing mosques, or attacking those who are visibly Muslim is morally wrong. Part of being in a tolerant, multicultural society means supporting their freedom of conscience and freedom of worship as long as it does not harm others vis-à-vis the non-aggression axiom. On the other hand, "Islamophobia" is nowhere being nearly as heinous as anti-Semitism for a number of reasons. 

How long has each form of bigotry existed? Anti-Semitism has existed since the Egyptians per the account in the Book of Exodus. The Jews were in exile from the year 69 to 1948 when the State of Israel was created. Whether it is the ancient Romans, the English Expulsion of 1290, the Spanish in 1492, the pogroms in the Russian Empire, rule under various Islamic polities, or the Nazis carrying out the Holocaust, the Jews have dealt with this universal hatred for a few millennia. 

If the past year has reminded me, anti-Semitism has not died. It simply evolved and skyrocketed in the past 365 days. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently released a report about anti-Semitism in the United States one year after October 7, 2023. Anti-Semitism was already at an all-time high before the 10/7 attacks. The anti-Semitism has only skyrocketed since 10/7, whether in the form of increased harassment, assaults, vandalism, threats, intimidation of Jews, or violent anti-Semitic posts on social media. 

While the United States has the largest Jewish diaspora population, European Jews have also been pressured to stop expressing their Jewishness in public. Do not be surprised if today, October 7, 2024, does not have pro-Hamas rallies across the planet celebrating this pogrom because Muslims do not feel the same pressure to hide their Muslim identity or their political opinions about the Middle East as Jews do. 

In contrast, let us ask when did Islamophobia begin. According to this publication from Cambridge University's Review of Middle East Studies, "Islamophobia" was developed as a concept in the late 1990s. While the term was first used over a century ago, the Runnymede Trust takes credit for inventing the term as used in its contemporary meaning...in 1997. That makes sense to me not only because hundreds of thousands of Muslims emigrate to the western world while many Muslims comfortably assert their Islamic identity in public. Why am I not surprised that "Islamophobia" is a new concept? 

Muslim polities have a history of colonization and oppression. Muslims have not been persecuted around the world for centuries like the Jews have. If anything, Muslims persecuting non-Muslims dates all the way back to Muhammad in the Qu'ran. Whether it was the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Almohads, or the other caliphates, non-Muslims living under Muslim rule were either relegated to a second-class status of dhimmi, forced to convert, or executed.  There were a number of other caliphates throughout history that illustrate my point regarding Islamic colonization.  Israel is the size of New Jersey. When you compare Israel's square mileage (8,469 square miles) to the Arabian Peninsula (1.2 million square miles), never mind the entire Arab-speaking world, the Middle East, or Muslim world, it makes you wonder who the real colonizers have been in the Middle East. 

There will be more to explore in Part II of this series.

Matt Walsh Documentary Exposes DEI for the Racism-Perpetuating Scam It Is (Part II)

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become trendy in multiple circles. DEI is meant to be an organizational framework aimed at promoting the fair and inclusive participation of all people, particularly those who have historically been underrepresented. At first glance, DEI sounds like an acronym filled with lofty goals to improve racial and interpersonal relations. Proponents present it as an asset allowing for multiple perspectives and a learning opportunity to grow from those who are different from us. That sounds peachy in theory. But when the Far Left, woke crowd applies DEI to its "anti-racist" efforts, DEI becomes synonymous with the word "discrimination." The DEI proponents teach that white people are evil racists, racial minorities are hapless victims, and racism should be treated as an "irreducible, essential characteristic of the human condition...rather than a prejudice we can and must overcome." 

In his documentary "Am I Racist?", Matt Walsh exposes the over-simplistic backwardness of DEI and reminds us that DEI is as counterproductive as it is racist. Not only was I intrigued enough to watch it at the movie theater, but I have now written two blog entries about it. You can read Part I of this blog series at the link here. The only other time I have blogged on a movie was when I saw Everything, Everywhere, All at Once because I thought it was that prolific. In Part I, I first highlighted the crazy "anti-racist" moments in the documentary. I then pointed out how DEI backfires and perpetuates racism, followed by providing some analysis on the logical fallacies involved in a DEI mindset. I now resume with my criticism of DEI and the so-called "anti-racists."

DEI is a narrow-minded view that results in lousy problem-solving and public policy. My criticism of DEI proponents is more than a group of so-called "anti-racists" denying their own racism, biases, and general small-mindedness or basing their assertions with zero empirical evidence. By erroneously thinking that disparity automatically means racism, it not only means inaccurately diagnosing the problem. They have reduced complex social issues into a grossly inaccurate, oversimplified view of the world. 

With a warped view on how the world works, it means that the public policy recommendations will also be warped. For the folks obsessed with equity, their stated goal is to eliminate racial disparities. I hate to break it to these people, but there is always going to be inequality in the world. The fact that those on the Left have a harder time accepting that inequality and unfairness are an inherent part of reality is a reason why they are less happy than everyone else. In order to chase this fantasy, the DEI crowd uses puritanical and authoritarian measures in the hopes to expunge what they deem as impurities. In many ways, the adherents of DEI and "anti-racism" have significant parallels to fundamentalist religion.

DEI not only hurts white people and Asians, but also racial minorities. When I criticized Critical Race Theory (CRT), I pointed out that CRT also hurts students of racial minorities in addition to white students. Why? Because CRT propagates a toxic victimhood that patronizingly teaches that racial minorities are hapless victims stuck in their circumstances. This sort of victimhood keeps racial minorities trapped. Conservatives being more likely to reject victimhood and value resilience, personal control, and responsibility helps explain why they are on average happier than their liberal counterparts. 

As someone who used to work in K-12 education policy, I cannot help but notice how DEI and CRT have harmed minority students. I have written on two examples on how the DEI folk have used equity as a guise to dumb down education to make minorities feel better: removing honors classes and removing basic skills requirements in the name of equity. Not only is it insulting to insinuate that racial minorities are incapable of educational achievement and attainment, but DEI does nothing to help lift minority students up and succeed. What I find rich is when the woke Left blames the amorphous "system," especially when it comes to education. That irony tickles my funny bone because K-12 education is dominated by the woke Left, which means they are "the system" and, as previously mentioned, they are the problem that they do not want to have to look at in the mirror.  

If minorities overcome hardship and adversity, it means that DEI, and by extension, woke ideology, is a sham. This explains why the Left is willing to throw Asian-Americans under the bus when it comes to affirmative action, disparage those who exercise as right-wing extremists, or show disdain for the State of Israel while supporting Palestine. For minorities to use personal agency and responsibility while subsequently becoming stronger, more resilient, and happier human beings in spite of what they underwent is a smack in the face for a group of people for which the political is the personal. The cognitive dissonance for those who succumb to this sort of groupthink is too much for them to bear.

Postscript

With a brilliant use of humor, narrative, and straightforward questions, Walsh shows that DEI is not about diversity, equity, or inclusion; it is about conformity. DEI does not heal; it stirs up hate. DEI does not unite; it divides us further. The only winners from DEI are the grifters and those who feel a sense of moral superiority by adhering to this fundamentalism. Ultimately, the documentary is a comedic endeavor to expose the "anti-racism" consultants and DEI professionals for the grifters that they are, which is rich given how anti-capitalist and anti-profit the Far Left is. In that respect, Matt Walsh succeeded with flying colors. 

Walsh emphasizes the importance of us needing to stand up to the "anti-racism" grifters and stop obsessing over race. The fact that university faculty and best-selling authors have exploited racial shame and sowed racial disharmony to make a ton of cash for this long is unacceptable. Making assumptions about the entirety of an individual based on the superficial assessment of their skin color, gender, or sexual orientation is truly dehumanizing, yet that is a major underpinning of DEI. When the "anti-racists" argue that "colorblindness is racist", their statement that the color of skin is more important than content of character seeks to re-racialize this country and indeed the world.  

Something that I have noticed is that universities and corporations are beginning to abandon DEI initiatives. People are fed up with the counterproductive divisiveness, myself included. What I hope is that Matt Walsh's document provides more momentum to leave DEI in the ash heap of history where it belongs. Martin Luther King once taught us that we should judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Ultimately, we need to ditch the identity politics and this toxic Age of Grievance so we can embrace colorblindness once more if we stand a chance at living in a tolerant, post-racial world.