Monday, August 7, 2017

Ann Saphir — Check your math, central banker says: less immigration equals less growth

Less than week after a U.S. President Donald Trump embraced legislation to reduce immigration, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari urged residents of South Dakota to embrace newcomers instead.
"Just going to math, if a big source of economic growth is population growth, and your population growth slows, either because you restrict immigration or because you have fewer babies, your economic growth is going to slow," Kashkari said at the Rotary Club of Downtown Sioux Falls, responding to a question about a Trump-backed bill to cut legal immigration by 50 percent over the next 10 years. "Do we want economic growth, or not? That’s what it comes down to."

Kashkari not alone in seeing immigration as key to U.S. economic growth.

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan routinely points out that immigrants have historically boosted U.S. workforce growth, and therefore economic growth, and has warned that the crackdown on illegal immigration could hurt consumer spending. Fed Chair Janet Yellen told U.S. lawmakers earlier this year that slowing immigration could probably hurt growth....
And "everybody knows a rising tide lifts all boats." (snark)

Reuters
Check your math, central banker says: less immigration equals less growth
Ann Saphir

6 comments:

Kain said...

No mention of GDP per capita.. No mention of wage growth..

Kaivey said...

No, just the rich getting richer. There will be more demand for housing pushing the house prices up, so people will become poorer. Rents well go up too.

More demand for water will further wreck the environment.

Also, immigrants only work harder for a few years then they work no more harder than anyone else. More immigrants will lead to an exponential rise in the population meaning more problems down the road.

This article is proof that the elite want more immigration and this had been their policy. So this is why the neocons want open borders. The Soros conspiracy theory may well be true.

Ralph Musgrave said...

Good heavens: so the larger the population, the bigger GDP is likely to be!!! Who'd er thunk it?

Matt Franko said...

"Fed Chair Janet Yellen told U.S. lawmakers earlier this year that slowing immigration could probably hurt growth"

what about "inflation!" though...

Dan Lynch said...

What Kain and Kaivey said.

Population growth benefits corporations.

But how does it benefit me?

Kaivey said...

If you are not paying the wages you have to get demand from somewhere. More people will do.