> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Behalf Of Max Sawicky
> Still, I want to know more about inequality measures controlled for
> immigration (if such statistics are even kept).
>
> ...I've raised this point myself. If you imagine a set
> of people with given incomes that remain fixed over
> some time period, then add some additional folks
> with lower incomes, the average will decrease and
> the distribution will be less equal, even though
> the well-being of the initial group has not changed
> at all.
Wait a second- we aren't adding poeple "with lower incomes"; we are just adding people who are employed in the economy. If the economy is creating employment patterns such that jobs on the bottom make far less than those on the top, that is a structural change in inequality, whoever is filling the jobs.
Most immigrants add more to the economy than they receive in wages and benefits from society (pretty well documented by the Urban Institute at this point) so the higher income -- or even steady income -- of the previously poor or median workers is possibly due to those very immigrants, so you can't analyze the economy in this static way.
With exploitation of those immigrants partly fueling the economic growth funnelling to the top, this argument blaming inequality on the immigrants entering the demographic analysis just seems very wrong.
For leftists, the problem of inquality is precisely the problem of exploitation and to in any way explain way inequality by the existence of a new additional exploited class is an odd statistical sleight of hand.
-- Nathan Newman