The Bear’s Lair: The immortal Smoot

Posted by Geoff M. Beck on June 27, 2005, 09:35 AM | #

I think you can leave your comments about the South out of this conversation. Especially, since you are a foreigner, anyway.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on June 27, 2005, 09:55 AM | #

I’m not a foreigner, I’m a delayed colonist! And I have to say, only on this site would I find a comment that objected to my denigrating the Ku Klux Klan by comparing it to Democrat Senators! )

Posted by john rackell on June 27, 2005, 10:45 AM | #

Since when has calling the Chinese “mercantilist” been considered racist?

Posted by Phil on June 27, 2005, 02:49 PM | #

Of General Motors’ 473,000 units sold in China in 2004, up 27 percent over the previous year, 253,656 were Buicks, largely manufactured by GM’s Chinese joint venture, Shanghai Automotive.

Strategically, it may be better if those Chinese were driving little Nissans and Toyotas instead of big Gas-guzzling Buicks.

No offence to GM (they are after all fighting for their survival now) but if a billion Chinese drove around in the sort of cars Americans drive, the energy market would go bananas (actually we would probably be past the Oil peak way before then).

Posted by Phil on June 27, 2005, 02:54 PM | #

A statistic in Wednesday’s Washington Post is telling: the number of registered lobbyists in Washington DC has more than doubled in the last 5 years, from 16,342 to 34,785.  The absolute numbers may not sound like much, except that, since the “starting salaries” for Washington lobbyists have risen to more than $300,000 per annum, salary costs alone for these parasites represent an outlay of more than $10 billion a year.

I was going to post on that. I had mentioned in a comment a few days ago that Washington has become such a corrupt place that no politician can insulate himself from it. Almost every politician from across the country who lands up in Washington joins the crowd. Otherwise he won’t survive.

Posted by Kubilai on June 27, 2005, 04:47 PM | #

Why ‘especially at the low skill level’? Doesn’t free immigration equally threaten the jobs of physicians, computer analysts, and the proverbial rocket scientists? Apart from the language barrier, what grounds are there for assuming that unskilled workers are more likely to suffer a setback of interest than the highly educated? - Carolus Obscurus

This is a very astute observation.  It seems that not only programming and call center jobs are being exported in this new world of “globalization”.  The possibility of having foreign physicians to interpret diagnostic tests in the US has moved past the initial phases of simple brainstorming.  Insurance companies have made some inroads and set up contracts with Indian based physicians who will interpret an xray, EKG, or whatever for a fraction of the cost that a US trained and based physcian would expect to receive from the same insurance company.  I think this is the main route of our better, higher paying, higher education jobs.  While the low income, education jobs are being taken over by illegals, the higher ones will be leaving the country entirely.  There may be a proportion that stay and are given to the invaders or fought for by Whites who will have to “match the price”. 

I seriously doubt that there will be anyone who will get out of this unscathed, unless quite wealthy and well protected financially.  Even then, governments have a way of making what you have in the bank nearly worthless.  Look at South America and Argentina specifically.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on June 27, 2005, 07:40 PM | #

Physicians are an interesting case in point.  Medical costs are continually increasing as a percentage of GDP, so without outsourcing physicians should do very well indeed—you can imagine a world in 2100 in which we can all live to 150, but require hugely costly medical intervention to do so. 

Accordingly, outsourcing may be the only way medical costs can be checked as a percentage of GDP, but will still leave a generous living for domestic physicians who have physical contact with the patient. More or less a win-win, in other words.

The downside is if the trial lawyers are able to scoop off the extra funds available through outsourcing, in which case doctors will be underpaid (probably through an NHS) and medical care poor, while only the lawyer-leeches will flourish.

Posted by jonjayray on June 27, 2005, 08:08 PM | #

Martin
I have often disagreed with you in another forum but I wholeheartedly congratulate you on the excellent article above

Posted by John S Bolton on June 27, 2005, 08:16 PM | #

Let’s not forget that free trade is not an absolute universal, or not a valid one. Tariffs and quotas are entirely appropriate against the shipment of stolen goods. America’s $500+billion current account deficit is financed mainly by the Bank of Japan, which steals the money that they need for this. Please defend the moral or practical feasibility of letting this volume of stolen goods into the country.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 27, 2005, 08:32 PM | #

“Why ‘especially at the low skill level’? Doesn’t free immigration equally threaten the jobs of physicians, computer analysts, and the proverbial rocket scientists? Apart from the language barrier, what grounds are there for assuming that unskilled workers are more likely to suffer a setback of interest than the highly educated?”  (—Carolus Obscurus)

Vdare.com published a letter-to-the-editor and reply

yesterday touching on this (for access to the text’s copious links, check out the original):
______
Today’s Letter: A Programmer Reader Chastises Peter Brimelow For Skilled Immigration Squishiness; Brimelow Blithers
From: [Name Withheld]:

I recently watched your UVA talk. (Watch in RealVideo) One thing that I was amazed at: how lax you were towards skilled labor immigration, saying something like “maybe if we let them [the business lobbies] have their 50,000 computer programmers, they’ll let us contain the rest of it.”

First off, we programmers have as a group been more negatively affected by immigration than any other group. The recent trend towards rampant insecurity in information systems-and phenomena like Enron- suggests also that form of immigration is having effects just as undesirable for the population as a whole per immigrant as any form of immigration.

Peter: put yourself in my shoes for a moment:

H-1b/L-1 expansion meant to me:

1)  Two years of unemployment

2)  Eventually acceptance of a job with a more than 60% cut in pay.

Also, the Marxist analysis fails here. It isn’t just economic elites that have been party to this—political/media elites have enthusiastically participated. (Old Marxist parties used to advocate immigration limitation, and the Socialist International has even been critical of guest workers).

I don’t think stopping immigration is quite as easy as you suggest. Stopping emigration from Mexico will require disenfranchisement of the elite that has created the problems in both countries and almost certainly a revolution there—I personally support that. The question: how can the American people contain their own political, media and economic elites?

The current political discourse, in which everyone from liberals like Ted Kennedy to conservatives like Trent Lott is utterly insensitive to the situation of U.S. technologists, is creating an intensely volatile situation.

Peter Brimelow blithers: Norm Matloff and others have pointed out forcefully that, because the numbers of skilled immigrants are relatively small, I tend to discount the devastating displacement that they can cause, as opposed to the grander disaster of mass unskilled immigration.

My comment, however, was made in the context of Guest Worker programs. As a practical matter, I do think that a temporary Guest Worker program (with appropriate citizen-child reform) would be useful in neutralizing the business lobbies. I admit that nobody in the immigration reform movement agrees with me!
______

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 27, 2005, 08:38 PM | #

By the way, the link at “Norm Matloff” in Brimelow’s response to the reader yesterday (in my comment above) goes to Peter’s reply to this

post-9/11 assessment of the immigration situation by Prof. Matloff:
______

I found the various comments on immigration reform on VDARE.com interesting, but I must add my two cents’ worth.

Specifically, I found it interesting that so many of the writers were so sanguine over the prospect that the September 11 tragedy would facilitate long-overdue immigration reform. Though indeed the event did take the wind out of the pro-immigration camp’s sails, I believe that this effect will be both temporary and of limited degree.

The fact is that it has always been the case that most Americans, including most immigrant Americans, have been in the restrictionist camp. The problem has been that the wishes of the populace have always been trumped by the special interests, such as:

—the ethnic-activist groups lobby

—the educational lobby

—the computer industry lobby

—the manufacturing industry lobby

—the farm lobby

—the immigration lawyers’ lobby

—the libertarians (often funded by other lobbies)

—etc., etc., etc.

The events of September 11 have not changed this picture.
______

Look one more time at one of the points Prof. Matloff makes in his comment:

“The fact is that it has always been the case that most Americans, including most immigrant Americans, have been in the restrictionist camp. The problem has been that the wishes of the populace have always been trumped by the special interests [...]”

(Incidentally, John Ray ... “majority rules”?  Come again?  I dunno, John—I’d say you’ve a few things to learn from Mark’s new MR.com

log entry on this topic

... not to mention the comments thread underneath it ...)

You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see—the enemy can target you but you can’t target him.  Here, gentlemen, above, are some of your targets (among a large number of others, of course). 

Take careful aim and defend yourselves, your race and nation, and all you hold most dear ... and

... TAKE NO PRISONERS.

Posted by john rackell on June 27, 2005, 08:54 PM | #

if manufacturing is moved to a low-income country, the increased income in that country will itself increase demand for the goods made in the high income country.

Your own essay refutes this argument. GM does not make cars in the US for export to China, it makes cars in China. Rising incomes in China will increase the quantity of Chinese cars purchased, not American cars.

In the Chinese market, the great success story of the last few years has been a foreign import – Buick.

GM’s success in China is not the same as success for the United States in its trade with China. Cars made in China by Chinese are not tradeable goods produced by the US that will reduce its gargantuan trade deficit (per Paul Craig Roberts ).

Of General Motors’ 473,000 units sold in China in 2004, up 27 percent over the previous year, 253,656 were Buicks, largely manufactured by GM’s Chinese joint venture, Shanghai Automotive.
GM’s Chinese joint venture, Shanghai Automotive., about says it all. Chinese mercantilism requires GM to set up a joint venture. That isn’t “free trade”. The Western car manufacturers are played off one against the other by China: access to our market for your technology and training up our workforce. This is not free trade.

However efficient Chinese manufacturing, most of the value added in this heart-warming automotive success derives from General Motors’ global intellectual capital,

I)efficient Chinese manufacturing Here’s an example of efficient Chinese manufacturing from the DailyReckoning: ““I just visited a factory in China. In this immense building were thousands of women assembling batteries…rechargeable batteries…by hand. You could have done it easily by machine. In fact, they had the machines there. But at 35 cents an hour, the company found it cheaper and more efficient to do the work by hand. You just can’t imagine how awful this work was…tedious, boring…But these women worked six days a week at it.”
http://dailyreckoning.com/Issues/2004/033104.html

People are cheap in China! The West has embarked on the high productivity route of substituting machines for people. Free trade is destroying this. This should be obvious enough, but here’s a quote from Yourdon’s Decline of the American Programmer (1993) regarding a conversation with an Indian: “...I didn’t really appreciate how pervasive this “people are cheap, machines are expensive” attitude is until Thakur explained to me that, for many, an automobile is a lifetime investment. So is a television.

“What about a dishwasher?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s no problem,“Thaker said,“We can get one for a hundred rupees a month”.
“That’s a lot cheaper than our dishwashers! Where do you buy them? Japan?...”

Thakur replied, “I was talking about a person”.

I invite anyone to peruse any job listing in the US. What are the jobs?  Dog groomer, Dog sitter, Dog walker. Americans are becoming the equivalent of these Indian Dishwashing machines.

II)General Motors’ global intellectual capital Your essay is again self-refuting. If GM’s technology has such a premium it would justify the manufacture of cars by highly paid UAW workers for export to China. GM is not exporting cars to China, ergo, either: i)GM technology has no premium or ii) Chinese mercantilist practices prevent GM from capitalizing on its premium by requiring joint ventures and technology transfer.

Rather than worrying excessively about outsourcing to China, there is a more dangerous problem currently facing the U.S. economy, for which legislators of both parties bear a considerable share of the responsibility. There’s nothing to stop Chinese lobbyists paying off a few Congressmen to prevent protectionism arising and promote free trade. Of course the free trade lobby is as much an injurious lobby to the interests of the United States as the other rackets you bemoan.

Posted by john rackell on June 27, 2005, 08:55 PM | #

[cont]

Whereas free trade threatens jobs in a minority of industries, where goods or services can be produced more cheaply overseas (and produces jobs in other industries such as automotive design, where new foreign markets open opportunities) free immigration threatens jobs throughout the economy, but especially at the low skill level.
I) Where is the evidence that new design jobs are being produced in the US. Intel, Cypress Semi, Cadence, General Electric you name it are all outsourcing their design work to India, Russia, China.

II)Your essay does not touch on how you intend for us to pay for all the goodies we get from this specious free trade. How many beards trimmed, lawns mowed, or socks sold at Walmart will it take to pay for all the things which are cheaper to manufacture in the BRICs.

None of these jobs you cite produces exportable goods and services that would pay for our imports. So what does the US sell? Right, right I understand, you advocate we sell off the farm to our new creditors: we sell our trademarks, brand names, prime agricultural land, mineral rights. Yup folks Unocal is just the beginning.

Looked at in this light, the moans of the protectionists make no sense at all.
Your pro outsourcing propaganda fails to convince. I fully accept that protectionism would have dire consequences but since the American economy is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t we fortuitously have the freedom to choose a course of action that secures our long term interests.

Posted by Kubilai on June 27, 2005, 09:55 PM | #

Accordingly, outsourcing may be the only way medical costs can be checked as a percentage of GDP, but will still leave a generous living for domestic physicians who have physical contact with the patient. More or less a win-win, in other words.

The downside is if the trial lawyers are able to scoop off the extra funds available through outsourcing, in which case doctors will be underpaid (probably through an NHS) and medical care poor, while only the lawyer-leeches will flourish. - Martin

Thanks for the post, Martin.  The physician from the US is quite a different animal than ones in Australia, Canada, and the UK with their universal health care.  Medicine is big business in the US and it feeds a tremendous amount of people, including physicians who are more vocal and demanding of their rights to earn a living with “fair market prices”.  Their lobby is also extremely powerful which has managed to hold at bay any significant changes in health delivery and reimbursement.  Not so for their colleauges in the other respect countries I mentioned who are simply castrated, guilt-ridden individuals who have no collective voice of any strength or significance.  You mention socialized medicine to most people in the US including physicians and you may as well have a tatoo of a hammer and sickle on your forehead.  That is how it is perceived.  When physicians are accustomed to making a certain income, and in many case it is quite huge, they will not consider “taking one for the team” and agree to socialization and fee reductions.  That is simply aggressive American “free market” thinking.

Your trial lawyer scenario is valid and it did not cross my mind, however I can see it.  Another scenario which you may or may not have thought is the inundation of foreign trained physicians who are allowed to immigrate and given a fast track to working in their fields which was essentially non-existent only a few short years ago.  These new “recruits” are simple pawns of the government.  They will vote in any unpleasant legislation that is unpalatable to the native physicians. They will work for less and won’t mind as much if fees are reduced because most will have come from much worse.  This is a new ploy by the government which the seeds are being planted now and the fruits of their labour to be ready for picking in a decade or two.  The quality of health delivery will be abysmal, however which government gives a you know what about quality over the bottom line?

Posted by john rackell on June 27, 2005, 10:33 PM | #

Whereas free trade threatens jobs in a minority of industries, where goods or services can be produced more cheaply overseas (and produces jobs in other industries such as automotive design, where new foreign markets open opportunities) free immigration threatens jobs throughout the economy

With sufficient capital any job can be done more cheaply overseas because India and China have an effectively unlimited supply of labor. The question of the merits of displacing US industry is outside the realm of economics which is non-normative (afaik). The survival of US manufacturing is a question of values.

Your statement does not take into account the quality of jobs in these “minority of industries”. The jobs in these companies are the anchors of whole communities; they are massive reserves of technical knowhow vital to the nation; they act in and of themselves as job multiplier because companies such as GM support a whole raft of secondary suppliers, tool and die shops, specialty production machine suppliers, machine tool manufacturers, you name it.

Walmart type jobs are job dividers, not job multipliers. Walmart is hastening the demise of the last remnants of American industry by forcing its suppliers to manufacture overseas to meet the so-called China price. If or rather when China revalues its currency we are going to get a massive shot of inflation that a more rational trade policy would have mitigated. The China price will now be 30% higher and we will have no industry to fall back on because Walmart have been working assiduously over the last 10 years to gut it.

Your free trade religion says we are all better off because we get socks 10c cheaper at the cost to the nation of losing its entire (more or less) textile industry. And contrary to your opinion the US textile industry is undoubtedly the most productive in the world given the high automation in its factory and the regulatory constraints its operates under (both of which are public goods). It’s output per man hour is astonishingly tremendously high. There is no merit in an argument that says we should sacrifice this highly capitalized industry because a $5/hr US worker can’t compete with a 35c/hr Chinese worker.

I encourage anyone to peruse Eamonn Fingleton’s website to understand the critical role of manufacturing in maintaining our standard of living and why we should resist the free trade zealots from cavalierly dismissing it as “a minority of industries”.

In particular the first chapter of Fingletons book “In Praise of Hard Industries” is online:
http://www.unsustainable.org/HI_excerpt.php

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 27, 2005, 11:24 PM | #

Speaking of Prof. Matloff, here’s an excerpt from a recent edition of his H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter (a newletter devoted to questioning U.S. government policies that irrationally cause loss of domestic U.S. high-tech IT and other jobs to lower-wage Third-Worlders, whether through immigration or offshoring):
______

To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter

I used the word “reluctant” in my Subject: line here, not because I am reluctant criticize New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman, but because I am reluctant to give him any publicity.  I don’t mind people who disagree with me, of course, but I get irritated if their views are based on snap judgements rather than careful, thorough examination of the facts.  I get even more irritated if they hide the fact that they stand to gain financially from those views which they present as being for the public good.  All of that is why I really don’t want to give Friedman any publicity (even if my “contribution” is tiny compared to what he already has).

Friedman has always gotten lots of publicity, especially with his latest big theme, which is basically, “Globalization is good, and its downsides can be compensated by improving our educational system.”  He is one of those who, for example, hold the Alice in Wonderland view that we can solve our current problem of unemployed engineers and scientists by
producing MORE engineers and scientists.

Friedman just came out with a book on globalization, “THE WORLD IS FLAT:  A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,” which is being heavily promoted.  I’ve received quite a bit of e-mail from readers, suggesting I comment on the book, but originally I didn’t want to waste my time on such drivel.  But this week two events made me change my mind:  (a) I found that someone whom I respect highly and is very knowledgeable about IT offshoring was unaware of Friedman’s book, and (b) an excerpt from his book appears in Blueprint (formerly The New Democrat), a publication of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

The DLC is the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party (and for that matter, the Gore/Kerry wing) [Fred Scrooby note:  Prof. Matloff is a liberal Democrat, by the way—as are a great many who favor immigration sanity, such as former Colorado governor Richard Lamm (see the article How to Destroy a Nation:  Destroying America in seven easy steps in

The American Conservative, March 14th, 2005), journalist/columnist Joe Guzzardi, blogger/columnist/activist Brenda Walker, far-left radical Ralph Nader, socialist liberal commentator “Melinda Jelliby,” and so many others].  Their philosophy is basically to out-pro-business the pro-business Republicans, and take a centrist line on social issues.  I’ve been quite critical of the DLC in the past in this e-newsletter.  In that posting, made during the presidential election campaign last year, I pointed out the DLC’s in-house think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, was espousing a pro-H-1B, pro-offshoring viewpoint. Yet even I, in spite of my cynical view of the DLC, was surprised to find that Friedman’s book is excerpted in this month’s issue of Blueprint, the DLC magazine.  You can read it here

.

A few weeks ago a reader sent me e-mail saying that Friedman had been exposed as being on Enron’s payroll.  I couldn’t find confirmation of that, but I did find that Enron did propose to Intellibridge that the latter hire Friedman as a member of its Enron PR committee.  (See enclosure below.)  Friedman does reportedly do a lot of speaking to business groups, and I suppose it is likely that he does derive some income as a consultant to firms like Enron as my reader claimed.  But even more interestingly,  I then checked Intellibridge’s Web page, and guess who is one of its consultants—Al From, founder and head of the DLC! 

[cont’d next comment]

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 27, 2005, 11:29 PM | #

[Prof. Matloff’s e-newsletter excerpt, cont’d from previous comment]

Speaking of H-1B, Friedman has a section in that Blueprint excerpt on immigration of technical (and other) professionals:

“Immigration.  While we need to redouble our efforts to build the muscles of each individual American, we have to continue to import muscles from abroad as well.  [Fred Scrooby note:  Why in the world is that, Mr. Friedman???  Why do we “have to” do that???]  Most of the Indian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Iranian, Arab, and Israeli engineers, physicists, and scientists who come to work or study in the United States make great citizens. [Fred Scrooby note:  This may be the explanation right here—could it be that Friedman, who’s Jewish, wants open borders for Israelis to be able to come and go as they please between here and Israel, but doesn’t want to say so and appear interested only in his group, so adopts an “invite-the-whole-world” position?] They are family-oriented, educated, and hardworking, and most would jump at the chance to become an American.  [Fred Scrooby note:  So would all two billion people in India and China—that means they should all come here?  What, we don’t have our own country here or something, Mr. Friedman? You’re insane, Mr. Friedman—literally insane.  Either that, or you’re some kind of dishonest obnoxious bastard looking out for himself and his group and, naturally, his pro-immigration lobbying income.] They are exactly the type of people this country needs [Fred Scrooby note:  I’m sure they’re fine folk, but as for inviting them all here, how about we put that before the American public in a clearly-worded referendum, shall we, Mr. Friedman, you sleazy lucre-worshipping lobbyist?], and we cannot let the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security, in their zeal to keep out the next Mohammed Atta, also keep out the next Sergey Brin, one of the cofounders of Google, who was born in Russia.” [Fred Scrooby note:  Will you listen to this piece of low slime!  Can the boldness, narcissism, and pure greed be believed?  The guy’s worse than Grover Norquist!  Norquist wants all the Arabs in Arabia to come here because he’s married to one, has now apparently converted to Islam, and ... what was the other reason? ... I forget ... wait, it’ll come back to me ... OH YEAH!  and he’s being paid handsomely by the Arabs to lobby for open borders for them.  That was the other reason that I almost forgot ... It was close, but I finally remembered it—it just suddenly came to me, as if out of the blue ...  This Friedman guy wants open borders for the entire world so there’ll be free entry for guys like Sergey Brin who I assume must be Jewish or Friedman wouldn’t be citing him here in this way—so, in order that Jews like Brin can come here freely we have to have open borders!  I’m part German—am I advocating open borders for the whole world to come the the U.S. so that Germans can come here freely without encumbrance?  Friedman sees only himself and his own group—what obnoxiousness!  It almost has to be seen to be believed!]

[con’t next comment]

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 27, 2005, 11:30 PM | #

[Matloff excerpt continues:]

This is typical of the attitudes of Friedman’s class.  To begin with, there is the (rather racist) notion that all the world would just love to immigrate to the U.S., the place where, as the Chinese saying used to go, “Even the stars are bigger.”  Well, guess what—the American stars have gotten pretty tiny lately, and engineers in most of those countries Friedman lists are not so anxious to come here now, precisely because people like Friedman have ruined the American job market for engineers.

Second, the Brin example is way out of line.  First of all, Brin was a family immigrant, not someone who came here as an H-1B or a foreign student.  But much more importantly, Google is not the only search engine.  There are lots of them.  Friedman’s implication that without Brin we couldn’t do Web searches is just plain false.

Friedman continues: 

“I would favor an immigration policy that gives a five-year work visa to any foreign student who completes a Ph.D. at an accredited American university in any subject. I don’t care if it is Greek mythology or mathematics.  If we can cream off the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world, it will always end up a net plus for America.”

I myself have always supported a policy of rolling out the immigration red carpet for “the best and the brightest” in the world.  But where did Friedman get the ridiculous idea that anyone who completes a PhD is a “first-round intellectual draft choice”?  A few people who get a PhD are indeed brilliant, but most PhDs are not. 

Now consider this comment of Friedman’s:

“My friends Judy Estrin and Bill Carrico have started several networking companies in Silicon Valley. ‘When I was eleven years old,’ said Bill, ‘I knew I was going to be an engineer.  I dare you to find an eleven-year-old in America who wants to be an engineer today.  We’ve turned down the ambition level.’  Added Judy, ‘Ambition comes from the parents. People have to get it.  It will probably take a crisis [to get us refocused].’ “

The fact is that any ambitious kid would be crazy to want to go into engineering today, again because people like Friedman have ruined the engineering job market.

[End of Matloff excerpt]

Posted by jonjayray on June 28, 2005, 05:38 AM | #

My goodness!
Fred has outdone himself

His comments add up to about four times the length of my post on China

Maybe you should try to be more succinct, Fred

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 28, 2005, 07:36 AM | #

Thanks for that valuable constructive criticism, John, and I’ll certainly strive for it. 

I see, though, you haven’t chosen to “notice” the passage from Prof. Matloff I quoted, to wit:

“The fact is that it has always been the case that most Americans, including most immigrant Americans, have been in the [immigration-]restrictionist camp. The problem has been that the wishes of the populace have always been trumped by the special interests [...]”

“Majority rules,” John? ... Did you write that somewhere, by chance? ...

Posted by jonjayray on June 28, 2005, 07:48 AM | #

“The fact is that it has always been the case that most Americans, including most immigrant Americans, have been in the [immigration-]restrictionist camp. The problem has been that the wishes of the populace have always been trumped by the special interests [...]”

I don’t doubt it but is the Congressional majority that rules, not the majority of the people

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on June 28, 2005, 09:29 AM | #

Just one small point from above. “With sufficient capital any job can be done more cheaply overseas.” True, but the main difference between a developed market and an emerging market is cost of capital.  This difference has been artificially suppressed by the super-low real interest rates of the last decade. 

Once Greenspan has been carted off to the funny farm interest rates will rise to their proper level (short rates 2% above expected inflation, long 3% above, i.e. 7% Fed Funds and 8% long bond, given today’s forward looking inflation is about 5%, when you correct BLS’s Enron accounting.) Differentials between low and high risk countries will then reappear and U.S/Europe/Japan’s number 1 cost advantage over the 3rd world will reassert itself.  Roll on the day!