If you want to make something more affordable, you cannot continue to spend more money on it, nor can you continue policies which encourage bloat and bureaucracy. To be quite fair, there are dozens if not hundreds of factors that have contributed to the price increases.

• The $100B/year tax subsidy given to corporations is pretty pervasive. Anyone who doesn’t work for a large corporation is at a disadvantage, unable to write off their health care expenses as tax-free — and more unfairly handcuffs people to their jobs.
• The digital age has rapidly accelerated the development of new techniques and new technologies over the past few decades, but many of these procedures are extremely expensive (a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that many people view health care and insurance as a “Free Lunch”).
• The technological advances have allowed us to live longer than ever before — but there is a price to pay. An aging population will always require more attention as the frailty of old age sets in: everything from reading glasses to new drugs and procedures to elder care and hospice.

But something else happened in the 80s that contributes to this problem: The AMA, an evil cartel the sole purpose of which is to extract the highest possible monopoly rents for its member doctors, with the collusion of congress, began restricting the number of new and potential doctors, in spite of an obviously aging population.

The marketplace doesn’t determine how many doctors the nation has, as it does for engineers, pilots and other professions. The number of doctors is a political decision, heavily influenced by doctors themselves…

The United States stopped opening medical schools in the 1980s because of the predicted surplus of doctors.

— via USAToday

The moratorium on new medical schools was not overturned until 2002 when the damage was already well underway. Thirty-ish years later, despite spending more, the US has fewer doctors, fewer nurses, and fewer hospital beds per capita than the OECD average [source: pdf].

This problem is going to take years to fix. I pointed out the metaphysical problem last time: there is already a shortage problem, and it’s only going to get worse if someone pronounces that medical care (provided by whom? at what costs?) will be an American birthright. A shiny new label that says “Universal Single Payer Awesome Health Care America Fuck Yeah!” isn’t going to work, the entire “system” is broken, and rotten to the core.

The strike has become so important because of the prominence of the brands and because of its unusual nature: a highly profitable company is taking the rare and bold step of demanding large-scale concessions.

Dissent notes that the productivity gains of the last several decades have simply not “trickled down” in to the pockets of the American worker, instead they’ve been pocketed by the corporate elite. If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should.

Mike LeBerth, president of the local union echoes a familiar, but mistaken refrain:

“This whole economy is driven by consumer spending, so how are we supposed to keep the economy going when they take away money from the people who are doing the spending?”

Mistaken, because economies aren’t driven by consumption, they’re driven by production. The standard GDP-economy puts the cart before the proverbial horse. Per J.B. Say, Production must precede consumption; prosperity increases where production is permitted.

In fairness, I have to admit I’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of corporate greed, than a company which showed a $555M profit on $5.5B revenue in FY2009. What LeBerth describes, is not the problem. The real problem, or problems, are much greater.

The case of Dr. Pepper Snapple illustrates nicely that the “race to the bottom” is but a symptom* of monopoly rents.

In this instance, a substantial portion (approaching 100%) of their profits are attributable to intellectual property, a considerable barrier to market-entry enforced by the government under penalty of law. Make no mistake: this is not a “right” in any sense of the word, it is a privilege granted by government, to corporations X, Y and Z, protecting them from A, B and C and anyone else who might otherwise be tempted to start their own competing business. The effects of such privilege are obvious: where a lucrative market exists, profits are concentrated among those who benefit thereby.

Insofar as this case embodies a “race to the bottom”, it is the monopoly privilege of intellectual property which drives a wedge between workers of various classes: those inside the protected industry may enjoy leverage over those outside. To a probably substantial degree, the wages taken by the union are a derivative economic rent, extracted from the rest of the economy (i.e., the non-union employees in other industries in the local market), but coming first and foremost from the privilege granted the corporation. And it is precisely this privilege which enables a corporation like Dr. Pepper Snapple to exercise such a degree of economic power over its own workers, as to demand considerable concessions even when posting record profits.

+++

* For brevity’s sake I will limit discussion to this one problem, although I do not doubt that you could point out several more, each of which would merit examination of its own.

So, how can I possibly be opposed to such a program? Because it’s funded by taxes, silly (i.e., legalized theft, extortion). And I am fundamentally opposed to all taxes, except for maybe some sort of “asshole tax”. Yes, if they could find a way to levy taxes only on people who are total assholes, I could be OK with that.

Other than the very vague description given in the press release, I know nothing about the study or its method. What I do know from years of experience in the field, is that “online consumer panels” pose many serious challenges to market researchers in terms of obtaining representative sample (they skew significantly younger), avoiding ‘professional survey takers’, etc. So, take it for what it’s worth.

Distributed Costs, Concentrated Benefits

One popular argument is simply the magnitude of the problem an. Spend $12M to generate $600M in revenues. I understand the difficulties in organizing competing businesses in some sort of consortium, but seriously this should be a no-brainer. “Difficulty” in organizing is simply not a valid justification for taxing people. It’s “difficult” to make a No.2 pencil — so difficult in fact that nobody really knows how its done — but we have them anyways. It’s “difficult” to raise money to build a factory to manufacture vehicles, but people do it all the time. Lots of things are “difficult” and require imagination, ingenuity, and the sacrifice of risk. But that doesn’t justify taxing people.

At the very least, it seems like an opportunity for dominant assurance contracts or real-life community-building. Less “competition” and more “cooperation”, if you will.

And it clearly fails the popular “public goods” test.

Macro explanations for the micro boon

Although it is not clear whether the authors are suggesting that the macro-economy had a positive or negative impact on these numbers, they do qualify the research, stating:

These results should also be considered in light of the economic conditions in the United States in 2009 which had a constraining effect on travel and traveler spending

In my grossly uninformed opinion, against the backdrop of a faltering economy, 2009 was probably a down year overall for vacations in the traditional sense, as families abandoned luxurious plans in favor of the “stay-cation.” It certainly seems plausible that the “stay-cation” phenomena could skew midwest travel, as people substitute Michigan vacations for the more extravagant vacation they might take under different economic circumstances.

Marginal consumption, and small margins

The hospitality industry operates on small margins. A fortunate restaurant might increase its sales by 10% but net profits increase maybe a fraction of a 1% (or less). This isn’t the sort of revenue that enables capital-intensive investments. It’s not creating long-term growth opportunities, it’s simply moving finished goods from one place to another.

Most of this spending is marginal, and purely consumption; i.e., it doesn’t really matter whether the gas station sells 1M gallons of gas in 2009, or 1.001 million gallons of gas. It doesn’t matter if a restaurant sells one extra steak dinner or one single extra beer. That is, it requires no additional labor, brings no unemployed people in to the labor force, and generally does not measurably improve the lot of anyone already in the labor force.

Seen and unseen

Every dollar funneled into, or otherwise diverted to the tourism industry is a dollar which can’t be used on other productive endeavors. So to some extent, tax-funded promotions like this encourage the mis-allocation of productive resources (labor and capital) in favor of the hospitality industry, and at the expense of every other sector of the economy.

Conclusion

The only palatable argument for such a program is if its used to offset resident’s taxes. So, if MI plans to reduce their property taxes by the net of $29M, or if they plan on refunding $29M worth of sales taxes paid by MI residents, I guess it’s not such a bad thing. But that’s not how it operates.

Instead, it is a direct transfer of wealth, corporate subsidies, if you will. Use $12M worth of money taken from taxpayers (an extremely distributed cost) in order to fund an Advertising/Marketing campaign to support business interests which, although still distributed, are significantly more concentrated than ‘taxpayers’. Hey, it’s better than spending their own money, and coming up with their own solutions to the problems they face.

Ad spending, and private business revenues/profits is not a public good which would arguably justify some sort of redistribution, and since it’s not a public good, we have to reject the Reagan-esque, trickle-down-economics argument which is mostly bullshit anyways.

Addenda

I swear when I was walking the dog yesterday evning I had one more even better response, but I lost that train of thought and it hasn’t come back yet…

Michigan had $23B worth of tax revenue in FY2009 — in all honesty $41M is like pissing on a forest fire.

Vacant about 99% of the time since 2002, the ‘Dome has been maintained of late by the City of Pontiac, at an annual cost (to taxpayers) of about $1.5M.

As recently as 2005, the City refused a $20M purchase offer. This week, the City of Pontiac (MI) accepted a bid to purchase the Silverdome, nestled among 127 sprawling acres of crumbling concrete and lightpots, on the outskirts of 20.2 square miles of blight known as the “City of Pontiac”, for $583,000.

Five-hundred eighty-three thousand dollars. That’s about $8 per seat; the cost of a single domestic draft beer at most Stadiums today.

Home to the Detroit Lions of the NFL for 25 years before they built the sweet new Ford Field stadium in Downtown Detroit, the Silverdome cost $55.7 million to build, adjusted for inflation that’s something like $250-600 million, depending on how you calculate it.

Ford Field , which cost over $400M to build, like the Silverdome and most modern arenas, was financed largely by public (i.e., taxpayer) funds which were justified by spurious claims of “urban renewal”, “development”, “jobs”, “tax base” and other economic bullshit.

[The] neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors’ kids, or face the consequences.

When I first read the story yesterday, I was taken aback by a few of the comments — although I should not have been so surprised by the outright rent-seeking. It’s also a modern-day witch hunt. Snyder will have to defend herself against whatever frivolous charges the State and the DHS dream up, all because some jackass accused her of running an unlicensed day care facility, despite all the evidence and common sense to the contrary.

Commenter msbean74 threw down the gauntlet:

I am a daycare provider and a mother of 2. I would only want the best for my children. I believe if you want to watch other peoples children you should be licensed. There is so much more done now to make sure that provider is safe. I mean we have to do finger printing, CPR, first aid, blood bourne pathogens.. This is all to make sure that we know what to do in an emergency and to know how to properly care for your children. We have to go through training every year. …

All I read is: We spent a lot of time and money to get this license which allows me to do a “job” (which any competent 14 year old girl is capable of doing), and to extract monopoly rents from my customers since, and also prohibits my customers from taking care of one another. Therefore, we the day-care industry believe that we are entitled to be compensated for this time, study, effort, and certification.

i don’t know this lady but i’m sure it was someone with a daycare license that reported her. this is our income and when unlicensed people are doing it, it takes from those who are licensed. everyone has their opinion on the topic but i still believe that [she] should should be fined

This is the pinnacle of “They’re stealing our jobs” selfishness, except in this case “our jobs” were practically never necessary to begin with; after all, people have been taking care of their own for only all of recorded history without the need for state-licensed day-care practictioners. Is it any wonder why people aren’t lining up to hire “licensed” day care providers to sit at the school bus stop?

The key here is how you define the term “watching children” because in reality, whenever children are around, someone is “watching them.” Should a “licensed” day care provider be present at all times and at all places where there are children?

For the sake of argument, I will accept that some level of security, certification, bond, etc., might be required for summer camps, full-time professional day-care services, after-school programs, etc., but it is absolutely preposterous, as a matter of practicality, to presume (as msbean74 must presume) that you could hire someone to come to your house for 15 minutes each morning. Insofar as a genuine need exists for licensing and/or certification of professional (i.e., for profit, primary-source-of-income) day-care providers (a point I am not willing to concede, but which I will entertain for the sake of argument), msbean74 would have a valid point.

But this isn’t about a bona fide day care facility; it’s no different than picking up your neighbors’ children from school or football practice, or allowing them to come over to your house and play in your backyard with your own children. It is no different.

I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that people like msbean74 think these are also stealing their jobs and income. No, I would not be surprised in the least, if people like msbean74 supported laws that required only “licensed” child-taxi-drivers to pick children up from school or extra-curriculars. Or, laws that required “licensed” counselors be in attendance any time you have children in your house who are not your own.

If this is your idea of community, neighborliness, or responsibility, go ahead and include me out.

I did want to respond further to some of his comments, so read on if you will:

But I don’t yet understand how the profit motive can continue its promise of higher and higher returns, given the exhaustibility of the natural world and the satiability of human nature.

I think what he means is the insatiability of human nature. Every generation has its naysayers, those who believe that the end of humanity is nigh. And every generation prior to the present has been wrong in this regard. According to the historical record, the only vector that rivals human desire, is human ingenuity. This is not to say that mankind could never destroy itself — of course this is possible, but like Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, salvation is possible until the bitter end.

Yes, a previous comment that I left suggested that human desires are boundless, yet it is competition for scarce (exhaustible, so-to-speak) limited resources, and the varying subjective values individuals ascribe to the myriad resources at their disposal, that gives rise to “profit.”  Consider: why do you buy your bread from the baker, your cutlets from the butcher, and your candles from the candle-maker, rather than make them on your own? Is it not because you profit from the transaction, if even in the simplest of terms, by not having to bake your own bread, or breed, slaughter, and package your own meats, dip your own wicks?

Surely, you recognize a benefit from the division of labor in a relatively free economy. This is “profit”.

Also, the profit motive, if defined purely in capitalist (not spiritual, affective, or humanitarian) terms, while doing some good, perhaps even a great deal of good for individuals and groups, does not appear (to me, anyway) to have served the common good.

Assuming through the context ouf our brief discourse, the colloquial definition of “capitalism,” to be sure, there is a great deal wrong with it. This much is certain, and I would be among the first to object to the status quo.  Has General Motors served “the greater good”? How about Citigroup? AIG? Bear Stearns? The list is endless, yet the answer is the same. In the short- to medium-run, these entities which are for the most part oligopolies, have provided a concentrated benefit to a select group of fortunate insiders, who may have been stockholders, executives, or perhaps assembly-line workers, depending on the specifics.

When I talk about profit, I mean “profit” in it’s purest sense — not in a “capitalist” sense, but in a truly freed market sense. Profit is a realized economic gain (it need not be monetary) which is the consequence of alleviating some amount of human suffering, discomfort, or inconvenience. In other words, providing more-or-less, for the “greater good.”

This is not profit. This is rent-seeking.

Throughout the decades, these organizations have succeeded at suckling the government’s teat in order to extract their own benefits, at the expense of everyone else.  In addition to bleeding the rest of us through higher prices, taxes, tariffs and other restrictions on trade, this is a process which has wrought irrevocable damage to the nation’s economic foundation.

Several generations of people grew up believing that there would always be a good-paying Union job for them at General Motors or Ford or Chrysler: no need to try hard in school, no need to apply oneself, no need to become something more — take that gig at the stamping plant, put in your 25 or 30, and if you’re lucky and you play your cards right, you can retire with two houses and three cars.  More recently, the best and brightest at Universities were looking to score big with a job in finance or banking.

So many exhaustible resources went down the drain at these companies, because the union got its way, or the stockholders got their way, or the bankers got their way, and not merely the material resources of land and capital goods, factories and assembly lines, by far the largest misallocation was the misallocation of human capital: several generations who contributed to “the common good” far less than they were capable, far less than they would have, if only the incentives hadn’t been so distroted.

Dogmatic? In a sense, perhaps. But no moreso than the belief that mortal humans, when entrusted with nearly omnipotent power over others, will not abuse same as they have in every time and place before us.

The greater monuments of our civilization and culture–from Notre Dame cathedral (constructed over a span of 182 years – just try to fly a 182-year building plan with stockholders today–even for a building that will outlast the average Vegas hotel-casino by several centuries) to American democracy (still under construction 233 years after its inception)–were built on the altruistic or visionary expenditure and risk of vast fortunes with (as far as I can tell) no foreseeable or substantive capital returns.

Although I appreciate the cathedral at Nôtre Dame (much less so than Sacre Cœur, from which the view of Paris at nightfall in June is unrivaled), and the pyramids at Gaza, both as eternal monuments to the capabilities of human ingenuity and labor, I’m under no delusions as to how they came to be built.

Yes, these are magnificent structures, but at what cost were these monuments to human bondage constructed? What did future generations forfeit in exchange? In the end, despite their aesthetics, despite their longevity, they’re just one more big god damned building, and the fact of the matter when taken objectively, is that throughout the millenia, the sum of these epic monuments and thousands of others long since destroyed, have not in-fact added anything substantial to the “greater good.”  There was a very real opportunity cost.

I’d urge caution when cherry-picking examples of “civilization.” The great Egyptian pyramids were neither a product of altruism, of humanity, of benevolence: they are the product of a sociopathic delusion, that a man can be a god, melded with the wonders of feudalism and/or outright slavery. The monuments of our civilization, like the cathedral at Nôtre Dame are the product not of altruism, but of the nearly omnipotent power wielded by the Roman Catholic church in the middle ages. Their “capital returns” are called tithing in some cases, and taxes or tribute in another. One needn’t worry about capital returns, when he’s spending other people’s money, and breaking other people’s backs.

Marohl concludes with his greatest concern, which is the preservation of culture…

At this point in our nation’s history, my greater concern is the culture, not the economy.

But culture can’t be divorced from its economy. Again, I’d like to reiterate, that I don’t mean “economy” in any vulgar sense, I don’t mean “Wall Street” or “The City”, rather I mean “economy” in the classical sense: human action. I agree with Marohl’s earlier rant: I don’t believe it’s true that General Motors seals the fate of the nation, and I agree with his earlier comment that this widely-held belief was likely never true.

But what is true, is this: as goes the economy, so goes the culture.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm says the federal government needs to invest more in research and development for auto-related alternative energy technologies such as the batteries for electric cars.

…South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd. on Monday was named as the lithium-ion battery supplier for General Motors Corp.’s Chevrolet Volt. Granholm says LG has benefited from its government’s commitment to research.

Damn those Asians!

Of course, I don’t believe that the South Korean taxpayers should be financing our fetish for all things “green”, but as long as the South Korean taxpayers are willing to subsidize our Electric Vehicles, let them do it. In a “race to the bottom”, the winner is the loser. It makes absolutely no sense, economically, to participate in such a competition.

Unless you can benefit from it, by forcing others to bear the lions’ share of the burdens.

Protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. The ruling class is deciding what move to make, the prisoners—the consumers—are not playing the game. Although open trade benefits people on both sides of the artbitrary borders drawn to secure Statehood, Protectionism serves the interest of the plutocrats in control of the State.

The answer is: A system that encourages oligopoly: government for business, and business for government. This is State Capitalism, and this is how it works: they get your money, in order to make you ever more dependent, ever more acquiescent.

The last few months of 2008 have been characterized by a severe economic downturn. People in the mainstream news are finally calling it a “recession”, not because of any newfound integrity, but rather because they’ve simply run out of euphemisms. The trouble became really apparent when people began to realize the banking system is broken, although some of us had been predicting this crash for several years.

In all fairness, I had no idea the extent to which it would wreak havoc on the economies, but there you have it: unintended consequences. I saw a boom that needed to bust in the housing market. But I didn’t know how far it would go.

Money flooded into real estate, and consequently into mortgage-backed securities, those securities were largely held by banks and insurance giants, and when the value of these securities dropped to zero, or became so toxic that it was impossible to value them accurately (so they were treated as if their value was zero) the whole house of cards began to fall apart.

Financial institutions like AIG were deemed too big to fail. The automotive manufacturers had their own epic fail, and are getting their own share of your hard-earned money.

This is what happens when consumption (rather than production) drives an economy. (And don’t give me any of that Keynesian Circular Flow bullshit.) Lenders now illiquid, or on the precipice thereof, stopped lending, and the economy which is built on a shaky foundation of consumption, grinds to a halt. Individuals, who for the better part of a decade had been sucking paper equity out of their mortgaged-to-the-hilt McMansions, now find themselves burdened with very real debt. Other monolithic corporations like the American automobile manufacturers, who for years have been selling vehicles as loss-leaders in order to profit through their financial arms, found that they have a hard time making that business model work when new money isn’t continually pumped into the economic system.

The very nature of these institutions implies a massively distorted one-way dependency:
An Insurance Giant doesn’t give a damn if one of its customers files bankruptcy or loses his job, but heaven forbid, a giant like AIG goes out of business, millions would be left uncovered, without affordable health insurance, and without much recourse. Whereas, every single automotive supplier needs the Big Three; the Big Three could give a damn if one or a hundred small machine shops closed their doors tomorrow, never to reopen. The asymmetric dependencies are problematic in their own right.

In a free market (the U.S.A. is not a free market) it is unlikely that any company could ever get as big as General Motors or AIG, for the simple fact that in order to grow, they would have to be profitable, and as long as they were profitable, there would be an incentive for others to compete with them. In a free market, where profit exists, small businesses should have easy access to capital.

Currently, regulations and restrictions prevent most people from effectively competing with large corporations. In a free market, any large corporation would be the necessary offshoot of an extremely beneficial product: in order to be big and profitable, you have to satisfy your customers in ways none of your competition can. General Motors, AIG, etc., none of these companies are now or were unique in this manner, so the question isn’t about their failure, rather it should be redirected.

The question is: Producing nothing meaningfully distinguishable from, nor more valuable than their competition, how in the world did these companies ever get so big.

For bonus points: what do we do about it?

Two months ago, GM’s market cap was something like $6.5 Billion. Today it is less than $3B. General Motors is now spending, on a monthly basis, about as much money as GM’s total market valuation. General Motors now burning through $2.3 Billion, every month.

Let’s put it in perspective: General Motors has about 8 months of cash reserves left. In order to ultimately stave off bankruptcy.

GM would need to sell something like 5 million new cars over that period of time, in order to generate that sort of positive cash flow (assuming an average car payment of $400/month). That would potentially buy them three to four years, before those notes expired and the company would find itself in a very similar position, again.

No, really, let’s put it in perspective. General Motors sold just over 2.1 million vehicles in 3Q2008. They would need to literally double their sales over the next eight months to stay solvent, which would probably require that they double their capacity. This is inconceivable.

Although the merger talks with Chrysler are temporarily on hold, but GM (actually all of the Big 3) is still pandering for a bailout in the neighborhood of $25-50 Billion. A bailout is the only thing that could possibly keep General Motors in business, and for that reason alone, it is objectionable. In the event of a bailout, a handful of insiders are going to make a bunch of money that was taken from the rest of us, and the company is going to go under, anyways.

There is simply no good reason to force the rest of us to finance GM’s life-support, only delaying what is in all likelihood a foregone conclusion. General Motors will die, whether we keep it alive for a few more months (or years) is beside the point. There’s no justification for society’s productive members to be forced to pay higher taxes, and enjoy all the benefits of a reduced standard of living, just so a company that has failed so objectively and so perfectly can continue to make cars that nobody wants to buy.

Illegal immigration causes an enormous drain on public funds. The seminal study of the costs of immigration by the National Academy of Sciences found that the taxes paid by immigrants do not begin to cover the cost of services received by them.

And if slavery persisted to-day, some would argue that freed slaves would consume far more in government programs than they would pay in taxes. But the freed slave, or the immigrant’s comparative poverty and misfortune is the result of the system which has been holding them back; it is not caused by a desire to “cheat” the rest of us! Specifically, in the case of the immigrants earning black-market wages, one reason they don’t pay taxes is because they’re not allowed to pay taxes! Give them a legal job, and voila – they’re taxpayers.

That they may be a “drain on public funds” is an argument that is at least as true for the native poor, and the elderly, the latter being among the wealthiest individuals to have ever walked the earth. Yet nobody is clamoring to kick them out of the country, or to build a wall to keep them at bay, even though such extradition would almost certainly enrich the rest of us. The very notion of paternalist “social safety nets” is founded upon the belief that those less fortunate are more deserving of assistance, and that we ought to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Yet some people only care about the less fortunate as long as caring for the less fortunate does not impact their livelihood, which is to say: these people don’t give a shit about the less fortunate, since any act of compassion requires some amount of self-sacrifice.

If there is a problem, it is not with poverty or immigration, but rather the incentives created by such programs. FAIR continues:

Additionally, job competition by waves of illegal immigrants desperate for any job unfairly depresses the wages and working conditions offered to American workers

This statement would be more accurate if it read: “The violent suppression of the non-native poor is a contributing factor to the benefits packages offered to uneducated and unskilled Americans.”

The eradication of chattel slavery presented the same sort of alleged problems: the new waves of workers would drive down the wages of all workers in destructive competition. This is an argument that is simply not born from the facts of reality. Were some people harmed? Undoubtedly so, but the brunt of this was borne by those who had, for generations, profited from the exploitation of others. This is no less true when applied to would-be immigrants, whose standard of living is artificially suppressed by draconian immigration laws and the State’s usurpation of private property rights, free association, and voluntary contract..

Along the same vein, FAIR pulls out the “population growth” scare-tactic:

Illegal immigration also contributes to the dramatic population growth overwhelming communities across America

[Come to Detroit, where factories sit idle, and the population is dwindling!]

In all seriousness, as I’ve previously noted: the “population explosion” argument is patently untrue. Over the past 200+ years, the population growth in America has slowed substantially. Growth was at its peak, many years ago, when the people were arguably dumber and less productive than we are today.

Curiously, and in spite of these natural handicaps, the population continued to grow, and wealth continued to increase to such a point that generally, even the poorest Americans are now wealthier in real terms than just about anyone in the history of the world! Clearly, the mass-immigration that characterized the Industrial Revolution era did not destroy America, and it will not now destroy a wealthier, more productive America.

Like slavery in years gone by, laws forbidding the peaceful migration of people represent the basest imaginable form of economic rent-seeking. Of course, those who believe (rightly or wrongly) that they benefit from the status quo will probably be its loudest proponents. So we see Big Labor fighting against immigration, just as we historically viewed the Plantations’ vested interests as the mouthpiece for the continuation of slavery. Releasing men from the chains of slavery (proper, or economic) has the necessary side-effect of eradicating any “advantages” accruing to others as a reslult of that gross inequity. .

When it becomes necessary to right a wrong such as slavery, there are undoubtedly going to be “victims” whose way of life has only been sustained by the perpetuation of that injustice, but removing the inequity does not cause economic harm; it merely destroys the capacity for one man (or group of men) to continue earning economic rent through the exploitation of the less fortunate.