I would doubt the housing prediction, for a lot of reasons I won't go into here, except for one: the home construction industry now operates on a low-inventory business model, rather than building tons of "spec" homes, so as long as demand for homes remains high, the industry will do fine. Here's a post that I wrote two years ago explaining it.

The current housing industry already has avoided several recently predicted busts. Demand remains high because the prime home-buying demographic is doing better and better economically, and the number of people wanting homes is growing - and even though mortgage interest rates are rising a bit, they still are very low.

For more on the non-existent housing bubble, see here.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 9, 2005 10:59 AM

I agree that a big slowdown seems unlikely anytime soon.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 9, 2005 12:15 PM

I agree that a big slowdown seems unlikely anytime soon.

Then why did you post the story? Seriously. If you don't agree with it, why did you post it? Because it fits your agenda?

For those of you who haven't Googled Donna's name yet, you can read my forthcoming post tomorrow to see just how out of sync she is with Bill Hobbs, but the above is a great intro and I appreciate Bill's honesty in challenging the information.

Most of her arguments against illegals tend to be based on liberal talking points - such as the same old tired "sky is falling" negative economic forecasts that keep coming out. This is the stuff that Bill Hobbs has been debunking here for the couple of years that I've been reading, so it's really wierd to see him debunking it while it's being posted on his own site.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 9, 2005 3:58 PM

Watch for the Senate version to be entirely different and the social security measure to be yanked, if there ever is a Senate bill passed.
Same old junk about he Border. Promise stricter enforcement and then gut the provisions when they come to conference.

Yuck

Posted by: ronj at December 9, 2005 8:12 PM

No, I'm not a clone of Bill, and I guarantee you he is not under that impression. Before I began guest-blogging here, I stated in a comment or two on this blog that Bill and I may disagree on some issues - and we do - but I have appreciated his ethical voice and journalistic approach. I stated in one guest-blog post that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Bill Hobbs. Opinions -- we've all got 'em. I am part of a politically diverse network that is demanding action, not more words thrown at the problem. True conservatives have been and are the only ones willing to take the action to get the immigration situation under control. The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that takes a restrictionist position on the issue, regularly publishes highly regarded research, a lot of it based on Census data. Their site is at cis.org. I recommend that folks do keyword searches there and read their publications.

But some folks will still say ketchup isn't red. Just because they can.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 9, 2005 11:56 PM

Donna, you either missed the question or avoided it. Here it is:

If you disagree with the story that you posted, why did you post it?

You see, I don't think you disagree at all with it. You've been pushing liberal crackpot theories about the economy being in the toilet for how many years now?

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 10, 2005 8:44 AM

I know that most of Bill's readers, some or many of whom are journalists, know this, but let me make it clear to others: When you see my byline in a guest-blog entry on this site, my name is followed by the words "Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform." That tells you that what follows was written by an advocate. It is not straight journalism. It has a slant. When you read a guest column by me or anyone on the editorial or op-ed page of a newspaper, the column is opinion/commentary with, one would hope, some checkable facts thrown in. Such an article is generally followed by a shirttail/bio-line that tells you something about the writer, ideally some information that reveals the point of view of the writer.

If you see my name alone, without the org tag, the views I express may not necessarily represent those of our diverse network. Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform focuses on immigration issues only, including some issues that directly or indirectly relate to immigration. Immigration is all we do. We are part of a national ad hoc coalition, whose members may interface on immigration issues only. Please keep that in mind.

I accepted Bill's invitation to guest-blog because it sounded like fun and it's a way to get information about federal and state legislation to the public. That's really all I'm interested in doing here. I'm blogging about immigration only, though I may get into other things in the comment sections. This is Bill's personal blog. It reflects his point of view, and, out of respect for that and his invitation, I take care in the home-page entries not to get into other issues.

Next. Liberal crackpot theories? If you think a welfare state can for decades take in millions of people - educated, skilled, or not - without eventual collapse, you are the crackpot. We have said repeatedly that we are talking more about the future than the present. We are talking about the future. We are talking about where we are headed. We're subsidizing plenty right now, but our children and grandchildren are the ones who will pay the highest price for current immigration policy.

If you Google my name, you miss a lot of what I've said and written, because those links are long gone or don't pop up. (But I have copies.) And it's common for reporters to report no more than one or two sentences of what a source says.

My daddy worked in the construction industry, and I still follow construction news and probably will all my life. When work was slow, we didn't go to the grocery store that week. Our family life was focused on where the next construction job might come from. I have men on my e-list who followed their daddies, friends of my daddy, into the construction trades. They have been forced out of their trade by contractors using cheap, illegal (for the most part) labor. I have contractors on my list - one of the first to join my GA list was a building contractor - who lost their businesses because they refused to employ illegal aliens and were undercut by the contractors who did and do. It's a cascade effect, with employers going to cheap imported labor to stay in the game with their competition. And not just in the building trades.

Associated Builders and Contractors, whose news release I mentioned, are employers whose profits American taxpayers are subsidizing. We pick up the slack for what their low wages don't pay - Emergency Alien Medicaid, WIC, education, and free school lunch - by law, illegals can get those and a few other things, plus all kinds of welfare for their children born in this country. These employer associations do not include or represent the Americans who did that work and were forced out of it.

I came out of the working class, and I keep my ties to it. Those folks are the people who walked out on a 2004 debate between my district's Democratic congressman, Lincoln Davis, and his Republican challenger, Janice Bowling. At my urging, our network had endorsed Bowling. Bowling stood up in that debate and talked about everything except what relates to people's real lives and survival. She did not say the magic words. Some men in our network stood up, pointed at me, walked out. They told me they would vote for Davis. I heard from others. Davis was saying the magic words. Well, some of them anyway. Davis won, taking my county, which had recently elected its first Republican state rep since Reconstruction. It's tough to beat an incumbent, but the first time is the best time. Get in touch with your district or don't run. Davis is in touch with his. Even more so now.

Here and here and here.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 11, 2005 1:33 AM

If you read nothing else I have to say on this blog, at least read this myth-buster:

"The Impact of Immigration on the American Workforce," Statement of Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, Testimony prepared for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, November 16, 2005.

Excerpts:

"For reasons explained in greater detail in the NRC report, the aggregate size of the wage gains for more educated workers should be larger than the aggregate losses suffered by Americans at the bottom of the labor market, thereby generating a net gain for natives overall. The NRC's findings mean that the wages of workers without a high school degree are $13 billion lower because of immigration, while the wages of other natives are roughly $19 billion higher, for a net gain of $6 billion. Of course, as a share of their income the losses to less-educated natives are much larger than the gains to other workers. And as share of the total economy the gain is very small. The two Harvard economists who did the NRC's labor market analysis argued that the benefit to natives, relative to the nation's $8 trillion economy at that time, is "minuscule."3 However, it should also be noted that while the effect on natives overall may be minuscule, the immigrants themselves benefit substantially by coming here. . . ."

"Center for Immigration Studies Research. My own research suggests that the effect of immigration may be even greater than the estimates in the NRC report.7 I compared differences across occupations nationally and found that the concentration of immigrants in an occupation does adversely affect the wages of natives in the same occupation. . . ."

Please read the entire testimony. And don't forget about the billions of dollars in remittances being sent out of this country every year as well.

The Center for Immigration Studies is very cautious and conservative in its estimates of the number of illegal aliens currently in our country and tends to go with low-range Census figures. Some university economists and labor analysts say the actual number of illegal aliens here is between 20 million and 30 million, based on extrapolations they have done. But no one knows for sure.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 11, 2005 5:10 PM

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