Now, I don’t personally buy this: individual choices to migrate seem to indicate pretty clearly which way they see the tradeoff between income and political rights; and I see little reason to second-guess them. But it seems possible at least, for an egalitarian to think this way.

*Yes, this depends on where the immigrants come from, but I think it’s defensible as an empirical generalisation.

(Note that her comments were warmly received and that “economists” frequently forget to include all the costs of immigration, including giving people like her more power.)

The problem with Goldberg is that he has no credibility writing a book like that, supporter of Bush – a right wing social engineer – that he is.

Now that feels like reading Ann Coulter! Maybe Krugman made a hash out of the argument, but Goldberg’s entire thesis is inherently, transparently frivolous.

Allowing Muslims into the country, to proselytize and accumulate wealth and likely political power could also very well drive the plebs into the hands of the Republicans. Should Muslims, then, be descriminated against?

One may as well say that Democrats being Democrats drives non-Democrats into the hands of Republicans. Thus Democrats should be…Republicans.

Now that’s just stupid. Starting your argument that way is like starting a critique of Bush with “Bush is a Nazi” or writing a book called “Liberal Fascism” and expecting people to take it seriously.

Now, I’ve only read Krugman’s book once but you seem to take quite a bit of liberty with his immigration intentions. My estimation is Krugman has little problem with a nice inflow of immigration so long as it doesn’t create a political backlash that drives the working class into the hands of the nativists mostly trolling about the Republican party or worse yet turn the Democrats into a Nativist party as well. It’s a pragmatic calculation, something Libertarians, for all their nice traits, are quite awful at.

So yes, you could open up the borders and see a nice short term increase in Earthen income equalization followed by an isolationist backlash and a turn toward conservative economic policy and ending up with a hefty overall decrease in opportunity and equalization. So perhaps you should imagine Policy A beyond the short term which changes the outcome considerably. But as I said, Libertarians have never been good at translating theory into practice. In my estimation, that’s why they’ll always be big players in the political abstract of policy theory and cocktail discussions but on the margins when it comes to accomplishing anything practical. This post seems to be a perfect illustration.

I can see the Libertarian attraction to this argument but ask yourself if we can really greatly increase immigration and not expect a backlash. Don’t we already bring in the most immigrants of any nation? The calculus is much more complicated than how you present it.

I’d love to see you interview PK on “Free Will”…hahaha. That would be fun. Having read PK’s book, I came away with a similar disdain.

But what you say is a nice summary of the premise advanced by Dan Klein and Harika Barlett in this paper.

Too bad your excellent analysis of PK (as well as that of Klein and Barlett) is not as easy to grasp for most people. It is indeed a very telling way and to expose PK for what he is.

Here’s why.

The welfare state must be defended, and by extension the political borders and nation-state conventions it is concretely based on. There’s a tension here between the liberal disdain for national borders and their commitment to upholding the redistributist and regulatory status quo.