James Pethokoukis — Republicans have a big new economic idea. It's terrible.

James Pethokoukis is has a master's degree in journalism and no credentials in economics. Perhaps this explains at least part of his failure to understand that globalization under neoliberal doctrine — "free markets, free trade, and free capital flows" results in the great leveling as capital flows where resources, including labor, as least expensive in order to be be competitive. This implies that wages and capital investment in developed countries, where resources are most costly, will fall as the emerging world rises. This will continue under such a system until an equilibrium level is reached.

Obviously, domestic workers in developed countries are disadvantaged by this policy and will continue to be unless government step in to soften the blow, or neoliberal globalization is ended.

The policy of the present administration is the latter.

But it is not the only policy available for addressing the issues that neoliberal globalization entails.

MMT economists recommend recognizing that receiving real resources from abroad is a real benefit domestically. Moreover, a currency sovereign has the ability to purchase the use of real resources to prevent their being idled. Such a government also has the capacity for improving the value of real resource use through public investment in education, health care, infrastructure, R & D, etc. while addressing temporary problems with welfare provision and an employer of last resort program funded by the currency issuer.

The Week
Republicans have a big new economic idea. It's terrible.

James Pethokoukis |Dewitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the AEIdeas blog

More illogic from The Week.

The author admits that this is no historical basis for Zionism but we should just pretend there is anyway, since Israel is already a nation state and failure to do so will encourage anti-Zionists to attack Israeli statehood, and that would be a bad thing. Huh?

Why Zionism should be untouchable

Damon Linker

Tyler Cowen — Trump understands this, perhaps you do not

Perception about immigration.

Marginal Revolution
Trump understands this, perhaps you do not
Tyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center

William Lacy Swing — How migrants who send money home have become a global economic force

More people are on the move around the world than ever before. An estimated 258 million people are currently living outside their country of origin. Every migrant chooses to leave home for different reasons, but they all bring their life experiences, knowledge, culture and ambitions with them. As they settle into life in their host countries, they acquire new skills and know-how. And they contribute to their families and communities in their country of origin by sending money home.

Financial remittances have been recognized as an important developmental vehicle associated with migration. Financial remittance flows have steadily increased in volume from the 1990s to the present day. In 2017, migrants sent an estimated $466 billion to families in developing countries. Money sent home from abroad is shown to be more stable than both private debt and portfolio equity flows, and several times larger than international development aid.…

However, apart from financial remittances, transnational communities also contribute by way of 'social remittances' - the flow of skills, knowledge, ideas and values that migrants transmit home. The impact of social remittances was most strongly felt in areas such as education, health, employment, business and aspects of governance, found a study conducted by IOM in Tanzania in 2014. There is also a broader development effect, as the recipients of social remittances extend beyond the migrants’ immediate circle of relatives and friends to the wider community beyond.

Taken together, financial and social remittances have an important role to play in the achievement of individual family goals, community and national development priorities, and the achievement of the SDGs more generally. However, to leverage the true development benefits of financial and social remittances, there is still work to be done....

World Economic Forum
How migrants who send money home have become a global economic force

William Lacy Swing | Director-General, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

A different view of Africa. A ways to go, but longer the global backwater, looking hopeless as development challenge.

By 2025, 97% of worldwide growth will occur in the world’s emerging markets, many of which are in Africa. Africans are watching technology develop and evolve in ways never seen before. The continent leads the way in mobile payments, with money transfer service M-Pesa serving 30 million users across ten countries. Africa isn’t just driving technology change for Africa, but for the world at large. By 2025, the population of Africa will exceed that of India and of China. Shortly after that, about 40% of the world's working-age population will be in Africa, a continent of 54 countries.

Africa's inspiring innovators show what the future could hold

Njideka Harry

CEO, Youth for Technology Foundation

Ryan Devereaux — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Will Remove “Nation of Immigrants” From Mission Statement

New mission?

The Intercept
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Will Remove “Nation of Immigrants” From Mission Statement
Ryan Devereaux

Jason Smith — Immigration is a major source of growth

One of the findings of the dynamic information equilibrium approach (see also my latest paper) is that nominal output ("GDP") has essentially the same structure as the size of the labor force.

The major shocks to the path of NGDP roughly correspond to the major shocks to the Civilian Labor Force (CLF). Both are shown as vertical lines. The first is the demographic shock of women entering the workforce....

With the positive shock of women entering the labor force ending, immigration is a major (and perhaps only) source of growth in the US aside from asset bubbles [3].

Information Transfer Economics
Immigration is a major source of growth
Jason Smith

Joel Kotkin — The globalization debate is just beginning

On both sides of the Atlantic, there are now two distinct, utterly hostile, opposing views about globalization and multiculturalism. The world-wise policies of the former investment banker Macron play well in the Paris “bubble” — and its doppelgangers in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and London — but not so much in the struggling industrial and rural hinterlands....

This will require something in short supply today: a reasoned approach. The fulminating xenophobia of a Le Pen or Steve Bannon may be repugnant, but equally unreasonable and out of touch are the trade dogmas of the Davos group or open borders notions now embraced by many on the left.

Finding a way toward some sort of great recalibration, a middle ground between extremes, may be difficult in these polarized times, but it may be the only way to address critical issues without making the future far worse than the recent past.

Democracy is supposed to handle this with compromise, but in a highly polarized environment compromise is seen as not only weakness but also betrayal.

Newgeography.com - Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places
The globalization debate is just beginning
Joel Kotkin | Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, CA and executive director of the Houston based Center for Opportunity Urbanism

Branko Milanovic — The welfare state in the age of globalization

In my previous post that looked at policies to reduce inequality in the 21st century, I mentioned that I will next discuss the welfare state. Here it is...

Global Inequality
The welfare state in the age of globalization
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Neil Wilson — Why does the UK Import Labour?

With 1,597,000 unemployed, 2,191,000 inactive but want a job, and 1,118,000 part timers wanting full time why do we need any more?

Modern Money Matters
Why does the UK Import Labour?
Neil Wilson

David Henderson — Ominous Inaugural Addresses

If Donald Trump understood trade and immigration, that would not be ominous at all. Because if he made every decision on trade and immigration "to benefit American workers and American families," he would decide to move in the direction of lower tariffs and import restrictions and fewer restrictions on immigration. Remember that "American workers and American families" includes pretty much all Americans, including those who gain from buying cheap imports (which, by the way, is all of us) and those who gain from hiring cheaper labor. The fact of gains from trade and immigration is not controversial in the economics literature. What makes this statement ominous is that Trump doesn't understand trade.

What's ominous is that economists like this don't understand ordinary families problems and the effects on politics in a representative democracy. This election was unusual in that the establishment of neither party was able to prevail precisely because they were not paying attention to this. This is the reason for Brexit, too, and it is also the reason for the disintegration of the Eurozone and the rise of the right in Europe.

Why these pundits don't get is that immigration is not an economic issue as much as a political one and the embedded labor in imports is ersatz immigration.

"Build the wall" is symbolic of this. As I recall, Lou Dobbs was the first to pick up on this, although it may have been Pat Buchanan that was first. Both was mocked for it as was Donald Trump, but DJT parlayed it to victory — unless you believe the lame excuse that "Putin did it."

These establishment types are clueless about reality and can only see the world through their models based on restrictive assumptions that make them worthless in application to political economy and policy formulation.

Econlog
Ominous Inaugural Addresses

David Henderson, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is also associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California

Trump Nominee for Homeland Security John Kelley Favors Draconian Immigration Policy — Sharmini Peries interviews Dahr Jamail

SHARMINI PERIES: Dahr, this is the third General that Trump has chosen to join his cabinet -- James Mattis and Michael Flynn for Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor. Now how should we interpret this? The previous interview I had done with Vijay Pershad, he says this is shaping up to look like the junta rather than the cabinet -- your thoughts on that?

DAHR JAMAIL: I would agree with that statement.

Real News Network
Trump Nominee for Homeland Security John Kelley Favors Draconian Immigration Policy

Sharmini Peries interviews Dahr Jamail,  Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism

Tyler Cowen — My Second Thoughts About Universal Basic Income

I used to think that it might be a good idea for the federal government to guarantee everyone a universal basic income, to combat income inequality, slow wage growth, advancing automation and fragmented welfare programs. Now I'm more skeptical.

Bloomberg View
My Second Thoughts About Universal Basic Income

Tyler Cowen | Bloomberg View columnist and professor of economics at George Mason University

Alex Christoforou — Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary must stand up to Europe’s “Sovietization” and defend its borders

How some in formally USSR states see the EU.

At a commemoration of a 1956 anti-Communist uprising, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary must stand up to defend its borders against mass migration.

The Duran
Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary must stand up to Europe’s “Sovietization” and defend its borders

Alex Christoforou

See also

On the website of the Employers’ Association he estimated that the refugees are getting roughly 360,000 Euro per year. There is no official confirmation on the numbers yet.

Syrian refugee in Germany with 4 wives, 22 kids sparks social media fuss over welfare

Pat Lang — A Coming Civil War in France?

PL: "Calvar is the equivalent in France of Andrew Parker, head of MI-5 in the UK and James Comey, Director of the FBI in the US. This is not a voice crying in the wilderness. He is one of the big guys." 

Sic Semper Tyrannis
A Coming Civil War in France?
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Vyacheslav Scherbakov — Alternative for Germany

Although the “return to the German mark” theme was undoubtedly essential, the program’s developers sought to defend themselves from accusations of forming a “single issue party.” Therefore, they touched on a number of problems that, in their opinion, are troubling society. They included demands for a commitment to “A Europe of sovereign states” with a common internal market, demands for EU reform, and the “liquidation of the Brussels bureaucracy,” the strengthening of the democratic freedoms of citizens, and introducing a system of popular referendums along the Swiss model. The party also spoke out in support of families and especially pensioners and children: “Family solidarity support is an investment in our common future and an important part of inter-generational consensus.” An important component of such family support was determined to be an educational system including kindergartens, schools, and universities. At the same time, parents are to be responsible for the education and upbringing of their children and should be supported by the state. The situation with integrating immigrants had led to such programs so valued by AfG to be shut down. In a rather short section, special attention is devoted to the necessity of revising immigration laws. The immigration system of Canada is presented as one to be imitated: “It is necessary to put an end to indiscriminate immigration into our social system.”[6] On the same note, it is emphasized that persons persecuted on political grounds should be given priority right to asylum in Germany.…

Fort Russ
Alternative for Germany: The Genesis of a New "People's Party"? - PART 1

Alternative for Germany: The Genesis of a New "People's Party"? - PART 2
Vyacheslav Shcherbakov for Fort Russ - translated by J. Arnoldski

Chris Dillow — Immigration as social mobility

Another provocative post by Chris Dillow and another reason that I continually emphasize that political economy that is not based on the global economy is not only bollox but biased (racist, if you prefer.) For one thing, it ignores and even denies the issues arising from primitive accumulation, which was, contra Locke, principally by force. Liberalism for me but not for you.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Immigration as social mobility
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Sputnik International — Rioters Attack German President for 'People are the Problem, Not Elites' Remark

"Let them eat cake."

Sputnik International
Rioters Attack German President for 'People are the Problem, Not Elites' Remark

The Duran

German President Joachim Gauck says “elites are not the problem, people are the problem”. Gets booed and spit on [Video]
Alex Christoforou

Jack Peat — Trump Backs Brexit

Donald Trump has said the UK would be “better off without” the European Union in a typically candid interview with Fox News.

He said it is his “feeling” that the UK should vote to sever ties with the EU in its 23 June referendum because the union has failed to handle the migration crisis, which has been a “horrible thing for Europe”.…

The London Economic
Trump Backs Brexit

Jack Peat

Marshall Auerback — Donald Trump Understands the Nexus Between Trade and Immigration

Embedded labor in imported goods is vicarious immigration. Both reduce the real wage of the importing country.

Net imports are a benefit in real terns of trade, but only under full employment. Otherwise both result in either lower domestic wages (immigration) or lower domestic employment (net imports).

Naked Capitalism
Marshall Auerback: Donald Trump Understands the Nexus Between Trade and Immigration

Reuters — Ohio’s ‘dirty little secret’: Blue-collar Democrats are backing Trump

Canton’s local United Steelworkers union has 1,800 members — down from 6,700 at its peak 30 years ago. Its leadership has not officially endorsed a candidate, thought it has praised Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders. Some rank-and-file members, however, say they better identify with Trump’s broadsides against illegal immigration and tirades against trade with China and Mexico.

Raw Story
Ohio’s ‘dirty little secret’: Blue-collar Democrats are backing Trump

Reuters

Lord Keynes — A Neoliberal Vision for Europe

Moar neoliberal nuttiness.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
A Neoliberal Vision for Europe
Lord Keynes

See also

Open Borders in Europe means More Neoliberalism