Economists struggle to find evidence that immigration reduces wages, yet business leaders' support for immigration is clearly based on believing it does just that. This suggests 1) economists are wrong, or 2) biz leaders are stupid even when they're also entirely self-interested.
Followers of my tweets will probably not be surprised that I think the vast bulk of the explanation lies with 2.
Was listening to a Freakonomics story yesterday about researchers who found that lots of advertising is basically worthless for companies' bottom lines, yet they got a lot of pushback simply because no one believed for-profit companies would stupidly waste that much money.
There's this weird assumption out there that cold-blooded self-interest and evidence-based intelligence naturally go together.
Also, my sense is that a fair amount of "populist" conservative anti-immigration sentiment is reverse engineered from business' support. "If the woke capitalists think immigration reduces wages, then it must do that, no matter what the economists say!" https://twitter.com/jeffspross/status/1336009211461971973
This this this. https://twitter.com/interfluidity/status/1336014861965406212
You can follow @jeffspross.
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