Monday, April 07, 2008
Will Wilkinson on immigration
Libertarian Will Wilkinson has been doing some really good posts defending free immigration. I've been puzzled by why the Republicans have been anti-immigration and the Democrats pro-immigration. Immigration boils down to economics. From our point of view, it's a question of cheap labor for consumers vs. higher wages for workers. You'd expect the free-trade folks to be pro-immigration, with the anti-globalization folks being anti-immigration. The moral considerations Wilkinson brings up are also worth considering, of course.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Are you daft? Cheap labor erodes the free market system and leads to unemployment in the working class of Americans. You are promoting social restructuring not economics. Try again.
I understand it can lead to unemployment for workers, but so can having the jobs done overseas. It's that issue of consistency I was mainly worried about here. But how on earth does it erode the free market?
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling this growth.
I'm not talking just about the obvious problems that we see in the news - growing dependence on foreign oil, carbon emissions, resource shortages, soaring commodity prices, etc. I'm talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled "Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America." To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management, especially immigration policy. Our policies of encouraging high rates of immigration are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight other countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. The U.S. is the only developed country still experiencing third world-like population growth, most of which is due to immigration. It's absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized, and that's impossible without dramatically reining in immigration, both legal and illegal.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface for free, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It's also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive the somewhat "spammish" nature of the previous paragraph. I just don't know how else to inject this new perspective into the immigration debate without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
Immigration in and of itself doesn't contribute to population growth, except in the country immigrated into. Where that country is the United States, it happens to be a country with a fairly low population density compared to most of the rest of the world.
Reproduction rates are lower in developed nations than in developing nations, and reproduction rates of those who immigrate from developing nations to developed nations also drop. Remittances sent back to their home countries also help increase the wealth there, with reproduction rates dropping as wealth increases.
I don't think the argument that immigration contributes to population growth gets off the ground.
Post a Comment