Politick

Our Immigration Policy is Exactly Backwards

Bush recently floated immigration 'reform' to give amnesty to illegals and make it tougher for legal entry.  People respond to incentives, and the rate of illegal crossings has increased to get in under the wire.  But why worry? Twenty years ago we put in place this exact policy, and it has failed miserably.  It looks like we will do it again, so why not in another 20 years?  Crises come and go, but political pandering seems to go on forever.

This policy has the incentives exactly backwards.   It is hard to get legal immigrants in, so Silicon Valley companies going begging to fill their H1B visas for skilled workers; and yet unskilled illegals continue to flood in. A better policy would be to make it easy for legal immigration - guestworkers if you like - and hard for illegals.  No amnesty.  Require them to return, apply and come back as guestworkers.  If unskilled, they can be hired below the minimum wage, as happens now with illegals.  In the interim the jobs won't go begging as the new guestworkers can come in and fill them. And our skill industries to go back to attracting the best and brightest from around the planet without having to worry over H1B visa limits.  Much better than what we have now - insourcing the unskilled and outsourcing the skilled.

Hybrid Vigor Mortis: Smug Alert!

Now that the bloom is off the rose for hybrids, even cartoon characters are piling on.  Before you buy your next Toyota 'Pious', be sure to watch the recent South Park episode, Smug Alert, which can be seen on YouTube: part 1, part 2, part 3, or downloaded into your iPod, which is, of course, an insanely smug thing to do.  It also skewers San Francisco liberals, and Goerge Clooney.  An instant classic!

Hybrid Vigor

The hybrid car has gone from darling to doggie in a remarkably short time, helped by a boneheaded set of errors in Consumer Reports.   The magazine later corrected its calculation errors but the damage was profound.  Others picked up on the original story, including a recent New York Times commentary, and the meme that hybrids are not worth the extra expense is becoming conventional wisdom.  This may be bad for hybrids but it is good for hybrid buyers, as prices have softened on all but the few high-mileage models (such as the Toyota Prius), to the extent that the hybrid model can actually be cheaper to buy than the corresponding gasoline model, not even including the gas savings.  Three things to keep in mind about hybrids:

1. Performance.  Hybrids can be designed either for better mileage or for better performance - more pep with a smaller gas engine.  Watch Toyota/Lexus launch vehicles with both characteristics, such as the upcoming GS hybrid that accelerates faster than a souped-up V8.  The press seems to miss that hybrids are not just about high miles per gallon.
2. Smoother Ride.  Hybrids can be designed with a continuous transmission, rather than a normal automatic with 4 or 5 gears.  The drive is much smoother in city driving - no momentary pause & jerk, as in a V6 in the low gears.  Quicker pickup, smoother acceleration.
3. Street Price Advantage.  Hybrids can be cheaper to buy as well as cheaper to operate.  We just picked up a Lexus RX400h for less than the equivalent RX350.  Many of the consumer price comparisons in the media will use MSRP rather than street price.  With the sag in demand for hybrids, they can sell at delightfully low real prices - plus you can get a decent tax credit ($2200 on the 400h) from the government on most models. 

Use the CarsDirect price as a starting point for street price, and check it out.  When the herd runs away, time to buy.

View From The Mount of Olives

The Mount of Olives overlooks the Old City of Jerusalem.  Prophets would come up from the desert and crest the Mount of Olives before walking into the Jerusalem.  The view is spectacular - but for prophets and pundits, there is no better place to cast a vision than from the Mount of Olives, and no better time than during Easter - especially this Easter, sandwiched between the release of the latest Gnostic Gospel, The Book of Judas, and the worldwide launch of The Da Vinci Code.  Both pose an enigma wrapped in a riddle inside a mystery: was the real message of Jesus co-opted when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire? Our pilgrimage to answer that question sheds more light on the human condition than on the religious one. 

China Changes Direction

John Mauldin puts out a very good newsletter/blog.  He occasionally guest blogs from other sources.  He recently passed on a China Visit Report from Simon Hunt.  Simon's observations are worth contemplating, as it means China is now in a five-year transition that is fraught with risk.  The Yelnick View has been that the 2008 Olympics are to China what Y2K was to the US - a defining event that the government will make work, whatever the cost.  Post the Olympics, all bets are off.  Will China make it that far?  Let's take a look at the China Report and its implications.