Might point out that immigration restriction and globalization are two different things. I'll avoid the first point, because it is outside the permissible range of speech at this board, but I think Japan has a --- system:
Quote:Quote:
“In countries that have accepted immigration, there has --------------------- there,” [Abe] told the audience, as he held up a white signboard marked with a red “x” to underscore his negative position on the issue.
But even without any immigration of new workers, companies can simply take their capital offshore. If workers from foreign countries won't come to their local plants and offices, they can simply take their plants and offices to the foreign workers. If you removed the H1B visa system, you'd simply see more American companies move their operations offshore, with a similar effect on jobs.
On globalization, it is not at all new. The exploitation of differences in prices has been around since the days of wooden merchant ships and the silk road. It is simply commerce. You can't claim that now 'workers in one country can be displaced by workers from another country more easily', that globalization has just started. There is no difference. If you are producing rugs at $1000 a rug, and a merchant starts bringing them in from overseas for $10 a rug, your job is being 'outsourced' to foreign rug-makers even if you're self-employed.
There isn't any possible mechanism by which this can go away, other than brutal protectionism. All foreign imports are banned, all ownership of foreign assets by local companies is banned, all export is banned (lest capital leak out), all citizens engaged in work subject to citizenship spot-checks etc. I.e. isolate every country from commerce with each other and create a situation ripe for war. “When goods don’t cross borders, Soldiers will".
Then add on top of that the complaints about automation. To avoid that we'd have to bring back the Luddites and start smashing robots.
All of this is simply choking the progress of mankind, on top of the governmental problems it's currently suffering from.
The gutting of the middle-class is not caused by the presence of a free-market (and there isn't one), it is caused by the constitutional conditions I described in my previous post. It is caused by masses of regulation (red tape), deliberately complex tax codes, high and progressive taxes, other bullshit like 'anti-structuring laws' and 'civil forfeiture', general legal uncertainty of 'what you can and cannot do', that raise the bar for an individual to start independent business. Workers entitlements (minimum wage etc) also encourage immigration and offshoring. If an employer has less liberty to hire and fire on his terms in the country he's in, he'll hire and fire elsewhere. And as Friedman put it "illegal workers are beneficial mostly because they're illegal" - they're outside all the bullshit laws. Then you have the fiat monetary system, which exists just to benefit the government, inflation always hits the lower class most and the upper class least, and the middle class get their wages subject to bracket creep and any of their capital gains and interest clipped because "10% capital gain under 10% inflation is zero gain, but you'll still be taxed on it". Then you have the welfare system on top of that. Then you have the ballooning costs of education fueled by government-subsidized student loans, which raises the burden of entering middle-class professions.
America did not become a place with high wages compared to the rest of the world by magic. There are no naturally occurring 'high wage fountains'. It just had lots of space, some natural resources, and free market capitalism. Had immigration been the death-knell of wages, the average American wage would not have steadily risen since the 1700s to where it is today, it would have steadily declined. Same goes for automation being the death knell of employment and wages.
More freedom is needed, not less. Specifically:
- No welfare
- No regulation (common law tort is sufficient)
- No central banking (return to free banking)
- Flat low tax, no special exemptions
- No subsidization, No tariffs
- No playing world police (war is good at making upper class industrialists rich and while the lower class get killed)