In three weeks, I premiere my all-new course on the “Economics of Immigration.” If GMU sticks to its current plan, I will start teaching it in-person on August 27 to a mixed class of grad students and undergrads. As you’d expect, the class closely follows the organization of Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, but with extra time devoted to criticism of immigration from social scientists like George Borjas, Paul Collier, and Garett Jones. The course also adds sections on the environment and contagious disease, two important topics that I neglected to address in Open Borders.
There are still ten open spots in the class, but in any case the whole world is welcome to read the notes and try the homework.
READER COMMENTS
Michael Pettengill
Aug 13 2020 at 10:57am
Do you mention the critical role immigration provides to a free market economy: consumers, customers?
I think the answer is no. In fact, your notes imply consumption is a burden on the economy of a nation.
I do note that a top objection to immigration reflects the common economic policy axiom of conservatives: customer income comes primarily from government. Eg, government must cut taxes to put more money in consumer pockets. Government must cut costs, which are always labor costs, to put money in consumer pockets.
Immigrants are, more than natives, the identity of worker/consumer.
Without consumers, there can be no producers.
But consumers must have income, and “illegals” work to get all the income the spend as consumers in good times and bad.
(I grew up when the worker/consumer identity was axiomatic and thus generally unstated. Eg, FDR and Keynes focused on wage income to drive the economy, not government handouts. Today, the GOP talks of how goverment must put money in consumer pockets, often by cutting worker income, but never putting money in immigrant consumer pockets.)
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