This is a idealistic thought experiment, but Europe is still reeling from the the Syrian refugee crisis and that is just one small country. Throwing open boarde

This is a idealistic thought experiment, but Europe is still reeling from the the Syrian refugee crisis and that is just one small country. Throwing open boarders when there’s differential welfare systems would be chaos. The world wouldn’t be $78T richer, it would be $78T poorer because it would lead to widespread civil war. Even if the author was right about the economic impacts she is discounting people’s tolerance for change, especially is a country’s conservative faction. For developed nations it would effectively be asking for forfiteture. The author uses Greece as an example, but Greece has nowhere the poverty of much of the developing world (and that’s a big number). What incentive is there for the average middle class American to partake in such a grand experiment? Look at what happened when you introduced scarcity to an educated and industrious population after WW1. Mass genocide. And let’s not forget housing inflation in developed countries. Immigrants are not going to head to Reno, they’re going to go to cities like NY, SF, LA, London—cities that they’ve heard about and where there are already large immigrant communities. Good luck adding another million people to NY over a three year period.