A lot of people in the UK think that white people should be given UK jobs ahead
of black people. They complain when black people get jobs ahead of white
people - and they get taken in by the false propaganda that exclaims black
people coming into the country to work is bad for the economy (it isn't).
All that I just said is
true, apart from two small details; I said 'white' instead of 'British' and
'black' instead of 'non-British'. I
said it because, even today, many people who believe it is wrong to
discriminate on the basis of race (a man made concept*) are surprisingly quite
happy to discriminate on the basis of geography (another man-made
concept). When we look
back at some of the shameful acts and beliefs in history (such as
stoning, witch-hunts, slavery), we are usually appalled that our ancestors
behaved so reprehensibly, and with such ignorance. Similarly, most of us
are appalled at the relative recency of our homophobia and
racism. The underlying point is, I don't see why we should be less
appalled at discriminating against someone based on their geography than discriminating
against someone based on their race – both strike me as equally absurd, unkind
and unjustified. Furthermore, I
feel fairly certain that future generations will have culturally evolved to
find discrimination based on geography as reprehensible and ignorant as we of
today find discrimination based on race.
Despite the above, it is
incredible how frequently people complain about 'migrants stealing our jobs', and how often they insist that 'British money should be spent in Britain'.
I don't see why a young, unskilled man from Newcastle
or Liverpool or London with not much willingness
to work should take precedence in the employment market over a young man from Poland or Nigeria who has the right skills,
and is willing to work. And I don't see
why a family in Cambodia with not enough food and drinking water should be any
less of a concern for us than a family in Newcastle or Liverpool or London
living in impoverished conditions - in fact, it seems obvious to me that those
in Cambodia (and other countries much poorer than ours) should be more of a
concern, because they are the people in the world that need the most
help.
You may be the sort of
person who thinks that £7 million of British taxpayers' money spent on a dual
carriageway in Norfolk should take precedence
over £7 million spent on digging wells to provide drinking water for dying
people in Cambodia. Your logic might be that British people are
paying their taxes, so it should thus stand to reason that that money should be
spent on British needs. I don't think that's a good way to think, because
if you recall Harsanyi's model, which tests these moral issues most honestly
and prudently – his model would show that it's better to stop people dying than
it is to improve their journey times on roads.
But even if I grant you that
British taxpayers’ money should be spent on British things, that still doesn’t
advance the argument that’s it is ok to discriminate in favour of British
people in the employment market, because the taxpayers are not paying wages,
employers are (at least they are in the majority of cases we are talking
about), and employers are free to employ whoever they want. A correlative point – and one which many do
not get – is that if an employer has found 100 non-British workers who are
willing to work for £3 per hour less than his 100 British workers, the nation
is better off (as is the global economy), because before the non-British
workers began to do the jobs, there were 100 potential workers each being overpaid by £3
per hour. In a 40 hour week that amounts
to a net overpayment of £12,000.
Ok, I’d guess some people
aren’t convinced that paying people £3 per hour less is a good thing. That’s because they’re not thinking with a
proper economic model – they’re probably thinking in emotive terms like
‘minimum wage’ and ‘cheap labour’, and they probably have it drummed into them
that high wages means a good economy. This
is wrong on two counts; firstly, it is erroneous to think of a £3 per hour drop
as being a net loss – it is no such thing.
It’s a loss if you only think of the cost and ignore the benefit, which
amounts to saying, don’t just focus on the employee who is losing £3 per hour,
focus too on the employer who just gained £3 per hour. There is no net loss to the economy, because the
employee’s loss is balanced out by the employer’s gain. And in fact, those higher wage demands that
are insisted upon to ‘protect British workers’, actually end up putting the
prices of goods and services up even more for everyone else, which amounts to an
overall net loss.
But there’s another reason;
finding someone who will do the job for less is a good thing for the economy in
a similar way to how improving technology is good for the economy (and in most
cases it’s a good thing for the person doing the work too – because having
accepted the lower wage job, one presumes he did so because the terms offered
were an improvement on his situation prior to accepting it). In fact, not only is finding someone who will
do the job for less a good thing for the economy in a similar way to how
improving technology is a good thing for the economy - they are more or less
the same thing. Here’s why.
Suppose you have a car
factory in Manchester, and on the staff team you have 3 innovative engineers;
Tom, who designs a machine that assembles the engine valves 25% quicker than the
current machine; Dick, who synthesises two compounds that vastly improves the
engine oil’s ability to clean the engine; and Harry, whose newly constructed equipment
can make seatbelt holders at £2.60 per item cheaper than the current
equipment. I think you’ll agree that
those three advances have improved the car factory in Manchester.
And having agreed, it stands to reason that if you want to be consistent
you are compelled to agree that finding cheaper ways to employ people is also
good for the economy, because it’s the same thing.
When we outsource the work
attached to call centres, medical data analysis, computer software design,
electrical engineering, and so forth, we are doing something very similar to
Tom, Dick and Harry’s improvements in the car factory in Manchester.
That’s the wisdom that it seems too many people miss; new business and
trading links across the world are good for the world as a whole, just as new
technological innovations are good for the world as a whole. Hopefully in our lifetime we will get to live
in a world in which we see the end of discrimination against total strangers because
they happen to live in another humanly constructed geographical border. Economics favours it, and so does human kindness and decency.
* Generally
speaking, there is more genetic diversity between a man in Nigeria and a man in Kenya
than there is between a man in Nigeria
and a man in Belgium, Holland or Spain.
This alone shows the absurdity and
man-made wickedness of racism.
