A nonpartisan site where economists write fact checks and short explainers on U.S. economic data and policy, such as defense spending and birth rates.
Commenters cite it as a data source on defense spending history, Pentagon audits, and immigration, using it to correct claims in political arguments.
So, kinda? I don't have a spectacular source, but there's this [1]
Deportations were highest at the end of Bush's term. Obama gradually ramped down internal deportations. You may recall there was a pretty strong emphasis on DACA, the DREAM act, and a bunch of stuff about sanctuary cities. That got rolled back somewhat under Trump.
This has been a politically charged topic, and I'm doing my best to tread lightly.
My understanding is at the end of Obama's term, deportations were mostly driven by criminal activity. If someone got arrested for something, ICE is tipped off, and they're deported. On the other hand, they ran a stop sign, that was generally overlooked.
Later, there was a push to improve those numbers, so there were various people who were suspected or known to be undocumented. Some were visited and deported. There's various stories of homes being busted into. I have some opinions around all of that, but that's a minefield I don't want to walk through.
What is disturbing is, the enforcement varies with the political winds. They have a lot of power. "abuse" is pretty charged in this context. My preference is for the rules to be a lot less fuzzy. We already have a lot of rules around how citizens are treated, my preference is to treat people as citizens until proven otherwise. I'm ok with kicking in the door, if they can get a warrant.
There's lots of special cases, there's lots of horrible outlier examples. Yeah, I get the guy picking tomatoes getting paid under…
> That is a non-issue regarding privacy
This is definitely not true and results from a limited perspective. How you get that information is important. This is quite difficult to do accurately if we're being honest, and you should work it out (write down how you'd measure it, then determine how to exploit it, then repeat). I think you'll find that the only way to do this results in invasion of privacy.
I'll give a more familiar example of how things that are well intentioned and at first look appear innocuous. We encourage the use of pronouns to correctly address people and give them proper respect (a great goal and something we should always do!). But on the other side, it forces people to pick an identity and draw a very discrete line (as opposed to more flexible boundaries and terms). It does not account for gender fluidity and it forces people to out themselves or hide even more. Which can happen in ways out of their control (e.g. someone else sets up a name tag knowing their preferred pronouns in a setting the person may not want to reveal their identity). Often more important when someone is figuring themselves out.
The problem is not intentions, it is that life is messy. Nothing is monolithic or universal. The best intentions can lead to amplifying the very thing you are trying to prevent/resolve. Another famous example is removing convicted criminal history questions (ban the box) from job applications[0]. Things are complicated and never are like what you assume…
> argue for an uncontrolled anarchistic border and presence of foreign nationals in the same breath.
Can you cite any of these arguments? Because I struggle to take seriously your assertion when compared against data like these [1][2].
These data show laws were being followed and enforced. Maybe you want to argue about the level of enforcement, but you can't look at these data and conclude the border was "uncontrolled and anarchistic". Looks like Biden deported more people at the border in 2024 than Trump ever did in a single year. That's not anarchy.
The real issue with interior deportations is the drastic rise in pending asylum cases after 2020 - roughly 3x more cases in 2024 than in 2020, and the number is just going up. Dealing with this would be easy if you just deny everyone political asylum, but that would be lawless.
[1] https://econofact.org/immigrant-deportations-trends-and-impacts [2] https://www.ice.gov/spotlight/statistics
The US' contribution has been incredibly significant and the war would have gone very differently without US support but the idea that the US has contributed most money is false and driven by hubris.
There's various ways of tracking support and by many metrics there are European countries that have given more than the US once you account for population & GDP. It gets more complicated for EU members as the EU has given financial support, so the largest funders of the EU, like France, have paid proportionally more via the EU than directly.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-countries-have-committed-the-most-aid-to-ukraine
Also worth remembering that 70% of that aid from the US never left the US and was spent on procuring weapons from the US.
https://econofact.org/factbrief/does-most-u-s-aid-to-ukraine-go-to-u-s-companies-and-workers
That attitude sounds like a college grad with a fresh credit card they keep spending on.
Their parents warn them that if they keep spending on it there will be major issues. But hey, they still have like $10k of credit and they can get another card! They’re just old and predicting catastrophe all the time.
Until one day they they have no more credit left and all their income goes to paying credit card interest not even paying off the debt.
In the 70s the debt was negligible. Now the debt is nearing 100% of the US GDP [1]. Historically once countries reach 120% hyperinflation occurs. The dollar being the global reserve currency buffers it a bit but not indefinitely.
1: https://econofact.org/why-is-the-u-s-debt-expected-to-keep-growing
Well said on the site of Y-Combinator. A US company ran by Americans that mostly funds startups in the US. Clearly the US, the home of Apple, nVidia, Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla etc. is sinking while the EU the home of (? ... well, there is ASML) is going to be running the world.
Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:
https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributors?timeRange=past365days&start=2025-04-11&end=2026-04-11&widget=geographical-distribution
EU's GDP is so catching up with the US:
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-gap-between-europe-and-the-united-states-increased-in-the-past-decade
NOT