The lifeboat effect can be best illustrated by the 1995 film Titanic. One of the occupants in a lifeboat wanted to go back and pick up the survivors in the water. But he was told the survivors would swamp the boat because the lifeboat has limited resources such as space, water, and food.
Is the border crisis causing a lifeboat effect?
To talk about the lifeboat effect we have to talk realistically about the United States and its resources. A great myth about the United States is that it is a very rich country however we are highly indebted and even our social security system may go broke by the year 2035.
According to economist Dr. Robert Gordon who wrote the paper “IS U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH OVER? FALTERING INNOVATION CONFRONTS THE SIX HEADWINDS“ There was virtually no growth before 1750, and thus there is no guarantee that growth will continue indefinitely and that was an unusual time in human history. There was only a great economic growth after 1750.” That date is a date that we recognize as the beginning of the United States.
So what is the big deal about economists writing a paper? Years ago, I discovered another paper written by a mathematical physicist, who had a similar conclusion. This paper, written by Dr. Jonathan Huebner, is called “A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation” and was published in 2005. In it Dr. Huebner hedges his bets by stating that there is a possible declining trend in worldwide innovation. The Industrial Revolution and innovation helped create the middle-class standard of living today.
Dr. Gordon was unaware of Dr. Huebner’s publication. Physicists, in general, do not talk to economists and vice versa. I am bringing both of these papers together in this article. Hopefully, other academics will read these two papers. When two individuals with PhDs from different disciplines obtain the same data or similar data and come to the same conclusions, you can almost be certain that what they observe is a real effect.
The observation of these authors is that innovation is slowing down, as innovation in the world slows down, and the middle class is on the decline, especially in the United States. What is particularly telling about Dr. Huebner’s paper is the last figure in his paper. It shows that the rate of innovation/invention since the end of the Dark Ages is slowing down.
Ironically this migrant crisis accelerated under the Obama Administration and the great irony here is that his main constituency, African Americans are the most damaged by this acceleration in immigration. The late congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas was also concerned about immigrants taking away the jobs of African Americans.
For example, the authors of “Immigration and the Economic Status of African-American Men,” a 2010 study published in the journal Economia, concluded, “We find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose.”
The chart below Illustrates The Fading of the American dream that children will not do better than their parents.
Being a third-generation Italian American it's hard to say that we should now slam the door on new immigrants, but something is happening with the economy that did not happen before in US history.
This new economic fundamental that is happening with the economy may best be explained by Dr. Robert Gordon's paper cited above. Children born today are not doing as well as their parents. Ironically the group most negatively impacted by the migrants are African Americans the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party. This party helped to create the immigrant surge thinking that these would be new voters for them and they would maintain power in Washington.
A college education does not guarantee a middle-class lifestyle. The chart below shows how much college costs have risen and the average earnings in the ages of 22 to 27.
No doubt the hype of the economic value of coming to the United States has been tremendously overemphasized. I know of some Latin Americans and some Indians who came to the United States and found it much more difficult to work here. The cost of living was much higher in the United States and they returned to their home countries.
Needless to say, we have some very difficult decisions to make about migrants and immigration in the very near future.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Why do we lump legal immigration in with illegal immigration? To say we don’t want to shut the door on immigration isn’t the issue. No one wants to shut the door on LEGAL immigration. An initial comment. I’m just beginning to read your article.
"IS U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH OVER?"
It's hard to tell. It's complicated, but government economists measure growth in the size and amount of government as growth in the economy. I discuss this in my Substack yesterday "The U.S. Economy versus the American Economy". https://open.substack.com/pub/michael796/p/the-us-economy-versus-the-american
So the real US economy has probably been growing a lot slower than we have been told. And it cannot support a vast increase in illegal immigration.