> Yes, but when "everyone else" just means certain groups of high-skilled workers, owners of large businesses, government employees, and people reliant on government benefits, because they're the only ones whose income is not reduced by the importation of labor, you have a pretty big problem for your country.
Software engineers are the the high-skilled jobs being protected by H1B caps, you know, the top 10% income in the country.
> OK, but no one is talking about giving a monopoly to a single person, so the negative effects are going to be vastly smaller.
I've made an argument in kind, this is an argument of degree. I'll answer in degree: its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages. If it were to suppress wages a lot, its because the monopoly was very strong. Monopoly power does not require having a single actor, it can happen with many. A good example is medicine: no doctor in the world that is board certified can provide medical care in the united states. Only a small subset of doctors in the world can: american doctors certified by american institutions. The result is that doctors outside the US are willing to provide top level care at 10~20U$S an hour, while they do so at 10-20x in the US.
The result is also evident: medical care is extremely expensive in the US.
> Good thing no one is suggesting that. Keeping foreign labor out of the market is not the same thing as a monopoly.
It is to the employer: they are unable to buy from someone else. There is no big difference between making it illegal to import cars, and give a monopoly to american car companies than to make it illegal to bring foreign car workers. The result is that the cost of manufacture rises for everyone. When you import anything from outside, you are also importing the labor: untaxed, unfettered, sometimes illegal labor. IF you were to bring the worker from the other country into the US, the US would enjoy higher tax revenues and have the exact same GDP (ceteris paribus).
Countries were people leave enter a spiral of misery, countries were people enter have the exact opposite effect!
> In the long term, I'd prefer to pay more for my computer and phone and know that people who my children and grandchildren are going to share a country with are going to have each other's interests in mind
I believe you believe this, but I also believe you don't. Ban any foreign product from your consumption today and you will see why: everything would turn insanely expensive and inconvenient. In any case, I reiterate that your model of how an economy can prosper with protectionism is only in the rhetoric of politicians and in the real of climate denialism or flat-earthers. It just not whats observable. The freedom of trade is almost 1-1 correlated to country prosperity around the world, and the most miserable countries are the protectionists ones.
>I've made an argument in kind, this is an argument of degree.
Yes, of course it is. The degree to which you restrict participation in a market matters.
>its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages.
What does that matter?
>Monopoly power does not require having a single actor, it can happen with many.
The "mono" part of "monopoly" disagrees with you. But there is no point in squabbling over words here. We both understand that there are degrees to which you can restrict participation in a market, and the more you restrict participation, the more severe are the effects of the restriction.
>It is to the employer: they are unable to buy from someone else.
They have tens of millions of people to buy from.
>The result is that the cost of manufacture rises for everyone.
I'm not sure why you're bothering to mention this. No one is disputing that restricting imports raises the price of goods, or that restricting the importation of labor raises the price of labor.
>the US would enjoy higher tax revenues and have the exact same GDP (ceteris paribus).
There is of course a third alternative, which is to impose duties on imports of goods in addition to restricting the importation of labor, which would substantially raise wages for low and medium skilled workers in this country.
>Countries were people leave enter a spiral of misery, countries were people enter have the exact opposite effect!
That depends on who is coming and going, and why they are doing so.
>Ban any foreign product from your consumption today and you will see why: everything would turn insanely expensive and inconvenient.
Why not mention the lesser alternative to banning, which is to impose duties? Of course outright banning things for which our existing chain of production is insufficient would cause massive problems.
>In any case, I reiterate that your model of how an economy can prosper with protectionism is only in the rhetoric of politicians and in the real of climate denialism or flat-earthers.
You keep talking about the economy prospering, by which I assume you mean GDP going up fast. My goal is for the people to prosper, not the economy. Of course the economy must prosper to a degree for the people to prosper, and it's attractive to try to optimize GDP because it's an easy thing to measure, but it's not the main goal. Sometimes optimizing for GDP is at odds with building healthy communities, and when it is, I would prefer to pick building healthy communities. Or perhaps you think those two things can never be at odds for some reason?
Talk to a professional economist. You are going against the field of economics as a whole, and you will not find economists that agree with your models, factual statements or otherwise.
> The "mono" part of "monopoly" disagrees with you.
You are using a rhetorical definition, not an economics one.
> its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages. What does that matter?
Economic efficiency is almost synonymous with reducing rents
> They have tens of millions of people to buy from.
Shocks to the supply curve change equilibrium points in markets. There's elasticity of demand/supply.
> There is of course a third alternative, which is to impose duties on imports of goods in addition to restricting the importation of labor, which would substantially raise wages for low and medium skilled workers in this country.
Economic literature has been arguing the exact opposite for literally centuries.
> That depends on who is coming and going, and why they are doing so.
This is almost a Malthusian model or labor and resources and it will give you dangerous and obviously wrong ideas, like the solution to economic prosperity is marginalizing and kicking people out.
> Why not mention the lesser alternative to banning, which is to impose duties? Of course outright banning things for which our existing chain of production is insufficient would cause massive problems.
A 100% duty is a ban. A 50% duty is half a ban. You are objecting to the crudeness of a ban. I am objecting on the value of any restriction whatsoever by any criteria or method. Look for any chart of economic liberty and see where countries stand in free trade and economic prosperity. This is not a topic of debate, it's absolutely settled. Im trying not to be callous about that, but really its not something that should be debated, akin to refuting gravity and there is more than enough documentation in the open wild to read about.
> You keep talking about the economy prospering, by which I assume you mean GDP going up fast. My goal is for the people to prosper, not the economy
Just a metric like any other, the goal is definitely people's desired prosperity.
- In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.
>Economic efficiency is almost synonymous with reducing rents
I wouldn't dispute that.
>Shocks to the supply curve change equilibrium points in markets. There's elasticity of demand/supply.
I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is, though I don't dispute that either.
>Economic literature has been arguing the exact opposite for literally centuries.
You yourself have stated that restricting the supply of doctors and lawyers raises the wages of those professions, so that their purchasing power is higher relative to other professions than it would be if those restrictions were eased or removed. But the same thing wouldn't happen for unskilled or medium skilled workers? What the economics literature you refer to says is that it would lower their purchasing power, but I don't think you can deny that it would raise their purchasing power relative to other people in society.
>This is almost a Malthusian model or labor and resources and it will give you dangerous and obviously wrong ideas, like the solution to economic prosperity is marginalizing and kicking people out.
Again with the economic prosperity. Do you think a country is nothing more than an economy?
>I am objecting on the value of any restriction whatsoever by any criteria or method.
And you're totally justified in making that objection if the only thing you find valuable is economic growth. If you value things like social cohesion and loyalty to one's countrymen, which I guess you do not, then I'm not sure how you could dispute that having huge numbers of unassimilated foreigners in the country who are there for no purpose except to make money has the potential to cause problems in those areas.
>Look for any chart of economic liberty and see where countries stand in free trade and economic prosperity. This is not a topic of debate, it's absolutely settled.
I don't dispute that.
>In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest.
In their economic interest, yes. I don't dispute that. But the health of a society is more than the sum of the net worth of each member.
It seems there is very little or nothing we disagree with as far as economics is concerned. You just seem to believe economics is the only thing that matters, for some reason.
If what you care about is something other than economic prosperity, you have to use other tools other than economic analysis. It's not a core problem of political economy to make a system where different interpretations of what social cohesion is and how to use economic policy to satisfy them.
Though the little that political economy does to touch those subjects it will tell you: the most cohesive and prosperous societies are those that respect life and liberty and allow people to trade amongst themselves as freely as possible, and that restrictions flame anger, dissent and war. I personally find it ridiculous to argue that making most of Americans poorer and sicker to protect the wages of doctors is socially cohesive.
>If what you care about is something other than economic prosperity, you have to use other tools other than economic analysis.
Right, it's a political issue. We are not slaves to an economic system; the economic system exists to serve us.
>the most cohesive and prosperous societies are those that respect life and liberty and allow people to trade amongst themselves as freely as possible
In which direction does the arrow of causality point?
>I personally find it ridiculous to argue that making most of Americans poorer and sicker to protect the wages of doctors is socially cohesive.
I certainly am not in favor of employing economic protectionism on behalf of high skilled workers exclusively. It should be used on behalf of low skilled workers as well. They are our countrymen; we have a shared destiny, and should put them before others as we would hope they would do for us and our posterity in times of trouble.
> I certainly am not in favor of employing economic protectionism on behalf of high skilled workers exclusively. It should be used on behalf of low skilled workers as well. They are our countrymen; we have a shared destiny, and should put them before others as we would hope they would do for us and our posterity in times of trouble.
I am willing to accept any proposal of protectionism and restriction you are willing to offer with one condition alone: that is done equally to all, or none at all. That is the equivalent to my original proposition that there should be no restrictions.
Software engineers are the the high-skilled jobs being protected by H1B caps, you know, the top 10% income in the country.
> OK, but no one is talking about giving a monopoly to a single person, so the negative effects are going to be vastly smaller.
I've made an argument in kind, this is an argument of degree. I'll answer in degree: its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages. If it were to suppress wages a lot, its because the monopoly was very strong. Monopoly power does not require having a single actor, it can happen with many. A good example is medicine: no doctor in the world that is board certified can provide medical care in the united states. Only a small subset of doctors in the world can: american doctors certified by american institutions. The result is that doctors outside the US are willing to provide top level care at 10~20U$S an hour, while they do so at 10-20x in the US.
The result is also evident: medical care is extremely expensive in the US.
> Good thing no one is suggesting that. Keeping foreign labor out of the market is not the same thing as a monopoly.
It is to the employer: they are unable to buy from someone else. There is no big difference between making it illegal to import cars, and give a monopoly to american car companies than to make it illegal to bring foreign car workers. The result is that the cost of manufacture rises for everyone. When you import anything from outside, you are also importing the labor: untaxed, unfettered, sometimes illegal labor. IF you were to bring the worker from the other country into the US, the US would enjoy higher tax revenues and have the exact same GDP (ceteris paribus).
Countries were people leave enter a spiral of misery, countries were people enter have the exact opposite effect!
> In the long term, I'd prefer to pay more for my computer and phone and know that people who my children and grandchildren are going to share a country with are going to have each other's interests in mind
I believe you believe this, but I also believe you don't. Ban any foreign product from your consumption today and you will see why: everything would turn insanely expensive and inconvenient. In any case, I reiterate that your model of how an economy can prosper with protectionism is only in the rhetoric of politicians and in the real of climate denialism or flat-earthers. It just not whats observable. The freedom of trade is almost 1-1 correlated to country prosperity around the world, and the most miserable countries are the protectionists ones.