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Trump's Wall Is Mathematically Unlikely

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the numbers-don't-lie dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Fred Reed's mathematical analysis of Trump's Wall proves that Trump is insincere, proves that Trump is mathematically incompetent, and earns Fred Reed an honorary nerd card:

https://fredoneverything.org/the-wall-the-sound-and-the-fury-and-not-much-else/

More math!

~childo

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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:24AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:24AM (#619064)

    The first thing I spotted was the wrong assumption that TANF benefits are not received. (because illegal aliens are not eligible) Well they do in fact get TANF. Part of this is simple fraud, and part of it is inherent in the "F" which stands for "Family".

    Perhaps a more serious error is conflating "immigrants" with "illegal aliens". This particularly affects the section on crime. Illegal aliens are known to commit crime at rates which are higher than normal, not lower than normal. Border jumpers are being mixed up with H1B nerds, probably on purpose.

    Health care costs have changed for the worse since that report was written over a decade ago. This increases the cost of illegal aliens.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:02AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:02AM (#619074)

    Illegal aliens are known to commit crime at rates which are higher than normal, not lower than normal.

    Do you have any actual data, or are you operating on the same assumption as Trump & co, that feels = facts? Of course, assuming we're not including the crimes of illegal immigration and working undocumented, which would give us a ~100% crime rate.

    Here's an NYT article [nytimes.com] from the top of the search results about immigrant crime rate. Quoting the last paragraph:

    “The tone and tenor of the president’s executive order blurs the line between who’s a serious criminal and who isn’t,” and between documented and undocumented immigrants, said Randy Capps, the institute’s director of research for United States programs. There is no national accounting of criminality specifically by people who are in the country illegally. But Mr. Nowrasteh said he had analyzed the available figures and concluded that undocumented immigrants had crime rates somewhat higher than those here legally, but much lower than those of citizens.

    If you're one of those people who wouldn't trust NYT if they said the sky was blue, there are links to research papers and stuff that you can check yourself.

  • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:44AM (1 child)

    by tonyPick (1237) on Sunday January 07 2018, @10:44AM (#619083) Homepage Journal

    Perhaps a more serious error is conflating "immigrants" with "illegal aliens". This particularly affects the section on crime.

    Well, it's clear about the sources of data being built on extrapolations between legal and illegal immigrants behaviours, data sets which combine the two populations and indirect surveys, which means any oputputs will be estimates based on the combined behaviour of the two populations. It's more specific where it can be.

    And to take your example, on crime, the FAIR statistic downthread: [politifact.com]

    produces the state's incarceration costs for illegal immigrants based on the state Department of Corrections' "illegal alien" count of inmates. However, no such count exists. Instead, the state keeps tabs on all inmates who are not U.S. citizens, whether they're in the country legally or illegally.

    Which somehow is suddenly not a problem for anyone quoting those numbers?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @06:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @06:22AM (#619430)

      Politifact provides PR service for democrats.