The nation-state is a good practical institution, but it does not provide the final moral delineation of which people count and which do not. So commentators on trade and immigration should stress the cosmopolitan perspective, knowing that the practical imperatives of the nation-state will not be underrepresented in the ensuing debate.
Read the whole column.
Also, read Peter Sutherland.
migration is the original strategy for people seeking to escape poverty, mitigate risk, and build a better life. It has been with us since the dawn of mankind, and its economic impact today is massive. Migrant remittances exceed the value of all overseas development aid combined, to say nothing of the taxes that migrants pay, the investments they make, and the trade they stimulate.
Pointer from Kari Kohn.
Development economist William Easterly coined the dichotomy between searchers and planners. The strong relationship between migration and poverty reduction shows the value of bottom-up searching.
Cowen and Caplan kept telling us in the 2000s that obviously, massive immigration from Mexico was empirically good for Americans: look how high home prices in California are!
Okay, so the events of 2007-2008 deflated that intellectual bubble. Cowen is a smart guy and he sort of knows he lost that debate pretty badly to his commenters. So, now, he’s doubled down by saying that his advice was morally right (even if, maybe it wasn’t quite empirically, well, you know, empirically accurate).
But, it’s just nuts when you stop and look at the real world. Mexico isn’t famine-plagued, it’s now the second most obese country on earth. Over five billion people live in countries poorer than Mexico. There’s no moral logic to this, it’s just CYA for Cowen’s screw-ups in the last decade over immigration.