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A fine balance

March 24, 2008 By Michael O'Hare

Since the ancient Greeks, and even earlier, balance and proportion have been recognized to be at the heart of merit, in art, in policy, and in praxis. Let us now pause to admire the fine equality between the heartless and bottomless greed of the current fatcat administration and its eye-popping and pervasive incompetence.

If you wanted to cripple a twenty-first century economy, how could you beat denying it brainy, hard-working, ambitious people, especially an economy facing a demographic downslope of low native fertility? The idea that national security, or jobs for Americans, are advanced by denying visas to people who want to come here, eat take-out night after night slaving over hot computers, and create lots of value as new Americans, is so goofy it can only be compared to a joke, like the British plan to convert to right-hand driving in stages (trucks and buses first, then cars a couple of weeks later).

The core illusion here is a confusion between a prohibition and an obligation, and it’s observable in other contexts. My home town has tried for decades to force blue-collar manufacturing to return to its desolate industrial sector by land use policy that prohibits anything else in zillions of square feet of vacant buildings. But zoning doesn’t force anyone to do anything, least of all to start a business, and keeping smart young people out is not at all the same as forcing firms to employ Americans; indeed, the latter is impossible, especially if such job candidates simply don’t exist.

I guess it’s a bitter consolation, or would be if it weren’t so costly for everyone, that these guys are so bad at what they do…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Immigration

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