Can I take this a step further and challenge (or at least interrogate) the premise that people who work lower-paying or less specialized jobs are “low-skilled”? The woman who cleans our house has extensive skills I frankly lack (and cycled through many less competent cleaners to finally find); same goes for the enormously gifted babysitter who watches our kids on Sundays. They have developed these competences over years of thoughtful, diligent work, no less than any competent physician or C-suite exec. How much are we conceding to the wrong narrative by sticking with the “high-skilled”/“low-skilled” conceptualization?
Bryan, since you think (1) higher education is a waste of tax payer money (2) higher education is just expensive signalling and (3) low-skilled work is awesome, it's time for you to eat your own cooking, quit your professorial job (you've blown the whistle on tenure, no one cared and now you can GTFO) and become an Uber driver.
Until you quit your job, you are a hypocritical phony.
I dont think most people who oppose open borders or large scale immigration really spend much time thinking about the potential productive capacity of immigrants. They dont distinguish between low skilled or high skilled they actually focus more on how much the origin culture overlaps with American (particularly traditional anglo Christian protestant culture) because thats the cost to individuals. They think "X culture is or is not fairly punctual, does/doesnt tend to throw loud parties that carry on through midnight, does/doesnt favor redistributive political movements, etc. etc.". And invariably the high skilled workers tend to come from cultures that dont carry huge switching costs and low skilled workers tend to come from cultures that have massive switching costs. Yes the math probably says the benefits are greater than the costs but the benefits arent as tangible and obvious as the costs. If you live in a very diverse area and youre a traditional anglo American who has been raised in a watered down version of Calvinism (think max weber protestant ethic) you simply think "wow these low skilled neighbors of mine require lots of adjusting to. I like some aspects if their culture (food, conviviality) but not enough to forget how much i dont really like other aspects (e.g., communication style)." They dont go "ahh but they're increasing my disposable income or productive capacity by X%".
You do not address Garett Jones’s *political* or *public policy* worry. Bad politics—roughly speaking, *socialism*—is the main reason poor countries are poor. Importing people who favor such policies will sooner or later undermine our prosperity. It is unfortunate that we cannot deport our native-born socialists; let us not make our position even worse by importing foreign ones—by importing the people who have created the self-defeating politics of most foreign countries.
I feel like this could be a mischievous trick and today is the AI. Definitely hits on some classic Caplan themes which have been covered before. Will reserve final judgement until the next one.
Can I take this a step further and challenge (or at least interrogate) the premise that people who work lower-paying or less specialized jobs are “low-skilled”? The woman who cleans our house has extensive skills I frankly lack (and cycled through many less competent cleaners to finally find); same goes for the enormously gifted babysitter who watches our kids on Sundays. They have developed these competences over years of thoughtful, diligent work, no less than any competent physician or C-suite exec. How much are we conceding to the wrong narrative by sticking with the “high-skilled”/“low-skilled” conceptualization?
Bryan, since you think (1) higher education is a waste of tax payer money (2) higher education is just expensive signalling and (3) low-skilled work is awesome, it's time for you to eat your own cooking, quit your professorial job (you've blown the whistle on tenure, no one cared and now you can GTFO) and become an Uber driver.
Until you quit your job, you are a hypocritical phony.
I dont think most people who oppose open borders or large scale immigration really spend much time thinking about the potential productive capacity of immigrants. They dont distinguish between low skilled or high skilled they actually focus more on how much the origin culture overlaps with American (particularly traditional anglo Christian protestant culture) because thats the cost to individuals. They think "X culture is or is not fairly punctual, does/doesnt tend to throw loud parties that carry on through midnight, does/doesnt favor redistributive political movements, etc. etc.". And invariably the high skilled workers tend to come from cultures that dont carry huge switching costs and low skilled workers tend to come from cultures that have massive switching costs. Yes the math probably says the benefits are greater than the costs but the benefits arent as tangible and obvious as the costs. If you live in a very diverse area and youre a traditional anglo American who has been raised in a watered down version of Calvinism (think max weber protestant ethic) you simply think "wow these low skilled neighbors of mine require lots of adjusting to. I like some aspects if their culture (food, conviviality) but not enough to forget how much i dont really like other aspects (e.g., communication style)." They dont go "ahh but they're increasing my disposable income or productive capacity by X%".
You do not address Garett Jones’s *political* or *public policy* worry. Bad politics—roughly speaking, *socialism*—is the main reason poor countries are poor. Importing people who favor such policies will sooner or later undermine our prosperity. It is unfortunate that we cannot deport our native-born socialists; let us not make our position even worse by importing foreign ones—by importing the people who have created the self-defeating politics of most foreign countries.
I feel like this could be a mischievous trick and today is the AI. Definitely hits on some classic Caplan themes which have been covered before. Will reserve final judgement until the next one.
I suspect that this exercise is just a ploy to get ChatGPT learn of Bryan's existence.
Excellent post.
One correction: "While importing vastly more low-IQ immigrants"
We don't import immigrants. Immigrants make choices to come here.