Immigration: No Free Lunch
It’s NOT the economy, stupid. I note, and have noted many times before, that the immigration question among the mainstream is continuously presented (almost solely) in economic terms. The latest manifestation of this is the claim that immigration is the “closest thing to a free lunch” since population growth fuels economic growth via an increased number of workers and consumers. This Ponzi scheme view of economic growth fails for a number of reasons, including the obvious point that a larger economy divided over a larger population is not increasing the per capita payoff – it may be a larger pie, but not larger pieces for each individual. I note that as immigration has flooded into America over the past several decades, allegedly “fueling economic growth,” real wages for the typical American have stagnated, and the American middle class is in a well-documented and oft-discussed decline. Is it that all this “growth” is lining the pockets of big business, and also benefiting t...