Im-Politic: Insidious New Frontiers in Media Bias

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2016 elections, Bryan Caplan, chattering class, China, currency manipulation, Donald Trump, echo chamber, Financial Crisis, Global Imbalances, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Mainstream Media, Open Borders, Project Syndicate, The Atlantic, TIME, Trade, Vanity Fair, Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite

I’ve always found the role played by the Mainstream Media in setting the national policy agenda fascinating, important – and sorely neglected. As suggested in recent posts about establishment figures and organs expressing formerly taboo perspectives about U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the nation’s leading publications and news shows in particular not only actively campaign for favored policies through legitimate (e.g., their own editorials) or not-so-legitimate (biased reporting) means.

In addition, especially with opinion articles they publish and post, they exert influence more subtly – by deciding which subjects and positions are acceptable for their often highly educated and politically active readers, and of course for politicians, to raise. And as others in the media or the nation’s political classes and other elites start getting and repeating the message, powerful momentum for chosen views can be generated through what many observers have called the “echo chamber effect.”

In my lifetime, one of the clearest examples was the late CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite’s famous 1968 broadcast portraying victory in the Vietnam War had become a futile ambition for the United States. Until then, respectable opinion was split, but along the relatively narrowly drawn lines of calls for escalating America’s military involvement, and calls for (some kind of) negotiated solution to the conflict. But Cronkite’s pessimism was so complete and unexpected, and his judgment and integrity so highly regarded, that even though he endorsed more energetic diplomacy, the idea of cutting losses and simply pulling up stakes inevitably moved from the wings toward center stage.

So that’s why it’s important to spotlight examples of this agenda-setting and momentum-creation on top of those already discussed in these digital pages – especially since the two latest exemplify some troubling contemporary twists. Authors have  been permitted to air path-breaking versions of preferred points of view without being required to contend with screamingly obvious objections. And these missives are appearing practically – and suspiciously – back to back. Even worse, there appears to be a blatantly political, Campaign 2016-focused objective being sought as well.

The first example concerns immigration, and my conviction that it can’t be completely coincidental that both TIME magazine and The Atlantic presented readers with articles making the case for completely open borders within three days of each other!

I’m not saying that this is not a perfectly valid opinion to hold. But in addition to the timing, what’s revealing – and in fact outrageous – is that evidently none of the editors at either publication asked the authors to deal seriously with the potential problems that relatively wealthy countries would run into if they started sending “Come one, come all” messages around the world. After all, it’s not like the chaos that’s resulted in part from the European Union’s welcoming stance regarding refugees has not been screamingly obvious for months. And imagine the possible magnet effect on Mexico if the United States explicitly dropped its immigration limits and border enforcement. (Not to mention the national security threats that could arise.)

To his credit, the author of the TIME column, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, did acknowledge such challenges. But although his answer – restrict welfare benefits for immigrants – is defensible logically, it’s absurd politically. What makes him believe that most of the pro-amnesty forces would accept this kind of compromise?

The second example of such sophisticated propagandizing concerns international trade. In this case, two other economists (and indeed, much bigger names than the above open borders champions) have argued for coddling China’s brazen violations of market-oriented commercial norms, including its currency manipulation. Again, although I strongly disagree, there’s a defensible argument for the United States to accommodate China’s rise. Ditto for believing that with enough supposed smarts in Washington, the opportunities for mutual gain should and will outweigh the temptation in both Washington and Beijing to view bilateral relations as an exclusively zero-sum proposition.

But both authors – Nobel economics laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and superstar Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs – have ignored what happened when the United States pursued just this strategy on the economic front just a short decade ago. The resulting trade and investment imbalances arguably helped trigger the global financial crisis. It’s infuriating that neither author – both of whom are surely familiar with this contention and the impressive evidence for it – referred to this danger. And it’s appalling that none of the editors of even Vanity Fair magazine and the Project Syndicate website that showcased their work brought up the question.

Either these staffs weren’t aware of this objection, or they shunted it to the side in order to portray these theses in the best possible light. Neither explanation would reflect well on media platforms that claim to value educating the public. And let’s not forget that Stiglitz’ Vanity Fair article was posted barely a week after Sachs’ Project Syndicate column.

So it seems entirely reasonable to conclude that these four articles were published and posted specifically to start convincing the public not only to support today’s watered down versions of open borders-type immigration and trade policies. They also sought to demonstrate that the logical extremes of these policies are eminently feasible as well as desirable. And son of a gun – which front-running presidential hopeful this year has made more restrictive immigration and trade proposals his core issues?

The First Amendment properly protects the media’s right to engage in such subliminal political advertising. If only the Constitution could protect the public’s right to know when it’s being manipulated.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: About Those “Jobs Americans Won’t Do”

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agriculture, automation, Bryan Caplan, Center for Immigration Studies, farm workers, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Immigration, Jobs, labor shortages, Mark Krikorian, Michael Dukakis, minimum wage, Open Borders, productivity, Ron Unz, technology, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As “everybody knows,” one of the main reasons that the U.S. economy desperately needs a huge population of low-paid immigrants (whether legal or soon-to-be legalized) is that these workers do crucial jobs that the native-born population snubs. And with the immigration policy debate continually intensifying in this presidential campaign cycle, expect this claim to be trotted out again and again by champions of Open Borders-style approaches to the issue. (Here’s a good post indicating just how often it’s been made by major political and chattering class figures.)

What a surprise, then, to keep discovering evidence showing that the “jobs American won’t do” contention to be completely bogus.

As should be clear to anyone familiar with standard economic thinking, the idea underlying all such claims – of chronic labor shortages that can only be eased with big new influxes of foreign workers – is nonsensical theoretically. The reasons have to do with time-honored concepts of supply and demand. When they’re out of balance – which in this imperfect world happens all the time – actors in free markets adjust in several ways, all involving the price mechanism. Employers facing such labor market mismatches will either raise wages, in order to attract the workers they need, or they introduce labor-saving machines or other efficiency-enhancing improvements if the former option isn’t appealing. Of course, in the real world, responses are often some combination of these alternatives.

But whatever business’ choices, the implications for the economy as a whole are the same. “Jobs that Americans won’t do” will before too long be filled by better paid workers or by the proverbial robots.

Both options, moreover, contain ample potential to strengthen the economy to everyone’s benefit. The pluses of higher wages (up to a point, of course!) are self-evident. But although the labor-saving technology strategy sounds like a formula for mass unemployment, centuries of history teach that automation ultimately creates many more, and better, jobs than it displaces. (Will this record continue in an unfolding age of more and more sophisticated robots and artificial intelligence? I sure as heck don’t know. But that’s a medium-term challenge, not an imminent one.) Moreover, more use of machines is typically a sign that the economy is becoming more productive. And that’s as good as it sounds – including for wages and broader living standards.

There is an important caveat: Not all companies, or even whole industries, are capable of making these adjustments (whether they want to or whether they’re confident that immigrants will keep flooding to their rescue). But that doesn’t mean that labor shortages need to or should be dealt with by new government measures like opening borders even wider. Instead, it mean that these companies and industries have lousy, and even completely non-viable business models. Why should they be bailed out with immigration policy at the expense both of native-born workers and greater efficiency?

It’s true that theories can be and often are wrong. But not this one. Exhibit One has to do with technology. Immigrants both legal and not comprise a big share of America’s agricultural workforce, and the farm sector has long insisted that the depressed wages that result from immigrant-fueled labor surpluses are crucial to keeping food affordable. Further, they and their supporters argue, few native-born Americans would want to toil in the fields even if pay was raised.

As it turns out, however, meager wages ultimately were making workers harder and harder to find throughout the ag sector. And rather than close up shop – and let entire crops go unplanted, immense harvests rot on the vine, and widespread hunger to emerge – guess what American farmers have started to do? Yep. They’re spreading mechanization beyond the grains and other commodity crops for which its use has been commonplace for decades!  (Thanks, by the way, to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies for a recent tweet that first alerted me to this development.) 

In fact, thanks to ever more sophisticated robots and similar devices, they’re even mechanizing the picking of fruits and vegetables long considered to be too delicate to be handled by machines, like strawberries and blueberries. And it’s pretty reasonable to suppose that these machines will keep getting cheaper, better, and able to perform an ever wider range of tasks. .

Exhibit Two isn’t a real-world development yet. Instead, it’s a proposal that dramatically shows how higher wages could slash the nation’s supposed need for illegal immigrant labor. According to folks ranging from former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis to reform-minded California Republican multi-millionaire businessman Ron Unz, a healthy increase in the minimum wage would draw many legal U.S. residents back into the nation’s workforce and reduce the attractiveness of hiring illegals – many of whom are poorly educated and speak limited English. And of course, businesses that hired only legal residents would have no law enforcement worries. Even George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, an unabashed supporter of completely Open Borders (seriously!) has acknowledged the “logic” of the proposal.

So the next time you hear the “jobs Americans won’t do” argument, you can be pretty sure that it’s coming from someone who just doesn’t know their basic economics, whose ideologically committed to completely unfettered immigration, or who has a big political or economic self-interest in importing poverty on a huge scale into the United States.