Frontiers of Migranomics from one of our intellectual elites, a New Yorker writer:
We’ve been informed, as a matter of Scientific Fact, that low-skill immigration does not reduce wages for the American working class (contrary to Harvard economists’ analysis). Now the same Scientists are telling us that employers will be forced to pay higher wages, e.g., to apartment cleaners and roofers, if low-skill migrants are sent back to their home countries. More immigrants caused wages to rise (the undocumented built the current American economy) and, also, a reduction in immigrant supply would cause wages to rise.
This reminds me of Immigrants expand our economy, but millions of immigrants exiting the U.S. don’t shrink our economy.
Separately, I’ve refined my Is U.S. immigration policy a form of animal hoarding? post into a more succinct form (without even trying AI!):
The passion for low-skill immigration has the same rational basis as keeping 100 cats in a 2BR apartment: “Animal hoarding is an accumulation of animals that has overwhelmed a person’s ability to provide minimum standards of care. … Rescue hoarders believe they’re the only people that can adequately care for their animals.” The same people who say that the U.S. has a dire shortage of affordable housing and health care then say that the 70 million migrants we’ve welcomed in recent decades aren’t sufficient and we need to bring in more migrants.
My new standard response on X, featuring photos from Unlimited Car Wash in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, November 21, 2025:
Without 70 million immigrants and their children (another 50 million?) who will hand-wash and vacuum my Rolls-Royce for $21?
In case the Jill Filipovic tweet is memory-holed:
Immigrants are good for their economy, but not for your economy?
Being logically consistent is not important to some folks.
1. Child care is too expensive; regular people cannot afford it.
2. Child care workers are not paid well enough; they all deserve a raise.
Anon: That’s a great point. Child care is so expensive that only billionaires should pay for it via their taxes!
Phil, it leaves me feeling disappointed that I need to inform you that this post is another among several that have left me feeling…disappointed. You seem like a well-meaning soul, but you appear to be missing the central point here. The key issue isn’t whether these New Citizens enhance or detract from wages and other such metrics, but whether they are Enriching our societies. And here it is abundantly clear, based on our experience here in the UK (and similarly in your new Homeland of Portugal), that they absolutely are! I have previously cited to you the Enrichment of our New Pakistani Citizens and their Noble tradition of Girl Rape Gangs (so uplifting to our young girls!). I would encourage you to review the Wonderful Enrichment brought to us in the UK by these folks, and encourage a similar Welcoming within the U.S. irrespective of concerns about banal issues such as wages. Allahu Akbar to you during this week of Thanks and Enrichment!
A bit philosophical, Dr. Greenspun, but what’s wrong with the Gandhian style of doing many of your own things? Sure, people like Bill Gates and Dr. Philip Greenspun gain from having more time at their hands by employing immigrants. They read books, think about world’s problems, etc., but most people watch YouTube videos, waste energy on social media and other useless stuff.
I think the average person would gain or retain some skills by doing stuff around the house, and they will also be mentally healthier since the effects of so much use of digital electronics are not fully known.
For the average person, gardening, cleaning their car and other household chores may not be totally bad, at least they are known to not drive you mentally insane.
> what’s wrong with the Gandhian style of doing many of your own things?
I know, right? Why have an immigrant blow the leaves off the grass with a polluting gas-powered blower, then go to Planet Fitness to stay fit? Use a rake and a tarp, it’s a good workout. Same goes with hand-washing the car, mowing the grass with a reel mower, hand-pulling weeds, sweeping the hardwood floor with a broom, etc.
Turn off social media and hand rake your neighbor’s lawn, if you want to connect to real people. If you do need someone to help, hire a U.S. citizen even if you have to spend the money you save on Planet Fitness. Some people also have kids–pry them away from their screens and try to have them help around the house. I started raking leaves when I was 8 and mowing the lawn when I was 12. I still do at 60.
I’m not sure how I got lumped in with Bill Gates (“at least 8 houses” says Google AI and we certainly don’t have a full staff of servants even in our one house). I probably already do 20-30 hours per week of household-related stuff, even when experts are called in. The other day it was 2+ hours spent with the leak expert to find out why water was leaking out of our decorative pond. That was preceded by several hours of solo work draining the pond, photographing some pipes, and consulting with Drs. ChatGPT and Grok (their guesses regrading the leak turned out to be correct, I think).
Cleaning your own car is environmentally unsound because you’re not recycling the water as a commercial car wash does. Also, the folks at Unlimited Car Wash have an array of specialized equipment, including compressed air for blowing items out from between seats, set up and ready to go. I would be more inclined to wash our own airplane, but even that is a major undertaking (have the plane towed to where the filtered water source is, bring buckets and microfiber cloths from the house, etc.).
Maintaining a single-family Florida house to Florida standards (everything inside and out has to look more or less new, unlike in New England where decrepit is chic; everything inside and out has to be clean and organized) might take more than 40 hours per week even if one had all of the requisite skills and equipment. The weekly cleaners for our house spend 6 person-hours at their appointed task and we probably spend at least 1 person-hour getting ready for their arrival.
I think it would be practical for a person to do everything him/her/zir/theirself by (1) living in a small rental apartment (though that’s kind of cheating because there will be a full-time staff of building employees who provide substantial support), (2) owning just one car, (3) refraining from purchasing anything else that needs maintenance, and (4) throwing out rather than attempting to fix anything that is broken (other than the car and the stuff for which the apartment building landlord is responsible).
> Cleaning your own car is environmentally unsound
Greenspun and Gates may not know this, but they do make self-serve car washes with pressurized wands, which filter the runoff. I think car washing in your own drive violates EPA rules if the water reaches a storm drain. (As does pressure washing driveways.) But realistically, the car is giving off microplastics from the tires (one of the biggest sources of pollution in a car), dust from the brakes, grime when it rains, in an ICE NOx/airborne hydrocarbons/CO when running in open loop and CO2 all the time. Plus the unsoundness of manufacturing it and extracting whatever energy source you use. Poor practices in recyling lead-acid batteries is a well-kept dirty secret; I’m not sure any LiIon batteries are recycled at all.
Phil could get one of those Wily Coyote batman suits if he wants to fly, speaking of an environmentally unsound practice. (Spew lead much, assuming you haven’t converted to lead-free avgas?) My wife and I lived in a 3BR home for 25 years sharing a subcompact car. I’ve lived for months at a time in a car-oriented suburb without one available, using a backpack to haul groceries on foot. Post-pandemic WFH it is even easier.
It does seem Phil is doing a lot, especially for having Gates-class wealth. It really isn’t an all-or-nothing idea. Have Floridians thought about making their own sea-salt from pristine Florida sea-water and clothing from hemp left over from MMJ? Give Big Salt and Shein the finger for Ghandi.
HM: It’s too far away for us to visit on a regular basis, but we have gone to https://pinkbirdcarwash.com/ where the machines wash the car (and recycle the water) and then you park in a bay where they have vacuums and interior cleaning equipment. I’m not sure that the automatic equipment is truly safe for a minivan with bike racks on the roof. That’s one reason I like the hand-wash system at Unlimited.
> where the machines wash the car
Sigh. The point of using a hand wand is to exercise your biceps. Do we really want robots to make us evolve into Wal-E leisure yacht creatures in hover-rounds? So be it. I personally don’t even like strangers touching my car, if at all possible, to avoid damaging shit. Google “Snappy Shine”, which my dealer put on my tires as a “favor”.
I forgot to mention hand waxing, using a cleaner/wax like Zymol. That would give your entire family a workout and social bonding through collective griping. Doing so once or twice a year can make your paint last decades. That spray-on-wax treatment at the carwash is a joke. Wax-on, wax-off grasshopper.
Zymol? I looked it up and it seems pretty expensive for our collector-grade Honda Odyssey. https://www.roadandtrack.com/gear/g65206744/best-car-wax-tested/ likes Turtle Wax as “easiest to use” and Meguiar’s mass-market Carnauba as the best paste wax. They also like a cheap Collinite “insulator wax”.
https://www.caranddriver.com/car-accessories/g60030525/best-car-wax-tested/ has some slightly different recommendations, but they’re all pretty cheap.
I doubt that any wax can protect paint that is exposed to the Florida sun all day every day (we don’t have enough garage space for the Odyssey, sadly).
But wait — doesn’t paying illegal migrants low wages and making them do difficult jobs no one else wants akin to slavery? Aren’t we, in effect, bringing back slavery under a different name? Where is the outrage!
That tweet from Jill Filipovic is phenomenal. How can she be that dumb! Talk about saying the quiet part out loud. Presumably she thinks that she is one of the good guys and doesn’t need to weigh out the ounce of self-reflection it would take to realise the idiocy of what she has just written.