Today, I am an Indian

[KrazyHorse]

HOLY ****, IT'S LIKE YOU LIVE IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE WHERE THE LAWS OF LOGIC DO NOT APPLY

[Heraclitus]

As far as linking to the studies, use ****ing Google. Get some initiative. You need to learn how to research independently.

You do know that if I google "Jews rule the world" I will get a few/many pages supporting this right?


Even if I avoid such phrases, If I knew very little about the Jews or what kind of people usually claim this I might be led to believe it is true if the site or study seemed to be legit. And even if you argued that Jews ruled the world and I knew for a fact Jews ruled the world it would be much more conductive for any debate if I read the same Jews rule the world tracts you read.

[KrazyHorse]

DO YOU HAVE A POINT, YOU ****ING IDIOT?

[Heraclitus]

No, it doesn't. If the immigrant workers are poor substitutes for the native workers and are instead complements then their immigration can increase the real wages of everybody in the receiving country. This is an empirical question, not a theoretical one.

If I may comment this as well.


This is logical but isn't it also true that higher labour costs in almost any sector are an incentive for automation? Unless the immigrant labour is the one needed to invent/maintain/design the machines, isn't there a potential hidden cost of a few higher paying jobs that would have otherwise been available for the native population?

[Heraclitus]

DO YOU HAVE A POINT, YOU ****ING IDIOT?

It is good to know exactly which sources everyone involved in a debate is citing, this improves quality.

[Heraclitus]

RICH people SIGNAL they are HIGH status to other RICH and wannabe rich people by calling workers who dislike illegal immigration xenophobes and racists thus showing they aren't POOR people.

RICH people SIGNAL they are HIGH status to other RICH and wannabe rich people by calling workers who dislike "unreliable", "newfangled" tech Luddites thus showing they aren't POOR people.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MACHINERY DISPLACING POOR WORKERS AND HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS DISPLACING RICH PEOPLE, YOU ****ING MENTAL MIDGET?

You asked why the first is ok and the second is not. To quote myself:

What RICH PEOPLE like, is almost by definition what society considers to be "ok" as you put it in the post I first quoted.

[Heraclitus]

Please type faster, I'm really enjoying this but I may have to leave in about 30 min.

[KrazyHorse]

Hera, think it through:

let's say that you can build a robot that does a job for 25k per year or you can hire a Mexican to do the same job.

The cost of the robot is paid to an engineer who designs, builds and maintains the robot. Say 4 robots per engineer, who get 100k per year. Paying this engineer increases the prices of all technical-minded labour in the economy (over time; initially, it just raises the prices for engineers with that specific skill-set). These people are already well-paid relative to the average person. Automation increases the GENERAL welfare, but it also skews the gains in favour of the people needed to keep the automation running (who are high-skilled high-income people)

Mexicans who work in the US are like the robots in that they reduce the need for native workers to do the jobs they do instead. But WHAT DO THE MEXICANS DO WITH THEIR MONEY? They don't build walls of banknotes. They purchase goods and services from Americans with them, or send the money home where eventually it's used to purchase American goods and services in trade (if the money stays in Mexico then Mexico is simply giving away labour to the US for free).

If the jobs Mexicans do were already being done by poor people in the US, are consumed by rich people, and the goods the Mexicans consume are produced by rich people then while the general welfare increases, the poor lose out badly. All the gains and more go to Mexicans and the rich.

If the jobs Mexicans do were not previously being done by the poor (meaning that the influx of Mexicans allows a higher volume of this work to be done than in the previous equilibrium), the stuff Mexicans consume is made by poor Americans (fast food, cars etc) and the stuff that Mexicans do is consumed by both rich and poor Americans then the gains flow to both rich and poor.

Mexicans are like robots which take input of certain American goods and services and output labour. Robots generally take input of high-skilled workers and output low-skill labour equivalents. Depending on the exact jobs the Mexicans do and the things they consume, the gains may be concentrated among the rich (who also might extract gains from poor Americans) or might be more evenly distributed. Again, this has to do with whether Mexicans are COMPLEMENTS or SUBSTITUTES for American unskilled labour. And as previously stated, there is evidence to suggest that they are, generally, complements. IIRC there is some evidence that minority unskilled labour (along with the previously mentioned immigrant labour) is adversely affected by unskilled immigration, while white unskilled labour is not.

This is not a theoretical question. It is empirical.

[KrazyHorse]

You asked why the first is ok and the second is not. To quote myself:

In other words, after I yelled at you, you finally refined your argument to the point where it made some kind of sense.

[Heraclitus]

In other words, after I yelled at you, you finally refined your argument to the point where it made some kind of sense.

Progress

[KrazyHorse]

Papers on the effects of immigration:

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/peri_accounting_sept_09.pdf

Finds that immigration increases employment in the native population, increases total factor productivity in the native population (TFP is the "magic" part of productivity from technical and business innovation, etc) and decreases capital intensity (so that less capital is used to produce more stuff). Most intriguing, it finds evidence that the skill bias of TFP (high productivity skews gains toward high skills) is REDUCED by immigration. Immigration causes LESS inequality than technical progress.

Another by Peri:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12956

By Ottoviano and Peri:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14188

finds short-run negative consequences on wages of immigration and long-run positive effects. Finds dramatically negative effects on previous immigrants of new immigrants

Kremer and Watt suggest that low-skill immigration allows high-skill women to be freed of housework and childcare, increasing the supply of high-skill labour and reducing the disparity between rich and poor natives, with accompanying data from high-immigration countries (HK and Singapore)

http://www.cid.harvard.edu/bluesky/papers/kremer_globalization_0609.pdf

Borjas et al suggest that African-American wages are those most severely affected by illegal immigration:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12518

[KrazyHorse]

I'm not aware of any serious economist who's against high-skill immigration, by the way. In general, IIUC most economists think that low-skill immigration may or may not adversely impact the poor (at least in the short run), but they also know that low-skill immigration increases general welfare (measured in real national income, say), even if it is bad for inequality (and may thus be bad for general welfare measured in some more inclusive fashion)

The point is that the arguments against immigration (even unskilled immigration) actually apply MORE STRONGLY to technical progress in manufacturing, farming etc. Yet you don't see people railing against technical progress. The non-economically illiterate response is to claim that there are negative consequences from immigration which go beyond the labour market. Some of these are based on false impressions or prejudice (criminality outside of illegal immigration itself is, as far as it's possible to tell, lower amongst immigrants than amongst the equivalent native population, generally younger males). Some are based on anger at the fact that it's illegal immigration (fair enough). Some are based on costs to local and state governments (again, fair enough). Some claim a loss of American identity (or something which does verge on the xenophobic, along with ignorant of American history).

[Heraclitus]

Hera, think it through:

let's say that you can build a robot that does a job for 25k per year or you can hire a Mexican to do the same job.

The cost of the robot is paid to an engineer who designs, builds and maintains the robot. Say 4 robots per engineer, who get 100k per year. Paying this engineer increases the prices of all technical-minded labour in the economy (over time; initially, it just raises the prices for engineers with that specific skill-set). These people are already well-paid relative to the average person. Automation increases the GENERAL welfare, but it also skews the gains in favour of the people needed to keep the automation running (who are high-skilled high-income people)

Your argument makes perfect sense.

I just wish to comment this bit. It raises the prices for engineers with that specific skill set, doesn't that also mean more people will go for engineering jobs? Sure the people doing low income jobs probably on average don't have what it takes to be engineers but still.


And another thought: Don't you if you employ robots and your own potential-engineer population exhausted, isn't there a greater demand for foreign immigrant engineers, which are more likely to have a higher IQs?

And high IQ correlates positively (wealth, health, employment) and negatively (crime rate, violent behaviour, drug use) with many important things. Traits which the state and its citizens wish as many of them would have.


(crazy part here):
Sure a highly automated economy is by your probably a worse place for the lowest class but overall I assume it could create the GDP as would a economy that uses cheap labour but with much fewer human beings. And as long as you have a high GDP per capita can't you just welfare your way closer to egalitee? I think in the long run we are probably all obsolete, technological progress will drive low IQ or poorly motivated people to the bottom why forestall the process by reducing the incentive for automation rather than embrace it as quickly as possible before falling IQs (since many developed countries have shown a reversal of the Flynn effect) relegate more people than absolutely necessary to welfare queens?

[KrazyHorse]

I just wish to comment this bit. It raises the prices for engineers with that specific skill set, doesn't that also mean more people will go for engineering jobs? Sure the people doing low income jobs probably on average don't have what it takes to be engineers but still.

That's what I said: over time, people who would have become biophysicists become magic mexican-replacing robot engineers. But the movement is generally from one fairly high-skilled path to another. It's not "either become a fry clerk or an engineer".

[Heraclitus]

Papers on the effects of immigration:

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/peri_accounting_sept_09.pdf

Finds that immigration increases employment in the native population, increases total factor productivity in the native population (TFP is the "magic" part of productivity from technical and business innovation, etc) and decreases capital intensity (so that less capital is used to produce more stuff). Most intriguing, it finds evidence that the skill bias of TFP (high productivity skews gains toward high skills) is REDUCED by immigration. Immigration causes LESS inequality than technical progress.

Another by Peri:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12956

By Ottoviano and Peri:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14188

finds short-run negative consequences on wages of immigration and long-run positive effects. Finds dramatically negative effects on previous immigrants of new immigrants

Kremer and Watt suggest that low-skill immigration allows high-skill women to be freed of housework and childcare, increasing the supply of high-skill labour and reducing the disparity between rich and poor natives, with accompanying data from high-immigration countries (HK and Singapore)

http://www.cid.harvard.edu/bluesky/papers/kremer_globalization_0609.pdf

Borjas et al suggest that African-American wages are those most severely affected by illegal immigration:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12518

Ok, I'll get on reading the links before posting anything else.

Borjas et al suggest that African-American wages are those most severely affected by illegal immigration:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12518

This is pretty clear even on anecdotal evidence. Its easy to spot that this matches their policy preferences but not the preferences of the African-American elite.