Violent Crime Down In Mexico

Ms Sheinbaum’s government says Mexico’s murder rate has come down by 32% in the year since she took office. Analysis by The Economist confirms that the rate has fallen, though by a significantly smaller margin, 14%.

Counting homicides alone misses an important part of the picture, namely the thousands of people who disappear in Mexico every year, many of whom are killed and buried in unmarked graves. A broader view of deadly crime that includes manslaughter, femicide and two-thirds of disappearances (the data for disappearances is imperfect), shows a more modest decline of 6%.

Still, Mexico is on track for about 24,300 murders this year, horribly high, but well below the recent annual average of slightly over 30,000. Ms Sheinbaum is the first Mexican leader in years to push violent crime in the right direction.

From The Economist.

The current Prime Minster of Mexico appears to be quite effective. Reducing violent crime is always a good thing.

State Building in Mexico Wasn't Easy

We easily forget how messy the path to the present can be. The emergence of the Mexican nation and state is one example of this mess process in action.

Mexico in the nineteenth century presents a dramatic example of this problem. Mexico suffered extreme political instability and strife in the nineteenth century. There were 800 revolts between 1821 and 1875. Between independence in 1821 and 1900, Mexico had 72 different chief executives, meaning that the average term was only a little more than one year long. Likewise, the country had 112 finance ministers between 1830 and 1863. In addition there were several invasions and secessionist movements.

The country also experimented with several different forms of government, including two empires (one headed by a French-backed, Austrian-born member of the Habsburg dynasty), one disputed period where there were presidents from both main parties, four republics, one provisional republic, and a long dictatorship. President Guadalupe Victoria was the first constitutionally elected president of the country, and the only one who would complete a full term in the first 30 years of independence.

Some other examples: There were four Mexican presidents in the years 1829, 1839, 1846, 1847, and 1853, while there were five in 1844 and 1855 and eight in 1833. Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was President of Mexico on ten separate occasions, was president four different times in a single year.

Mexico faced constant challenges to its sovereignty in the first 50 years of independence, from the secessions of Texas and Central America, to the secession attempts of the Yucatán, as well as numerous smaller rebellions.

by Robin Grier from Works in Progress via Marginal Revolution.

Mexico Is Big

Mexico is geographically large, and its population of 126.7 million (as of 2021) isn't small either.

Many People Die From Chilly Weather In Mexico

Weather that is far less than freezing causes many deaths in Mexico, mostly among poor people. 

Twelve degrees Celsius is 54 degrees Fahrenheit and twenty degrees Celsius is 68 degrees Fahrenheit (basically room temperature), while thirty-two degrees Celsius is about 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

We examine the impact of temperature on mortality in Mexico using daily data over the period 1998–2017 and find that 3.8 percent of deaths in Mexico are caused by suboptimal temperature (26,000 every year). However, 92 percent of weather-related deaths are induced by cold (<12 degrees C) or mildly cold (12–20 degrees C) days and only 2 percent by outstandingly hot days (>32 degrees C). Furthermore, temperatures are twice as likely to kill people in the bottom half of the income distribution. Finally, we show causal evidence that the Seguro Popular, a universal health care policy, has saved at least 1,600 lives per year from cold weather since 2004.

From a new paper in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, by François Cohen and Antoine Dechezleprêtre.

Mexico's Military Considered

Usually, I focus my military blogging on the military of the United States and its main potential military adversaries. This post, however, is devoted to an almost opposite perspective, the military of Mexico, the immediate Southern neighbor of the United States.

Basic Statistics - The U.S. v. Mexico

The population of the United States is currently about 333 million. Mexico's population is about 128 million (about 38% of the United States).

The GDP of the United States is currently about 21,430 billion U.S. dollars per year (about $64,354 U.S. per capita). Mexico's GDP is about 1,269 billion U.S. dollars per year (about 6% of the United States and about $9,914 U.S. per capita).

The U.S. spends about $778 billon on its military every year, which is 4.4% of its GDP and 38% of total military spending by all countries in the world combined.

Mexico spends about $7.1 billion on its military every year, which is about 0.6% of its GDP and less than 1% of what the U.S. spends on its military. So, the U.S. spends about 12.7 times as large a share of its GDP on the military as Mexico.

As of 2019, the U.S. had 1,367,030 active duty military personnel (including active duty Coast Guard personnel to assist in making the numbers comparable). It also has reserves in all four military services and the coast guard, and the Army and Air Force National Guard. This is 4,105 active duty military personnel (including the Coast Guard) per million people.

Mexico has 277,150 active duty military personnel in all parts of its military, in addition to 81,500 reserve forces. This is 2,165 active duty military personnel per million people.

The U.S. spends $570,000 U.S. per active duty soldier. Mexico spends $25,618 U.S. per active duty soldier.

The U.S. has a large nuclear arsenal which Mexico lacks entirely.

Mexico's Military Aircraft

Overview

Like the United States, Mexico has both an air force and aircraft that are part of its navy.

The Mexican military has 53 armed fixed wing aircraft. 

Only six Mexican military aircraft have meaningful air to air combat capabilities, and only seven Mexican military ships and boats (discussed below) have anti-aircraft missiles (and obviously can't "chase" a fast moving squadron of incoming enemy aircraft). The Army's anti-aircraft grenade cannons would only be effective against low altitude aircraft.

Only twelve Mexican military aircraft and three Mexican military ships and boats (discussed below) could conceivably sink a surface combatant or large commercial ship at a distance of more than twenty miles. Three more Mexican military ships could do so at shorter ranges. 

The rest of Mexico's armed aircraft are suitable only for dropping "dumb" bombs in uncontested airspace or perhaps in the case of eight more of them directing machine gun or unguided rocket fire at a target at close range.

The Mexican military has no missile or rocket or grenade cannon armed attack helicopters. It has no armed drones (by air, sea, underwater, or on land). It has no heavy or long range bombers. It has no stealth aircraft and only six aircraft that are capable of supersonic flight. 

It has no heavy lift helicopters. It has no heavy fixed wing military transport aircraft (comparable to the U.S. C-5 or C-17 or the Airbus A400M). It also has (as discussed below) no significant sea lift capabilities relative to the scale of its Army and Marine forces.

It has no cruise missiles, no medium or long range missiles (other than those on its Maritime patrol aircraft), and no nuclear weapons of any kind. So far as I know, Mexico has no military surveillance satellites.

Specific Resources.

Mexico's air force has: 

* 6 Northrop F-5E fighter jets. The original F-5 was designed for the U.S. Navy in 1962 and was in due course replaced by the F-14, then by the F-18, then by the F-35C. The F-5E design for export sales dates to 1972. It is a single pilot supersonic jet fighter that can reach bursts of speed up to Mach 1.63, and has a 140 mile combat radius with a full load of missiles and bombs. It has a ferry range of about 1,600 miles, with drop tanks in lieu of weapons, traveling at a slower the cruising speed Mach 0.8 to conserve fuel. It can operate at very high altitudes (51,800 feet).

The F-5E has relatively modern, although not state of the art, fighter aircraft radar. It has two 20mm cannons. It can carry 2 or 4 modern guided missiles (air to air, or air to ground), or pods with up to 38 unguided 70mm rockets or 8 unguided 127mm rockets. And, it can carry, in addition, up to about 5,200 pounds of unguided "dumb" bombs (if it is carrying only 2 relatively light air to air missiles). It can take off from a 2000 foot runway with two air to air missiles, but not a full load of bombs. 

The F-5Es are the only aircraft in Mexico's military that can used modern missiles for air to air combat, and the only supersonic aircraft in Mexico's military. Some reports suggest that only about half of them are operational.

* 33 Pilatus PC-7 light attack aircraft. This is a modified 1978 two seater general aviation training aircraft from Switzerland which can carry about 2,300 pounds of unguided "dumb" bombs or unguided rockets spread over six hard points. It has a top speed of 256 miles per hour and a cruise speed of 106 miles per hour. It has a range of 1,630 miles (a combat radius of 815 miles), and a maximum altitude of 33,000 feet. Since all of its munitions are unguided, it needs to get close to the target to drop its payload, bringing it within range of anti-aircraft guns. 

In addition to these armed aircraft, the Mexican air force has:

* 4 full sized commercial passenger jets used for VIP transport, 

* 5 C-130 intra-theater transport planes, 

* 12 smaller fixed wing military transport planes, 

* 124 small and medium sized utility/transport helicopters, 

* 5 unarmed fixed wing reconnaissance aircraft, 

* 100 Israeli Elbit Hermes 450 surveillance drones, that are about 550 pounds, have a 20 foot wing span, and can stay aloft for 17 hours at its 80 mile per hour cruise speed, at altitudes up to 18,000 feet, and

* 147 training aircraft (fixed wing and helicopters combined).

The Mexican Navy has:

* 6 Spanish CASA CN-235 Maritime patrol/search and rescue aircraft. These have six hard points, each of which can carry an AM-39 Exocet anti-ship missile with a 120 mile range, or a torpedo.

* 8 Spanish CASA C-212 Maritime patrol aircraft. These have two hard points that can carry a combined 1100 pounds of weapons, typically machine gun pods or unguided rocket pods.

* 17 small fixed wing transport planes (general aviation aircraft sized)

* 54 small and medium size utility/transport/search and rescue helicopters, 

* 5 unarmed fixed wing reconnaissance aircraft, and

* 63 training aircraft (fixed wing and helicopters combined).

Mexico's Warships and Military Boats

Overview

Mexico's Naval ships and boats are pretty much completely separated between a Pacific Navy Force and a Gulf and Caribbean Force, which is only rebalanced on rare trips through the Panama Canal.

The Mexican Navy has 7 ships with torpedos and/or anti-ship missiles capable of sinking a warship or large commercial ship (four of which have anti-air missiles). But, only three of these ships can sink another warship or large commercial warship at a range or more than about 20 miles with anti-ship missiles (while every U.S. Navy cruiser and destroyer has missiles that can sink warships at longer ranges than that, and every U.S. Navy aircraft carrier has aircraft that can do that). 

All seven of these ships and 24 more offshore patrol vessels of 1,000 tons or more, have helipads and also have grenade cannons and/or 2-3" naval guns. Three of these offshore patrol vessels have anti-air missiles, so there are a total of seven ships in the Mexican navy with anti-air missiles.

Eleven more offshore patrol vessels have grenade canons and a 3" naval gun but no helipad. 

There are 98 more coastal patrol vessels and interceptors with machine guns or grenade cannons, but no naval guns or missiles or helipads, and 16 search and rescue boats with machine guns.

The Mexican Navy has no submarines and no significant anti-submarine warfare resources. 

It has no aircraft carriers or helicopter carriers (although it has 31 ships with helipads for one or two small or medium sized helicopters). 

It has no battleship, cruisers, or destroyers. Just four surface combatants in the Mexican Navy are as large as the smallest surface combatant in the U.S. Navy (the littoral combat ships). 

The Mexican Navy's fleet is much more comparable to the fleet of the U.S. Coast Guard, with just a handful of heavier surface combatants, and the Mexican Navy has a mission much closer to that of the U.S. Coast Guard. It does not aspire to be a "blue sea navy."

Detailed Inventory Of Ships and Boats

* 4 Allende class frigates. The U.S. Knox class destroyer escort design from 1965. 3226 tons and 522 feet. Crew of 288. All four have 5" naval guns, torpedos and a helipad. One has Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft/anti-missile missiles.

* 1 Reformador class frigate. This is a Dutch 2005 design. 2575 tons and 298 feet. Crew of 20 to 80. Torpedos, a helipad, and modern anti-air and anti-ship missiles.

* 2 Huracan class missile boats. This is an Israel 1980 design. 498 tons and 202 feet. Crew of 53. A helipad and modern anti-air and anti-ship missiles.

* 8 Oaxaca class patrol vessels. Mexican 2003 design. 1680 tons and 282 feet.77 crew and 39 Marines. Helipad, 3" naval gun and grenade cannons.

* 3 Sierra class corvettes. Spanish 1998 design. 1366 tons and 231 feet. 75 crew. Helipad, 2" naval gun and modern anti-air missiles.

* 4 Durango class patrol vessels. Spanish 2000 design. 1300 tons and 267 feet. 74 crew and 55 Marines. Helipad and 2" naval gun.

* 4 Holzinger class patrol vessels. Variant of Uribe class. 1022 tons and 224 feet. 73 crew. Grenade cannons and helipad.

* 5 Uribe class patrol vessels. Spanish 1982 design. 998 tons and 220 feet. 54 crew. Grenade cannons and helipad.

* 11 Valle class minesweepers. U.S. and U.K. Auk-class design from World War II. 890 tons and 221 feet. 100 crew. 3" naval gun and grenade cannons.

* 20 Azteca class coastal patrol vessels. British 1976 design. 148 tons and 112 feet. 24 crew. Grenade cannons.

* 10 Tenochtitlan class coastal patrol vessels. Dutch 2001 design. 239 ton and 140 feet. 18 crew. Machine guns.

* 68 Polaris II class patrol interceptors. Swedish 1991 Combat Boat 90 design. 15 tons and 52 feet. 3 crew and 21 marines. Grenade cannons, machine guns and naval mines.

* 5 search and rescue motor lifeboats. U.S. 1997 design. 18 tons and 47 feet. 4 crew and 30 passengers. Optional machine gun mount. All on Pacific coast.

* 11 Defender class search and rescue boats. U.S. 2002 design. 2.7 tons. 4 crew and 6 passengers. Machine guns. All on Pacific coast.

Mexico's Amphibious Forces

Mexico has about 25,000 Marines, often included on ships as boarding parties on patrol vessels, and four tank landing ships (with a combined capacity of 1,384 marine and their equipment) which are as follows:

* 2 of the Papaloapan class. These are a U.S. design from 1968. 4,793 tons and 522 feet. Each has a crew of 213 and carried 421 marines. It is armed with machine guns and has a helipad.

* 2 of the Montes Azules class. This is a Mexican design from 2011. they are 3,666 tons and 327 feet. Each has a crew of 89 and carries up to 181 Marines and 1800 tons of cargo. It has two landing craft. It is armed with a grenade cannon and a helipad. These are part of the Pacific Naval Fleet and usually used for disaster relief missions.

Mexico's Army

Mexico has about 130,000 active duty Army soldiers (exclusive of the air force and the Marines), which is only modestly less per capita than the number of active duty Army soldiers per capita in the United States that are not deployed abroad, and about 65,000 reserve Army soldiers. Army soldiers make up about half of the active duty military personnel in Mexico, with the remainder being in the Air Force, Marines, or Navy (a larger share of the total than in the United States where the Army is 35% of the total).

The Army's equipment is a mishmash of different designs from different countries. Mexico's Army has: 

* 120 light tanks (8 tons with 90mm main guns) (by comparison, a U.S. M-1 main battle tank weighs 74 tons and has a 120mm main gun), 

* a handful of mobile armored vehicles with 75mm howitzers or 81mm mortars, 

* about 1231 armored personnel carriers with anti-tank guided missiles (with a 2-3 km range), 

* about 1500 armored personnel carriers with grenade cannons or heavy machine guns (only a minority are optimized against IEDs), and 

* about 5,500 armored Humvees with grenade cannons or heavy machine guns. 

It has two kinds of grenade cannons optimized for anti-aircraft duties. 

It has a variety of infantry carried and towed unguided anti-tank guns from 105mm to 125mm. 

It has a large number of towed 105mm to 155mm howitzers, and 60mm to 120mm mortars.

Apart from short range anti-tank missiles mounts on armored personnel carriers, the Mexican Army has no missiles of any kind. It has no anti-aircraft missiles, no missiles serving in an artillery role, no missile defense systems, no artillery shell or rocket defense systems, and no cruise missiles, and no nuclear missiles.

The Mexican Army has no heavy tanks and no heavy howitzers or mortars that are integrated into an armored vehicle.

Analysis

Despite its meager military capabilities, Mexico's armed forces are not necessarily unwise given its missions.

Mexico knows that it is no match for its Northern neighbor, the United States, and doesn't even try to have a military defense to a U.S. invasion. The Pacific Ocean and the U.S. Navy in that ocean, guards it from outside invasions from Asia and Oceania.

Belize and Guatemala on its small southern land border have tiny militaries with even fewer resources. Belize has fewer than 1,500 troops. Guatemala has about 18,000. Neither of these countries has armed aircraft with any air to air combat capacity, or naval forces in their respective theaters that could rival even Mexico's modest fleet. The same can be said for Mexico's other close Central American neighbors.

Mexico has decided that it simply cannot afford and doesn't wish to engage in foreign wars and military engagements.

With a minimal risk of invasion, the Mexican armed forces exist primarily to respond to armed drug cartels and criminal gangs, to smugglers and fishing violators, to put insurrections (mostly by indigenous populations with no foreign proxy war resources of money or military assets, or by students and unions), and to provide civilian law enforcement at sea, and to provide disaster response in times of disasters or other exigent circumstances. 

Basically, the Mexican armed forces, collectively, have a mission similar to the U.S. Coast Guard, Army National Guard, and Air Force National Guard, made more burdensome mostly by the failings of law enforcement in Mexico to address organized criminal violence. This homeland security mission for Mexico is much less expensive than the expansive military missions that the U.S. has undertaken.

Many Mexican armed forces missions are ones that the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force are prohibited by statute and long standing custom and tradition, from conducting.

Options For Upgrading Mexico's Military

If Mexico wanted to make its military more capable against sovereign state class threats, there would be some obvious places to begin at an affordable cost.

The least expensive and most consequential option would be to convert some of its existing Army and Navy utility helicopters, on proven existing designs, to missile, rocket and canon armed helicopter gunships, along the lines of the AH-1 Cobra variant of its UH-1 helicopters, or the AH-60M variant of its UH-60 helicopters.

In ground based conflicts, this could provide a powerful and robust (and better targeted than existing methods) means to devastating enemy armored forces and entrenched defenses.

In sea based conflicts, an existing frigate or missile boat or patrol vessel with an attack helicopter could be very effective against the highest end threats from criminal organizations and neighboring countries navies (other than the U.S.) that Mexican forces are likely to encounter at sea, effectively creating a mini-aircraft carrier strategy that can respond to emergent events much more quicky than the fastest ship.

Another inexpensive option would be to modify some of its light bombers and maritime patrol and training and light transport aircraft to carry advanced avionics and long range modern aircraft based missiles (air to air, and air to ground) and/or "smart bombs", while refraining from trying to buy more than a handful of advanced modern jet fighters (if any), as attaining meaningful air to air combat capabilities is much more expensive. Even an upgrade to smart bombs would multiply the effectiveness of the force by reducing the number of sorties per target, allow bombs to be dropped from safer locations in terms of altitude and distance from the target preventing casualties from ground based anti-air fire, and would reduce collateral damage when bombs are dropped.

If there is a felt need for any anti-submarine capability a small number of P-8 maritime patrol aircraft and some surface ship drones to gather reconnoissance might make sense.  This planes can cover a huge territory, monitor sensors dropped in the ocean and on drones (perhaps also via patrol vessels), and can launch rapid strikes with torpedos launched from the plane when a target is identified.  

Armed drones would make sense as a replacement for much of its existing light bomber resources. They cost less, do the same job and don't present the same risk of casualties.

Buying missile artillery like the U.S. military HIMARs system would provide benefits similar to smart bombs over howitzer and mortar based artillery, which have short ranges and comparatively low accuracy.

Buying modern ground based anti-aircraft missile batteries like the Soviet S-400, would be another that would cost somewhat more, but not that much more, and is probably the most cost effective way of discouraging enemy air intrusions into Mexican air space. Mexico can't afford the air to air fighter fleet necessary to have that effect.

To the extent Mexico wants to replace old ships with new ones, ships like its 500 ton Israeli missile boats make far more sense than blue sea frigates or cruisers or destroyers or non-coastal patrol vessels. These boats are very capable offensively, have small crews that are less expensive, and are less expensive than full sized blue sea surface combatants. And, Mexico doesn't no a far off coast capability.

Just two or three small diesel-electric coastal attack submarines could also be an investment to provide robust anti-surface combatant capability and a moderate but not entirely cheap price.

Finally, investing in IED resistant armored vehicles to the U.S. MRAP standard, before they become necessary due to an actual IED threat, could discourage one from ever arising.

Global Chaos

I am struck by how much U.S. life seems to be proceeding on a business as usual basis when immense upheavals have defined recent history in so much of the globe, even though I am reluctant to use this to "normalize" Donald Trump's unprecedented missteps. 

But, even in the U.S., a series of natural disasters and ineffective responses to them in Puerto Rico have led to sustained malaise in that U.S. Commonwealth, and there are been recent epic wildfires in California.

Here are some of the big upheavals around the world for those who haven't been paying attention (and I'm sure I've missed at least one or two, if not more, notable cases):

* Coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China is becoming a global pandemic, killed thousands in China, and caused the nation to go into lockdown and schools to close for a month.

* Coronavirus has shut down schools for a month in Japan. Meanwhile, Japan is in the midst of an intense economic downturn with GDP falling at a more than 6% annualized rate in the last quarter of 2019.

* Months of intense rioting in Hong Kong over efforts by China to strip away its distinct freedoms and democratic institutions.

* China has put more than a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps and is terrorizing this entire society.

*  India is facing continuing mass street riots that have bubbled into a full on massacre in Delhi over a Hindu Nationalist government's immigration bill that has been perceived as anti-Muslim.

*  The ongoing insurgency/conflict in Kashmir recently entered as hot and violent phase.

* Myanmar recently had a government led genocidal expulsion of Rohingya Muslims with a mass refugee flight to India.

* Ethnic conflict and more put masses on the streets and led to military brinksmanship in Thailand. This is related to a sixteen year old and ongoing "South Thailand Insurgency".

* Indonesia had a week of mass street protests in September last year across the nation, over governments efforts to eliminate anti-corruption institutions in the country.

* Wildfires and heatwaves across Australia have dramatically disrupted life there and horribly disrupted the ecological balance.

* Antarctica has had unprecedented high temperatures accelerating glacial melting that could trigger rapidly rising sea levels. So has Greenland.

* An active civil war/Saudi Arabian war against Shiites is raging in Yemen.

* The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians seems to have escalated and gotten more violent, mostly due to Israel being more aggressive.

* An active civil war is raging in Syria with Russian backing.

* An active civil war is raging in Libya.

* An active civil war is raging in Somalia which still doesn't really have a functioning and universally recognized central government.

* An active civil war is raging in the Eastern Ukraine with Russian backing.

* Far right movements have surged in parts of Europe such as Hungary and Poland that have shredded democratic institutions and tolerance.

* An active civil war is continuing with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

* There are violent active, verging on genocidal insurgencies and Muslim-Christian clashes across the African Sahel.

* France has had months of general strikes and large scale fairly violent street protests.

* While less violent and disorderly, the United Kingdom has left the U.K. as Brexit happened.

* The economy and social cohesion of Venezuela has totally melted down into hyperinflation and chaos. This has also produced mass street protests.

*  Much of Mexico and Central America has descended into an orgy of cartel and gang violence with extremely high murder rates. More than 35,000 people were killed in 2019 in the "Mexican Drug War" which has killed 115,000 people since it began in 2006. Many of these countries have had massive street demonstrations (including parts of Mexico) and this has triggered a surge of refugees headed for the United States. Costa Rica, however, seems to have been mostly spared.

* Bolivia recently had a coup also involving massive street demonstrations.

* Haiti has had recent mass unrest.

* Brazil under a far right President has epic levels of crime and its interior has turned into a free for all of violent self-help of resource industry capitalists in anti-indigenous people oriented actions. Massive wild fires, some intentionally set, have been burning in the Amazon where other forms of deforestation haven't already occurred.

* Peru is in a continuing constitutional crisis also involving wave after wave of massive corruption.

Overrated And Underrated Countries

The ratings here are relative to "conventional wisdom" about how good a place to live or bad a place to live a country actually is.

Places Perceived As Bad That Are Much Worse Than Most People Realize

* North Korea

* Saudi Arabia

* The West Bank and Gaza in Israel (a.k.a. Palestine)

* Pakistan

* Belarus

* Papua New Guinea

* Venezuela

* South Sudan

* Yemen

* Central African Republic

Places That Are Bad But Are Perceived As Worse Than They Actually Are.

* Lebanon

* Iran

* Cuba

* Columbia

* Cambodia

* Vietnam

* Bangladesh

* Ethiopia

* Eritrea

* Uruguay

Places That Are Better In Some Respects But Worse In Others Than They Are Perceived

* Mexico (more educated with better healthcare; but also more corrupt and violent)

* India (more economically developed in some places, but more fanatical, with more profound poverty and with a serious underuse of toilets)

* Portugal (more progressive in some ways, more economically backward and authoritarian in others)

* Egypt (safer but less free)

* Singapore (more developed but less free)

* China (more developed but less free and more corrupt)

Places That Are Perceived To Be Better Than They Actually Are

* Greece

* Italy

* Spain

* Hungary

* Much of the United States of America

The Platte River Basin

Denver is a part of the Platte River basin that in turn feeds into the Mississippi River basin (other parts of Colorado are sources for many of the other major U.S. river basins). The Platte River basin is part of the Louisiana Territory as the French had claimed the entire Mississippi River basin as their own. The territory of Colorado that is west of the Continental Divide and much of Southern Colorado, in contrast, was not part of the Louisiana territory. Much of that territory was part of "Old Mexico".

Here is a nice map of that river basin via a Facebook post by John Orr whose blog is Coyote Gulch.

Mexican Migration Surge Unlike To Recur

Trump's wall is an idea that has been obsolete for a long time.

Net migration from Mexico to the U.S. has been approximately zero for a decade.

One reason that it is not likely to recur because Mexico no longer has a rapidly growing population.

Source.

Automation And Trade

Offshoring Happened - Manufacturing Malaise Isn't Only The Fault Of Robots

One of the biggest developments of the last fifty years of the U.S. economy has been the offshoring of manufacturing. Entire manufacturing industries such as televisions, clothing and steel moved almost entirely abroad. Other manufacturing industries such as automobile manufacturing, have remained partially in the U.S., but a significant share of the goods in the market are produced offshore by both domestic and foreign companies, both of whom manufacture cars partially in the U.S. and partially abroad. The oil and gas industry because there are natural limits on the extent to which it can be offshored, and a handful of idiosyncratic holdouts like aircraft manufacturing, have remained mostly domestic. But, the overall trends have been clear.

While it is true that the U.S. manufacturing industry hasn't lost much productivity and has even increased a bit, and that automation has played as great a role in lost manufacturing jobs as offshoring, it is also true that a much larger share of goods consumed in the U.S. are manufactured abroad than was the case half a century ago, and that market share of manufacturing had declined steadily over a long time period (although it may now be leveling off).

This has resulted in immense economic dislocation in the U.S. and huge social costs. Offshoring and automation have both contributed significantly to the appearance of the Rust Belt. It has absolutely devastated cities like Milwaukee, Flint, Detroit, Toledo, Lima, Cleveland, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Allentown, Burlington, and Saint Louis. It created the despondent working class that is now abusing opium on record scales, and was a pivotal factor in creating the black underclass. As a group, less educated men have born the brunt of offshoring while receiving only lower bills for purchases of imported goods at Wal-Mart in exchange for the economic prosperity that they lost when manufacturing jobs left.

So, but for offshoring, the U.S. manufacturing industry would be much larger than it is now and would employ far more people, notwithstanding automation. The failure of the U.S. manufacturing industry to expand because offshoring has eaten much of its growth is one reason that the U.S. education system hasn't seen strong private sector pressure to improve vocational education for middle skilled manufacturing jobs, many of which are relevant in a world of highly automated manufacturing. Why push to train people for jobs that the economy isn't creating because it is cheaper to create them abroad?

On the other hand, the high standard of living in the U.S. today is due in significant part to the extremely low costs of goods relative to services that offshoring has made possible. But for this offshoring, goods would be more expensive in the U.S. and Americans could afford less of them. 

Also, offshoring, which has almost certainly been concentrated in the areas where U.S. environmental laws have the biggest impact on the bottom line of manufacturing companies, has played an important and unrecognized role in improving the quality of the environment in the United States, which its citizens have enjoyed with better health and greater happiness.

The U.S. would manufacture a larger share of the goods consumed in the U.S. and would manufacture more far goods overall than it does now, in the absence of so much offshoring, but the total amount of manufactured goods we consumed would be smaller, and the economies of the developing world would be far, far less well off, particularly in Northern Mexico and China.

The economic evidence is overwhelming that free trade which facilitates offshoring has increased U.S. GDP per capita. But, given the extent to which GDP gains in recent years have been concentrated in a small economic elite rather than being widely shared, and given that the social costs arising from lost manufacturing jobs aren't deducted from those GDP gains, the economic benefits of offshoring for the the free trade which has facilitated offshoring for everyone outside the upper middle class in America are significantly overstated.

Why Is Manufacturing Offshored?

The conventional wisdom is that manufacturing jobs left the U.S. because the cost of labor in the developing world was lower and environmental laws were weaker.

Suppose the conventional wisdom is true.

Labor Costs, Environmental Laws And The Situ Of Manufacturers

As manufacturing becomes more automated, the share of labor as a factor of production in manufacturing shrinks and the labor that is requires is more skilled.

Comparative advantage between the U.S. and developing countries is greater for developing countries at the low end of the labor market than in the highly skilled labor market.

Highly automated manufacturing operations also tend to be less polluting because pollution and waste have always been inefficient. It is just that historically, the costs of pollution were outweighed by the cost savings involved in using these sloppy methods.

Also, many of the historical offshore manufacturing centers have seen their wages rise as they have developed economically and have been forced to pay more attention to environmental regulation as unregulated pollution has made life unlivable and higher standards of living have allowed people to place of greater priority on the environment.

As less skilled labor costs and environmental laws become a smaller consideration in locating manufacturing, other aspects of developing economies and offshore manufacturing operations also loom larger.

Quality control is harder to maintain from afar. Developing economies tend to have more corrupt and inefficient government bureaucracies and less reliable legal systems. Their infrastructure is less reliable. A general environment of corruption can seep into business operations leading to reduced quality and higher costs.

Automation, in some cases, via tools like programmable manufacturing equipment and 3D printing, can also make economies of scale in manufacturing less important. This makes it possible to have more manufacturing locations closer to the places where the produces will be sold, to change up and "retool" product lines more rapidly, and to make more customized products.

In summary, automation, on balance, disfavors the offshoring of manufacturing relative to the status quo.

Transportation Costs And The Situ Of Manufacturers

All other things held equal, manufacturing goods closer to where they are used is more economically efficient than manufacturing things far away. But, the cheaper and faster freight technology is the less distance matters. 

Increased automation will tend to reduce the costs of shipping freight. But, cargo ships and trains are already so highly automated that there is little room to reduce costs with automation that reduces labor costs in that part of the freight market.

The only place where automation could still dramatically reduce freight costs is in trucking, if self-driving trucks, which already exist in proto-type form. But, this reduction in freight cost is pretty indifferent between the benefit it provides to manufacturers somewhere in the U.S. and manufacturers abroad once they deposit their freight at a port or their goods are removed from a rail yard.

So, automation is unlikely make offshore manufacturing significantly more competitive vis-a-vis domestic manufacturing.

Also, one of the likely growth areas for manufacturing is likely to be in the construction industry, where there is a huge untapped potential that has been utilized with great success on a limited basis, to build buildings in bigger chunks that are built in more efficient, less waste generating factories off site. These factories build building components on a more automated basis with more skilled labor than on site stick building techniques. But, the components are very big, some transportation costs are a material consideration.

Transportation issues disfavor offshoring for building module manufacturing more than they do for other kinds of manufacturing.

Bottom Line

Gradual shifts towards more highly automated manufacturing will shift incentives away from offshoring manufacturing and towards manufacturing domestically. Comparative advantage principles mean that offshoring won't go away any time soon. But, in general, automation means that the future of the domestic manufacturing industry in the United States is fairly bright going forward. 

This is especially true in new industries where sunk costs don't multiply the impact of decisions made when economic incentives more strongly favored offshoring.

Of course, since domestic manufacturing is most attractive in the most automated operations, a major resurgence of domestic manufacturing may not produce all that many more U.S. jobs and the jobs that it does create will largely be for higher skilled workers, not for the blue collar workers who lost their jobs in the deindustrialization process that started to take hold in the U.S. in the 1970s.

The exception to that general rule, however, may be manufacturing in support of building construction, where transportation issues can favor domestic manufacturing even when the work is relatively unskilled. But, even in this case, the growth in construction manufacturing jobs will come at the cost of even more lost jobs in on site construction. And, this shift will hurt the least skilled workers the most.

Automation is bad news for the employment of less skilled workers both in the U.S. and abroad. And, the impact of automation on these workers is largely irreversible, unlike offshoring.

Impressions From Mexico

I'm back after a vacation in the Puerto Vallarta area of Mexico in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Nayarit. Seeing new places always brings new insights, so here are some of my impressions:

Urban Planning

One of the most striking aspects of the cities I visited is that there is no visible sign of any zoning or land use regulation. Industrial facilities, hospitals, shops, warehouses, farms, zoos, car repair or car part stores, auto dealerships, restaurants, real estate offices, schools, markets, notary offices, police stations, hotels, adult clubs and so on are cheek by jowl. Shops and restaurants in primarily residential neighborhoods, sometimes operated out of a garage or residence, seem to be common.

There is also none of the enforced tidiness seen in towns that strictly enforce local ordinances on subjects like weed control or public rubbish piles, or the equivalent enforced by home owner's associations. There is a high tolerance for visual messiness.

There is also a strong indication that people do not trust government law enforcement to provide sufficient private safety. There are lots of private security guards. Most shops are closed with metal curtains when they are not open.  Most homes seem to be built in walled complexes with razor wire or spikes atop the walls with only slight attention paid to the exterior appearance and a focus on creating beautiful private interior spaces.

The Real Estate Market

The recent formal legalization of foreign direct real property ownership has spurred lots of for sale signs and real estate offices, but seemingly not very inflated real estate prices and not a lot of real estate sales activity. There is also surprisingly little development and construction activity for an urbanized area of this size, with many undeveloped vacant lots available in prime locations listed for sale, and lots of spaces available for rent at pretty modest rents.

Water and Plumbing

Storm sewers routinely empty, unfiltered onto the beach and into the sea.

Outside the resorts, tap water quality is dubious and almost everyone drinks bottled water in the places that I observed. No restaurants provide free water with a meal. Free public toilets are also pretty much entirely absent. 

Water and sewage service would almost always be a local government function in  the U.S., and is pervasively done poorly in all but a few isolated pockets of Mexico.

Traffic and Transportation

There are no crossing light controlled cross-walks there, and traffic laws (while not ignored) are often taken to be guidelines. Ambulances, fire trucks, and municipal police officers get no respect in traffic. People are routinely carried in the back of pickup trucks, both privately and for fares.

There is a high volume of bus service that isn't pretty but very competitive and inexpensive. It is arguably the most vigorously hustling industry in the area. Local bus services appear to be operated by municipal license rather than by a governmental entity. Per Wikipedia:

Puerto Vallarta is serviced by three municipal bus unions that provide coverage for most of the greater Puerto Vallarta area (e.g. Ixtapa, Mismaloya, Pitillal). Most of the population of the Municipality of Puerto Vallarta travels by municipal bus. Automobile ownership is not rare, but cars are seldom used to commute to and from work. They are typically reserved for family outings and major shopping trips. Parking in Puerto Vallarta is scarce, and this makes automobile commuting impractical. 

Throughout the central area of the city and along the coastal strip, roads are generally paved, often with cobblestones. In the residential areas outside of the central commercial area dirt roads are the norm, and many of them are in poor condition and not suitable for normal cars except at very low speeds. 

The city is also served by a large fleet of taxis. Rates are controlled by a taxi driver's union, and set in negotiations between the union and the city. Rates are based on established zones rather than using taxi meters.

It could be that Puerto Vallarta is at a localized advantage here, because the urbanized area doesn't go very far inland, allowing most areas to be served with a pretty much a handful of one dimensional routes serving strips of the coast at a couple of levels inland.

Services v. Things

Many aspects of the local economy appear to arise from a much lower cost of services relative to goods than in the United States.

Indeed, overall prices for most retail good and services run about half the price of comparable goods and services in the U.S. although it is hard to know how much of that is due to temporarily favorable exchange rates (the dollar buys about 50% more Mexican pesos than it did just 2 years ago) and how much is due to a lower cost of living. I suspect that both factors are at work.

* Veterinarians make house calls.

* Resorts are heavily staffed compared to comparable U.S. establishments with maids, people delivering drinks, landscapers, and so on.

* Bus service is cheap and thriving, which may be a product of bus driver's being paid less, because bus drivers and not buses are the main cost of a bus system. (Buses running full are also incredibly fuel efficient vis-a-vis even extremely fuel efficient single occupancy or single family occupancy vehicles.)

* Taxi service is cheap. We got a cab from just outside the formal pickup area of the airport to a resort downtown for the equivalent of $5 U.S. Another 40 minute taxi trip from a house where I was staying in Nayarit state, directly to the airport, was $15; a comparable trip in Denver would cost $67-$75.

* It is apparently economically profitable to have someone man even very marginal shops with very little business.

* Many people are employed walking up and down beaches and in other public areas hawking trinkets or gifts of all kinds.

* Many low level retail salespersons have the authority to haggle over prices. This is rare in the U.S., in part, because low paid retail sales employees on hourly wages can't be trusted with this responsibility. You see little haggling in retail sales in the U.S. below the price threshold of an automobile, outside DIY sales of used goods where there are no agency issues.

* Per Wikipedia: "Residents of the United States, particularly those living near the Mexican border, now routinely cross the border into Mexico for medical care. Popular specialties include dentistry and plastic surgery. Mexican dentists often charge 20 to 25 percent of U.S. prices,while other procedures typically cost a third what they would cost in the US."

Innovations

* An interesting practice I observed in fast food was to serve food on a non-disposable plate covered with a plastic bag. When you are done, you discard the bag, but return the clean non-disposable plate.

Healthcare

Per Wikipedia:

Healthcare in Mexico is provided via public institutions, private entities, or private physicians. Healthcare delivered through private organizations operates entirely on the free-market system, i.e., it is available to those who can afford it. This is also the case of healthcare obtained from private physicians at their private office or clinic. Public healthcare delivery, on the other hand, is accomplished via an elaborate provisioning and delivery system put in place by the Mexican Federal Government. In 2012, Mexico instituted universal healthcare. . . . 

While private hospitals account for 2/3 of all hospitals in Mexico with 2,988 institutions, less than 10% of the Mexican population has private insurance coverage, paying for care mainly "out of pocket" . . .

Public Healthcare delivery is accomplished via an elaborate provisioning and delivery system instituted by the Mexican Federal Government. It is provided to all Mexican citizens as guaranteed via Article 4 of the Constitution. Public care is either fully or partially subsidized by the federal government, depending upon the person's (Spanish: derechohabiente) employment status. All Mexican citizens are eligible for subsidized healthcare regardless of their work status via a system of health care facilities operating under the federal Secretariat of Health (formerly the Secretariat de Salubridad y Asistencia, or SSA) agency. 

The Secretariat of Health's Seguro Popular offers coverage to Mexicans who do not have formal employment. The program currently covers over 55 million people. 

Employed citizens and their dependents, however, are further eligible to use the program administered and operated by the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) (English: Mexican Social Security Institute). The IMSS program is a tripartite system funded equally by the employee, the private employer, and the federal government. There are 58 million people covered through IMSS. 

The IMSS does not provide service to public employees, who instead are serviced by the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) (English: Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers), which attends to the health and social care needs of government employees. This includes local, state, and federal government employees. There are nearly 13 million people covered through ISSSTE. 

The government of the states in Mexico also provide health services independently of those services provided by the federal government programs. In most states, the state government has established free or subsidized healthcare to all their citizens. 

The Secretariat of Health (Secretaria de Salud) is the largest public healthcare institution, operating 809 hospitals throughout the country. 

The Mexican Social Security Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social - IMSS) grants hospital care and services to employed citizens and their dependents - there are 279 hospitals affiliated to IMSS. 

The Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (Instituto de Serguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado - ISSSTE) grants hospital care and services to government employees - there are 115 hospitales affiliated to ISSSTE. 

The remaining 279 hospitals are affiliated with 9 government dependencies, including State Facilities, Secretariat of National Defense (Secretaria de Defensa Nacional), Mexican Navy (Secretaria de Marina), Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), and the Red Cross (Cruz Roja). . . . the public hospital infrastructure relies on a vast network of small hospitals. Over 50% of public hospitals have less than 50 beds. . . . 

On December 1, 2006, the Mexican government created the Health Insurance for a New Generation (also called "Life Insurance for Babies"). This was followed by a February 16, 2009, announcement by President Felipe Calderon where he stated that at the current rate of progress Mexico would receive Universal Health Coverage by 2011, and a May 28, 2009, announcement in which his administration made public Universal Care Coverage for Pregnant Women. In August 2012 Mexico installed a universal healthcare system.

Vagrancy

Many people in Mexico are obviously poor. But, beggars and vagrants are virtually absent on the streets, and there are very few visibly homeless people. 

I have no real intuition regarding why this is the case. It could be that there are laws against it that are enforced, it could be that the social safety net, a healthy employment market and a low cost of living makes this rare, it could be that there are slums to which the poor are confined that tourists don't see. I couldn't tell you, and would welcome comments from anyone who has more insight into this reality.

(Incidentally, the lack of visible vagrancy is also something I've observed to other places in Mexico that I've visited that are not primarily tourist destinations.)

Criminal Justice

My understanding is that municipal police handle only traffic offenses and minor matters, while federal police handle serious matters. The municipal police appear to get little respect from the public. 

As noted regarding urban planning, build people spaces in a way that reflects little or no public trust that they will be secure without strong self-help measures designed to actually stop burglars and vandals rather than to merely indicate that an area is not open to the public symbolically.

Federal police on patrol appear to travel in packs of a couple of SUVs with about six heavily armed policemen (or policewomen who were definitely visible) in paramilitary garb. A recruiting sign in the airport for the federal police indicated that they were a paramilitary gendarme force that was part of the extended organization of the military. The closest U.S. analogy to this status might be to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The concept of "community policing" seems to be absent for the federal police. They act like occupying army military police in their demeanor and attitude.

There is apparently no posse comitatus law in Mexico as uniformed soldiers are visible guarding a variety a non-military facilities in the area (e.g. port facilities and the airport).

Intellectual Property

Lots of branded items (e.g. sports teams and popular TV series) are publicly sold in circumstances when it is clear that the vendors do not have licenses from the trademark/copyright owner to sell the goods. It is a pretty marginal part of the overall economy, but important to the livelihood of many select vendors.

Overall

Overall, Mexico comes across as a country with a weak state and in particular weak local government institutions, relative to the U.S., and as a very thinly regulated economy in general. It is something of a free market economist's dream that comes with pluses and minuses, but has not caused Mexico to have a level of development comparable to the U.S. or Canada.

The Rise Of The Nones?

Secularism is swiftly becoming the norm in Western Europe and Japan, and is becoming significantly more common in many places in world.  But, signals are mixed in much of the world as well.

The story does not discuss, however, the surge in Christianity generally in Africa, or the rise of Evangelical Christianity in lieu of Roman Catholicism in Latin America, or the massive return to religion from Soviet era levels in the former Soviet Union and to a lesser extent in China.  South Korea's mild step towards secularization, likewise follows a surge in Christian adherence in the 20th century that made it the Asian country with the highest percentage of Christians by far.

It isn't clear if there have been any shifts in religious adherence in predominantly Muslim and Hindu areas where religion has also become far more entangled in politics and nationalistic struggles.

Europe

* For the first time in Norwegian history, there are more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. 

* For the first time in British history, there are now more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. And church attendance rates in the UK are at an all-time low, with less than 2% of British men and women attending church on any given Sunday. 

* A recent survey found that 0% of Icelanders believe that God created the Earth. That’s correct: 0%. And whereas 20 years ago, 90% of Icelanders claimed to be religious, today less than 50% claim to be. 

* Nearly 70% of the Dutch are not affiliated with any religion, and approximately 700 Protestant churches and over 1,000 Catholic churches are expected to close within the next few years throughout the Netherlands, due to low attendance. 

* According to a recent Eurobarometer Poll, 19% of Spaniards, 24% of Danes, 26% of Slovenians, 27% of Germans and Belgians, 34% of Swedes, and 40% of the French, claim to not believe in “any sort of spirit, God, or life-force.”

North America

* In the United States, somewhere between 23% and 28% of American adults have no religious affiliation, and these so-called “nones” are not only growing in number, but they are becoming increasingly secular in their behaviors and beliefs. 

* Among Millennials - Americans in their 20s - over 35% are non-religious, constituting the largest cohort of secular men and women in the nation’s history. 

* In Canada, back in 1991, 12% of adults stated “none,” when asked their religion - today that is up to 24%.

Latin America and the Caribbean

* In South America, 7% of men and women in Mexico, 8% in Brazil, 11% in Argentina, 12% in El Salvador, 16% in Chile, 18% in the Dominican Republic, and 37% in Uruguay are non-religious — the highest such rates of Latin American secularity ever recorded. 

* Over 20% of Jamaicans are now non-religious.

Australia and New Zealand

* In Australia, 15% of the population said they had no religion in 2001, and it is up to at least 22% today. 

* In New Zealand, 30% of the population claimed no religion in 2001, but it had risen to 42% in 2013.  

East Asia

* In Japan, about 70% of adults claimed to hold personal religious beliefs sixty years ago, but today, that figure is down to only about 20%; In 1970 there were 96,000 Buddhist temples throughout Japan, but in 2007, there were 75,866 - and around 20,000 of those were un-staffed, with no resident priest. In the 1950s, over 75% of Japanese households had a kamidana (Shinto altar), but by 2006 this was down to 44% nationwide, and only 26% in major cities. 

* While 11% of South Koreans were atheists in 2005, that has increased to at least 15% as of late, and the percentage of South Koreans who described themselves as religious has dropped from 58% to 52% over the past decade. 

* Over 50% of Chinese adults are secular (although in Communist dictatorships where religion is officially oppressed, valid information on people’s religiosity is always hard to come by).

Africa

* In Africa, while religiosity remains high, there are none the less growing pockets of irreligion: over 5% of the those in Ghana claim to have no religion, and 9% of people in Madagascar and Tanzania, and 11% of people in Gabon and Swaziland are now non-religious. 

* Approximately 20% of Botswanans now claim to have no religion. 

Per the Huffington Post.

The Latest Immigration and Employment News

Unemployment Down

The unemployment rate in Colorado in October (3.8%) was the lowest since August 2007. The national unemployment rate has also declined significantly to 5.0%.

The Denver metropolitan area has long tended to have a lower unemployment rate than the state as a whole, and its unemployment rate is approaching the theoretical floor that economists call "full employment" at which almost all unemployment involves brief periods of transition between jobs.

Mexicans Leaving The U.S.

More Mexican immigrants left the United States than entered the United States in 2014.

The Pew Research Center found that slightly more than 1 million Mexicans and their families, including American-born children, left the U.S. for Mexico from 2009 to 2014. During the same five years, 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., resulting in a net flow to Mexico of 140,000. . . . Pew said there were 11.7 million Mexicans living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of 12.8 million in 2007. That includes 5.6 million living in the U.S. illegally, down from 6.9 million in 2007. In another first, the Border Patrol arrested more non-Mexicans than Mexicans in the 2014 fiscal year, as more Central Americans came to the U.S., mostly through South Texas, and many of them turned themselves in to authorities.

The authors analyzed U.S. and Mexican census data and a 2014 survey by Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The Mexican questionnaire asked about residential history, and found that 61 percent of those who reported living in the U.S. in 2009 but were back in Mexico last year had returned to join or start a family. An additional 14 percent had been deported, and 6 percent said they returned for jobs in Mexico.

The number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States is down by 1.3 million since 2007 (about 20%), while the number of Mexicans living in the United States in compliance with immigration laws has increased by about 200,000 over that time period (about 3.3%).  A majority (albeit a narrow one) of Mexicans living in the United States have a legal immigration status.

The collapse of the housing market in the financial crisis, NAFTA fueled manufacturing jobs in Mexico, and an aging population in Mexico that has reduced the number of people young enough to consider migrating while reducing competition for jobs there have been tagged as possible causes of the shift. The 2007 peak followed a steady increase in the Mexican population of the United States from 1965 until then.

The fact that back migration to Mexico has continued in earnest despite a recovering U.S. economy, a resurgent construction market, and continuing drug wars with cartels that have given some Mexican states the highest murder rates in the world, is particularly notable.

While the conventional economic explanations can tell part of this story, the fact that all of the net outmigration of Mexicans in the United States is attributable to undocumented immigrants and the fact that this is continuing even as the economy recovers, suggests that measures targeted at employers of undocumented immigrants may be having a big effect as well.

The Politics of Immigration

President Obama has been canned by critics as soft on immigration, for example, for adopting regulatory policies that intentionally ignore the immigration status of Generation 1.5 "Dreamers" (who were born in Mexico but grew up in the U.S.) and otherwise law abiding individuals with long standing ties to the U.S., for trying to allow more refugees to come to the U.S., and for adopting policies that have arguably encouraged unaccompanied Central American minors to come to the U.S. as refugees.

But, this is not the whole story.  President Obama has deported more people for immigration violations than any of his predecessors, has prosecuted immigration violations criminally at high rates, has presided over a major decline in the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S., and has let remarkably few refugees from hot spots like Syria into the country.

The Obama administration has been particularly diligent, compared to its predecessors, at deporting legal and illegal immigrants convicted of non-immigration crimes, thereby transferring recidivism risks posed by those criminals when they are released to the country of origin of those immigrants.

It may be that despite harsh rhetoric from GOP immigration critics, that ultimately the power brokers in the Republican party really favor a system that is symbolically harsh, but still allows the business interests that they are beholden to to benefit from the undocumented labor force, for example, by not enforcing immigration laws targeted at employers very effectively.  Ultimately, the GOP is the party that doesn't believe in government and as a result, Republicans aren't good at or interested in making government work, while Democrats, who believe in government, are better at managing it well.

Also, for Republicans, immigration is an issue upon which their party is divided.

The conservative Southern and blue collar white Republican base is opposed to almost all immigration, legal and illegal alike.  This is based mostly on some plausible assumptions about the impact of immigration, even though many of these are incorrect.

* They are particularly wary of less skilled Latin American immigrants because they feel that those immigrants are taking jobs from white blue collar men whose employment prospects (i.e. wages and unemployment rates) have been stagnant or gotten worse in a period of time that overlaps pretty neatly with the rise in Mexican immigration and when white and pink collar America whose industries haven't faced nearly as much immigration pressure has prospered.

There are holes in this story.  The natural experiment of the mass migration of Cubans to Florida had almost no negative employment impacts on the local economy.  Other empirical studies have likewise been hard pressed to see the Econ 101 expectation of negative impacts on blue collar men materialize to the extent expected.  My intuition is that the studies still understate the economic impact on this demographic which has been gradual rather than punctuated.  But, it isn't as if native born Americans are eagerly snapping up the often very low skill jobs as migrant farm workers, unskilled construction workers, maids and short order cooks.

Off shoring, automation, and the demise of private sector unionization are also important factors in blue collar wage stagnation.

* They are worried about an immigrant drain on public funds even though this is demonstrably false.

* They are worried about the cultural impact that immigrants have on what they perceive as their own threatened culture.  There is genuine merit to this claim.

* They are worried about crime by immigrants which is also demonstrably false even though it is plausible that lots of low income people moving in who have broken the law to do so would commit crimes at high rates.

There Hasn't Been Net Undocumented Immigration From Mexico For Half A Decade

In 2012, 5.9 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico lived in the U.S., down about 1 million from 2007. Despite the drop, Mexicans still make up a slight majority (52% in 2012) of unauthorized immigrants. At the same time, unauthorized immigration overall has leveled off in recent years. As a result, net migration from Mexico likely reached zero in 2010, and since then more Mexicans have left the U.S. than have arrived.

From the Pew Research Center via Marginal Revolution.

Mortality In Syria

About 70,000 people have died in the Syrian civil war over the last two years. 

This is about twice the violent mortality rate of the State of Chihuahua in Mexico, which has the higheste murder rate in the world (about 111 murders per 100,000 people, per year).

On the other hand, Syria has a population fairly close to that of the United States during its Civil War, which killed about 1,000,000 people, give or take, over five years, a mortality rate about seven times as high.  There were battles in both the U.S. Civil War and in World War I that killed that many people in a single day in a single location.  This is despite the fact that Syria's population is much more dense, that a much larger proportion of the population is in or near war zones, and that far more advanced military technology (e.g. jet fighters dropping bombs) has been used in Syria. 

I doubt that much of the difference in lethality between the wars of a century or two ago are mostly more lethal because of improved modern medical technology that is available now, although I'm sure that this has had some incremental effect.  A better tactical understanding of how to fight an insurgency or counterinsurgency or any kind of war for that matter, with modern weapons, which was absent in the wars of a century or two ago, is probably a bigger factor.