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If borders were open

economist.com

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Re: If borders were open

#71

Post by maxerickson »

conanbatt wrote: post #57
tastythrowaway2 wrote: post #28

Did I miss the part where they discuss the economics of having a larger worker pool? like how that would affect existing workers? that seems like an enormous question to not address fully.

It would not affect everyone equally, and wages in many areas would definitely go down. For example, if the US recognized medical degrees from other countries, the influx of doctors would be so large that the income for a physician would drop tremendously. So the physicians that are already employed should (if they represent their own interest) be very against such a policy. But the aggregate would end up being that…

The US does recognize medical degrees from other countries and leans on foreign doctors heavily.

We require them to go through a US residency.

Something like 1/4 of doctors in the US are foreign born.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/health/12chen.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/the-value...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2016/07/12/25-of-d...

Re: If borders were open

#72

Post by Zahlmeister »

jayd16 wrote: post #50
orbifold wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you restrict yourself to young males then immigrants have a disproportionate share in crime at least in Germany, actually immigrants in Germany commited ~40% of all crimes in 2015, with a rapid increase in the last few years. It is also pretty obvious on the street level: drugs for example are primarily sold by immigrant gangs, for example africans with turkish bosses.

Where are you getting this? >According to the Bundeskriminalamt, also known as the Federal Criminal Police Office or BKA, crimes by immigrants rose 79 percent in 2015. But at the same time, the number of refugees in the country rose more than fivefold — by 440 percent. In other words, the typical German was more likely to engage in crime than the average migrant. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/201…

In other words, the typical German was more likely to engage in crime than the average migrant.

Sorry, but that's complete nonsense. The crime rate among immigrants (and their descendants) is much higher than among "ethnic" Germans. That means the typical German is less likely to engage in crime.

In absolute numbers of course, there are much more Germans than immigrants, so Germans commit more crimes total, as you would expect.

This topic is sensitive, so people just fling around with percentages and relative numbers until it appears to fit whatever narrative they would like to be true. It's not really helping convince anybody, everybody just keeps believing what they already believe.

Of course, the idea that Germany is now "riddled with crime" is just another Trumpism. Considering that we have a million refugees, the increase in crime is rather low and all the alarmism isn't justified.

Re: If borders were open

#73

Post by vilmosi »

jayd16 wrote: post #50
orbifold wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you restrict yourself to young males then immigrants have a disproportionate share in crime at least in Germany, actually immigrants in Germany commited ~40% of all crimes in 2015, with a rapid increase in the last few years. It is also pretty obvious on the street level: drugs for example are primarily sold by immigrant gangs, for example africans with turkish bosses.

Where are you getting this? >According to the Bundeskriminalamt, also known as the Federal Criminal Police Office or BKA, crimes by immigrants rose 79 percent in 2015. But at the same time, the number of refugees in the country rose more than fivefold — by 440 percent. In other words, the typical German was more likely to engage in crime than the average migrant. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/201…

> In other words, the typical German was more likely to engage in crime than the average migrant.

That's not what your source says.

It's not the typical German, it's "comparable groups among the current population", whatever they mean by that.

Re: If borders were open

#74

Post by GabrielBen »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

A world of free economist articles would be _____ richer. Yet they built the paywall. There seem like a lot of obvious objections that are not addressed and raises more questions than it asks. > Workers in rich countries earn more than those in poor countries partly because they are better educated but mostly because they live in societies that have, over many years, developed institutions that foster prosperity and…

> A world of free economist articles would be _____ richer. Yet they built the paywall.

The actual analogy would be a world where you need to get a visa per-magazine to read the articles they have, to the which you might not qualify.

A newspaper-immigration-patrol would look at this comment of yours on HN and possible deny you access, you should watch out.

> What are these institutions, and would they be damaged at all by free movement? If the people in good_country made the institutions, and they get demographically boxed out by people in other_countries, what happens? What are "institutions," exactly? Why did other_countries grow bad institutions? Would emigrants damage those countries further? The article semi asks these questions then drops the thread.

A great open question is what happens to institutions when there are culture changes. But bear in mind that without immigration, there would be no institutions in the U.S. whatsoever. It is a point of view of past immigration being great, but current and future immigration being bad, which I think it makes very little sense holistically speaking.

> Yeah they could, but most won't.

There really isnt a limit on living space. The rent is high in places like the bay area precisely because moving there is still a good deal. Problems of residential prices are widely overstated.

Re: If borders were open

#75

Post by Zahlmeister »

conanbatt wrote: post #52

Any kind of immigration restriction is an act of oppression. Think of how insane a proposal to limit people moving from a state to another in the US would be, how many arguments would be concocted against that, but so many arguments in favour of international restrictions. I have no doubts that free movement would have drastic positive economic and social effects. What is truly incredible is how adamant people can be…

Hello from Germany.

We effectively have "free" movement of people from Africa to Europe. Once they're ashore, we can't readily send them back. We also used to have movement from Iraq and Syria through Turkey, but that was curbed.

We took in about a million refugees and we did not manage to integrate well over 90%+ into any form of employment. We don't have jobs for these people. It has cost us about 20 billion in 2016, about 3% of taxes earned total, to support these people. We've managed to "oppress" the flow of refugees with unpopular measures. If we didn't, how many more people are we supposed to take in?

Re: If borders were open

#76

Post by conanbatt »

programmarchy wrote: post #68
conanbatt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milton friedman spoke 40 years ago of how people in america changed their views on immigration. In the 1800's and early 1900's, immigration was open and considered nowadays to be one of the great processes that got america to be what it is. Bring me the poor and the sick and all that. 60 years later, turns out immigrants are lazy welfarers. As MF says, the moment you put welfare, suddenly you end up wanting to restri…

This is a good point. Once welfare systems exist, you don't know if immigrants are coming because they believe in the host nation's cultural values or if it's just because they want free stuff, and have no intention of assimilation.

It is one of the terrible side effects of all welfare programs. If you have socialized medicine, suddently it makes sense to ban products and practices for public health (since it lowers costs). If you agree to split the bill with the friends, you end up having to make rules on what people should be able to order to make sure things dont go too out of whack.

Re: If borders were open

#77

Post by 0xbear »

conanbatt wrote: post #60
0xbear wrote: post #43

Open borders == immediate destruction of the low-skilled and unskilled labor market due to oversupply of labor.

This is the exact same argument to have collective bargaining rights and unions. I don't think the tech-crowd is a fan of unionization in general.

Tech crowd is doing pretty well as it is. Low skilled and unskilled workers are already kind of f#$ed, with more to come due to globalization, and (later) automation.

Re: If borders were open

#78

Post by conanbatt »

maxerickson wrote: post #71
conanbatt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not affect everyone equally, and wages in many areas would definitely go down. For example, if the US recognized medical degrees from other countries, the influx of doctors would be so large that the income for a physician would drop tremendously. So the physicians that are already employed should (if they represent their own interest) be very against such a policy. But the aggregate would end up being that…

The US does recognize medical degrees from other countries and leans on foreign doctors heavily. We require them to go through a US residency. Something like 1/4 of doctors in the US are foreign born. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/health/12chen.html https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/the-value... https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2016/07/12/25-of-d...

Residencies are one of the most grueling experiences for human beings ,and a restriction that makes doctors go through that process twice (in their home country and then in the US) amounts to a strong restriction.

Asking an experienced doctor to go through a residency is worse than asking software developers to get a doctorate if they want to write code in the US.

Re: If borders were open

#79

Post by conanbatt »

PeterisP wrote: post #62
conanbatt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not affect everyone equally, and wages in many areas would definitely go down. For example, if the US recognized medical degrees from other countries, the influx of doctors would be so large that the income for a physician would drop tremendously. So the physicians that are already employed should (if they represent their own interest) be very against such a policy. But the aggregate would end up being that…

Looking at the concerns of US population, I'd bet that they'd be quite happy with the notion that increased supply could cause a significant decrease in doctor salaries and thus medical costs. Protection benefits the industry, lack of protectionism benefits everyone else; and patients have much more votes than doctors.

100% agree with the first part.

The second part is true, but the patients do not so clearly see the benefit, while the doctors would personally see and feel the pain of such a measure! The interest and understanding of the latter makes them very powerfully motivated.

Re: If borders were open

#80

Post by conanbatt »

fche wrote: post #70
conanbatt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not sure what you mean with this comment, can you clarify?

Considering mass immigration in terms of increasing worker pools presupposes that the mass immigrants are workers.

They will quickly starve if they dont provide means to feed themselves.
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