Imagine you are an economist and a great football (soccer) fan. In other words, you are a little bit like me. And like me, you are not just a football fan, but also love to live in a diverse multi-cultural environment. I mean, I have lived in Switzerland for 21 years and it is a fantastic place to live, but the cultural diversity of London means that I can get better food, better theatre, better music, and a lot of other things in London. If you ask me whether I prefer to live in London or Zurich (or my hometown Stuttgart), I’ll take London any day. But that is a personal preference and I understand that many people prefer to live in the orderly world of Switzerland.
Hi Klement! I love your posts, thank you for doing this. Here are my thoughts on this one:
The football piece is a great argument in favor of diversity in organizations, but the employment+wages part is more an argument in favor of more population as a whole - diverse or homogenous. If I were a politician, I could counter with - "good point - I'll just incentivize my citizens to have more kids, so that labor supply outweighs demand and native wages are reduced."
Additionally, sounds like a country would be better off allowing a population of unskilled workers to immigrate. That population, however, doesn't necessarily have to be diverse as long as they are cheap. Your population, then, would merely be bivariately distributed.
If the immigrants are undocumented, I'd argue that's even worse because social support is less available and this worsens all sorts of social indicators such as crime, anti-social behaviour, access to high quality services etc.
For these reasons, I think high-skilled immigration (which footballers would be an example of) should be preferred. Look at the impact of high-skilled immigration on Australia, for example.
Hi Klement! I love your posts, thank you for doing this. Here are my thoughts on this one:
The football piece is a great argument in favor of diversity in organizations, but the employment+wages part is more an argument in favor of more population as a whole - diverse or homogenous. If I were a politician, I could counter with - "good point - I'll just incentivize my citizens to have more kids, so that labor supply outweighs demand and native wages are reduced."
Additionally, sounds like a country would be better off allowing a population of unskilled workers to immigrate. That population, however, doesn't necessarily have to be diverse as long as they are cheap. Your population, then, would merely be bivariately distributed.
I'm really enjoying your posts, thanks for your writing. On this one, I don't think low-skilled immigration is a good as portrayed. Low-skilled immigration makes income inequality worse (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/10/14/how-immigration-makes-income-inequality-worse-in-the-us/).
If the immigrants are undocumented, I'd argue that's even worse because social support is less available and this worsens all sorts of social indicators such as crime, anti-social behaviour, access to high quality services etc.
For these reasons, I think high-skilled immigration (which footballers would be an example of) should be preferred. Look at the impact of high-skilled immigration on Australia, for example.