Are welfare and free trade/migration incompatible?

[jay gw]

It strikes me that the dismantling of some welfare, social safety net programs like Social Security and some that Europeans are dismantling, are happening at the same time that free trade is increasing and workers are moving around at an incredible pace.

It seems that to have a welfare system, like coupons for food to give the poor, you have to have a system which registers people, and monitors them for abuses of the charity.

But....if people migrate faster and faster, going where the best work conditions are, how can you monitor them?

You do not have a stable population to monitor.

The second thing, and maybe more importantly, is that the ones moving are the educated and better paid people. They can get in countries much easier than unskilled people.

But....they are the ones that pay the biggest revenues into the government treasuries. The vast majority of money paid into the US Treasury is paid by a tiny fraction of rich people. The majority pays very little.

If they are the ones getting dual/triple whatever citizenships, and hiding their assets, how can a government get the money to pay into welfare systems?

 

[Rob Lister]

If they are the ones getting dual/triple whatever citizenships, and hiding their assets, how can a government get the money to pay into welfare systems?

Well, gosh-darn, Jay GW had has come to an important economic realization: Countries, like companies, compete for the best 'clients'.

 

[TragicMonkey]

The second thing, and maybe more importantly, is that the ones moving are the educated and better paid people. They can get in countries much easier than unskilled people.

Not always. Companies sometimes pay the costs to bring in lowskilled labor from poorer countries, knowing that the imported labor will work for less money than local labor. This is widespread in the hotel and resort industry. Sometimes an entire generation of young people living in Poor Village A all wind up working at Resort B in another country. Some, no doubt, will use the opportunity to acquire more education or skills while working there, and move on to better paid work. Others will keep their jobs, satisfied that they're better off than they were at home.

As long as the workers do have access to some opportunities to study, etc, if they desire to, I see nothing wrong with the practice. In fact, it sounds like a good deal provided the company in question treats them well and isn't doing something fishy about the immigration status or anything.

 

[SlippyToad]

It strikes me that the dismantling of some welfare, social safety net programs like Social Security and some that Europeans are dismantling, are happening at the same time that free trade is increasing and workers are moving around at an incredible pace.

It seems that to have a welfare system, like coupons for food to give the poor, you have to have a system which registers people, and monitors them for abuses of the charity.

But....if people migrate faster and faster, going where the best work conditions are, how can you monitor them?

You do not have a stable population to monitor.

The second thing, and maybe more importantly, is that the ones moving are the educated and better paid people. They can get in countries much easier than unskilled people.

But....they are the ones that pay the biggest revenues into the government treasuries. The vast majority of money paid into the US Treasury is paid by a tiny fraction of rich people. The majority pays very little.

If they are the ones getting dual/triple whatever citizenships, and hiding their assets, how can a government get the money to pay into welfare systems?

Another consequent question you might ask is are the precepts of human society and industrial capitalism compatible? In other words, if our society is treated as a machine that works to its own best advantage, and people are disposable units, how long before the people, who are individually much more intelligent than the machine, decide that it is less painful to tear it down and do without, than to continue being exploited by it?

Because whenever I am confronted with peoples' whining about social redistribution, I have to wonder what they imagine people will do when the machine no longer has a use for them, and they have no social safety net to fall back on? Just fall into a crack? I think not.

 

[gnome]

I don't think you can have truly free trade unless the labor force is as freely able to move as the capital. Until that is the case there will be a fundamental imbalance, to the detriment of labor, because the capital can easily move to where labor is cheaper.