Affordable Family Formation

[Imran Siddiqui]

So what this guy is saying, in the end, is that Pat Buchanan was right in an immigration policy for the US that will benefit the Republican Party?

[Kuciwalker]

You don't have to be a genius to see that, in general, immigration helps the Democrats (with the noted exception that pro-life hispanic immigrants very well may vote republican).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes, but the blogger is arguing it from a different view point, that immigration increases the supply of housing, which makes the prices go up, and thus white people become more Democrat, since housing costs more and that means they will wait to have kids and families... or something.

There are correlations, but whether they lead to causation is another story.

After all, he speaks about Texas voting for Democrats and how they switched, but fails to point out that Texas Democrats in the 50s and 60s were the conservatives. California, I think has changed because of the immigration itself, and not because housing prices have increased as a result of the immigration.

Then again, if housing prices are higher, wouldn't that mean public schools are better, since most public schools are funded through local property taxes?

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, but the only people who go to those schools will be the ones in the higher-priced houses. The people who don't have the higher-priced houses will live in the city or somewhere with lower-priced houses.

EDIT: plus what drake said

[Drake Tungsten]

Then again, if housing prices are higher, wouldn't that mean public schools are better, since most public schools are funded through local property taxes?

Not if your public school system is saddled with having to teach scores of non-English speaking immigrants.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Then again, if housing prices are higher, wouldn't that mean public schools are better, since most public schools are funded through local property taxes?

Not if your public school system is saddled with having to teach scores of non-English speaking immigrants.

If you live in an area where your housing prices are higher, you likely don't have many non-English speaking immigrants in your schools .

This is a place I think the analysis breaks down. The places with the highest housing prices are usually pretty 'white'. Perhaps immigration raises housing prices through a national supply shortage, but that doesn't work for me either.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
If you live in an area where your housing prices are higher, you likely don't have many non-English speaking immigrants in your schools .

At which point my point is true.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, I don't really agree with the immigration angle. It might be true, but it wasn't as well supported as other points in the piece.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well it isn't just the immigration angle. The cost of housing doesn't seem to work for me either. In New Jersey, I lived in a pretty high cost housing area (on the shore, every house with big yards, etc) which was solidly Republican.

While the center cities do have a liberal upper class housing area, the lower cost housing areas within the cities are also Democrat. And a lot of higher cost housing around the cities tend to be Republican.

It doesn't fit. I think it is more a function of actual geography than housing costs.

In Atlanta area, for example, the lower housing cost areas are the more Democrat areas, whereas the higher housing cost areas seem to be the more Republican areas (of course it isn't a hard an fast rule).

The other stuff may indeed be true, though I'm not sold on the cost of living argument.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DanS
I don't agree with what that guy has to say about immigration, but the other stuff he says makes a lot of sense.

There are a lot of places in the red states with a very high standard of living -- a lot higher than in the blue states. Most of these places are rather bland and "rough hewed", though.

Perfect places to raise families.

"raise a family" how?

People have been raising families everywhere since the beginning of recorded history. What one wants their kids to have differs.

I am very skeptical that these numbers are being read right- instead of saying "being married ina suburb makes you 'red'", maybe being 'red' is what makes you seek out marriage in a suburb, thought what is "red" varies greatly: Republicans in Long Island and Republicans in Houston share very few things.

[Kuciwalker]

Which is why I think this trend will skew the party back towards the NE Republicans.

[:) Smiley]

The author misses one big point - without immigration, where's the cheap labor to build all those suburban mcmansions going to come from?

[GePap]

I think of it this way: People who seek lots of cheap individual space in order to create an autonomous zone for themselves buy into the "its my money, I should keep it rhetoric". They have a view of themselves as king of their own little kingdom, and no one should be intruding upon it, darn it.

On the question of marriage, on the other hand, people who are married longer are probably people for whom marriage is of upmost importance, and these people begin as socially conservative, and less liekly to countenance marriage and so forth.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
I think of it this way: People who seek lots of cheap individual space in order to create an autonomous zone for themselves buy into the "its my money, I should keep it rhetoric". They have a view of themselves as king of their own little kingdom, and no one should be intruding upon it, darn it.

It probably works both ways, in that the thinking of those who obtain such a space tends to change towards that line.

On the question of marriage, on the other hand, people who are married longer are probably people for whom marriage is of upmost importance, and these people begin as socially conservative, and less liekly to countenance marriage and so forth.

[Drake Tungsten]

Which is why I think this trend will skew the party back towards the NE Republicans.

Moderate Nebraskan Republicans...

The cost of housing doesn't seem to work for me either.

Cost of housing isn't the only factor to take into account. Marriage and children were the more important factors, which the author argued were encouraged by low housing costs in most cases.