Merkel Dismisses Link Between Islamic Extremism, RefugeesSo that makes it all better …By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AUG. 18, 2016, 3:06 A.M. E.D.T.
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel has dismissed suggestions that the influx of refugees over the past year has brought Islamic extremism to Germany.
German news agency dpa quotes Merkel as saying that “Islamist terrorism by IS isn’t a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, it’s one that we had before too.”
I see this kind of absolutist thinking all the time when it comes to immigration policy: e.g., we already had a problem with Islamic terrorism in 2014, so my decision in 2015 to make it worse was actually a good idea because when you find yourself in a hole, you must keep digging, because stopping digging would be to admit you were already in a hole. Or something …
19th Century economists came up with the idea of marginalism, which is a really good approach. That’s why economists almost never apply it to immigration policy.
