[astrange]

They aren’t useful for analyzing labor as if it’s an inanimate object. Labor is what produces demand in the first place, so you get partial equilibrium results if you don’t acknowledge that.

It’s very common to do it wrong, it’s one of the most common excuses people have for saying immigrants take your jobs. Strangely, they don’t say having children takes your jobs.

[philwelch]

> Strangely, they don’t say having children takes your jobs.

Because if you have children, you have about 20 years to progress far enough in your career that a brand new hire isn't going to take your job. Also, as a society, somebody needs to be working after the old people retire.

Immigration is more complicated, but it is possible for immigration to depress pay or even deprive people of jobs, if you had enough immigrants with all the same qualifications. In the early years of Israel, for instance, Israel had far more physicians per capita than they actually required and many of them had to take other jobs.

[astrange]

> In the early years of Israel, for instance, Israel had far more physicians per capita than they actually required and many of them had to take other jobs.

That'd be a good problem for the US - we don't have enough of them because we restrict immigration and licensing so strictly. But yes, some of them do end up taking other jobs and starting businesses and it works out in the end. More people = more economy.

Of course, adding more of some inanimate objects can increase demand for them because of things like network effects, and there's nothing surprising about that. A phone or a gold bar isn't very valuable if there's only one of them in the world; nobody's going to want it.

[philwelch]

> That'd be a good problem for the US - we don't have enough of them because we restrict immigration and licensing so strictly.

As a consequence of regulatory capture by the AMA, who don't want their pay to go down. Which furthers my point that their pay would go down, assuming that the AMA aren't total idiots ;)