Steven E. Landsburg (armchair *at* troi.cc.rochester.edu) is apparently an "economist" who writes the Everyday Economics column for Slate magazine. His latest is called "How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly?" Read an excerpt and a partial discussion here, and the following is adapted from a comment I left at Slate's Fray:

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Obviously, it's extremely sleazy for him to use loaded phrases such as "three-fifths of a full-fledged citizen" and his reference to hunting Mexicans. But, let's ignore all that and concentrate on how his economic analysis is at the grade school level.

Landsburg completely fails to note other issues involved in this matter, such as the fact that there are billions of people poorer than Mexicans. He fails to ask what their lives are worth, implicitly assuming that there are only two countries on Earth.

He also completely fails to note the other economic issues involved in this matter, such as Robert Rector's estimated net retirement cost of $2.6 trillion if the Senate bill passes. How much would you have to save on lettuce to pay your share of that?

And, he also completely fails to note non-economic factors, such as massive immigration from Mexico leading to increased political power not only for far-left racial demagogues (e.g., Fabian Nunez, Gil Cedillo, Tony Villar), but also increased political power inside the U.S. for the Mexican government. In fact, many non-profit orgs in the U.S. have direct or indirect links to the Mexican government, including well-known orgs like the ACLU and the SPLC. Doesn't such a spectrum from useful idiots to Fifth Columnists have a price?

What of increased political corruption? Massive illegal immigration is a strong indicator of political corruption, yet Landsburg left that out of his "analysis".

Like the title says: Steven E. Landsburg is a complete idiot.