24 comments

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  Feed the starving children

  1 year ago

  What we really need to do is allow hundreds of millions of starving Bangladeshis, Indonesians, and others come to the U.S. When the poverty rate dips almost to their level and open sewers begin to sprout across the land, we can bask in the warm glow of knowing that we're helping alleviate world poverty.
  
  P.S. Vote Libertarian!
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  Will Wilkinson

  1 year ago

  I'm sure your right. If we let women into Augusta it really will ruin the character of our club.
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  Jasper

  1 year ago

  What we really need to do is allow hundreds of millions of starving Bangladeshis, Indonesians, and others come to the U.S.
  
  Cool. Let's all get behind the legislation to let "hundreds of millions of starving Bangladeshis, Indonesians, and others" immigrate. Oh, wait a minute, you mean there isn't any such legislation, nor any candidates proposing it, and you're essentially just spouting irrelevant bullshit? Damn!
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  Chris

  1 year ago

  I think it's possible to approve of women and not open sewers!
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  Steve Burton

  1 year ago

  Mr. Wilkinson: this post of yours is deplorably unresponsive to Robert Samuelson's supposedly deplorable column.
  
  By the going standards, that piece is relatively high on informational content, relatively low on policy advice.
  
  You ignore the informational content entirely.
  
  You "respond" to the policy advice by hinting that Samuelson is a bigot.
  
  People with serious academic training in philosophy really should not engage in such stuff. Shame on you.
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  Matt McIntosh

  1 year ago

  Will, you're right on the moral principles but glib on the practicalities. I'm going to pose you a serious question and expect a serious answer. Here's the scenario:
  
  Let's say first generation immigrants from Mexico are generally productive and decent people, and that there's no compelling reason not to let them come here. But let's say that their kids and grandkids tend not to be so productive and decent -- that they tend to be lazier and commit crimes at a much higher rate than the first-geners and the population average of the US. So a downstream effect of more open immigration is a higher rate of crime in 20-40 years. As you know, there are costs to this -- not merely the cost of law enforcement, but the intangible erosion of the moral glue that helps make our society such a great place to live. It makes people trust eachother less, with all that implies.
  
  Here we have a situation where the effect of more liberal policies is downstream erosion of liberal society, broadly defined. This scenario is manifestly a problem for people like you and I who want a more liberal world, forcing us to make some kind of hard choice either way. I haven't fully worked out my answer to this, though I have some ideas. What's yours, Will?
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  bjk

  1 year ago

  What's wrong with comparative advantage? Mexicans sell us food and we sell them tractors? Why do we import Mexicans to prop up uneconomic and dead industries like agriculture? Industries which cannot be made viable even with the cheapest labor.
  
  
  "Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in the fields of California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many probably in the United States illegally. But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation."
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/05export.h...
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  bjk

  1 year ago

  Ironically, the practical effect of importing all of that "cheap" labor is the impoverishment of Mexico. Maybe the enforcement of our labor laws will give Mexico a fighting chance.
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  Matt McIntosh

  1 year ago

  BJK, "Mexico" does not suffer from poverty; Mexicans do. When those Mexicans move to America, they get lifted out of poverty. You can make an argument that there'd be more good done in the long run by encouraging them to be more productive *in Mexico*, but on the short-term level it makes no difference from the POV of division of labor and improvement of welfare whether you move the widget (trade) or move the person (immigration).
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  bjk

  1 year ago

  Actually it does matter. There is no such thing as cheap labor. By employing illegal aliens, the employer is simply shifting the cost of labor (like healthcare, for instance) from his payroll to the taxpayer.
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  Matt McIntosh

  1 year ago

  "There is no such thing as cheap labor."
  
  Uh . . . right . . . which is why we never see workers with low wages. WTF?
  
  I was making a ceteris paribus claim about immigration per se, not illegal immigration. Guys like Will want immigration to be above-board, so trying to shift the focus to illegals specifically confuses the issue.
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  TGGP

  1 year ago

  Don't libertarians like clubs and the right to exclude?
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  Carter

  1 year ago

  Libertarians are in the grip of what I like to call the late night college dorm room bullshit session model of the nation state: we don't get invited to any parties because of our autism, so let's stay up late spinning utopian fantasies about a borderless world (dudes, the nation state is, like, arbitrary man!) where libertarians and Ayn Rand's novels aren't laughed at.
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  stuart

  1 year ago

  There is a risk that very high rates of immigration would erode the institutions that allow American prosperity. Equally there is a risk that very low rates of immigration.
  
  Weirdly, a few commenters on other sites point to Japan to show the success of low immigration policies.
  
  This approach COULD suggest less immigration is better, but the conclusion is not guaranteed.
  
  There are clearly millions of hopeful immigrants who would strengthen these institutions.
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  Will Wilkinson

  1 year ago

  TGGP, It depends on the club, doesn't it? I think Augusta's men-only policy is disgusting. I certainly think they should be allowed to have it, but I don't think they should be allowed to feel comfortable about it.
  
  Also, WHOSE right to exclude. The property-owner's or the state's? I like property rights very, very much. But, the point is, a national territory is a legal jurisdiction, not a huge piece of private property owned by the state or "the people". If you like the right to exclude, you must also like the right to include. So how come if I own a private factory, I can't include anyone I like on its premises?
  
  A lot of anti-immigration types strike me as implicitly espousing the idea that I can't invite anyone I like because I don't really own my property, but just sort of lease it from the state (or from "the people"), which gets to make the ultimate decision about who I can let in. But if you have any libertarian sympathies whatsoever, the last thing you think is that individual's rights over their property are at the state's pleasure. If the state shouldn't be able to tell Augusta who they can exclude, they shouldn't be able to tell my factory who can work there, either.
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  Half Canadian

  1 year ago

  If a nation cannot exclude non-citizens, if it cannot enforce its borders, is it really a nation?
  
  Can you have the rule of law without a nation?
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  Steve Burton

  1 year ago

  So long as the people you let in to your club or your factory or whatever are not imposing costs on others, those others may have no right to complain.
  
  But illegal aliens collect more than $2000 per household per year in public services.
  
  It isn't the 19th century anymore. Immigrants to the U.S. today are not showing up in a relatively *laissez-faire*, sink-or-swim society where they have to pay their own way. They are showing up in an advanced welfare state where the taxpayers get stuck with many of their bills.
  
  So telling taxpayers that this is a purely private transaction between employers and employees, and that they have no business interfering, just isn't serious.
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  Jasper

  1 year ago

  What’s wrong with comparative advantage? Mexicans sell us food and we sell them tractors? Why do we import Mexicans to prop up uneconomic and dead industries like agriculture?
  
  If, say, a US producer of paper can't find the pulp it needs in the US, but rather must import it from abroad, does that mean the US government is "propping up" an "uneconomic and dead" industry? Of course not. So why would you say this of a US-based firm that can't find the workers it needs? Your argument is especially specious given the fact that a US-based firm is not free to pay the going global rate for the labor it would like to import, but must pay wages commensurate with the cost of living in the US, and/or wage minimums set by law.
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  Matt McIntosh

  1 year ago

  Steve, what isn't serious is that you automatically consider that an argument against immigration rather than against the welfare state.
  
  Will, would it be churlish of me to stomp my foot and demand some kind of response to my earlier comment? I think this isn't something that can just be ignored.
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  Steve Burton

  1 year ago

  Mr. McIntosh: no, I consider it an argument against the *combination* of unlimited immigration with the welfare state.
  
  Personally, I would just *love* to get rid of all those publicly funded services consumed by poor immigrants, legal and illegal alike.
  
  But what are the chances of that? And do the chances get better, or worse, as we import more and more poor immigrants?
  
  Suggested answers: zero, and getting worse.
  
  I mean, for heavens sake: we live in a time when prominent so-called libertarians like Tyler Cowen adopt a "don't worry, be happy" attitude toward the growth of government, yet go right on supporting open borders.
  
  It's incredibly irresponsible.
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  Will Wilkinson

  1 year ago

  Steve, Suppose
  
  (1) the average gain to taxpayers from immigrant labor more than compensates for immigrant-related welfare spending.
  
  Would you then be in favor of more immigrant labor?
  
  Suppose
  
  (2) it was possible to have a large guest worker program in which guest workers were explicitly ineligible for most forms of welfare.
  
  Would you then support the guest worker program?
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  Will Wilkinson

  1 year ago

  Matt,
  
  I'm a busy man!
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  Matt McIntosh

  1 year ago

  I know, I know. :)
  
  Really, I think a guest worker program would probably be the way out of such a bind. I think it's the best sort of compromise we can hope for, so I really don't understand why it's resisted so strongly by some people . . .
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  Steve Burton

  1 year ago

  Mr. Wilkinson:
  
  (1) The *average* gain to taxpayers, if any, is not dispositive, even if we are considering this in narrowly economic terms. It all depends on the distribution of gains and losses. If the majority of taxpayers lose, then why should they support more immigrant labor, just because relatively large gains to a minority of taxpayers (i.e., the immigrants themselves and their employers) make the average come out positive?
  
  Consider a mini-welfare-state of a hundred citizens. One of them is a vegetable farmer. Two of them are farm-workers in his employ. The other ninety-seven buy vegetables at the store, but are otherwise unconcerned with agriculture. All of them pay taxes to support public highways, public schools, public health clinics, etc.
  
  At this point, an immigrant family of four shows up on the doorstep. The parents are farmworkers, willing to work for half the wages of the current citizen farm-workers. They bring with them two school-aged children.
  
  The farmer is delighted, and proposes that they be admitted.
  
  Should the current citizens vote to admit, or to exclude?
  
  If the immigrants are admitted, here are the obvious gainers: (a) the farmer, who can cut his labor costs in half and make a higher profit while at the same time reducing prices, and (b) the immigrants, who can make a far better wage than they could where they came from while at the same time enjoying the superior public highways, public schools, public health clinics, etc. of their adopted country.
  
  And here are the obvious losers: the current citizen farm-workers, who must either accept a lower wage or move on to other employment (or unemployment).
  
  As for the other ninety-seven, they gain from lower vegetable prices, but lose from higher public welfare costs.
  
  Let's suppose, for purposes of argument, that the gains to the farmer, and to the immigrants, are so great that voting to admit results in an average gain to taxpayers (including the newly admitted immigrants). But let's also suppose, again for purposes of argument, that for the other ninety-seven, their gains from lower vegetable prices are smaller than their losses from higher public welfare costs.
  
  In that case, I count ninety-nine rational votes against admission, and only one rational vote in favor, even though admission would result in an *average* gain to taxpayers.
  
  So no.
  
  (2) Possibly yes - but it's not possible, so...what?
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