Economic Arguments for Immigration

Can we have a thread dealing with commonly made economic arguments for immigration?

It seems to be that a big part of the argument for mass immigration is basically that it increases GDP. GDP is an aggregation of all economic activity within a given polity/region/country, and a part of that equation is "consumption" - in other words, consumer spending. Now, in credit-fuelled economies like western ones, you can inflate consumer spending artificially simply by increasing the size of the population through immigration. You let new people in, saddle them with debt and bam, the GDP increases as a result. This is basically what all western "growth" over the past 20 years or so has actually been. It hasn't been a real gain in productivity, which is why real wages haven't risen in line with GDP growth, it's simply adding more people onto the population.

In fact, you can raise GDP simply by letting people in and putting them on welfare, a fact not lost on publications like The Economist, who seriously and unironically argued in favor of Merkel's refugee policy (partially) for this reason. More broadly, it allows debt-based economies to go on functioning by providing capital-owners with ever-larger markets into which to sell their products and services.

It is also useful to detach the economic necessity of skilled visa-based jobs with the right to settle in said country. While there may be economically advantageous to allow in a selective number of engineers and researchers, this does not follow that it is therefore economically advantageous to allow those visa recipients a right to settle and gain permanent residency and/or citizenship after a certain period of time, or "family reunification" (the ability to bring over relatives and eventually get them citizenship too).

So can we have a wider discussion on this issue? It's something that nationalists often flounder on, and it's very easy to rebut.

good for rich bad for poor

Basically, but people need some explanation as to why, because they hear words like "economic growth" and don't really understand what it pertains to other than a positive pavlovian reaction.

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That's not what I implied at all user.

Good thread OP.

So, one commonly touted argument is the Rcardian one of comparative advantage and free trade. It goes something like this:

1. David Ricardo proved that free trade was to the benefit of both nations trading with the Theory of Comparative Advantage.
2. Free trade therefore promotes economic growth in a nation as measured in GDP.
3. GDP consists of goods and services.
4. Services are provided by people.
5. People who are situated outside the country have to be able to enter it at will in order to provide their services.
6. Therefore, allowing people to move freely across national borders will create economic growth.

However, the model of Competitive Advantage as outlined by Ricardo assumed that capital was mobile, and labour fixed, or immobile.

1/?

1. Temporary workers/immigration - lower wages and increase work hours for natives.

Bob and Sam are locals. Bob finished college and wants to save up money fora house so he can start a family. Sam already has a wife and kids and works hard to support them.

Tyrone, Jamal and Mohhamed come to work in the country for 5 years. They won't stay, so they don't invest anything nor have any interest in the country itself. They will work longer and for a lower wage. They will all share a tiny apartment, since they don't seek to build a future here. Instead they save money or send it back to their country of origin.
Bob and Sam cannot compete and to remain working, they must agree to lower wages and longer hours.
The 3 foreginers will leave in a few years, wealthy for their standards. Meanwhile Bob and Sam will be left in their country with worse work conditions.

Why would rich even benefit for this? The labor costs are at margin with capital investment.

More you invest in capital stock of your business the less your labor costs are.

And with all that free money sloshing around in system, labor around the globe, even in china, is getting the shaft.

So, what happens if we adjust the model to include the fact that labour is mobile (and it absolutely is in the modern world)?

Take an example of two countries A and B. A produces some quantity of steel for 100 units labour, and some quantity of wine for 110 units of labour. Country B can produce the same quantities for 90 and 80 units of labour respectively. If labour is fixed, then it makes sense for country A obtain wine by producing steel for 100 units and trading it, rather than spending the 110 units to produce it. Similarly, country B can obtain steel for 80 units by trade rather than 90 by production. Everyone wins! Right?

Review the same situation with mobile labour. Both steel and wine labourers from country B will move to country A, as they see that they can receive a raise if they go to country A, whose labour supply in these fields is more scarce. For country A, this may be good on paper. It can now produce the same amount of steel and wine as before, but now for only 47.5 units of labour! This will increase the profitability of these industries, creating a windfall for investors and financiers, and even the govt through increased tax revenue. But what isnt taken into account is whether any of this is good for anyone else in country A.

2/?

There's what? 94 to 96 million Americans out of the work force? Why would you let in immigrants seeking work when nearly 1/4 of the citizens of the nation vie for those positions.

Those massive new profits exist because wages have fallen by 50 percent, and since the costs of other goods haven’t fallen in line with the reduced wages of the country A workers who still have their jobs, their quality of life declines. Other consequences include how the newly unemployed country A workers may go on the dole or turn to crime, how the new country B immigrants are heavily inclined to vote for the equivalent of the Labour Party (thereby throwing country A's political system out of balance), and how country A women begin bearing half-B children, thereby lowering the average IQ of the next generation by two IQ points or more, but in the short term, these factors are all considered “non-economic” and therefore don’t count as far as the economists are concerned.

So, we can conclude that theoretically at least:

- Ricardo implicitly postulated the immobility of labor.

- The mobility of labor not only fails to disprove comparative advantage, but actually strengthens the case for even freer trade… at least if you’re in the higher-labor-cost country and you only look at the labor costs.

- The mobility of labor will eliminate international trade since everyone will be living in Country A.

- The mobility of labor operates to the extreme detriment of labor and wage rates.

- Ricardo’s logic is irrelevant, proves absolutely nothing, and does not provide a credible basis for defending either free trade or immigration.

3/3

OY VEY u uncaring monster, they just want to have a chance at american dream!

All of them are honist wurkurs!

Good reply. I think we're dealing with three trends in relation to the broad support for mass immigration and the fact it is virtually unchallenged among western elites.

The first is purely an economic, reductionist view. Namely that a nation is purely the sum of its economic activity, and that if this economic activity can be inflated by something (like mass immigration) it is inherently good. This is what I outlined above. This is also predicated on a radical and pseudoscientific individualism (born of enlightenment thinking) that supposes individuals from disparate racial groups are uniform and therefore interchangeable (the culture as amorphous and detachable from race meme).

The second is an intrinsically "humanitarian" viewpoint embodied by liberals/leftists, these people disregard economic arguments and view nations and their borders as illusory, artificial and something to be done away with.

The third view, one that doesn't receive as much attention as the other two is the geopolitical one, embodied by the more calculating liberal elites, that they can increase the international prestige and power of their respective states by inflating the population.


Yes, the comparative advantage theory makes no sense with regards to modern economies where most of high value-add exports are capital-intensive manufacturing or high-skilled services.

I think the whole ideology around free trade can't function unless you are an ideological liberal who sees nations as inherently illegitimate to begin with. If you view the individual as the base unit of society, rather than families and extended families and kinship groups (race), then you logically will not see any reason to have protectionist economic measures because protecting a nation's industrial base is a misnomer to begin with, there is only a "global" economy. Nation is just a regional abstraction, based on nothing.

Personally I think mercantile economics was actually closer to the mark of reality than classical economics was.

Forgive me if I've skipped over some of your points. I just wanted to expand on some of my own thinking.

It's called profit. You sell your product/service at the same price as you did with a domestic worker and inflated economic spending, hire a worker that can do it cheaper, take in gross at above a domestic worker's rate, claim more net profit. Company grows, people on top make more, repeat.

And while those at the top profit, those at the bottom suffer lower wages. And once the wages hit rock bottom, suddenly, you are Brazil. Wonderful.

More people to sell shit to. Larger unskilled workforce, pushing those wages down and making it easier to pass business-friendly legislation.
The rich get none of the downsides. They make more money instead of less, they don't need to walk in the diverse parts of town, and when things get bad enough they can infect a new host country.

Immigration for very highly-skilled individuals should be allowed though (like the Germans who did all the work for the American and Soviet space programs). They're in very small numbers so they don't change the demographics and unlike sandniggers they can improve the country instead of going allah akbar. It isn't good for the country they leave behind though.

Larger markets. It really is that simple.

Why the fuck is this thread bumplocked? There is actual intelligent conversation in here.

People with shit wages that don't even qualify for a fucking loan from a bank don't really benefit the rich.

Right now the system churns along because government is borrowing from the rich to fund the deficit and prop up the purchasing power.
When the rich start to want some actual return on their loans, this shit comes down harder than Greece.

Current financial capitalist system is being usurped by this race to the bottom. Globalization is bad enough, but when you add increasing automation and you are looking to system halting disruption in money flow trough the system.
Fiat money must flow trough the system, accumulating it is pointless because it holds no value in it self. When the money stop flowing, it loses its value as a useful tool. Simple as that.

Yes, I agree with what you are saying. Ultimately, the ardent defender of open borders must reveal himself as a brutal mechanist, who views humans merely as interchangeable units of consumption and labour productivity. The 'humanitarian' position can easily be dispelled via reductio ad absurdum, and the reductionist view via some historical and biological education.
I really do think that many of these people - at least those who earnestly believe that these ideas are good, can be shown the true way by a bit of digging under the surface of why they believe in these things.

They can qualify for some shit-tier credit card, that's all that matters.

Also the problem isn't really one of fiat money vs. some form of gold-backed currency. Even with a gold-standard the Jews are still going to control everything.

Whatever the medium of economic exchange is, it changes precisely nothing.

Oh, but here's the trick: they get welfare. So they still consume like any other good goyim. And once the money starts to run out the natives just have to work harder. When the day comes they're all too old and tired, well, it's time to invest elsewhere, and you get to sell some guns to the jihadists fighting to build the new caliphate.
Capitalism has always been a race to the bottom. It works nicely until it crashes horribly every few years. Allowing capitalists to freely decide not only the flow of money but of people will only end badly for us. But, hey, it makes them more money and makes liberals happy until they're raped and beaten to death by a mudshit.

Is this thread bumplocked?