I suspect many readers are suffering from post-immigration-debate fatigue. In the interests of fairness, though, here is my opponent Ron Unz’s takeaway.
I suspect many readers are suffering from post-immigration-debate fatigue. In the interests of fairness, though, here is my opponent Ron Unz’s takeaway.
Nov 12 2013
I want to add a hearty "amen" to David's post on Michael Cohen's recent article on President Obama's truth-challenged claims about health care. My views on the economic literacy of the American electorate are Caplanian, but Cohen stakes out a position that is breathtakingly arrogant: in effect, Obamacare is so amazingl...
Nov 12 2013
UPDATE BELOW In selling the health-care plan that bears his name, President Obama has, according to the fact-checking website Politifact, said at least 34 times that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." That statement was not completely true, and it's a lie that is today causing the President no end of...
Nov 12 2013
I suspect many readers are suffering from post-immigration-debate fatigue. In the interests of fairness, though, here is my opponent Ron Unz's takeaway.
READER COMMENTS
kebko
Nov 12 2013 at 10:55am
From Unz:
“I focused on the obvious point that the law of supply and demand ensured that a huge increase in the number of willing workers would greatly reduce their economic bargaining power against their employers.”
“the main economic proposal I have advocated over the last few years has been a sharp rise in the national minimum wage, perhaps to $12.00 per hour…An immediate jump of thirty or forty percent in the take-home pay of America’s working-poor would greatly alleviate their financial desperation.”
Just to clarify this for all of you elitist economic theorists: The law of supply and demand is “obvious” in the low wage labor market that includes immigrants, but does not exist in any other context, including the native low wage labor market and markets where immigrants are consumers.
Chris
Nov 12 2013 at 12:33pm
Ah, so a high minimum wage will price out low-skilled immigrants, but not low-skilled Americans. I get it now!
BarryV
Nov 12 2013 at 12:34pm
This would be my response to Unz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0
Andrew_FL
Nov 12 2013 at 2:07pm
Watch the pea under the thimble. A person harmed by such a minimum wage hike is not among the “working poor,” he is among the workless poor. He gets a 100% decrease in his take-home pay and his financial desperation is exacerbated, not alleviated.
Floccina
Nov 12 2013 at 4:09pm
Interesting I think that a wage subsidy to all USA citizens might do to immigrants something close to what a higher minimum wage would do. E.g. make US citizens as cheap as unskilled immigrants.
David
Nov 13 2013 at 10:01am
It’s always interesting when minimum wage supporters assert that large corporations would be able to handle the increase in labor cost but never seem to mention the effect on “main street”.
magusj
Nov 13 2013 at 10:10am
Mr. Caplan, I vociferously disagree with you on immigration but I must commend your very fair minded linkage of your opponents and their arguments. If only all debates, online and in real life, were this civil in discourse.
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