42 percent of American farm workers have no work authorization, because they cannot get it. The United States sets quotas on how many people can get work visas, far below the number needed to fill the available jobs. This leads not to American workers working on farms but to poorly educated migrant laborers filling the …
Author Archives: stidmatt
World political regions
I’m thinking about why I focus so much on Europe, since there are so many other parts of the world to explore, but I always come back to reading about the politics of Europe. But why? Why not Africa? Why not South America? Let’s explore the world by looking at regions. I will use the …
A trillion dollar budget cut
Congressional Republicans are saying they want to extend the Trump tax cuts at the cost of $5 trillion over 4 years or $1.25 trillion per year. How can they offset these tax cuts with spending cuts? They also want to increase military expenditure. Using the Fiscal Year 2024 as our baseline… how could they cut …
Portland – Vancouver transit
People have debated spending a billion dollars on extending Max to Vancouver, Washington, for decades. The problem is that the existing buses from Portland to Vancouver are faster than Max will be, because it is a streetcar. It doesn’t make sense to spend a billion dollars on a slower mode of transport when you could …
Defenses of democracy
I’m listing all the mechanisms and policies that can defend democracy. I want to analyze how well they work, how they work, and how hard it would be to eradicate them. Here are the policies I can come up with: Voting in free and fair elections Separation of powers Independent Legislature Independent court system Jury …
Full Brexit was impossible
The main point of Schengen is not so much about boosting tourism, though it is about that and does a great job at it… It is to ensure that if any member state starts to fall to fascism, there will be minimal barriers for citizens of member states to relocate. The ability to quickly move …
The Haavara Agreement and Holocaust Denial
So I was doing some reading while watching a fun video about Doctor Who which quickly became a not fun reading of seeing an actor accusing a politician of being an anti-Semite. Here we go… So the claim is that Hitler supported Zionism, which a lot of people claim is wrong for political reasons. This …
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The ideal level of political concentration
There is talk about creating a federal Europe, where the EU would have more power than they do now. I’m not convinced this is a good idea. The Treaty of Lisbon was the final major amendment to the Charter of the European Union. It was passed in 2007 and while it sounds like a big …
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Interstate transfers and the rise of Donald Trump
The United States started as a fairly loose country with a lot of power in the hands of states, but over the evolution of the country, power has become more and more concentrated in the hands of the federal government. In a healthy democracy, ideas can be experimented with and the consequences will be felt. …
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How to get visa-free travel
The way for a country to move from a weak passport to a strong passport is actually quite simple. Crack down on corruption Improve your country’s human rights record Have a strong economy Visa reciprocity Low visa overstay rate That’s really it. There are no other steps. With these five changes your country will almost …
