Does the Economy Need Migrants? and related discussion \ stacker news ~econ

Does the Economy Need Migrants? and related discussion www.profstonge.com/p/does-the-economy-need-migrants

3562 sats \ 163 comments \ @elvismercury 9 Feb econ

There's apparently an anti-immigrant zeitgeist today of the took our jobs variety -- the linked post from St. Onge, and this related SN post.

This is one of the issues I don't know much about, certainly not enough to get culture-warry about it. But it does strike me that this anti-immigration take both runs counter to the standard Libertarian / Austrian principle of maximal free trade all the time and everyone benefits from a free exchange etc etc. And it also strikes me that there is an avalanche of well-controlled empirical data on what happens to wages as immigration ebbs and flows. Sort-of Austrian Bryan Caplan goes on about this topic ad nauseum and wrote a book about it basically saying (I'm simplifying, but not drastically) that borders are bullshit and everyone should go and work wherever they want.

So. Can anybody who knows more than I do speak to this? With actual evidence, though?

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366 sats \ 1 reply \ @badabing 9 Feb

Some libertarians argue that open borders can only work if there is no welfare state.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @CheezeGrater 12 Feb

Just looking at the game theory this seems obvious.

785 sats \ 2 replies \ @Voldemort 9 Feb

The argument in the St. Onge link is so bad it is barely worth discussing, but I am a sucker for this type of stuff.

First, does it seem plausible that "semi-literate manual laborers" will come with such a high demand for dentistry that it would lead to an extreme shortage of dentists?

Second, his example about annexing France is absurd. The type of migrants he is discussing typically go somewhere because they can't find work in their current country. If France had high poverty and unemployment rates, we probably would get a bunch of new workers.

Third, he does not mention anything about technology. There is evidence that when firms do not have access to low-cost labor, they switch to capital. In other words, if I don't have "cheap fruit pickers" an investment in machines to pick fruit might become advantageous. As such, immigration can have a positive effect on long term wages.

I could go on and on, but there is a lot of research that has empirical evidence for this stuff. GJ Borjas is a very well known economist who studies this: here are links to his research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Patm-BEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 9 Feb

The argument in the St. Onge link is so bad it is barely worth discussing,

Yeah, I often find his stuff similarly discombobulating, but this one seemed worse than usual. Perhaps audience capture at work in earnest.

First, does it seem plausible that "semi-literate manual laborers" will come with such a high demand for dentistry that it would lead to an extreme shortage of dentists?

Give em a dollar, they spend it on getting braces. Typical.

I could go on and on, but there is a lot of research that has empirical evidence for this stuff.

Thanks for the link, that's what I was hoping for :)

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