Milton Friedman - Illegal Immigration - PT 1
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as a reference for Friedman's argument that generous welfare and open immigration are in tension.
What it is
A short clip of economist Milton Friedman discussing the dynamics of illegal immigration and its relationship with the welfare state. It is part one of two.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2011 to 2016.
What Hacker News said
Recommends abz10 · 2016-09 · on “EU's Tusk Says May Expects to Start Brexit Talks by February”
It's fair to bemoan the general decline of your society with the desire to better your personal lot through immigrating. It's likely that they don't dislike foreigners but they do dislike being forced to subsidise them via taxes. It's a side effect of the welfare state. Milton Friedmen convers it pretty well in [this video] . It's an old problem :/
Cites olalonde · 2011-04 · on “Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Leaving the U.S”
Some interesting thoughts on immigration from economist Milton Friedman ( [this video] ): I’ve always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people: ‘The United States before 1914, as you know, had completely free immigration. Anybody could get in a boat and come to these shores and if landed at Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from I
Cites tolmasky · 2014-12 · on “The Canadian Mincome Experiment of 1974-79”
One potential side effect of a minimum income is to make the U.S. (or any country implementing it), even more immigrant hostile. These programs usually only consider the effects in a vacuum, not with respect to much larger population that wants to get in. Either immigration needs to be restricted, or you have a "lower" non citizen class that doesn't get these benefits from the beginning (ironically perpetuating more inequality). Milton Friedman discussed this fundamental contention between welfare and free immigration, and it's coveted a little here: [this video] .