The Economist is worried about a “Drawbridge Up” America:
A FEW years ago a wise pollster—pondering how labels like left-wing and right-wing have been scrambled by globalisation—came up with a different way to sort voters in Western democracies. Electorates, he suggested, broadly divide into two groups, one of which sees change and the outside world as a threat, and a second which takes a more optimistic view, looking for opportunities to harness global forces and turn them to good ends. The pollster, Stefan Shakespeare of YouGov, calls these two camps “Drawbridge Up†and “Drawbridge Down†people.
Just after lunch on June 12th President Barack Obama was mugged by the Drawbridge Up bit of America, or at least by its elected representatives. A large majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives, joined by hard-right Republicans, voted to stall (and potentially kill) his hopes of reaching a big new free-trade pact between America and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Senate has already passed a bill that would allow Mr Obama to press ahead with TPP, and the House may return to the question as early as Tuesday.
Apparently, the editors of The Economist are not ones for fine distinctions. Even as I type the EU ministers are debating the fates of the half million refugees waiting in Libya, yearning to reach Europe, and braving the Mediterranean in rickety boats to do it. It must be might cozy complaining about up and down from an island with a drawbridge raised by Nature itself.
The default position for Europeans seems to be chiding Americans for raising our drawbridge from time to time while keeping their own safely up.
“The default position for Europeans seems to be chiding Americans for raising our drawbridge from time to time while keeping their own safely down.”
Logic would have it that what is meant is
The default position for Europeans seems to be chiding Americans for raising our drawbridge from time to time while keeping their own safely up.”
Wasn’t it the Tories who campaigned a month back on taking a popular vote to see if the UK would remain in the European Union?
Seems strange to make this an “European” issue. The Econimist has been staunchly pro-free trade since 1843 when it was launched as “The Economist: A Political, Commercial, Agricultural, & Free-Trade Journal”.
Also it seems somewhat strange for an American to scold about the advantages of having a moat to keep refugees out 😀
Until quite recently we were the only country in the world to share a 1,500 mile land border with a country where the per capita income was a quarter of our own. A quarter of the population of that country has moved here. Things have changed. Per capita income in Mexico is now $16,000 per year (about a third ours) and we shouldn’t be surprised if immigration from Mexico slows. Contrary to popular belief it take a substantial difference in incomes between two countries before you see major population flows from the lower income country to the higher income country.
In addition for most of its history the U. S. has had a much higher rate of immigration than any European country. If we have a moat, it hasn’t been doing a very good job.
The real message of this post is that things change. A century ago the marginal product of low-skilled labor was still increasing in the U. S. and it could accept large numbers of low skilled, low income people. Today it isn’t. The reason I objected to The Economist’s remarks is that they haven’t noticed that things have changed.
The natural destination for immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean is the United States. The natural destination for immigrants from Africa is Europe. Increasing incomes and changing demographic patterns in Central America and the Caribbean is pretty likely to slow the flow of immigrants from those areas. The flow of immigrants from Africa has hardly begun.