Princeton economist with a Nobel under his belt eats crow and does a U-turn on mass migration

Image: Holger Motzkau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered

By Olivia Murray

Just yesterday, Breitbart News reported on Angus Deaton’s epiphany regarding the mass invasion of illegal foreigners into the American interior; he finally realized that importing millions of freeloaders to our welfare state isn’t such a good thing for the working class taxpayers, or the economy. Deaton is a Princeton economist and a Nobel recipient, so cut him some slack, he’s a little slower than the rest of us—remember, “the road to Hell is paved with Ivy League degrees” and apparently, Nobel Prizes too.

Here’s what Deaton had to say, in an editorial titled “Rethinking My Economics” and published by the International Monetary Fund:

The [economics] profession knows and understands many things. Yet today we are in some disarray. We did not collectively predict the financial crisis and, worse still, we may have contributed to it through an overenthusiastic belief in the efficacy of markets, especially financial markets whose structure and implications we understood less well than we thought.

Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century.

After making a case for how “economists” really have no clue what they’re talking about—that much was obvious when Deaton included “Karl Marx” in a list of economists, and considering that a majority of them assert debt is nothing more than a number—Deaton arrived at several new (to him) realizations. Most importantly, Deaton did a U-turn on his previous support for the mass importation of third-world foreigners into the U.S. homeland:

I had … seriously underthought my ethical judgments about trade-offs between domestic and foreign workers. We certainly have a duty to aid those in distress, but we have additional obligations to our fellow citizens that we do not have to others.

I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the US was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers. I no longer think so [emphasis added].

Maybe the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ought to dole out another Nobel for his newfound and remarkable command of the obvious.

Deaton “seriously underthought” the ethical implications of a government stealing money from one person at the barrel of a gun, to hand it over to someone else who didn’t earn it? No kidding. How is this possible for such an “educated” guy? Those low wages for illegals are subsidized by my stolen wealth and your stolen wealth (food stamps, government health insurance, housing vouchers, public school, etc.), both through taxation and debt and devaluation. Better late than never… I guess?

Since Deaton is apparently behind the curve, a brief (and basic) economics lesson:

Importing tens of millions of third-world people with no skills and no money into a first world nation with an enshrined welfare state, does not benefit the people of that nation, as the latter are forced to foot the bill.

That’s it, class dismissed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/princeton_economist_with_a_nobel_under_his_belt_eats_crow_and_does_a_uturn_on_mass_migration.html