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Trump Wants 4% (or Higher) US Growth. Easy. Just Massively Increase Immigration.
Donald Trump has high hopes for his economic plan. From CNBC:
Donald Trump thinks American GDP can grow more than 4 percent under his policies, more than double the average rate the U.S. has seen in this century. “My great economists don’t want me to say this, but I think we can do better than that,” he said Thursday in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. Earlier Thursday, his campaign said in a fact sheet that its planned tax cuts and deregulation will boost average annual GDP growth to 3.5 percent and “create as many as 25 million new jobs” in the next decade. The U.S. economy grew at roughly 2 percent in 2015 and last grew at a 4 percent annual rate in 2000.
There are a number of problems with this 4% goal.
First, there’s the economic math. Fast US economic growth in the postwar 20th century — 3.5% — benefited from fast labor-force growth. But today that growth rate is only a third of what it used to be. As the Obama White House rightly cautioned in its 2013 economic report: “In the 21st century, real GDP growth in the United States is likely to be permanently slower than it was in earlier eras because of a slowdown in labor force growth initially due to the retirement of the post-World War II baby boom generation, and later due to a decline in the growth of the working age population.”
Second, just to grow nearly as fast as we used to — maybe 3% or a bit higher — means sharply boosting productivity growth above its historical average. That’s the difference between today’s 2% economy and a 3% economy — not a 4% economy or higher. Unless you are counting on the Singularity.
Third, if the productivity numbers are under-measuring growth —as some economists think — then getting to 4% would be easier. But if true, that means the US economy right now is doing better than we think. This is not the Trump campaign message.
Fourth, another way to boost growth to 4% or even higher is massive immigration. As economist Adam Ozimek has noted, ” … it’s actual pretty easy to make GDP grow 5% a year: just increase immigration until that happens. If we’re expecting 2.5% real GDP growth a year, then increase immigration by 2.5%. If we’re expecting 1.5%, then increase it by 3.5%. This shouldn’t be too hard considering there are 145 million adults worldwide who would like to come here.”
And keep in mind, as I have previously written,”that despite America’s immigrant friendly reputation, our immigration rate is only half that of some other advanced economies, including Australia, Canada, and Germany.”
Again, this also is not the Trump campaign message.
Published in Economics, Immigration
If you understand how IQ works, it’s really a non-issue.
I’ve always said, there’s nothing wrong with the US economy that a sustained six-year conventional bombing campaign against the rest of the industrialized world can’t fix.
That’s the only thing that Keynes ever got right about economics. As WWII demonstrated, if you put everyone in the world to work busily killing each other, it reduces unemployment.
So Ireland’s economy grew by 26% last year. The population growth must have been huge if we take your analysis seriously (which I don’t).
Not an argument.
If you are after the utilitarian goal of using immigration for economic gain, you should not be letting them in if they have children.
This is not a good plan for so many reasons. First, where are your immigrants coming from. Hopefully not terrorists from the middle east. Nor gangs for south america. Nor even hardworking poor from a multitude of countries. Why? Because many of those will not be able to compete in America. First there are language barriers, also culture that may not mix or even bring many unsavory characteristics that has been seen with many “refugee” populations. This does not mean that I do not want immigrants from those countries or even true refugees. Its just that we need to only let the amount of immigrants in who we Americans can successfully integrate. Until we as people of the USA can have a strong enough culture to integrate all newcomers, immigration seems more likely to become a strain on our government resources than a boost to the economy.
Also, what new jobs are we going to create here? Manufacturing is already leaving. Service sector jobs are not very good and some saturated already if they offer a living wage. Americans would have to accept lower standards of living with rapid immigration.
Finally, the way that the US economy seems to be going is the way of high tech. This means that the only immigration that we should accept is that of highly educated people. This I can accept, but only if we can manage to keep our politics in place and not hand our country to socialists or religious fanatics.
This too.
Agreed.
I bet you could do a study and come up with numbers for this one as well.
And finally we get to the real problem. There us nothing that can fix the US economy except the USA with a combination of reformed government and cultural expectations for working.
I’ve noticed that the biggest cheerleaders for diversity don’t actually practice it in their own lives. Liberal whites… usually well off… live in high security bastions of liberal whiteness… fancy New York apartments, San Francisco lofts, etc. Black and Spanish “diversity” advocates live and socialize with… black and Spanish people. Hard to not to draw the conclusion that the point of diversity isn’t diversity, but simply diluting the pool of the white majority that sometimes votes Republican.
The Dutch economy is larger than the Saudis, and they aren’t breeding. The Saudi’s population growth averages 25% a year. There were 3 million Saudis in 1950. There are 33 now. There were 10 million Dutch in 1950. There are 17 now. Japan is famously (infamously) losing population as the old die off and the young don’t breed. They’re in no danger of losing their #3 economic slot in the world.
Economies are not dependent on population growth. A steady population of native people is important for more than just economic reasons, but simply bringing in more people doesn’t improve your economy. That’s a falsehood sold by interests that know Americans would never agree to the real reasons they want to bring masses of 3rd worlders in.
Jeb Bush during his failure of a campaign made 4% growth his so called signature economic idea. I commented at the time he was all for 4% growth fueled by massive levels of immigration. We could import the population of Bangladesh and enjoy a so called economic “boom”. Under Jeb we would have 4% overall growth with declining per-capita GDP. I think Trump made a boo boo with that comment.
“Nativist scaremongering”? You reduce thousands of destroyed lives to a left-wing talking point?
You’re so wedded to your precious theory that you obviously care for it infinitely more than actual people.
I hope you actually have to confront the reality behind your theories one of these days.
Nothing else I can say to you is CoC compliant.