Jobs Are Not Money-Lined Boxes to be Filled, but Productive Tasks to be Performed
28 January 2009
Editor, The Baltimore Sun
Dear Editor:
C. Paul Mendez wants to protect American workers from competition with a moratorium on immigration (Letters, Jan. 28). Why stop there? Why not also impose moratoria on worker training and on technological advances? After all, improved worker skills and more highly developed production techniques increase worker productivity. The result is that any given amount of output is produced using fewer workers. So worker training and technological advances, no less than immigrants, also compete with many existing workers.
In truth, any such moratoria are moratoria on sources of economic growth - never wise moves at any time, but especially not during times such as these when investors are especially leery of committing funds to long-term projects.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Baltimore Sun
Dear Editor:
C. Paul Mendez wants to protect American workers from competition with a moratorium on immigration (Letters, Jan. 28). Why stop there? Why not also impose moratoria on worker training and on technological advances? After all, improved worker skills and more highly developed production techniques increase worker productivity. The result is that any given amount of output is produced using fewer workers. So worker training and technological advances, no less than immigrants, also compete with many existing workers.
In truth, any such moratoria are moratoria on sources of economic growth - never wise moves at any time, but especially not during times such as these when investors are especially leery of committing funds to long-term projects.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday July 3, 2009 at 2:21pm