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I think this is one of the unintended consequences of strong welfare states. If your government spends $xx,xxx per resident per year then someone who arrives an

I think this is one of the unintended consequences of strong welfare states. If your government spends $xx,xxx per resident per year then someone who arrives and doesn't contribute at least $xx,xxx is a net drain on resources. At the VERY least, you need to ensure your population produces at least $xx,xxx per year in gov't revenue. While I am strongly in support of things like free healthcare, education, etc. I can also see how adding residents who aren't net contributors threatens those systems. If Canada let any 60 year old American with health problems immigrae regardless of their ability to help pay for the health system it would reduce care for existing Canadian residents. After all, they're almost certainly going to cost more over their life than they kick in via tax. Of course, the same argument can go dark places, like forcing people to get exit visas to leave. After all, the state put a lot of money in to your upbringing, you owe them! Current visa regimes work pretty well to encourage this sort of behaviour. Young, educated people with lots of promise who will work hard (thus the tie to employment) or old people with millions can move. Others, well, can't. Barring that, sometimes less-educated people can move but in ways that try to ensure they don't become a burden (you work here for a set time and then you're kicked out) I sometimes wonder if the current system of heavy indebtedness for school and housing helps ensure people work as hard as possible and pay as much in taxes as possible as opposed to allowing them more leisure. Without having to cover a mortgage or health insurance, how many people would work part time? Or how many couples would have a stay at home parent? There were fewer formal barriers to moving not that long ago. The US had pretty much unrestricted immigration in the 19th century, but it also spent very little per resident. Passport restrictions in Europe showed up for WWI (well, briefly for Napoleon too IIRC) and never really left, probably because WWI also roughly coincided with cheap international travel.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Which is the problem with the gig jobs - yes people are employed but they don't earn enough.
ianai 8y ago
And you’re wrong. Population growth creates market growth. The humans that literally cannot contribute to the output directly create the broadest and often deepest demands. Babies need all sorts of things their parents wouldn’t otherwise purchase. Immigrants aren’t babies, necessarily, but they do increase market size. This is perhaps a very strong argument for UBI: empowering people with enough for the basics will ensure the contribution to market demand from population growth.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  if I run an ice cream collective, where 10 people make ice cream and share the results amongst themselves in a Universal Basic Ice cream scheme, but ice cream making is hard because the tubs are 30kg and hard to carry, I'm going to have a disincentive from letting frail people in to my collective since it will mean less ice cream for the rest of us. I will, however, be OK letting in strong people, or young people with promise, because I want to keep getting ice cream when I'm old. How is a bigger market less output per capita better? Say your countryA has 100 people each capable of producing $100 worth of stuff in a day. You introduce a UBI of $50. People have $50 left over The neighboring countryB has a lot of uneducated people (good folks! Just as smart. Just had less opportunity to learn) who move to your own. If five of countryB's people move to countryA they can go to school and draw on public resources and become skilled and make a future net positive contribution without too much drain on countryA in the present. You've got 20 countryA folks for every one countryB person. A few % cut in UBI or few % raise in taxes won't hurt If fifty of them do it it becomes a much larger burden on the present - now there are only two countryA'ers to support countryB'ers. The support systems that everyone relies on will be stretched pretty thin. I'm very much in favour of migration and am, in fact, an immigrant (left the US). But the more a government spends on its people the more it demands back from them, in the aggregate.
dalbasal 8y ago
That's definitely an argument that comes up, with purchase, in politics. I don't really think it has much (if any) validity. Taken as a whole, skilled migrants ar just to unlikely to be net recipients of redistributive governance. Skilled migration usually means educated, healthy, employable young (< 35-40) people. That's almost always a population in terms good tax/consumption ratios. I'd also note that I'm more comfortable (as a liberal) with denying migrants certain positive rights (eg unemployment payments) than basic freedoms. I think the welfarist-natuonalist argument amounts to a kind of "optimising-in our-favour." Why not get an even better tax/expenditure ratio out of migrants.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  I think we agree - skilled migrants are fine. I'm a skilled migrant (I hope!) and I pay more in income tax than about 90-95% of the people in my adopted country. But they wouldn't be thrilled if I'd tried to move here when I was 70. Unless I had a giant pile of cash, of course. I don't _like_ that it pretty much all comes down to money. I'd love to be able to say "this buddy of mine is a broke artist but he's super sound, great guy, plays the drums like nobody else and brings joy to all around him - that's the kind of person you want right?" but I don't know of a way to implement that sort of system without 1) being incredibly prone to bias and 2) being pretty expensive if you're not careful.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Which is the problem with the gig jobs - yes people are employed but they don't earn enough.

ianai 8y ago

And you’re wrong. Population growth creates market growth. The humans that literally cannot contribute to the output directly create the broadest and often deepest demands. Babies need all sorts of things their parents wouldn’t otherwise purchase. Immigrants aren’t babies, necessarily, but they do increase market size. This is perhaps a very strong argument for UBI: empowering people with enough for the basics will ensure the contribution to market demand from population growth.

CalRobert 8y ago
if I run an ice cream collective, where 10 people make ice cream and share the results amongst themselves in a Universal Basic Ice cream scheme, but ice cream making is hard because the tubs are 30kg and hard to carry, I'm going to have a disincentive from letting frail people in to my collective since it will mean less ice cream for the rest of us. I will, however, be OK letting in strong people, or young people with promise, because I want to keep getting ice cream when I'm old. How is a bigger market less output per capita better? Say your countryA has 100 people each capable of producing $100 worth of stuff in a day. You introduce a UBI of $50. People have $50 left over The neighboring countryB has a lot of uneducated people (good folks! Just as smart. Just had less opportunity to learn) who move to your own. If five of countryB's people move to countryA they can go to school and draw on public resources and become skilled and make a future net positive contribution without too much drain on countryA in the present. You've got 20 countryA folks for every one countryB person. A few % cut in UBI or few % raise in taxes won't hurt If fifty of them do it it becomes a much larger burden on the present - now there are only two countryA'ers to support countryB'ers. The support systems that everyone relies on will be stretched pretty thin. I'm very much in favour of migration and am, in fact, an immigrant (left the US). But the more a government spends on its people the more it demands back from them, in the aggregate.

dalbasal 8y ago

That's definitely an argument that comes up, with purchase, in politics. I don't really think it has much (if any) validity. Taken as a whole, skilled migrants ar just to unlikely to be net recipients of redistributive governance. Skilled migration usually means educated, healthy, employable young (< 35-40) people. That's almost always a population in terms good tax/consumption ratios. I'd also note that I'm more comfortable (as a liberal) with denying migrants certain positive rights (eg unemployment payments) than basic freedoms. I think the welfarist-natuonalist argument amounts to a kind of "optimising-in our-favour." Why not get an even better tax/expenditure ratio out of migrants.

CalRobert 8y ago
I think we agree - skilled migrants are fine. I'm a skilled migrant (I hope!) and I pay more in income tax than about 90-95% of the people in my adopted country. But they wouldn't be thrilled if I'd tried to move here when I was 70. Unless I had a giant pile of cash, of course. I don't _like_ that it pretty much all comes down to money. I'd love to be able to say "this buddy of mine is a broke artist but he's super sound, great guy, plays the drums like nobody else and brings joy to all around him - that's the kind of person you want right?" but I don't know of a way to implement that sort of system without 1) being incredibly prone to bias and 2) being pretty expensive if you're not careful.