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How much of a jerk do you have to be to oppose immigration?
YouNotSneaky has a great post in which he calculates how big a "jerk" you have to be to oppose immigration. The answer - proven with considerable mathematical sophistication - is that the exact "jerk factor" depends on theta, the extent to which marginal utility diminishes with income. The results, which you are unlikely to see in the JPE, make me laugh (but note that others will be insulted) are graphed here. Read the whole thing for details on the calculations which do make a serious point.
Hat tip to Dani Rodrik.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on May 24, 2007 at 07:05 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
The most popular children's name in Israel at the moment is Muhammad. Should Israel have an open border too?
Lebanon pretty much did, in 1900 it was majority Christian, today it is majority Muslim and all the Christians are leaving.
Would Tibet be Tibet if it was majority Bantu?
Answers, please.
Posted by: adrian at May 24, 2007 7:31:34 AM
Just about as big a jerk as you have to be to oppose complete redistribution of income and the abolition of private property.
Can I take it that you are also in favour of income tax rates of up to 100% Tyler?
The fact is that the world isn't, and shouldn't be, ruled simply by cost-benefit analyses (especially those which ignore 2nd order effects).
Note, if everybody who ignored Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income in their work was a jerk, that would make 99% of economists jerks. Which may be true...
Posted by: Neal Hockley at May 24, 2007 7:41:51 AM
Just about as big a jerk as you have to be to oppose complete redistribution of income and the abolition of private property.
Can I take it that you are also in favour of income tax rates of up to 100% Tyler?
The fact is that the world isn't, and shouldn't be, ruled simply by cost-benefit analyses (especially those which ignore 2nd order effects).
Note, if everybody who ignored Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income in their work was a jerk, that would make 99% of economists jerks. Which may be true...
Posted by: Neal Hockley at May 24, 2007 7:45:00 AM
Sorry for multiple posts, and also for confusing Alex with Tyler. I'll go and lie down I think...
Posted by: Neal Hockley at May 24, 2007 7:46:56 AM
Wow. This is a new low.
Alex, I want you to visit Japan and start calling everyone there "jerks". See how long before you're knocked flat on your ass.
Posted by: Morgan at May 24, 2007 8:08:58 AM
After reading this post, all I can think is that Alex knows the facts aren't on his side, so all he can do is resort to namecalling.
Posted by: Roy at May 24, 2007 8:35:49 AM
Honest question: what am I to think about the Rector numbers that challenge the premise of the YNS post that immigrants are a net gain to the economy?
Posted by: Ted at May 24, 2007 8:51:06 AM
I thought the post by YouNotSneaky was very funny but it has a serious point which all the comments so far are evading. Read the original post and explain where you disagree with the reasoning. What number of immigrants do you consider equal to a native? I want a number.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at May 24, 2007 8:53:32 AM
Alex,
You guys at MR constantly remind me of why I became an economist. Pissing off people like these Know-Knothings is a beautiful thing to watch.
Posted by: GoodnessOfFit at May 24, 2007 8:53:37 AM
What number of immigrants do you consider equal to a native?
Slightly more than the ratio of 7 billion to 300 million. (In other words if it were the US population versus the world population, I would choose the US population over the world by a little bit)
I'm assuming 1 to 1 for you Alex?
Posted by: Jody at May 24, 2007 9:28:42 AM
so this ratio changes with the time of day?
Posted by: stuart at May 24, 2007 9:39:16 AM
Jody, note that puts you at 23 to 1 which, with a theta of around 1 or a little bit more, puts you close to be being normal - thus you should be in favor of more immigration!
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at May 24, 2007 9:40:51 AM
This question is like saying "how much benefit to strangers would lead you to abandon your relatives". Hmm. doesn't being a jerk work the other way?
Posted by: Chris at May 24, 2007 9:47:00 AM
Alex, call me a jerk to my face and I'll deck you. You'll deserve it.
Since you excel at asking unanswerable questions of people, I'll turn the tables: How many people should move into the US before we're "full"? 1 billion? 2 billion?
Posted by: Morgan at May 24, 2007 9:53:15 AM
Two comments. One, you can be in favor of immigration (I read Julian Simon a a kid and most of what he said still seems to make sense), but still be disgusted by the manner in which illegal immigration is handled by this country and the effective amnesty provisions of the current immigration bill. Second, yes I consider Americans as more important than immigrants. I think that is at some level inherent in any definition of patriotism. Asking for exact ratios strikes me as meaningless rhetorical device. Would I ask my government to kill a billion foreigners to rescue one American> Unless it was my child no. Do I expect my government to take care of itss citizens first, yes. In between, the situations are so varried as to be impossible to generalize.
I think the biggest problem with the immigration debate is that being "anti immigrant" used to be code language for being racist. While I cannot deny that there is some of that out there, the current system is such a disaster that a great number of people of good faith believe it has to be fixed. Not fair to tag some arbitrary percentage of that group as "jerks".
Posted by: Greg at May 24, 2007 9:59:45 AM
Morgan - What exactly are the externalities from immigration that concern you so much? I'm used to opposing something because of external costs, but aren't immigrants seeking to exchange their labor? This seems like private exchange and no one's business except the contractor and the worker.
Posted by: jason voorhees at May 24, 2007 10:03:22 AM
Call me a jerk and I'll deck you! Because I'm totally not jerk who threatens to hit people!
Posted by: Will Wilkinson at May 24, 2007 10:05:12 AM
Alex Said:
"I thought the post by YouNotSneaky was very funny but it has a serious point which all the comments so far are evading."
I'm not evading the point, I agree with it: we should take account of Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income.
However, maximising arithmetic sums of welfare is not the only possible moral position, and indeed, it is one eschewed by many economists who refuse to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare, and indeed by everyone who believes in property rights, or any other kind of rights, or indeed any moral principles other than MaxSumUtility.
If one rejects MaxSumUtility as a determining moral principle
(and I don't believe there is anybody who really holds this to be a determining moral principle - what about "deservingness" for example), then YouNotSneaky's calculations, while still interesting, are not determining. Thus, one doesn't have to be a jerk to oppose immigration just as one doesn't have to be a jerk to oppose complete redistribution of income within a country.
If everybody really accepted MaxSumUtility as the determining moral principle, we wouldn't need courts, we could just decide guilt and innocence on the basis of Cost benefit analysis
Posted by: Neal Hockley at May 24, 2007 10:08:25 AM
Will - Yeah, I guess I went over the line. Too bad I didn't write a blog entry basically calling people who disagree with me "jerks."
Posted by: Morgan at May 24, 2007 10:15:58 AM
Neal,
One cannot propose policy without making at least implicit interpersonal utility comparisons and using some sort of social welfare function. You may not write it down like Bergson or Samuelson. But in any policy proposal it is there lurking. The benefit of writing it down and putting all the assumptions on the table rather than engaging in the rhetorical approach that most of the know-knothings use is that we know exactly what is going on in Sneaky's analysis. And if you disagree you can point to the parameter of disagreement.
Posted by: GoodnessOfFit at May 24, 2007 10:30:22 AM
I posted this over at YouNotSneaky!
"I think you are simplifying things. The end effect of allowing low IQ immigrants into the United States will be an eventual decline in the ability of the United States to help anyone in the world.
It's a little like arguing that a private citizen should spend time and money feeding the world's poor. OK, but might that citizen not be better off continuing to earn money that he can spend than exhausting his resources all at once?
Also, you are ignoring the fact that by allowing Third World countries to siphon off their most desperate citizens, they can avoid needed reform. Thus, allowing immigration may help perpetuate the economic problems of citizens in other countries.
Finally, I'm curious as to what results you would get if you were to do a similar analysis but instead substitute the United States for families and immigrants for strangers. How much of an obligation should you have to strangers over your own family in order to avoid being a jerk?"
Posted by: tommy at May 24, 2007 10:50:05 AM
GoodnessOfFit said:
"One cannot propose policy without making at least implicit interpersonal utility comparisons and using some sort of social welfare function."
I agree, and I think that YouNotSneaky's claculations are very useful and interesting. What I am trying to say is that this is not the only possible social welfare function or moral position, and that YouNotSneaky is being unnecessarily rude in saying that anybody who thinks that it isn't is a "jerk".
He is essentially saying that everyone in the world is a jerk because I do not believe there is anyone who sees this as the determining moral position - see my point about courts. Its not just about parameter values within MaxSumUtility models, its about our choice of model, and our choice of moral philosophy. Has YouNotSneaky taken steps to transfer his excess utility to the worlds unhappiest person?
YouNotSneaky is consigning 1000s of years of philosophical debate to the dustbin. This is not unusual behaviour for economists. Good debate though.
Cheers
Neal
Posted by: Neal Hockley at May 24, 2007 11:03:54 AM
Tommy wrote-
I think you are simplifying things. The end effect of allowing low IQ immigrants into the United States will be an eventual decline in the ability of the United States to help anyone in the world.
What about second generation immigrants? What are the educational outcomes of second generation immigrants historically? My non-informed sense is that they surpass their parents in terms of attainment. Also, is it the case that the ones leaving poor countries for richer countries are the worst those countries have? (I'm remembering a quote from the Statute of Liberty all of a sudden...)? There are risks in uprooting and moving to a new country to look for work, which don't suggest to me the worst, but perhaps some of the best.
It's a little like arguing that a private citizen should spend time and money feeding the world's poor. OK, but might that citizen not be better off continuing to earn money that he can spend than exhausting his resources all at once?
More on this at the bottom of the page.
Also, you are ignoring the fact that by allowing Third World countries to siphon off their most desperate citizens, they can avoid needed reform. Thus, allowing immigration may help perpetuate the economic problems of citizens in other countries.
I could see it another way, though. One, there are remittances back into the foreign country, which are equivalent to capital inflows, which encourages economic growth. Thus the incomes of families home rise, consumption rises, and hopefully investment in things like human capital and other growth generating assets grow as well. This is good for the sending country, obviously. Two, it's not clear the "most desperate citizens" are the low quality citizens. Desperate for what? For jobs? It's not like they're coming here to beg for food. They're coming here to work. So "desperation" needs to be fleshed out a little more. What proportion of the immigrants are "high types" in some meaningful sense?
Finally, I'm curious as to what results you would get if you were to do a similar analysis but instead substitute the United States for families and immigrants for strangers. How much of an obligation should you have to strangers over your own family in order to avoid being a jerk?
This is where the opponents of immigration seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of private property. If a sub-contractor hires a non-native worker, what's it your or my business? This is a private contract that only involves those two individuals. In your analogy, the family can choose who it wants to care for via the household heads' collective decisions. But in this context, employers are hiring workers, not forcing you to do anything. Where is the externality?
Posted by: jason voorhees at May 24, 2007 11:14:34 AM
"Morgan - What exactly are the externalities from immigration that concern you so much? I'm used to opposing something because of external costs, but aren't immigrants seeking to exchange their labor? This seems like private exchange and no one's business except the contractor and the worker."
*************
I'm not Morgan so I can't speak for him, but this comment shows a naivete of what is actually happening. Ideally, yes, it would be a private exchange between the contractor and the worker. But that's IF you have a pure libertarian system in TOTALITY. In other words, if you have the libertarian logic regarding immigration (completely open borders), you should also have the libertarian logic regarding the welfare state (no welfare state). But the combination of open borders plus a welfare state is an opportunity for employers to hire people without actually paying their own workers...pay as low as you want, and the taxpayers will do the rest to support your workers.
In Gaithersburg MD (btw I grew up there) and Herndon VA, there are government funded day centers for illegal immigrants. These illegal immigrants came to work, and are willing to work long hours, but their salaries per hour are so low that the amount they input through taxes (if they pay taxes) is less than the amount they extract. There is a burden on hospitals, public schools, roads and other infrastructure, and law enforcement. Eventually there is a tipping point when a place becomes ridden with crime, and when there is a high proportion of non-English speakers at the school, and your property value goes down.
The combination of non-enforcement of existing immigration law, plus a welfare state, results in a situation where employers get an unlimited supply of nearly free labor while shifting the cost onto the taxpayer.
Posted by: Jay Singer at May 24, 2007 11:53:37 AM
What about second generation immigrants? What are the educational outcomes of second generation immigrants historically?
Not too much better when it comes to Mexicans. In fact, even fourth generation Mexican-Americans lag dramatically and show no signs of making substantial improvement in any future generation.
Two, it's not clear the "most desperate citizens" are the low quality citizens.
We are getting a far higher percentage of Mexico's agricultural workers than its neurosurgeons, I fear.
Another question: how much of a jerk do you have to be to put the welfare of immigrants ahead of that of all your future descendants?
This is where the opponents of immigration seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of private property. If a sub-contractor hires a non-native worker, what's it your or my business?
Sure. What business is it of mine when that (high fertility) non-native worker sends his children to public schools at taxpayer expense? What business is it of mine when that worker gets into an accident without any car insurance? What business is it of mine when that worker gets injured and has to make use of the emergency room? What business is it of mine when that worker's kids commit a disproportionate share of crime? What business is it of mine when that worker and his descendants, being poorly educated generation after generation, take on a far lower share of the tax burden than I do while using a much higher percentage of government resources than I do? After all, we non-employers of non-citizens are completely unaffected (at least in negative ways) by the presence of non-citizens.
Posted by: tommy at May 24, 2007 11:55:52 AM
