[learc83]

We have no way of knowing what impact completely open borders would have on global GDP, so to throw around predictions like doubling global GDP is just ridiculous. Economies are complex systems and moving around tens to hundreds of millions of people is such a massive change that you can't possibly accurately model what would happen. I doubt the economies of developed countries would react positively to an influx of tens of millions of people.

But the people advocating this usually aren't advocating for truly open borders, they are usually advocating for more IT workers, so they can reduce the costs to their companies.

Let's imagine for a moment what would happen if we allowed just the small subset of unlimited immigration that people are really pushing for--an unlimited number of immigrants who have CS degrees. What do you think would happen to programmer salaries when 10 million new programmers arrive next year?

[dkural]

Removing artificial restrictions on a free market system will increase overall productivity. It will certainly increase global GDP to remove barriers to free movement of people.

Imagine that people could NOT move between various states in the United States. Do you think this would improve the GDP of the US? Hey, the SF programmers would no longer need to put up with those pesky developers immigrating from the midwest and reducing their 300K salaries to 140K. However this'd be true for the guy working in the grocery store as well for 120K a year - since he'd also not compete with anyone else and gladly take his share of your 300K salary.

People hate monopolies until they are the monopoly. Then they defend it tooth and nail. Native-born citizens, due to the chance event of where they're born, extract monopoly rents to the detriment of the global GDP.

[learc83]

>Removing artificial restrictions on a free market system will increase overall productivity. It will certainly increase global GDP to remove barriers to free movement of people.

The global economy isn't a free market system, it's not even close enough to a free market system to make modeling it that way useful. The entire argument that treating what isn't remotely a free market system, slightly more like a free market system will necessarily produce some result is completely misguided.

But let's assume that we can actually model it this way and that completely opening borders will eventually increase overall global productivity.

Even in this case, there is still an enormous problem here, the increase in productivity will take time. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Imagine 2 countries Richland and Pooria. Richland has a GDP per capita of $50,000, Pooria's is $500. Richland has a population of 10 million people, Pooria 50 million. Richland has expansive public services, good schools, and a fantastic infrastructure. Pooria has none of that.

Now lets say that we open the borders between the 2 countries, and 10 million people from Pooria decide to live in Richland. Now eventually in this hypothetical situation, Richland and Pooria may reach an equilibrium where the average GDP of both was higher than it was before.

However, this could take decades and during that time Richlands resources will be strained to the breaking point. During those decades the people of Richland would be much worse off, and the people of Pooria might not be any better off in a failing Richland than they were in Pooria.

And what if Richlands entire system of government breaks down under the weight. In that case the complex sytem that allowed Richland to produce so much could collapse completely and there is no guarantee that it would ever recover.

[dkural]

I challenge you to find a single study showing that any immigrant group (by country of origin.. by ethnicity) takes from the economy more than they contribute. The elderly with pensions, benefits, and healthcare costs, usually are the biggest net sink.

Please read the article and see re: opening up the Eastern European labor market, and how the feared outcomes did not materialize in Britain, including the scenario you've outlined.

Yet, when a part of the world is hurting bad enough, migration happens despite legal restrictions.

Also, pick your argument - are you claiming that the causal result of mass immigration an overburdening of the social systems, or are you claiming that markets will magically stay irrational and the benefits due to this magical irrationalism will not materialize? I think your argument is stronger if you claim that local governments cannot stay solvent, not due to markets being irrational, but due to a causal chain of events as a result of immigration.

Your argument breaks down again as we consider the intra-US case: People will not move to a more expensive neighborhood unless they can afford the bills, thus people making the move will have jobs, or failing to get jobs, would prefer if the cost of goods were lower like it is in their place of origin and stick to the lower-cost locations. Thus the distribution of people in wealthier and poorer regions self-regulate, just as it currently does in the United States. Why don't we have poor people overwhelming the school systems of wealthy neighborhoods? Because they can't afford the houses and taxes. They'd like to move in, but they can't. Economic reality still applies.

[learc83]

>I challenge you to find a single study showing that any immigrant group (by country of origin.. by ethnicity) takes from the economy more than they contribute.

Allowing small groups of (mostly skilled) people to move into a country in a controlled manner over time, has a net economic benefit. Ergo allowing an unrestricted number of people into a country must have a greater benefit. That just doesn't follow.

>Please read the article and see re: opening up the Eastern European labor market, and how the feared outcomes did not materialize in Britain, including the scenario you've outlined.

What article are you talking about? The one at the top of the thread didn't mention that at all.

It also isn't a fair comparison, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland are the countries that people in Britain and other EU countries were most worried about in regards to immigration. The populations of those countries aren't that large in relation to the population of the more well off countries.

Now compare the number of people living in developing vs developed countries globally. Depending on the source only about 15% of people worldwide live in developed countries.

Do you think those countries will be able to handle the mass influx of immigration? There was a poll done recently that estimated that about 100 million people want to permanently relocate to the US (many more want to do so temporarily), and that's knowing that it would be difficult. Imagine how many more would be willing if immigration were unrestricted.

>Also, pick your argument

You'll find that when making hypothetical arguments you can quite easily make 2 or even 3 simultaneously.

1. Modeling the global economy as a free market is absurd.

2. (When I gave that quote about markets being irrational, it wasn't meant as an example of what was going to happen, but as example of how even though something can be globally true--markets will eventually behave rationally--depending on the time span we care about they can be locally false.)

Anyway, back to 2. Let's assume you can model the global economy as a free market and assume that all labor markets will eventually adjust and reach an equilibrium where the global GDP is higher than it was before.

The amount of time this adjustment takes is unknown. There could be decades of depressed wages in developed countries before any benefit is realized.

3. Is related to 2. Mass migration brings with it problems that could collapse local governments lowering overall GDP permanently.

We're also ignoring what happens to developing countries when anyone who wants to can leave. Those countries may stop developing at all and devolve into even worse states. After all Pseudo-free markets still have problems with blighted neighborhoods.

>Why don't we have poor people overwhelming the school systems of wealthy neighborhoods? Because they can't afford the houses and taxes. They'd like to move in, but they can't. Economic reality still applies.

And yet this doesn't work when comparing countries because you're ignoring the relative differences in standard of living. Living as a homeless person in the US with absolutely no possessions is preferable to being poor in many countries. People are willing to walk across half a continent (and many have) to come to the US with no possessions just on the hope that they can get in.

You're also acting like you don't see migration like this inside the US all the time. There is a reason you see a much higher amount of homelessness in inner cities than you do in rural area (even adjusted for density). Social services, and public transportation attract them. A homeless person has a higher quality of life living in San Fransisco than he does living in rural Iowa, so he makes his way to San Fransisco even though he can't "afford" to live there.

[humbertomn]

You're having the belief that there's only a limited number of jobs in the economy. Newcomers don't just take jobs, they create jobs!

[learc83]

>Newcomers don't just take jobs, they create jobs!

Probably, in the long run. In the short term they will depress wages, and we don't know how long that short term will last--could be decades.

If you allow 10 million programmers into the US, it will severely depress wages for programmers already living here. For those people wages will likely not recover in their lifetimes.

[DVassallo]

> We have no way of knowing what impact completely open borders would have on global GDP

The impact on developed countries from the enlargement of the EU is probably the best "open borders" experiment we can look at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_Europe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_European_Un...

[falsestprophet]

They're all European countries, which is not exactly a random selection of countries.

edit:

European union countries share similar populations both culturally and biologically.

If you moved the populations of Catalan, Cameroon, Kuwait, Cambodia, Korea and Kiribati to the same geographic area, that would be a different experiment.

[DVassallo]

Yes they share the same continental plate. But:

"There is a significant variance for GDP (PPP) per capita within individual EU states, these range from €11,300 to €69,800 (about US$15,700 to US$97,000). The difference between the richest and poorest regions ranged, in 2009, from 27% of the EU27 average in the region of Severozapaden in Bulgaria, to 332% of the average in Inner London in the United Kingdom. On the high end, Inner London has €78,000 PPP per capita, Luxembourg €62,500, and Bruxelles-Cap €52,500, while the poorest regions, are Severozapaden with €6,400 PPP per capita, Nord-Est with €6,900 PPP per capita, Severen tsentralen with €6,900 and Yuzhen tsentralen with €7,200."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Economy

[learc83]

There is no way to isolate the effect of immigration on GDP from the effect of other policies of the EU, or the effect of the global economy, technological advancements, economic policy changes etc...

There are just too many variables.