Thoughts on Sanctuary Churches

[Ender]

In the movie “Up”, a dog is one of the heroes. One of the comic themes of the movie is that every time the dog hears the word “squirrel” he completely loses track of what he was doing and goes off to hunt the squirrel.

These threads are just like that. We started off discussing sanctuary churches until someone shouted “squirrel” and everyone went chasing off after it. That the squirrel in this case is free trade doesn’t alter the comparison.

 

[tstor]

To be fair, free trade often includes the free movement of labor.

 

[pnewton]

To be fair, free trade often includes the free movement of labor.

That was my thought as well. Labor is a resource, and a valuable one at that, not a liability.

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

To an extent, labor prices (wages) are impacted by supply and demand just like anything else. An over influx of labor results in wages being driven down. This is good for bosses but bad for laborers.

 

[pnewton]

To an extent, labor prices (wages) are impacted by supply and demand just like anything else. An over influx of labor results in wages being driven down. This is good for bosses but bad for laborers.

That is only partial how the market works. Job numbers are not fixed. The other part is that more abundant labor leads to greater production and the demand for that labor balancing the lower wages.

 

[joeybaggz]

I’m not familiar with that example, but the obvious response is that, if there’s an artificially low number of goods being produced, then other manufacturers (in America) will be incentivized to enter the market.

As to the Chinese peasant situation. The upshot of what I’m saying is starving, downtrodden people will eventually rise up and attack the perceived enemy. People with homes, jobs, full bellies, and entertainment outside work and home don’t want any armed conflict.

Hypothetical disgruntled Chinese peasants would be a problem for China’s internal stability. You still haven’t answered, why should we make our workers worse off to keep China stable?

Quote “other manufacturers (in America) will be incentivized to enter the market” Ummmm, what other manufacturers??? Automobile manufacturers the size of Ford, GM, and Chrysler just don’t pop up overnight. Your answer suggests you might want to get you head out of the textbook and into the real world.

As to your other response/question, see Sobieskill’s answer quoting Frederic Bastiat above.
I’m done.
[/QUOTE]

 

[tstor]

That has not been what we have seen though. Rather, we have seen that capital is extremely elastic. That is it expands with the increase in labor. Taken from one article:

But in the long run, history assures us, the capital supply will to a substantial degree expand to exploit the investment opportunities created by the arrival of workers. After all, the US labor pool has doubled many times since 1776, and capital has more than kept up. If capital supply is only a transient constraint on the economic absorption of workers, then we should expect the arrival of more workers to have zero average impact on wages in the long run. There will be more workers, more buildings, more factories, more computers, all producing things and selling labor at about the same prices—to more consumers.

As is pointed out in that same article, while new immigrants compete in the labor market, they also produce demand for goods and services, meaning that the market must adjust to the new demands for goods and services, resulting in a new demand for labor.

https://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/09/03/the-domestic-economic-impacts-of-immigration/

This essentially makes the effect on wages zero out.

How can these papers arrive at such different conclusions than Borjas (2003), who claimed that US immigration between 1980 and 2000 had lowered average native wages by about 3% and the wages of the least-educated natives by 9%? There are three crucial differences in the assumptions used by the different authors. First, Borjas (2003) holds capital fixed. In contrast OP and MMW assume that in the longer run capital adjusts to keep the capital–labor ratio on its long-run path (or equivalently, that capital is perfectly elastically supplied). As was illustrated in an earlier version of OP (e.g. Ottaviano and Peri 2008, Table 8) and acknowledged by Borjas and Katz (2007, Table 1.11) this matters a lot. If immigration increases aggregate labor supply by 10% (as it did in the United States between 1980 and 2000) and capital is fixed, average wages would be expected to fall by about 3%. If capital can adjust, however, the effect on average wages is approximately zero. Importantly, OP (Figure 2) show that the trend in the US capital–labor ratio was similar in the 1980–2000 period as in earlier decades. This and other evidence, including the remarkable inflows of capital to the United States in the past decade, suggest that the assumption of fixed capital for analyzing the long-run effects of ongoing immigration inflows is unreasonable [emphasis mine].

https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/jeea2012.pdf

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14188/w14188.pdf

 

[HarryStotle]

Good grief, the President acted like Puerto Rico was some foreign basket case that the US doesn’t need! Those are US citizens! It is a US territory!!

Uh huh. About that …

https://www.dailywire.com/news/2593...m_content=011718-news&utm_campaign=modelnames

Perhaps PREPA (Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority) just thought it was providing sanctuary to those tension steel sleeves and other critical construction materials?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

I guess I’m just totally disconnected, what in and of itself is wrong with consumption? Why does it matter that we consume more?

It matters that such a high proportion of those resources are being consumed by the 4% of the world that is the US. That does not sound like we are being stewards of creation.

I’d also counter that since we feed most of the world we export at least as much as we take in.

We do that partly by using the petrochemical fertilizers that we make from imported oil. If we consider not just food but all goods, there is no question that the US consumes more than it produces.

Although, as @Ender just reminded us, we are getting off the subject of Sanctuary Churches.

 

[Ender]

That was my thought as well. Labor is a resource, and a valuable one at that, not a liability.

Squirrel…

I suspect that very few of us know which churches are harboring fugitives…I mean, providing sanctuary…and while I’m not sure what I would do if it turned out that my church was one of those, in all likelihood I would still attend, but would stop my donations. I am more than willing to pay my part to keep the church running, but I am unwilling to pay anything to aid those who have broken our laws avoid the consequences of their actions.