首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
I have a plan that will raise wages, lower prices, increase the nation’s stock of scientists and engineers, and maybe even creat
I have a plan that will raise wages, lower prices, increase the nation’s stock of scientists and engineers, and maybe even creat
admin
2012-04-23
43
问题
I have a plan that will raise wages, lower prices, increase the nation’s stock of scientists and engineers, and maybe even create the next Google. Better yet, this plan won’t cost the government a dime. In fact, it will save a lot of money. But few politicians are going to want to touch it. Here’s the plan: More immigration. A pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants. And a recognition that immigration policy is economic policy, and needs to be thought of as such.
See what I meant about politicians not liking it?
Economists will tell you that immigrants raise wages for the average native-born worker. They’ll tell you that they make things cheaper for us to buy here, and that if we didn’t have immigrants for some of these jobs, the jobs would move to other countries. They’ll tell you that we should allow for much more highly skilled immigration, because that’s about as close to a free lunch as you’re likely to find. They’ll tell you that the people who should most want a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants are the low-income workers who are most opposed to such plans. And about all this, the economists are right.
There are also noneconomic considerations, of course. Integrating cultures and nationalities is difficult. Undocumented immigrants raise issues of law and fairness. Border security is important. Those questions are important. They’re just not the subject of this column.
The mistake we make when thinking about the effect immigrants have on our wages, says Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California at Davis who has studied the issue extensively, is we imagine an economy where the number of jobs is fixed. Then, if one immigrant comes in, he takes one of those jobs or forces a worker to accept a lower wage. But that’s not how our economy works. With more labor—particularly more labor of different kinds—the economy grows larger. It produces more stuff. There are more workers buying things and that increases the total number of jobs. We understand perfectly well that Europe is in trouble because its low birth rates mean fewer workers and that means less economic growth. We ourselves worry that we’re not graduating enough scientists and engineers. But the economy doesn’t care if it gets workers through birth rates or green cards.
In fact, there’s a sense in which green cards are superior. Economists separate new workers into two categories: Those who "substitute" for existing labor—we’re both construction workers, and the boss can easily swap you out for me; and those who "complement" existing labor—you’re a construction engineer and I’m a construction worker. Immigrants, more so than U.S.-born workers, tend to be in the second category, as the jobs you want to give to someone who doesn’t speak English very well and doesn’t have many skills are different from the jobs you give to people who are fluent and have more skills.
But that’s only half of their benefit. "Living standards are a function of two things," says Michael Greenstone, director of the Hamilton Project, which is hosting a Washington conference on the economics of immigration next week. "They’re a function of our wages and the prices of the goods we purchase. " And immigrants reduce the prices of those goods. Patricia Cortes, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, found that immigrants lowered the prices in "immigrant-intensive industries" like housekeeping and gardening by about 10 percent. So our wages go up and the prices of the things we want to buy go down.
We should remember, though, that the average worker isn’t every worker. A study by Harvard economists George Borjas and Lawrence Katz found that although immigrants raised native wages overall, they slightly hurt the 8 percent of workers without a high-school education and those with a college education. A subsequent study by Peri looked harder at the ways immigrant labor differed from native labor and found that all groups of workers saw a benefit from immigrants—though unskilled workers saw less of a benefit than highly skilled workers.
And unskilled workers face even tougher competition from undocumented immigrants who, because their status is so tenuous, will accept pay beneath the minimum wage. And they are unlikely to complain about safety regulations or work conditions. That takes unskilled immigrants from being a bit cheaper than unskilled natives and makes them a lot cheaper—which makes employers likelier to hire them for jobs that native workers could do better.
This suggests, first, that American workers would be better off if we figured out a way to take the 12 million undocumented immigrants and give them legal status, and second, that we might want to give them more direct help if we’re going to increase immigration. Both are possible—just politically difficult.
Our immigration policy should be primarily oriented around our national goals. And one goal is to have the world’s most innovative and dynamic economy. It’s never going to be the case that each and every one of the planet’s most talented individuals is born on American soil. But those born elsewhere could be lured here. People like living here. We should be leveraging that advantage, mercilessly roaming the globe, finding the most talented people and attracting them to our country. When we have the best talent, we have the best innovations. That’s how we landed Google, Intel, and the atomic bomb. Immigrants are about twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a small business, and they’re 30 percent more likely to apply for a patent.
The author is most probably______.
选项
A、a scientist
B、an economist
C、a politician
D、a sociologist
答案
D
解析
该题为推断题,文中多次提到“经济学家告诉我们”以及“政客们”如何如何,可见作者不属于他们中的任一种,此外,该文章也不是科技文,所以作者最有可能是探讨社会问题的社会学家。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/TGiO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、6%.B、6.5%.C、5%.D、7.5%.D
EsperantoEsperantowasinventeda【1】philologist,Dr.LudwigLazarusZamenhof.Esperantomeans"【2】".Thevocabularycomesm
EsperantoEsperantowasinventeda【1】philologist,Dr.LudwigLazarusZamenhof.Esperantomeans"【2】".Thevocabularycomesm
Meteorologistsroutinelytelluswhatnextweek’sweatherislikelytobe,andclimatescientistsdiscusswhatmighthappenin1
InBritaintherealcenterofpoliticallifeisin______.
Istheliterarycriticlikethepoet,respondingcreatively,intuitively,subjectivelytothewrittenwordasthepoetresponds
Ablindbabyisdoublyhandicapped.Notonlyisitunabletosee,butbecauseitcannotreceivethevisualstimulusfromitsenv
然而,或是因为中国人与其他人太不一样,或是因为他们工作起来很有耐心,他们能成功地把表面看来毫无价值的开采地(miningclaim)变为有利可图的东西,这使他们成为爱嫉妒的竞争者们的眼中钉。他们受到了多种形式的骚扰。经常阻止他们在开采地上开矿;一些地区甚
Somethinghasbeenhappeningtotheconceptof"fiction,"bothincriticaldiscourseandelsewhere.Foralongtime,thisconcep
随机试题
A.I型疱疹病毒B.Ⅱ型疱疹病毒C.柯萨奇病毒A4D.柯萨奇病毒A16E.水痘-带状疱疹病毒引起单纯疱疹性口炎的病毒是
患者,女性,28岁。因外出春游去植物园,出现咳嗽、咳痰伴喘息1天入院。查体:体温36.5℃,脉搏90次/分,呼吸28次/分,血压110/80mmHg,喘息貌,口唇发绀,在肺部可闻及广泛哮鸣音。该患者最可能的诊断是
某市政府将一闲置土地使用权无偿收回,提供给甲房地产公司开发经济适用住房,项目总投资预算为3800万元。甲房地产公司通过招标方式确定了乙建筑公司为该项目施工企业。程某于2008年7月预购了该项目的一套住宅,并申请了住房公积金抵押贷款。2008年10月该项目竣
某施工单位承建两栋15层的框架结构工程。合同约定:①钢筋由建设单位供应;②工程质量保修按国务院279号令执行。开工前施工单位编制了单位工程施工组织设计,并通过审批。施工过程中,发生下列事件:事件一:建设单位按照施工单位提出的某批次钢筋使用计划按时组织钢筋
下列会影响行业风险的情形有()。
商业银行支付结算业务中,托收属于()。
NovelistMoYanisthefirstChinesetowintheNobelPrizeforliterature.Whenhewasinterviewedabouttheaward,Mosaid,"I
以转基因生物为直接食品或为原料加工生产的食品就是转基因食品。关于转基因食品,下列表述正确的是()。
有一个三位数,如果把百位数字与个位数字对调,得到的新数字比原数字大495,如果把十位数字与个位数字对调,得到的新数字比原数字大9,如果把百位数字与十位数字对调,得到的新数字比原数字大360,则原来的三位数是多少?()
监理合同中的附加工作是指(30)。
最新回复
(
0
)