A world of free movement would be $78T richer
This article seems symptomatic of a general decline in the quality of The Economist. I used to be a subscriber but there  was a noticeable sharp drop some time ago, I think when Micklethwaite stepped down as editor, and things seem to have got worse since. Shoddy thinking, bizarre arguments and extremist conclusions seem more common than they used to be.<p>Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that <i>merely by moving to a richer country</i>, people become automatically more productive:<p><i>&gt; Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers</i><p>This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don&#x27;t suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too.<p>Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are <i>less</i> used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free?<p>A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”.<p>The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree.<p>Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands at just 17 per cent.<p>The Economist also seems to struggle with the basics of <i>why</i> some countries do better than others. They do sort of comprehend the shape of the problem:<p><i>&gt; On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so.</i><p><i>&gt; It is very hard to transfer Canadian institutions to Cambodia, but quite straightforward for a Cambodian family to fly to Canada.</i><p>Hmmm. So. Some countries are run abysmally, and others are well run. Why is that? The Economist acts like good governance is a feature of geography, something the Canadians dig out of the ground. But it&#x27;s not, government is people, so presumably the people in those countries aren&#x27;t very good at building wealthy societies. For example their cultures frequently turn a blind eye to graft, dictatorship is common, installing relatives in government posts is expected, work gets done slowly or not at all, votes are seen as things useful to sell for a bit more income and so on.<p>So what happens if all those people simply move to another country? Does their culture change overnight? And if not, what makes The Economist so sure that the bad administration and poverty those people were trying to escape won&#x27;t just follow them to the west?<p>This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don&#x27;t simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Corruption" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Cor...</a>