From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Jul  9 10:25:21 1998
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 10:25:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
To: systalk@ml.org
Subject: Re: [ST] Emigration
In-Reply-To: <35A257F3.4113@usa.net>
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On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Joshua E. Rodd wrote:
> Kragen wrote:
> > I have no quarrel with immigrants or immigration in general, but
> > unrestricted immigration makes it difficult to improve conditions in
> > one part of the world without improving conditions everywhere.  Of
> 
> What's wrong with American living conditions coming down a little if
> it means many more people are able to enjoy those conditions?

I'm not averse to *that*.  What I don't like is that cheap commodity
labor in the US raises the living conditions of the economic elite,
while driving down the standard of living of everyone else in the US,
without significantly improving the conditions in the places people
immigrate from.

> > course, the ultimate solution will be to improve conditions everywhere,
> > but if we restrict immigration in the meantime, it may become possible
> > to do things like strengthen unions and make the US more like (for
> > instance) Germany.
> 
> Why would we want to be like Germany? They are trying to become more
> like us. They have a 12.5% unemployment rate at the moment thanks to
> their labor regulations. Extensive regulation has just made the cost of doing
> business higher.

Because the 12.5% of people that are unemployed are not starving to
death, the people that aren't unemployed are considerably better off
than your average US burger-flipper, and health care is nearly
universal, among other things.

You also should remember that they absorbed East Germany only ten years
ago.  East Germany was much worse off economically, and is still
dragging down the general standard in Germany.

> Also, their telecommunications services aren't exactly competitive with
> those of the U.S. (Although they aren't *nearly* as bad as the
> Netherlands once were -- which, by the way, I hear is improving, which is 
> good news.)

This is a result of central planning and government-owned phone
systems.  Government regulation has some amount of central planning in
it, but it can be restrained to a level where it doesn't strangle
everything.

IMHO, the reason the USSR died was primarily central planning.

Kragen