I don't think most people who oppose open borders or large scale immigration really spend much time thinking about the productive capacity of immigrants. They don't 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 that's the cost to individuals. They think 'X culture is or is not fairly punctual, does/doesn't tend to throw loud parties that carry on through midnight, does/doesn't favor redistributive political movements, etc.' And invariably high skilled workers tend to come from cultures that don't carry huge switching costs while 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 aren't as tangible and obvious as the costs. And critically, the costs and benefits aren't borne by the same people. The professor in a homogeneous suburb gets cheaper strawberries and a richer intellectual case for open borders. The working class neighborhood gets the actual friction of navigating a fundamentally different cultural operating system every day. If you live in a very diverse area and you're a traditional American raised in a watered down version of Calvinism — think Max Weber protestant ethic — you simply think 'these neighbors of mine require a lot of adjusting to.' They don't go 'ahh but they're increasing my disposable income by X%.' The aggregate math being positive doesn't make that friction less real — it just makes it easier to ignore if you're not the one bearing it. Until the economic case for immigration is paired with a credible answer to these switching costs, the argument isn't going to move anyone from the nativist side on this issue. Oh and im aware of the "no one.
has a right to their culture" argument but its kind of moot. If you tell someone "you dont have a right to impose your behavioral preferences on others" they will ignore you and try anyway because other peoples behaviors impact ones life.
Well if we crack open history books or consult any AI model we'll find that historically this problem already existed and there were all sorts of remediation for it and they involved requiring the immigrant population to assimilate to the cultural norms of the country to which they immigrated. Its wasnt generally the other way around ...
It was generally the second (or third) generation that learned English, not the first. Most 19th-century immigrants did not immediately become fluent in English, and many first-generation adults never achieved proficiency, relying on native-language communities and their children to interpret. While they acquired rudimentary English for work, many maintained their native language at home, particularly in large ethnic enclaves.
Sure but youre suggestion was that Americans learn a second language to accommodate immigrants. And also learning the language is not the only form of assimilation. Lack of proficiency in English isnt really at the top of the behaviors and cultural norms that tend to cause friction. Second generations of some immigrant groups assimilate more than other immigrant groups. some second generation immigrants assimilate in very very low %s.
If we’re trying to reduce friction then yes, Americans should know some words and phrases of their local immigrant community, particularly if they have to work with each other or otherwise come into contact on a regular basis.
Im not refuting that it can be helpful but its not going to change anyones mind. The power sits with the incumbent. Telling people: "if you learn a second language youll like this option more." Wont move people any more than if you say "actually if you soundproof your walls and buy bose headphones you wont mind your noisy neighbors". Especially of you can just vote for for them to go away or never enter in the first place.
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.
But the U.S. experience with mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, suggesting that immigration from poor countries will not much affect national policy, is relevant. Also relevant is the U.K.’s decline in the 20th century, not plausibly caused by immigration. (The U.K. makes for a relatively close comparison with the U.S.)
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?
I'm keenly aware of this point. In today's world, my particular skills are relatively uncommon and are in short supply relative to the demand for them, and thus I am deemed to be "high skilled". But in truth, if my particular skills were not in much demand, I could struggle to be effective at many low-income tasks, and "low-skilled" is often used as a euphemism for "low-income". Playing rock guitar, for example, is generally a very low-income profession ("Money For Nothing" describes the extreme exception), involving busking and playing sessions in local bars - indeed, most of its practitioners have "day jobs"; and yet the skills required are relatively uncommon and are quite frankly beyond me.
So, are the people with those (and some other) skills "low-skilled" relative to me? Not necessarily; they are merely in far greater supply than there is demand. For some of them, that may change; for some of us, lucky enough to have skills in high demand, it may also change in the coming years.
"because the former are far more likely to receive exorbitantly-priced public education"
Are these immigrants not going to have any children that need to be educated? Are you going to have mandatory pregnancy checks on all immigrants with immediate deportation for anyone found pregnant (how Singapore handles guest workers)?
"Most obviously, we’d starve without low-skilled workers, because they grow almost all of our food."
Agriculture literally went from like 90% of our economy to like 3%. If we had to automate it even further we could. Basically everyone "low skill" people do is done by a robot or will be in the future.
"The vast majority of construction and infrastructure workers lack college degrees, and without them, we’d be living in tents. If we’re lucky, because tents are made by low-skilled workers, too."
The labor component of housing construction is a minority of the cost. The price of housing is driven by the price to exclude bad neighbors (low skill people).
Places that have embraced immigration have seen massive increasing in housing cost while places that haven't have affordable housing.
Low skill people cost the state millions. The have large negative impacts on culture, crime, and politics.
It's a fascinating argument. It's even more fascinating a professor of economics would make it repeatedly.
Ignore all the costs, ignore all the negative externalities, add a few other counterfactual assumptions, make the analysis superficial enough, and voila! low-skilled immigration works!
According to Caplan, the numbers work the other way around.
Since third-world shitholes have effectively $0 GDP, their people moving to and living and working in the USA (and other Western countries) will experience a massive increase in their personal financial situations (think mandated minimum wage).
Caplan maintains, with good evidence, that the shitholization of the USA (and West) due to the third-world culture such immigrants bring to their new country is both temporary and less costly in GDP terms than the net GDP gain of the immigrants, taken as a whole.
First, the third world doesn’t have $0 gdp. It has (mostly) running water, electricity, anti-biotics, cell phones, the combustion engine, an average lifespans of 60+ even in Africa, obesity, and low child mortality. It has these things because what the 1st world wipes from its ass and gets past the third world warlords with worth more then all civilizations throughout all human history.
The 1st world is an “o-ring”. If it breaks then instead of going from 0 to infinity it goes from infinity to 0.
The future of the 1st world does not rest on importing low reward high risk dysfunctional crap. That’s garbage in garbage out. And when the 1st world goes down everything goes down.
I’ve read how Caplin deals with them and found his dealing unconvincing.
There are a lot of things where being wrong is correctable. But immigration isn’t one of them. You get it wrong, your fucked forever. That’s what makes caplans error so evil.
Texas bussed migrants to New York (a great example of a place immigrants help make unaffordable) to protest illegal immigration and voted for Donald Trump.
The ex-confederacy has benefited from its whites being racist and voting 2/3rds GOP, which has helped to keep the sunbelt dynamic. But the demographic picture will be difficult as immigrants and their children age up and become a larger share of voters.
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 think that the idea is that immigrants come here and stay, and procreate. So the argument is that allowing in (“importing”) low-skilled/low-IQ people means multiple low-skilled/low-IQ people later for every one who gets in now. And since it doesn’t take as long to be stupid as it does to be wise, then the low- folks flood out others. You immediately think “regression to the mean,” which is what a high-skill/high-IQ guy like you would think. But that don’t go for the lows-.
I call it "Inverse Dunning-Kruger": the inability of the high-IQ to understand what life is like for those a couple/three standard deviations downward.
Yes, obviously. It is 100% certain that democrats used ngos, Myorkas came from a board seat on a human trafficking ngo, to rig elections, launder money and earn house seats in the census.
Im not arguing with you. If you don’t believe this youre a lying piece of shit.
I am good with immigration of workers, at least if not at an excessively large pace. But once we pace it, as required absent open borders, then we might as well select for higher skill workers.
What I strongly oppose is immigrants qualifying for welfare benefits for themselves and their families. I wish Trump would quit picking on working immigrants and concentrate 100% on criminals and any illegal on welfare type benefits (which they use at rates above natives).
That's simply an excuse to allow huge numbers of illegal immigrants in to live, work, and raise families (of birthright American citizens). Therefore, you're part of the problem, not its solution.
We obviously define the terms problem and solution differently. I think working immigrants are not necessarily a problem, and should be allowed in at a reasonable volume with a proper vetting process.
My point was trying to stress that immigrants should not qualify for welfare-type benefits, and that any illegals who do try to get them should be deported.
And their wives and their (thanks birthright citizenship) American children? Toss the whole crew out on their ears? Gimme a fucking break. Your mouth is moving but nothing sensible is coming out.
This isn’t the type of response that is appropriate for this substack. Take it up about ten notches please.
If you want to pay for anybody/everybody to come illegally into the country and then get free health care, subsidized housing and food, and so on, then please feel free to do so. I think this is a terrible idea and something which is intrinsically unsustainable.
You're actually an insanely evil person. This is the champagne socialist position of someone who will never have to deal with the downfall he took part in causing.
My concern with this position is that it is a supply side argument for cheap labor. The Japan example assumes that the displaced worker would provide incremental value by managing the 7-11 instead of working as a cashier. How do we know this is true for the displaced marginal workers elsewhere? If the marginal low skilled worker displaces the least marginally productive native worker and returns him to the dole , we have all the disfunction that goes with it along with the costs. To the least productive, low skilled jobs are a better form of welfare than the dole. It provides a sense of purpose. I’m not persuaded by efficiency arguments to simply transfer benefits in the form of welfare payments to the displaced worker since there are all sorts of corrosive social effects of the welfare state.
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.
What makes Americans wealthier than almost every other people in the world? Not the vast number of low skill immigrants we have invited through various schemes, but the fact that our labor productivity is much higher on average. So, it's the melding of skilled labor with technology, and even lower skill labor with technology that produces higher productivity.
If this weren't the case, we could literally "low-skill immigrate ourselves wealthy", but only fools believe that per capita GDP isn't the true measure of a society's wealth - China and India have plenty of low-skill immigrants (they call them 'citizens') and somehow their economies lag woefully behind ours in per capita terms.
America doesn't require lower caste workers to subsidize the lack of investment in technology of labor-intensive industries, we simply need to stop paying the current crop of low skill workers we have to stay in place and not work.
The question I have is do we have evidence to show these workers produce enough economic value to actually support themselves? In my view minimum wage laws exist to ensure this. If a lawyer wants an assistant, he doesn't just need someone willing to work for practically free for lack of a better alternative, the lawyer must create enough economic value to support himself and the assistant at a living wage. And I'm skeptical of statistics regarding immigrants and social benefit programs, most do not qualify or are too scared to apply.
“Yet if the price were right, most people would probably enjoy having at least four such servants: a valet, a driver, a cook, and a maid. After all, if you go to countries with very cheap labor, upper-class families commonly retain this eminently useful quadfecta.”
In countries with very cheap labor, how much does the government spend on providing education, healthcare, welfare benefits, and so forth to unskilled workers and their families? I’m guessing it’s a lot less per person than in the US. If the US were, let’s say, 20% upper-class families and 80% maids, drivers, etc., what would that mean for the government budget? (Also, shouldn’t it be “quadrifecta?”)
Basically, an average low-skilled immigrant, no matter how hard-working, is inevitably going to receive more in government benefits than he pays in taxes. This may be a good deal for his employer, but why is it a good deal for a citizen who pays taxes, but does *not* employ a valet, a driver, a cook, or a maid?
“Basically, an average low-skilled immigrant, no matter how hard-working, is inevitably going to receive more in government benefits than he pays in taxes.”
Now it’s sometimes true for hard-working immigrants with children. Sometimes. But note that we will need more hard-working people in this country to pay the otherwise Ponzi-scheme that is Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Which doesn’t mean we should be for open borders. And non-hardworking immigrants are definitely a problem.
But some healthy amount of hard-working low-skill legal immigration is a good thing.
> The economically soundest reply to all these observations: “The average low-skilled worker is good. It’s the marginal low-skilled worker that’s terrible.” Logically speaking, this is a fine response, but anyone who utters it accepts a heavy evidentiary burden. If the typical low-skilled worker is so useful, why would an extra low-skilled worker be so useless?
It hasn't been established that the "typical" low-skilled worker is good, only that enough good results from them in aggregate that dividing that good among all of them still results in a decent amount of good. Diminishing marginal returns could have kicked in so far back that the majority could emigrate and we'd be better off! In an actual Malthusian economy an event like the Black Death made the survivors better off, even though they'd be worse off if ENOUGH people died. We don't live in medieval Europe with good agricultural land being the main constraint on production, but we do live in a world where Jones' point about the externalities of those workers applies. Killing the golden goose of the First World would be foolish.
> After all, if you go to countries with very cheap labor, upper-class families commonly retain this eminently useful quadfecta.
Those are not places one would generally want to live, which is why even the upper-class there have long had net-positive migration rates to the US.
> If Japan welcomed a hundred million low-skilled immigrants, native-born cashiers would become store managers almost overnight
Does Japan have a shortage of store managers? Japan mostly seems like a nice place, so the Japanese aren't fleeing it.
I don't think most people who oppose open borders or large scale immigration really spend much time thinking about the productive capacity of immigrants. They don't 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 that's the cost to individuals. They think 'X culture is or is not fairly punctual, does/doesn't tend to throw loud parties that carry on through midnight, does/doesn't favor redistributive political movements, etc.' And invariably high skilled workers tend to come from cultures that don't carry huge switching costs while 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 aren't as tangible and obvious as the costs. And critically, the costs and benefits aren't borne by the same people. The professor in a homogeneous suburb gets cheaper strawberries and a richer intellectual case for open borders. The working class neighborhood gets the actual friction of navigating a fundamentally different cultural operating system every day. If you live in a very diverse area and you're a traditional American raised in a watered down version of Calvinism — think Max Weber protestant ethic — you simply think 'these neighbors of mine require a lot of adjusting to.' They don't go 'ahh but they're increasing my disposable income by X%.' The aggregate math being positive doesn't make that friction less real — it just makes it easier to ignore if you're not the one bearing it. Until the economic case for immigration is paired with a credible answer to these switching costs, the argument isn't going to move anyone from the nativist side on this issue. Oh and im aware of the "no one.
has a right to their culture" argument but its kind of moot. If you tell someone "you dont have a right to impose your behavioral preferences on others" they will ignore you and try anyway because other peoples behaviors impact ones life.
I propose every elementary school teaches a second language to reduce friction.
Well if we crack open history books or consult any AI model we'll find that historically this problem already existed and there were all sorts of remediation for it and they involved requiring the immigrant population to assimilate to the cultural norms of the country to which they immigrated. Its wasnt generally the other way around ...
It was generally the second (or third) generation that learned English, not the first. Most 19th-century immigrants did not immediately become fluent in English, and many first-generation adults never achieved proficiency, relying on native-language communities and their children to interpret. While they acquired rudimentary English for work, many maintained their native language at home, particularly in large ethnic enclaves.
https://news.wisc.edu/study-debunks-myth-that-early-immigrants-quickly-learned-english/
Sure but youre suggestion was that Americans learn a second language to accommodate immigrants. And also learning the language is not the only form of assimilation. Lack of proficiency in English isnt really at the top of the behaviors and cultural norms that tend to cause friction. Second generations of some immigrant groups assimilate more than other immigrant groups. some second generation immigrants assimilate in very very low %s.
If we’re trying to reduce friction then yes, Americans should know some words and phrases of their local immigrant community, particularly if they have to work with each other or otherwise come into contact on a regular basis.
Im not refuting that it can be helpful but its not going to change anyones mind. The power sits with the incumbent. Telling people: "if you learn a second language youll like this option more." Wont move people any more than if you say "actually if you soundproof your walls and buy bose headphones you wont mind your noisy neighbors". Especially of you can just vote for for them to go away or never enter in the first place.
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.
People said the same nonsense in the 19th century with the flood of immigrants from Euroep. You want CATHOLICs in this county?!
Calling it “nonsense” is not an argument.
But the U.S. experience with mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, suggesting that immigration from poor countries will not much affect national policy, is relevant. Also relevant is the U.K.’s decline in the 20th century, not plausibly caused by immigration. (The U.K. makes for a relatively close comparison with the U.S.)
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?
I’m not sure why everything has to turn into some hair splitting, these words might offend someone, debate.
I'm keenly aware of this point. In today's world, my particular skills are relatively uncommon and are in short supply relative to the demand for them, and thus I am deemed to be "high skilled". But in truth, if my particular skills were not in much demand, I could struggle to be effective at many low-income tasks, and "low-skilled" is often used as a euphemism for "low-income". Playing rock guitar, for example, is generally a very low-income profession ("Money For Nothing" describes the extreme exception), involving busking and playing sessions in local bars - indeed, most of its practitioners have "day jobs"; and yet the skills required are relatively uncommon and are quite frankly beyond me.
So, are the people with those (and some other) skills "low-skilled" relative to me? Not necessarily; they are merely in far greater supply than there is demand. For some of them, that may change; for some of us, lucky enough to have skills in high demand, it may also change in the coming years.
Wait. You lack a skill you never trained in!? For real? Wow.
Also you would expect a Dr to know that exceptions to the mean don't necessarily say that much. You have a hard-working learned cleaner, so what?
"because the former are far more likely to receive exorbitantly-priced public education"
Are these immigrants not going to have any children that need to be educated? Are you going to have mandatory pregnancy checks on all immigrants with immediate deportation for anyone found pregnant (how Singapore handles guest workers)?
"Most obviously, we’d starve without low-skilled workers, because they grow almost all of our food."
Agriculture literally went from like 90% of our economy to like 3%. If we had to automate it even further we could. Basically everyone "low skill" people do is done by a robot or will be in the future.
"The vast majority of construction and infrastructure workers lack college degrees, and without them, we’d be living in tents. If we’re lucky, because tents are made by low-skilled workers, too."
The labor component of housing construction is a minority of the cost. The price of housing is driven by the price to exclude bad neighbors (low skill people).
Places that have embraced immigration have seen massive increasing in housing cost while places that haven't have affordable housing.
Low skill people cost the state millions. The have large negative impacts on culture, crime, and politics.
It's a fascinating argument. It's even more fascinating a professor of economics would make it repeatedly.
Ignore all the costs, ignore all the negative externalities, add a few other counterfactual assumptions, make the analysis superficial enough, and voila! low-skilled immigration works!
In Caplanland, it's always all about driving up the world's per capita GDP. Nothing else matters.
I strongly doubt turning the first world into the third world would drive up the world's per capita gdp.
According to Caplan, the numbers work the other way around.
Since third-world shitholes have effectively $0 GDP, their people moving to and living and working in the USA (and other Western countries) will experience a massive increase in their personal financial situations (think mandated minimum wage).
Caplan maintains, with good evidence, that the shitholization of the USA (and West) due to the third-world culture such immigrants bring to their new country is both temporary and less costly in GDP terms than the net GDP gain of the immigrants, taken as a whole.
Simple, huh?
First, the third world doesn’t have $0 gdp. It has (mostly) running water, electricity, anti-biotics, cell phones, the combustion engine, an average lifespans of 60+ even in Africa, obesity, and low child mortality. It has these things because what the 1st world wipes from its ass and gets past the third world warlords with worth more then all civilizations throughout all human history.
The 1st world is an “o-ring”. If it breaks then instead of going from 0 to infinity it goes from infinity to 0.
The future of the 1st world does not rest on importing low reward high risk dysfunctional crap. That’s garbage in garbage out. And when the 1st world goes down everything goes down.
I'm representing Caplan's argument. Suggest you look a bit deeper into his arguments. He deals with all of your objections (and more). Happy reading.
I’ve read how Caplin deals with them and found his dealing unconvincing.
There are a lot of things where being wrong is correctable. But immigration isn’t one of them. You get it wrong, your fucked forever. That’s what makes caplans error so evil.
Maybe for one generation or so. Once the first world's productivity drops, economic growth will head back toward what it was for most of history.
> Places that have embraced immigration have seen massive increasing in housing cost while places that haven't have affordable housing.
Not Texas.
Texas bussed migrants to New York (a great example of a place immigrants help make unaffordable) to protest illegal immigration and voted for Donald Trump.
The ex-confederacy has benefited from its whites being racist and voting 2/3rds GOP, which has helped to keep the sunbelt dynamic. But the demographic picture will be difficult as immigrants and their children age up and become a larger share of voters.
Texas has taken in lots of immigrants by plain numbers. Its housing prices are low because it's legal to build housing.
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.
Think on the margin: he'll just be replaced by someone else equally wasteful.
Excellent post.
One correction: "While importing vastly more low-IQ immigrants"
We don't import immigrants. Immigrants make choices to come here.
Correct. We don't import immigrants; we import lineages.
Please explain. What are lineages? How do we import them? And who is "we?"
I think that the idea is that immigrants come here and stay, and procreate. So the argument is that allowing in (“importing”) low-skilled/low-IQ people means multiple low-skilled/low-IQ people later for every one who gets in now. And since it doesn’t take as long to be stupid as it does to be wise, then the low- folks flood out others. You immediately think “regression to the mean,” which is what a high-skill/high-IQ guy like you would think. But that don’t go for the lows-.
That, I believe, is the argument.
I call it "Inverse Dunning-Kruger": the inability of the high-IQ to understand what life is like for those a couple/three standard deviations downward.
Thanks.
You figure it out, genius!
That was not try under the Biden administration. They funneled billions of dollars to import voters.
How long do you think it takes between entering the country and being allowed to vote?
Depends on proximity to the election. Obviously illegals and so called asylum seekers were being used in ballot harvesting and dnc money laundering.
No, not "obviously".
Yes, obviously. It is 100% certain that democrats used ngos, Myorkas came from a board seat on a human trafficking ngo, to rig elections, launder money and earn house seats in the census.
Im not arguing with you. If you don’t believe this youre a lying piece of shit.
What's very curious is that you've conflated 'low skill' with 'no college degree', which is a serious error.
'Low skill' is low skill. This group includes a lot of college educated population who can't do anything useful.
'No college degree' includes a lot of very high skill workers, such as farmers who are, essentially, highly skilled problem solving machines.
I wonder if chat GPT will make the same mistake?
I am good with immigration of workers, at least if not at an excessively large pace. But once we pace it, as required absent open borders, then we might as well select for higher skill workers.
What I strongly oppose is immigrants qualifying for welfare benefits for themselves and their families. I wish Trump would quit picking on working immigrants and concentrate 100% on criminals and any illegal on welfare type benefits (which they use at rates above natives).
That's simply an excuse to allow huge numbers of illegal immigrants in to live, work, and raise families (of birthright American citizens). Therefore, you're part of the problem, not its solution.
We obviously define the terms problem and solution differently. I think working immigrants are not necessarily a problem, and should be allowed in at a reasonable volume with a proper vetting process.
Your last two sentences contradict each other. Plenty of legal, working immigrants receive welfare benefits.
My point was trying to stress that immigrants should not qualify for welfare-type benefits, and that any illegals who do try to get them should be deported.
And their wives and their (thanks birthright citizenship) American children? Toss the whole crew out on their ears? Gimme a fucking break. Your mouth is moving but nothing sensible is coming out.
This isn’t the type of response that is appropriate for this substack. Take it up about ten notches please.
If you want to pay for anybody/everybody to come illegally into the country and then get free health care, subsidized housing and food, and so on, then please feel free to do so. I think this is a terrible idea and something which is intrinsically unsustainable.
You're actually an insanely evil person. This is the champagne socialist position of someone who will never have to deal with the downfall he took part in causing.
My concern with this position is that it is a supply side argument for cheap labor. The Japan example assumes that the displaced worker would provide incremental value by managing the 7-11 instead of working as a cashier. How do we know this is true for the displaced marginal workers elsewhere? If the marginal low skilled worker displaces the least marginally productive native worker and returns him to the dole , we have all the disfunction that goes with it along with the costs. To the least productive, low skilled jobs are a better form of welfare than the dole. It provides a sense of purpose. I’m not persuaded by efficiency arguments to simply transfer benefits in the form of welfare payments to the displaced worker since there are all sorts of corrosive social effects of the welfare state.
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.
Not to mention the use of em-dashes.
I suspect that this exercise is just a ploy to get ChatGPT learn of Bryan's existence.
ChatGPT is well aware of Bryan's existence already. This sounds like him.
Bah.
What makes Americans wealthier than almost every other people in the world? Not the vast number of low skill immigrants we have invited through various schemes, but the fact that our labor productivity is much higher on average. So, it's the melding of skilled labor with technology, and even lower skill labor with technology that produces higher productivity.
If this weren't the case, we could literally "low-skill immigrate ourselves wealthy", but only fools believe that per capita GDP isn't the true measure of a society's wealth - China and India have plenty of low-skill immigrants (they call them 'citizens') and somehow their economies lag woefully behind ours in per capita terms.
America doesn't require lower caste workers to subsidize the lack of investment in technology of labor-intensive industries, we simply need to stop paying the current crop of low skill workers we have to stay in place and not work.
Strawman
Everything has trade-offs.
Low-skilled immigration doesn't have enough positives to justify whatever trade-offs and negatives should there be.
Do you really live in a world where trade-offs don't exist? Where immigration is the magical process exempt from the tradeoffs that govern everything?
Of course, high skilled migrants usually have higher IQ, higher self control, lower welfare consumption, and lower criminality!
The question I have is do we have evidence to show these workers produce enough economic value to actually support themselves? In my view minimum wage laws exist to ensure this. If a lawyer wants an assistant, he doesn't just need someone willing to work for practically free for lack of a better alternative, the lawyer must create enough economic value to support himself and the assistant at a living wage. And I'm skeptical of statistics regarding immigrants and social benefit programs, most do not qualify or are too scared to apply.
“Yet if the price were right, most people would probably enjoy having at least four such servants: a valet, a driver, a cook, and a maid. After all, if you go to countries with very cheap labor, upper-class families commonly retain this eminently useful quadfecta.”
In countries with very cheap labor, how much does the government spend on providing education, healthcare, welfare benefits, and so forth to unskilled workers and their families? I’m guessing it’s a lot less per person than in the US. If the US were, let’s say, 20% upper-class families and 80% maids, drivers, etc., what would that mean for the government budget? (Also, shouldn’t it be “quadrifecta?”)
Basically, an average low-skilled immigrant, no matter how hard-working, is inevitably going to receive more in government benefits than he pays in taxes. This may be a good deal for his employer, but why is it a good deal for a citizen who pays taxes, but does *not* employ a valet, a driver, a cook, or a maid?
“Basically, an average low-skilled immigrant, no matter how hard-working, is inevitably going to receive more in government benefits than he pays in taxes.”
Sorry but this is not true in the general case.
As this short ChatGPT prompt explains:
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a2b9c9c-dfd8-83ea-8bdd-f5f706f582eb
Now it’s sometimes true for hard-working immigrants with children. Sometimes. But note that we will need more hard-working people in this country to pay the otherwise Ponzi-scheme that is Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Which doesn’t mean we should be for open borders. And non-hardworking immigrants are definitely a problem.
But some healthy amount of hard-working low-skill legal immigration is a good thing.
> The economically soundest reply to all these observations: “The average low-skilled worker is good. It’s the marginal low-skilled worker that’s terrible.” Logically speaking, this is a fine response, but anyone who utters it accepts a heavy evidentiary burden. If the typical low-skilled worker is so useful, why would an extra low-skilled worker be so useless?
It hasn't been established that the "typical" low-skilled worker is good, only that enough good results from them in aggregate that dividing that good among all of them still results in a decent amount of good. Diminishing marginal returns could have kicked in so far back that the majority could emigrate and we'd be better off! In an actual Malthusian economy an event like the Black Death made the survivors better off, even though they'd be worse off if ENOUGH people died. We don't live in medieval Europe with good agricultural land being the main constraint on production, but we do live in a world where Jones' point about the externalities of those workers applies. Killing the golden goose of the First World would be foolish.
> After all, if you go to countries with very cheap labor, upper-class families commonly retain this eminently useful quadfecta.
Those are not places one would generally want to live, which is why even the upper-class there have long had net-positive migration rates to the US.
> If Japan welcomed a hundred million low-skilled immigrants, native-born cashiers would become store managers almost overnight
Does Japan have a shortage of store managers? Japan mostly seems like a nice place, so the Japanese aren't fleeing it.