Immigration Reform Now

 The primary economic priority right now is the state of play when it comes to inflation. Some of this is unavoidable, as energy costs continue to be volatile and likely will remain volatile until Russia is expelled from Ukraine.

However, there are other inflationary pressures on the economy, and they seem to be linked to employment. Fundamentally, there are not enough workers to fill job openings. This is good for workers, because employers need to raise wages to staff their businesses. It's bad news for consumers, when businesses pass those increased costs on to customers.

The conventional way to fight inflation is to raise interest rates, which makes money for borrowing harder to come by. This reduces economic activity as a whole and cools off inflation. The problem is that the "heat" in this economy is either from oil prices - which aren't really linked to monetary policy - or a tight labor market. So we are seeing a downturn in sectors like construction and manufacturing, because they are more dependent on easy credit. We are punishing certain sectors, while other sectors see robust job creation, even with high interest rates.

If you wanted to douse the inflationary fire, the easiest way economically would be immigration reform that allowed more people into the country either as Green Card holders or temporary worker status. Instead, we have a patchwork asylum system that's overloaded with migrants from places like Nicaragua or Venezuela who are here for bot legitimate asylum reasons and just a desire for a better life.

How much better would America be with more Nigerians or South Africans? More Indians? With almost no language barrier, incredible work ethics and perhaps even some needed skills, migrants from these countries could improve their personal circumstances and create downward pressure on wages that would ease inflation without the Federal Reserve having to force a recession on the country.

It's very important to note that inflation is not an American problem. Inflation in the EU is running at 10%, compared to the 7.7% we are seeing in the US. There's a pretty simple reason why we are seeing this, even above and beyond rising energy costs: Covid killed a lot of people. Lots of them are older, but there are also people who stayed home and changed their employment status. Plus, in most "post-industrial" countries the populations are, in fact, older. There are still quite a few workers in their 50s and even 60s. And some of them died and they weren't replaced by younger workers.

The US birthrate is 12.4 births per 1000 people. The global average is 18.5. India and Mexico's are over 18. Japan's economic stagnation since 1990 is tied to it's birthrate of around 8 per 1000. America isn't quite in that demographic death spiral, but if the American economy is going to grow, we need to start letting more immigrants into this country.

Sadly, there is an entire political movement oriented around destroying American economic growth. Ironically, they say they want to Make America Great Again, when really they are insuring its long term collapse.