Free movement of people is the logical corollary of free moment of goods under free trade. These are both two sides of the same poisonous free market coin.
If you think one is bad, you have some explaining to do about why you don’t reject the other too.
I’m on Twitter:
Lord Keynes @Lord_Keynes2
https://twitter.com/Lord_Keynes2
Simple. Immigration positively affects the wages of the members of the professional classes due to the existence of effective trade guilds. Free trade negatively affects the prices paid by the members of the professional classes. Both immigration and free trade wreck the wages of workers -- although free trade is almost certainly the worse offender.
ReplyDeleteYou can usually understand a person's opinions on these matters as pure questions of class interest. And yes, that goes for cultural lefties too.
I agree with you Illusionist. Dean Baker brings up this point quite often, that the United States practices selective protectionism. Baker mentioned this selective protectionism in a recent blog article.
Deletehttp://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-spreads-more-nonsense-on-trades
Really I don't know where I positioned. I tink that is a question of details. I can't be totally opposite against free trade, nor completely in favor of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm completely against the euro, an economic aberration. This aberration is based on the idea that we are rational (not human) and more trade means less war. That has some sense. But free trade + free migrations destroy cultural base of democratic country. I'm with Larry Summers (thttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/13ab4e9a-5b15-11e6-9f70-badea1b336d4.html#axzz4GjLTkmNQ) hat growth is the best distributive policy.
Not so hard. The arguments for free trade about the efficient allocation of resources (such as capital and labor) in so far as they apply to workers, apply to their *labor*. Immigrants bring more than their labor with them. An extrme example: If all prospective immigrants were made of anti-matter then the effect of their arrival would be quite deleterious, yet this effect was omitted from the efficiency arguments of the economists.
ReplyDeleteagain assuming full employment (of all means of production) at all times and constant returns to scale to all industries is ridicouls unless you are detached from the real world.
Deleteand the Old Left, which is what guys like LK are trying to revive.
ReplyDeleteI'd be curious if this doesn't become the topic of a future blog post of yours. I kept watching this thinking "I wonder if 'ol LK will get fired up after he sees this!" lol It's quite the piece of work:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUpdRvPs5iI&feature=youtu.be&t=13m37s
The 1st thing the guy says is the last thing I agreed with: That Trump seems to waffle a lot. After that, the guest commentator tends to drive off into the ditch!
Not sure what you mean.
DeleteDumping corporate trade agreements like TPP or TTIP is fine. They are the road to corporate tyranny.
In other news, the Republicans who hate Trump the most are the ones I in turn, hate the most:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-security-idUSKCN10J2EH
http://sputniknews.com/radio_double_down/20160802/1043866518/bread-circuses-taco-bowls.html
ReplyDeleteOne is a social and cultural debate, and another is an economic debate.
ReplyDeleteChinese televisions do not require British schooling, healthcare, and protection.
"Are there any conservatives who support free trade and oppose mass immigration?"
ReplyDeleteOf course e.g., UKIP types.
Immigration and free trade are analogous only if you take a very naive view. I would say there are two key differences between immigration and free trade:
ReplyDelete(1) Immigration more than just alters the labour supply, it changes the demographics of the nation. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the demographics of the nation is the base upon which the superstructure of culture and law is based. The demographics of the nation strongly affects what sort of policies are put into place, the level of corruption etc. If you want to phrase it in libertarian terms, it is not a purely voluntary thing. Who is in the same political unit as me affects me in highly non-voluntary ways. The citizens therefore have a strong interest in controlling who is let in.
(2) There may be quite considerable "psychological" externalities. It has been thoroughly documented (see Robert Putnam) that "diversity" leads to people being less engaged in their communities and less satisfied with their lives. In principle (though I have never seen it done, for obvious reasons) you could estimate the "externalities" of diversity by looking at the incidence of white flight and the cost of moving neighbourhoods, applying the assumption of revealed preference. My intuitive guess is that these externalities would be much larger than any gains from specialisation and trade that you'd expect from immigration.
Well put.
DeleteAs I have heard others put it, there are liberty costs to certain kinds and levels of immigration.
Pat Buchanan.
ReplyDeleteHow can white flight in u.s. neighbourhoods be a consequence of mass immigration ?
ReplyDeleteIs it not an aftermath of mass slavery 200 years ago, the way it ended, the racial divide etc. ?
As non voluntary interactions are concerned, it is not as clear as SL implied. For example, take two girls born in a poor country. One of them stays in the place she was born, gets marrieds and carries 6 to 8 children who happen to destroy the local rain forest for a living. The other one comes to France receives some education and professional training and has one or two children. The three of them are not unlikely to then get usefull jobs (like taking care of old people).
Who then affects me in the lesser voluntary way ?
(BTW we allways have non voluntary interactions with other especially in a "full world" like ours, that's why clever big government and planning (e.g. family planning, universal education and healthcare) strengthens personnal freedom - contrary to the libertarian tenets.