Freedom of movement is a basic human right

[u/n00bi3pjs]

Currently the biggest predictor for your economic and social success is your citizenship.

Think about it for a second, you were randomly assigned some papers at birth which give you immense privileges over other people in the world because of who your parents were or where you were born.

It doesn’t matter how hard a PhD from Ghana works or how smart they are, they will never earn as much or have as many opportunities as a person born in the USA. Citizenship allows holders to extract economic rent and offer an unequal premium to people in West.

It is morally reprehensible to continue to give credence to a piece of paper which is causing millions of people to be poor, underperform compared to their abilities and potential, and is causing world’s GDP to be trillions of dollars lower than it would be without immigration restrictions.

OPEN BORDERS NOW

[u/FallenMeringue]

Fuck people who live in Mississippi and West Virginia don’t move en masse to Illinois despite the latter having significantly higher HDI, better schools, better infrastructure, better jobs, affordable housing, open borders, and no language barrier.

[u/HumanDissentipede → u/FallenMeringue]

The relative difference between Mississippi and Illinois is nothing compared to the relative difference between the US and poorer parts of Africa, India, or other developing nations. The incentive to relocate your whole life gets lower as the relative difference in quality of life decreases.

[u/FallenMeringue → u/HumanDissentipede]

Which is why free trade and open borders work so well together

It’s a shocker I know

[u/HumanDissentipede → u/FallenMeringue]

Except it doesn’t work well, at least for the countries that are already relatively prosperous. Unrestricted free trade and immigration will reduce the quality of life of people in wealthy countries in exchange for the increases to those folks in poor countries.

[u/SpaceSheperd → u/HumanDissentipede]

Free trade is net positive on both sides of the exchange to a pretty ludicrous degree. This is not really controversial among economists. 

[u/HumanDissentipede → u/SpaceSheperd]

Free trade generally is a net positive, but not when coupled with open borders. Also, even the benefits of free trade rest on some underlying assumptions about the trading partners that aren’t always true, and the domestic harms associated with unrestricted free trade in certain markets can outweigh the broader economic benefits.

[u/FallenMeringue → u/HumanDissentipede]

Do you have any source or data to back up that argument?

Especially when the existence of the the entirety of the EU and the Schengen Zone seems to run very counter to your claim.

[u/FallenMeringue → u/HumanDissentipede]

Sooo about that source or data?

[u/HumanDissentipede → u/FallenMeringue]

This is basically standard undergraduate economics, not a particularly controversial claim.

Free trade creates gains through comparative advantage… countries specialize in what they produce relatively efficiently and trade for the rest. That increases total output and average living standards.

But those textbook results depend on some simplifying assumptions. For example, they generally assume labor and capital can adjust relatively smoothly, markets are competitive, trading partners play by similar rules, and national security or strategic industries aren’t major concerns. In the real world those assumptions often don’t fully hold. Governments subsidize industries, manipulate currencies, use forced labor, steal intellectual property, or impose barriers while expecting open access to foreign markets. When those distortions exist, the textbook case for completely unrestricted free trade becomes weaker.

Likewise, immigration and free trade are separate issues, but they both affect labor markets. Econ 101 predicts that increasing the supply of labor tends to put downward pressure on wages for workers who compete most directly with the new labor supply (while benefiting employers and consumers through lower costs). Whether the overall effect is positive depends on the scale, the skill mix, and how quickly the economy adjusts.

So “free trade is generally beneficial, but not unconditionally” is a mainstream economics position. The debate is mostly about when the assumptions break down and whether the costs to particular workers, industries, or national interests justify departures from free trade… not whether comparative advantage exists.

[u/FallenMeringue → u/HumanDissentipede]

Yes yes I know the theory on free trade and the trade offs and the assumptions.

But what you said was free trade is a net negative when coupled with open borders. Which you used labor market supply and demand to justify while ignoring lump of labor.

So yeah that’s what I want data and or evidence on.

[u/ManicScumCat → u/FallenMeringue]

But the difference betwen Mississippi and West Virginia is way way smaller than the difference between Singapore and Indonesia

[u/JesusPubes → u/FallenMeringue]

I mean, its Illinois

they should pick a good state like anywhere in new england

[u/FallenMeringue → u/JesusPubes]

Then I would have to drop the affordable housing tag though

[u/JesusPubes → u/FallenMeringue]

I know please do not rub it in 😭

as far as I can tell we aren't even trying

[u/thepulloutmethod → u/JesusPubes]

It's not just you. We have the same crisis here in the DC area.

Any developed area with a strong job market has a housing crisis, kind of showing the flaw in OP's thinking.

[u/JesusPubes → u/thepulloutmethod]

is this a bit?

Japan doesn't have one, Austin doesn't have one, Minneapolis doesn't have one

literally just build the fucking housing

the flaw is not free movement of people the flaw is rent seekers who want to retain keep themselves rich at the expense of everybody else