Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Immigration Policies are Lame

Thought experiment on labor...
We know that people immigrate for a better life. In the less developed nations, it is usually the lower class that travel to the U.S., and we know that by them coming to the U.S. alone raises the amount they produce. From this estimation alone we know that the immigrant came to the States with only his own human capital, and the increase in production must then be due to other elements found in the U.S.
Comparing the immigrants from less developed nations to those from more developed nations (see Olson's Big Bills Left on Sidewalks) we find that immigrants from more developed nations are more productive and therefore receive a higher wage than immigrants from less developed nations. The human capital from developed nations is substantially higher than that of the less developed nations. With this fact, isn't it strange that the government wants to uphold immigration with a quota? Yet clearly there is a difference between the immigrants from developed nations and less developed nations. Is the government so full of itself it believes it can set the quota to fit all different types of labor?
The more developed nation's immigrants would take the middle class jobs while the less developed nations would work in the lower class jobs within the American economy, so why is it many Americans believe Hispanic immigrants are taking most of American jobs again? Especially since they are in the lower level positions...
Government policy needs to get over itself; the market sets the equilibrium and the U.S. labor economy obviously is no where near the equilibrium for high human capital and low human capital labor.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Subway Systems Hacked!

Students from MIT hacked into the Boston Subway system which has similar systems to many of the biggest subways within the world including the DC Metro area. Check out this link to the article and the students pdf presentation upon how easy it is to hack into the system.