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When international trade consists only of material and not migrants Mass wealth can only be generated in advanced economies. For the people of developing count
by ipnon 7y ago
When international trade consists only of material and not migrants
Mass wealth can only be generated in advanced economies. For the people of developing countries to benefit their countries must participate somehow in these advanced economies. With globalization they are allowed to participate only by the exchange of goods (either selling manufacturing in developed countries like China or natural resources in undeveloped countries like Congo). Before globalization, they could not participate at all.
Advanced economies like the US and EU allow immigration only in a limited capacity, and they do so in way that benefits mainly the investor class, entrepreneurs and high-skill workers. Consider the typical Silicon Valley visa, the H1-B. The H1-B only allows corporations to sponsor highly-skilled workers to take jobs that are hard to fill with Americans. Think software engineers working at Google. This kind of immigration benefits investors in Google and workers in the software industry while increasing competition for Americans in the market for high paying jobs. Excluded from all of this especially are low-skill foreign workers.
Everyone wants to be rich, and they will not stop this pursuit. As long as the majority of people in this world, those who are living in non-advanced economies, can only become rich by the selling of manufacturing and natural resources instead of their labor, then there will always be billions of people whose work effects the planet's environment in a significantly damaging way.
- solotronics 7y agoIn no way does a H1-B benefit anybody but possibly some execs. It is exploited to drive down wages in our high demand industry. Probably the worst is that instead of taking new grads and mentoring them up there are many places that would rather contract some H1-B instead.
- dnissley 7y agoH1-B definitely benefits H1-B recipients.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoThough they may be better off as a result of getting an H1-B, it's not clear that the system benefits them compared to other possible immigration methods.
- titanomachy 7y agoMaybe it doesn't benefit American software developers very much, since they would prefer less supply in their industry and higher pay. Non-Americans are still people, and they benefit a lot from this. And they often become Americans, so America benefits by gaining skilled and hardworking people who otherwise would be stuck producing less value in some worse place.
- tengbretson 7y agoNo one asked for any of this. Where is the power button on this thing??
- ipnon 7y agoThe power button for my commentary or the power button for exclusionary immigration policy?
- tengbretson 7y ago.
- ipnon 7y agoIf you are interested in a reasonable and effective proposal to this problem I recommend you read chapter 3 of Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl. They propose that every citizen be able to sponsor a migrant themselves.
- fuzzfactor 7y agoInteresting concept. Food for thought. In the 18th century before American states were united, it was not a democracy at all but it was still considered a _free_ country because ordinary servants and indigents were encouraged to settle in the colonies where they could realistically aspire to property ownership for their descendants, and maybe even themselves, in ways that would never be possible in the Old World where everything was already spoken for generations before they came along. One reason it was called a New World. Back then they had a different way of approaching a similar concept in one of the southern states, among cultures where slavery had an unbroken legacy since before ancient Roman times. By this point bondage was just beginning to gain a foothold on agricultural plantations because great returns can be made when they scale unpaid hard labor. Only to eventually escalate later to more greedy & cruel things which we know citizens had not seen before on this continent. But plantations were not yet very large or numerous, and common Londoners were being tempted to sail the sea and start a new life as a colonist, where an industrious laborer or farmer could become a homesteader and _expect to be able to own a Negro within seven years_. And they showed the math in pounds & shillings.