Economist: Unlimited High Skilled Immigration Only Way to US Decline

A scary warning from Northwestern University Robert Gordon.

Hat tip to reader Haim for the link.

Comments

[George Chell]

"Looks like the heading is misleading and I read somewhere that Obama wants to appoint Mr. Durbin to the Labor secretary , People can kiss goodbye to H1Bs and PERM."

Would you rather have Kris "the Ku Klux Klan" Kobach as the Secretary of DHS?

[George Chell]

"Looks like the heading is misleading and I read somewhere that Obama wants to appoint Mr. Durbin to the Labor secretary , People can kiss goodbye to H1Bs and PERM."

I will start worrying if he becomes Secretary of DHS. Not having Durbin in the Senate removes one obstacle to the passage of bills. I am hoping that under the GOP Admin Grassley becomes the Ag Secretary. The biggest concern right now should be the defeat of Brian Bilbray and Steven King. While the former is likely to go down given a likely Obama blowout in CA, the latter might just get re-elected...one can hope it does not happen.

[George Chell]

"You can't forever keep paving over prime farmland, have enough water for industry, agriculture, and households, and put more cars into use without grinding your economic gears, let alone degrade the earth. Something not only should give but eventually HAS to give. In that sense, slower growth is not just an inevitable thing (as the author posits) but a good thing. Heresy, I know, but why are growth cultists so myopic? Surely with economists it is largely a matter of being trained in "growth good and forever" theory. But then you also have the biased "growth is God" drumbeat from capitalist media and politicians."

Something that has to give is farm subsidies, not the crap you are spewing!

[Amused]

China and India have over a billion people each. Of course their cumulative emissions are higher. The per capita contribution in the US is far beyond anything those countries emit. This insistence on pointing fingers is a fig leaf Jack, to avoid any pain on Americans. Shame on you for buying it, given you claim to care!

[Jack]

"Look at yourself before you point to others."

Meaning what? Here's the point: Is it not perverse to lose sleep over something slowing when that is the very thing which is putting the future of the world in peril? I.e., who cares about industrialization and "growth" when climate change is caused by those forces? It is mind-boggling. That an economist feels the need to use the term "provocative" to even question growth groupthink says a lot. Seriously, if you asked some of these people would it be worth it to save the planet at the cost of growth, what would they say? Do they think about anything else?

[RR]

@Jack
Just like the Kyoto Protocol, right? To save the plant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

From the entry -
"The only remaining signatory not to have ratified the protocol is the United States"

Look at yourself before you point to others.

[Jack]

I think a more accurate heading would be "Immigration a way to raise total hours of work per capita which affects one of six slower growth headwinds (demographics)"

And even that arithmetic effect is temporary because workers you import will eventually retire too. I'm surprised the author did not make the connection that immigration exacerbates one of his other headwinds--energy and environment. Theoretically, you can grow an economy through population growth--but there are limiting factors of finite energy, limited resources, pollution, etc. He sees it as more of a political headwind, e.g., the carbon tax, but not the purely economic--productivity itself becomes negatively affected. He understands that "the US was transformed
from 75% rural to 80% urban, and that could not
happen again." You can't forever keep paving over prime farmland, have enough water for industry, agriculture, and households, and put more cars into use without grinding your economic gears, let alone degrade the earth. Something not only should give but eventually HAS to give. In that sense, slower growth is not just an inevitable thing (as the author posits) but a good thing. Heresy, I know, but why are growth cultists so myopic? Surely with economists it is largely a matter of being trained in "growth good and forever" theory. But then you also have the biased "growth is God" drumbeat from capitalist media and politicians.

From the paper:

China and India contribute more to the growth
of carbon emissions and to global warming than
does the US but are naturally reluctant to have
their chance to leap into the ranks of the advanced
nations set back by high carbon taxes. They argue
with some justification that “no foreign power in
1900 told American steel mills to install expensive
emissions-reducing devices, so why should we
at the same stage of development be asked to do
so?”

Um, to save the world?

[Sa]

Looks like the heading is misleading and I read somewhere that Obama wants to appoint Mr. Durbin to the Labor secretary , People can kiss goodbye to H1Bs and PERM.