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On April 10, hundreds of
thousands of U.S. immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their
supporters staged protests in 94 American cities against proposed
immigration laws that would raise penalties placed on illegal aliens
and classify them as felons.
Meanwhile, at Low Memorial Rotunda, a passionate crowd gathered to hear
the opinions of three of the world’s top economists --
Columbia’s Jagdish Bhagwati, MIT’s Robert Solow and
Princeton’s Paul Krugman -- on the forces of globalization
that have so affected immigration trends, by allowing goods, technology
and people to move more easily across national borders.
Sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the
International Economic Policy Concentration and the Department of
Economics, the event was moderated by Sylvia Nasar, a former economics
correspondent for the New
York Times and author of the John Nash biography A Beautiful Mind,
which inspired the eponymous Oscar-winning film.
According to Nasar, who is now Knight Professor of Journalism at
Columbia, it is no coincidence that all three economists are also
journalists: Bhagwati contributes regularly to the Financial Times,
Solow is a columnist for the New
York Review of Books, and Krugman writes a New York Times
column. “The most brilliant economists of the 20th century --
from Keynes to Samuelson -- were also skillful journalists,”
she observed.
Nasar further observed that brilliant economists also tend to become
each other’s teachers, guides and friends. Solow was
Bhagwati’s mentor, while Bhagwati had in turn been
Krugman’s mentor -- evidence, she said, of the influence that
great teachers can have on their students.
Solow’s mentoring skills were on full display as he began his
presentation with what he called “a highly simplified example
that will enable you to see the problem clearly -- and at the same
time, see it my way.”
The scenario begins with the discovery of a giant pool of labor -- much
like the discovery of a natural resource -- in a foreign country. This
discovery, Solow said, is probably good for the world and even for the
United States, where consumers will enjoy lower prices. But it might
not benefit all Americans, he noted. Unskilled workers could find
themselves without even low-paying jobs. Of course, the country could
redistribute the wealth from those who benefit to those who
don’t. “The normal answer given by economists is
that there will be winners and losers, but the winners will be able to
compensate the losers,” he explained.
In today’s political climate, however, that answer
isn’t satisfactory, Solow said. America, he argued, is
engaged in a “veritable orgy of regressive
redistribution” that involves “giving the powerful
more power and the wealthy more wealth.”
Having posed the problem, he joked, “I’m now going
to turn to Professor Bhagwati for the solution.”
But Bhagwati, too, was “pessimistic about how much
redistribution we can accomplish,” observing that even
President Clinton had “dismantled the welfare state as we
knew it.” Perhaps, he said, we should set our sights lower --
recognizing that while “we may not be able to help the first
generation of workers affected by globalization, we may be able to help
their children.”
While admitting to being a “tortured soul” on the
subject of globalization, Krugman said that he nevertheless sees the
phenomenon as the world’s best hope for eliminating poverty.
“Several hundred million Chinese leaping into the modern
world is a good thing,” he asserted.
But globalization also has its downside -- and not just in the United
States. “We had believed free trade made societies more
equal,” he said, “but in Latin America, the whole
picture has been deeply disappointing.” In Mexico, he
continued, “trade liberalization has been associated with
increased inequality.”
With mention of Mexico, the focus of the discussion shifted to
immigration. Importing cheap labor is not the same as importing cheap
products, said Krugman. “The U.S. has an obligation to the
people it brings here, if it is to remain true to its values.”
All three professors oppose the protectionist measures that some
politicians advocate as a way of saving jobs in America’s
domestic industries, including not only tariffs but restrictions on
importing goods from countries with poor environmental records.
During the discussion period, MBA student John Nolan counter-argued
that, given the “race to the bottom” that occurs
when countries try to produce goods at the lowest possible cost,
“I fail to understand why some degree of protectionism is a
bad thing.”
Krugman replied by describing the economic benefits to developing
countries of industries that can’t meet strict environmental
rules. “We don’t want to be in the position of
saying to other countries, ‘We’re going to require
you to remain undeveloped if you can’t manage to meet our
standards.’”
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