theworldismine13
God Emperor of SOHH
Laura Ingraham KO's George Will. When Economic Nationalism Is Better Than Immigration
http://www.forbes.com/sites/cedricm...nomic-nationalism-is-better-than-immigration/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/cedricm...nomic-nationalism-is-better-than-immigration/
Video: Ingraham Battles George Will, Fox Panel: GOP ‘Elites’ Pushing Immigration Reform http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ingraham...-panel-gop-elites-pushing-immigration-reform/
Host Chris Wallace adroitly played the role of both boxing promoter and referee on Fox News Sunday – recognizing the tension between Contributors Laura Ingraham and George Will on the issue of immigration and spontaneously funneling it into a passionate debate. Laura Ingraham was the clear victor accurately depicting George Will’s pro-immigration policies as elitist. While Mr. Will did well to frame immigration as pro-entrepreneurial he had no answer for Ms. Ingraham’s more fundamental, America-first position.
George Will ignores America’s Capital-to-Labor ratio with the world, unable to admit that the immigration story also revolves around the destruction of capital in other countries and the inability to form it inside of America. He and other conservatives make the case that in an era of globalization it is naïve for Americans to act as if their country functions like a closed economy. But this excellence-should-know-no-borders attitude is actually more naive than what it attacks, in that it never starts from the perspective of the migrant and the nation they depart, dismissing how American political blunders can compel an exodus.
Economic nationalists are quick to spot the fallacious reasoning – that it is somehow good when other nations are forced to ‘send’ their best and brightest, those with the most capital, to compete with Americans for jobs. And they are rightfully insulted when depicted as paranoid or small-minded for not supporting immigration into an economy so weak it can’t consistently create enough jobs to keep up with population growth .
How did today’s Republican Party become so disconnected from common sense on this issue?
speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. on October 7, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That will require a series of columns but Laura Ingraham came close when she added the Wall St. Journal to her Sunday hit list.
Though her emphasis was different, she brought to mind Jude Wanniski’s bone of contention with what he described as the Journal’s “unlimited immigration” policy.
He once wrote , “My difference with the Journal’s editorial position is that it really has in mind skimming off the best and the brightest of countries like Mexico, who come here not because they face political or religious persecution in their homelands. They come because their economies remain stagnant, with little or no opportunity for their advancement or for their children’s. Because they are the most unhappy with the state of affairs they face at home, and because they tend to be more educated, more willing to take the kinds of risks associated with emigration, the Established elites who keep their economies stagnant are happy to see them leave. In Mexico, every time the folks at the bottom of the pile look like they are about to make some political headway, the ruling class screws up the economy with a tax increase or a currency devaluation, and emigration across the Rio Grande swells to new heights. After the surprise December 1994 peso devaluation sent the economy reeling, members of the Zedillo government had the nerve to publicly note that the long border with the United States was acting as a safety valve, to release the malcontents.
Where, after all, are malcontents created?
In recent years…. the broad and deep flow of immigrants to the United States, from Asia and Latin America, has been created by the economic errors of the United States government, our Treasury Department and our Federal Reserve — and the perverse blunders of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These are Establishment institutions, meant to serve the monied class. Or do you really think the poor people of the world are so inferior in intelligence that they have no choice but to work for $1 a day South of the Border or the minimum wage up north?
If you were to privately ask the editors of the WSJournal why there is so much misery and poverty in the world, they would tell you this themselves. They know how our big banks and major industrialists collude in managing international economic policy, that the IMF, while technically independent, is essentially an agent of the big New York and European banks.”
This was Jude, The Populist at his best, most nimble in showing how anti-growth and anti-entrepreneurial the Establishment could be when it ignored the electorate’s mass sentiment. No one understood better than Jude that economic nationalism was at its strongest when the two parties colluded in ways that made capital scarce relative to labor. Nothing did this better than the marriage of flawed monetary and immigration policies.
Jude’s 1995 testimony before The House Committee On Banking and Financial is a tour de force in this regard – an exhibit which no conservative has overcome since – showing how a decision forced upon the Mexican government by American financial elites destroyed the Mexican economy and the ability of its laborers to form capital.
George Will has no answer for thinking like this which shows how in a global economy, immigration can be a zero-sum game, where an American gain is absolutely due to an unnecessary Mexican loss. Jude put it succinctly, “…the most important form of capital available to individuals is in the family, friends and homeland. Economic opportunity, i.e., the opportunity to maximize intellectual capital, has to be sufficiently greater in an alien land to offset the pull of these attractions.”
And what happens when this first and most important form of capital – family, friends and homeland – is destroyed?
Sadly, among elites there is no consideration that the global perception of economic opportunity in America is relative – that things may be getting so bad in a native land that even a declining U.S. economy is worth the risk of emigration. This is hardly the dynamic process of economic growth, on either side of the equation.
Despite the ‘entrepreneurial dream’ narrative which styles every form of immigration as creative, millions have come to America running from contraction, recession and depression without any intellectual property or new business in mind or subsequently conceived. They left home on a prayer hoping to figure it out when they got here. There is no automatic innovation in a scenario like this – when Mexican capital is destroyed only to create a surplus in American labor.
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Cedric Muhammad