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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the Open Borders edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. Although this week we are zooming back, we are not going to bother ourselves with the picayune details of the news of the week. We have bigger fish to fry. I am Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm joined by Emily Peck of HuffPost. Hello, I'm joined by Anna Shymansky of Breaking Views. Hello, I AM in Washington, D.C. this week and we are joined by Bryan Caplan of George Mason University.
- [00:50]
B
How's it going?
- [00:51]
A
Who is a. I don't know. Can I just call you a professional contrarian?
- [00:56]
B
Sure. I love it.
- [00:56]
A
It's. You have a new book out. We're going to talk about three of your books in this episode. It's going to be a monster episode. But the new book and the, if I dare say so, by far the easiest to read or certainly the easiest on the eyes to read is called.
- [01:12]
B
Open the Science and Ethics of Immigration.
- [01:15]
A
You have made an argument in comic book form that the United States in particular and countries in general should just open their borders. We are going to talk about that and whether it's a good idea. But you, you didn't just write that book. You wrote two other books which we're going to talk about.
- [01:30]
B
What are those selfish reasons to have more kids? Why being a great parent is less work and more fun than you think. And also the case against education, why the education system is a waste of time and money.
- [01:41]
A
So if you think that we should have some control over who comes into our country, if you think that having universities is a good thing, if you think that maybe you don't want to have lots of kids, this is Brian's attempt to change your mind on these things. And it's going to be a rollicking show, all of which is coming up right now on Slate Money. So, Brian, let's start with your newest book, which is a comic book.
- [02:12]
B
Graphic novel.
- [02:13]
A
Well, it's not very much a novel.
- [02:15]
B
Yes. So you think of it as a documentary comic book. So it's called Open the Science and Ethics of Immigration. And in this book, I combine my love of graphic novels with my fascination with immigration to create a problem.
- [02:27]
A
And there's you. You are a drawn character. In this book.
- [02:31]
B
I'm the narrator. Just like in a lot of documentaries, you make yourself the narrator of your own documentary. And that's what I did in this book.
- [02:37]
A
Okay. So your thesis in this book is that we should open up our borders completely and just allow Anyone who wants to come into the country. To come into the country.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah. Unless they belong in jail.
- [02:52]
A
Have you found that people get persuaded by this?
- [02:55]
B
I've persuaded a whole lot of people, but of course there's a whole lot more people that I haven't persuaded. This is an idea that on the one hand it has a lot of appeal to people who like elegant simplicity. And of course it also has a lot of appeal to people who are highly logical, Vulcan type people who you can say, well, look, why exactly is it that we want to keep people out? But a lot of what I try to do in the book is just to broaden the appeal. I mean, part of it is I want to broaden it from. Make the readers everyone from active researchers on immigration all the way down to 7 year olds. This is the only thing ever written where my little kids were looking over my shoulder and were actually curious about what I was doing.
- [03:34]
A
That's awesome.
- [03:35]
B
So, I mean, I have been trying to get people to give this book to kids. So Christmas is coming up, every kid needs one.
- [03:41]
A
So let's do a quick round robin on priors here. I've always, well, not always. I pretty much always have been quite sympathetic to this idea, but most people are not. So, Emily, what was your view of this idea like before you read the book?
- [03:58]
C
I guess I had never actually thought about actually having fully open borders. I thought I'm definitely one of the people who think more immigration is a good thing. But it never occurred to me that we should just be like a free for all. And then I read in this graphic novel and realized, oh, we used to have open borders, it was fine. That's how my grandparents got here. And I was sort of pushed to agreeing with the thesis.
- [04:27]
A
All right, Anna.
- [04:29]
D
So I came into this, I'll be perfectly honest, pretty much how I came out of it, which is that I intellectually think this is all correct. I think there is no way that you can argue that open borders wouldn't be fantastic for people, for the economy in theory. Agreed. However, I think because people have a tendency to mess up economic models, that's where my concern comes in. And I did find the book really persuasive in a lot of ways, but I still have those concerns.
- [05:05]
A
Okay. Okay, so let's start with the headline, which is basically what is it like two or three trillion dollars which is sitting on the sidewalk waiting for.
- [05:15]
B
Oh, a lot more than that. More like 90 trillion a year. 90 trillion, 90 trillion a year would be a mid range estimate for what we would have had, if we'd had open borders the whole time.
- [05:27]
A
So basically the idea is if every country in the world just opened up all of their borders, tomorrow, the world would get $90 trillion, Richard, pretty quickly.
- [05:36]
B
Well, so the pretty quickly is less clear. So I would think it could easily take 50 years before we're realizing 75% of those gains. Just because people don't instantly pack up and move. Usually these estimates, they're basically long run estimates after everything's adjusted and everybody's moved to the place where they want to move and things have settled down. But again, the logic is just there's so much fantastic human talent that is trapped right now in low productivity countries. And you really can transform a person's productivity just by moving them from one country to another.
- [06:08]
A
And just to be clear, the, the reason why it might take a long time to realize most of those gains is precisely that open borders wouldn't mean massive overnight influx of migration and that people naturally tend to stay near where they grew up. And you can look at this in Italy, where you have massive economic disparities within the country, even though obviously it's open borders for a very long time and the migration does happen, but it happens super, super slowly.
- [06:41]
B
Right? I mean, here's the thing is when you're writing a book like this, you get a new idea of the meaning of massive. All right? Now I think actually the amount of immigration that would come if you under open borders, even in the short term, in the year or two, almost every normal human being would consider it massive because there'd probably be 10 or 20 million people that would move in the course of just a couple of years. These are probably people already have family members here or friends here that are ready that are immediately ready to help them hit the ground running. But the kinds of massive that the book's talking about is getting into the realm of a billion. Right? So like over the over a century, you could easily have a billion people.
- [07:16]
A
That would want to come into the United States.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, just the United States.
- [07:20]
A
So the United States currently has a population of what, 340 million? Something like that.
- [07:23]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [07:24]
A
So, so you, you treble the population of the United States.
- [07:27]
B
Right? Which again sounds crazy until you look at history and realize trebling population of countries is not that str. The United States has done it many times before. The idea that like this is the last tripling we can't triple again, it's like, why not? I mean, especially if you've ever driven across this country or just flown over at night and just realized, wow, this country's almost totally empty. There's tons of room physically for people.
- [07:49]
D
I think that that's one of the areas, though, is that I think we're dealing kind of with averages here, because if we had a tremendous influx of people, they probably wouldn't go to Idaho or the middle of the country. They most likely would. Would go to the cities where you have the greatest opportunity to make a lot of money. And while I think immigration is great, I think we should have way more immigration. But I think it's hard to argue that there couldn't be some downsides to that.
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So one of the main things I try to say in the book is I've got a lot of downsides for you. I'm very happy to discuss downsides. But it's the kind of thing where once, if you accept that we're losing like $90 trillion a year, you could list a thousand downsides of 10 billion each, and you're still nowhere close to saying this is a bad idea. In my mind, a lot of what's going on in this book is that there's a way that things get filtered through the media where you just say, look, there's three problems here. We can't do it and say, look, why. So those three problems, let's put a price tag on them and just compare them to the gains and then see whether that really is actually whether they're even comparable. And in the end, I just say they're just not. I mean, I'd actually be, you know, say something even more specific than what you said. So, you know, not only are people likely to go to cities, are likely to go to areas with cheap housing and where you're allowed to build a lot more cheap housing. So, like Texas. Texas is going to grow by leaps and bounds. On the other, you know, Bay Area, New York, like, you know, if they don't deregulate their housing, then I think it's a place that's not very appealing for immigrants just because the housing costs are so astronomical and would be even more so if you had a lot more people trying to move in.
- [09:21]
C
One thing I was curious about, you make the case in the book that immigration, like Felix was just saying, it happens relatively slowly. But has there been much thought put into what is going to happen with climate change and the issue of climate refugees? Because I believe all the projections show that we're going to see a lot more people needing to leave their countries urgently.
- [09:41]
A
Yeah, this Is the thing which was in the back of my head all the time I was reading this book is that we have gone from the open borders are becoming like a moral imperative. Like you make a really strong economic case for them. But when people are dying just by dint of where they are born, and if there are a billion people, you know, living on the Indo gangetic plain and that becomes uninhabitable, those billion people are gonna have to live somewhere else or die. And just on a moral level, you can't just leave them to die.
- [10:14]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Of course, you know, we have a lot more war refugees right now where we're. There's no speculation about how bad things are gonna get. You can just see they're right there. They're like, you know, there are people living in horrible places and horrible conditions. I mean, I remember like around the time of the Syrian refugee crisis, I was writing about how within a country, when there's a disaster coming, we evacuate people in order to save lives. Whereas when there's a war, the main thing is let's prevent the evacuation, let's keep them where they are, we don't want them here. And again, to me this mentality is just so strange. And again, it's also one where ultimately make the problem worse. If people can plan ahead and get out before things are dire, then they can again hit the ground running. They're able to leave with their assets and they can prepare conditions. Whereas you would make people wait till the last min, then you really do get a very scary situation.
- [11:02]
C
I guess I'm just wondering if, as the number of climate refugees increases and puts more pressure on the system, if the argument that open borders is okay because immigration moves slowly is a little dinged up because immigration is going to be moving.
- [11:16]
A
I mean economically. Economically you get more benefit if it moves quickly.
- [11:20]
B
Yeah, of course. Meaning you'll. Minus the adjustment costs. So if you have so many people that you can't drive in the streets because they're clogged with people, then it's a different story. But again, of course that's getting very far from any, any likely scenario. Again, just to be clear, I'm not someone saying that there's not going to be a lot of immigration. I'm saying that the ultimate amount is so astronomical that we shouldn't expect to get a large percentage of that huge amount overnight. But still, in terms of the amount of immigration that we'd be getting, even in the first 10 years, I think it could easily be 50 million people. I'm just someone who's happy to get 50 million more people.
- [11:53]
D
Okay. But one thing I want to bring in here is that we seem to kind of be talking without acknowledging the political reality of what often happens when you have an enormous amount of immigration. And I don't think this is a good thing, what I'm about to say, but it is just the reality is that what often ends up happening, at least, especially recently, we've been seeing is you have destabilized governments, you have the growth of far right parties. You know, right now isn't even a ton of immigration. But I mean, in South Africa you have people from Zimbabwe getting killed. So I think it's. Even though, yes, in a perfect world, both ethically and in almost every other way, this is great in the real world, these people are very. The people kind of we're talking about are very vulnerable. And so I think as a policy prescription, I'd be a little nervous about that because you're potentially putting people in a tremendous amount of danger. I know the argument would be, well, they're already in danger. But I think that if you're looking historically at what tends to happen when you have rapid amounts of immigration, there are some very real consequences.
- [12:57]
B
Yeah. So like, all those consequences you mentioned are true. I just think that when you really calm down and don't think like a journalist and instead think like a philosopher, you realize that these costs are nothing or so small compared to the gains. It just isn't reasonable to try to stop it. I mean, to me, when people talk about the rise of far right movements, my concern is, well, yes, that would be terrible if they stopped immigration. On the other hand, if all they do is complain, then I don't see that it's actually that bad of a problem. So I often argue with my colleague and dear friend Tyler Cowan, and he says, you're wrong, Brian. There's going to be this backlash. And I say, well, as long as the immigrants keep coming, then I'm not that worried about these other things. It's exactly what is it they're doing other than restricting immigration. If they restrict that, then there's a problem. So if you say that we need to go and moderate it so that we get more in the long run, that's just something where I'd like to see evidence, because I don't really see that there's.
- [13:52]
A
My view on this question is really a question of the relative weight of suffering in the United States versus suffering in, say, Bangladesh. And you can say that if a large number of Bangladeshis come to the United States because they're climate refugees, they would be treated very badly and they would have a standard of living which is unacceptably low by current American standards. And that might be true. The question is if that standard of living is unambiguously better than the standard of living they would have had in Bangladesh. There is a temptation which I think should be probably resisted to say, well, so long as they're suffering in Bangladesh, it's not our problem and we shouldn't need to worry about it. But if they're suffering in the United States, it is our problem, we should worry about it. Therefore we shouldn't let them into the United States. And that move, I think you're right, Ryan, is philosophically extremely problematic.
- [14:49]
B
You know, it's this extreme narcissism that people have where it's not really the suffering that bothers many people. It's that I had to see the suffering, which again is very relatable. So like, knowing there's a homeless problem is very different from actually seeing a homeless person, especially after you had a night, a nice night, enjoying your dinner. And then you say, oh my God, there's someone who's actually really having a, really having a hard time. But I say this is just the kind of thing you really need to steel yourself against and just realize that the moral issue is the other person not having a good life. It's not that it bothers you to actually have to experience it.
- [15:24]
C
I think the other thing to say about the so called risk of backlash and the rise of sort of far right propaganda about how immigration is bad is that just on a moral level it doesn't seem like that's a good reason to stop doing immigration. And also I feel like a lot of that backlash and the anti immigration propaganda comes from people who actually, I think Brian makes the argument in his book. It comes from people who actually don't even live near immigrants. It's like a politics, it's a rhetoric of fear and ignorance. And like even you could see it in Minneapolis where the President just spoke and like said terrible things about Somali refugees. But the reality is a lot of Somali refugees live there and like one even got elected to Congress. Like it's, it's like a positive story basically that he's like using to further his own agenda. And I feel like that agenda shouldn't drive immigration policy, even though it does have some obvious downsides.
- [16:19]
A
But let me ask.
- [16:20]
C
Hate crimes.
- [16:21]
A
Let me, let me ask that question specifically, which is if immigration is Such an. A good thing, both economically and morally. Why is it so universally unpopular?
- [16:37]
B
Right. So a lot of it is just human beings are very tribal and so they just focus on. They identify with a certain group and then everyone outside. It's just very natural for people to think of them not just as an outsider, but as a potential enemy. We can see the same thing, international trade, where people tend to think of imports as a bad thing, even though the logic of it, well, wait a second, you think we should export lots of stuff and import nothing? And why would we do that? That's just the same as giving our stuff away for free. But the idea that foreigners are interacting with you in order to take advantage of you or worse, seems to come very naturally to human beings. It's a pretty good evolutionary story that when we were hunter gatherers, when another group of hunter gatherers shows up on the savanna, it is naive to say, oh great, we'll just trade with them and it'll all be wonderful. Because those are very violent times. And the other tribe really go and murder you right before dawn while you're sleeping. And on top of it, it's a very zero sum kind of economy. There's a fixed stock of animals you're hunting. And we have these emotions that are just so irrelevant to the modern world and just so misleading. But again, this is hardly the only way in which it's so. Just think about how much people care about what strangers think of them, even though they're strangers and they'll never encounter them again. This is something that we picked up when we were living in small tribes and where other people's opinions really mattered because we were living with the same 20 or 40 people for our entire. Fast forward to the modern world when the opinions of strangers are as irrelevant to you as almost anything can be. And yet we still care. And I think a lot of maturity is saying, all right, I'm going to just calm down and remember that I'm not living in a tribe right now. 40 people. I'm in a modern world. And if total strangers laugh at my shirt, it really doesn't have any effect on me at all.
- [18:22]
A
I will say to the podcast listeners out there who cannot see Brian's shirt, it is a laughable shirt.
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D
So I want to bring up one other, one other issue. I think a lot of the kind of extrapolations about what the economic effects would be kind of paint this in a way that I would question a little bit because it seems to suggest as though you're going to have These economic benefits that are going to be relatively evenly spread. And my concern, because of, like, how his story has kind of shown that what would end up happening is that you'd have immigrants who would come who wouldn't have any rights. They wouldn't be allowed to vote. They probably wouldn't get benefits. It would make it less likely that the countries would be able to have a kind of broad social safety net. And then you'd have a large pool of people without rights, that companies could then have a nice pool of very, very cheap labor. And my concern is that then you'd create a lot of wealth, but a lot of that wealth would simply go to a small number of corporations, especially if you have a weakened government, because you don't have borders and much less.
- [19:27]
A
Democracy, because a much lower proportion of the population would be allowed to vote, obviously. I mean, I'm not only in favor of open borders or at the very least, much more open borders. I'm also a big fan in favor of all residents being allowed to vote. I don't understand the reason why only citizens should vote. But I think that Anna is right that realistically, if you have a large wave of immigration, a bunch of those immigrations are not going to be a bunch of those immigrants are going to be sort of democratically excluded.
- [20:01]
B
Right. So I guess there's two issues here. One is in terms of how we should expect the large increase in wealth to wind up. To wind up being distributed. And there I say we have numerous historical examples of large increases in output, and 100% of them have been broadly shared. Industrial revolution did not just benefit people that were running factories or capitalists. Instead, they benefited almost anyone who is wearing clothing or eating food or using transportation or living in modern buildings. You know, vaccinations do not primarily benefit companies that come up with vaccines. They primarily benefit the people that get vaccinated. The Internet does not primarily benefit computer programmers. Uber does not primarily benefit Uber drivers. Uber, the corporation still hasn't made any money as far as I know. So, I mean, like, we actually have a long track record of seeing what happens when you have a very large increase in production. And the way that it always works out is that it winds up being widely shared. Just because when you increase production that much, what's going to happen? You can't just have all the gains going to a small number of people. When you have such a large increase in the amount of stuff, the prices are going to go down. In terms of the democratic effects, this is one where I would say it's complicated. There are reasons to be concerned about a large number of people coming and voting in a very different way from the way the people in your country normally do. Especially if your country is pretty functional and their countries aren't. You might very well be worried maybe they're going to vote to go and turn it into a place that is a lot like their home country. This is a lot of what I do in the book just to see, is it really true that immigrants want to go and vote to turn America into Venezuela? And I don't see very much evidence along those lines, but at the same time, I can understand why people would be nervous. So just the fact that people need to wait for it. In terms of how bad is it to not be able to vote? Well, there are enormous numbers of immigrants to the Gulf monarchies who seem really happy to go there, and it's a huge improvement in their lives. And they can't vote. Is it less than optimal? Yes. But is it the kind of thing where I would say it's reasonable to think, well, maybe it's just not good that they're coming? I just think that's just really missing the picture of the reason why Kuwait can have 85% foreigners. A lot of it really is that they don't have much influence over the government. And so the people there just aren't so worried about letting them in. And they come and they really are able to transform their lives just by working in Kuwait for a few years. You can be in a rural village of Pakistan, just work as a waiter in Kuwait for a few years and come home and you're the richest man in your village.
- [22:33]
D
It is okay, but those workers are in very, very poor conditions, just to be fair. I mean, like, this is an issue.
- [22:40]
B
Because very poor by our standards, but awesome by the standards of Pakistan. So, like, as to why thinking this is a bad thing just because we wouldn't want to do it, I don't know.
- [22:51]
D
So I think that this is getting to another issue where we're basically arguing that everyone should be leaving the country or not, or many, many, many people should be leaving the countries where they are.
- [23:04]
A
No, no, wait. No. No one's saying they should be leaving the country. It's like this is.
- [23:07]
D
But they should have the ability to.
- [23:08]
A
Yeah, exactly.
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D
Okay, so then I think that that brings up the other question of, well, why isn't there also just more development in those countries so you have more competition between nations? Because this is my other fear of just like kind of consolidating wealth and power. And, like, I'm the resident capitalist on this show. But I think you can also see what happens when you start to really divorce capitalism from democracy. And if you start to get these situations, and we do see this in Gulf countries where you have workers who have zero rights.
- [23:38]
B
Yeah.
- [23:39]
D
I mean, are they slightly better off than they would have been before? Okay. But they're never going five times as better off.
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A
But I also. I worry. I think Anna's making a good point about what happens also to the countries which are exporting people. And we've seen this in Portugal, we've seen this in Greece. You know, you have freedom of movement within the eu, seen it with Romania, that you wind up the most economically productive people, wind up leaving those countries.
- [24:11]
B
And.
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A
And while it's good for the population of Europe as a whole, there's a real sense in which it's not good for the countries who are losing all of their most productive people.
- [24:24]
B
Right. So, I mean, this is the kind of thing, it has been studied quite closely. In theory, of course, it's possible, but in practice, there are so many other benefits that go back to the home country. So remittances, most obviously. But a lot of times what happens is someone goes to another country, they learn how to run a business well, and then they return and set the business up. I mean, in my graphic novel, I go over what I think is probably the very best example of this. So in 1902, there's a Supreme Court case that effectively rules that the US Will have open borders with Puerto Rico. Now, there was a hurricane a couple years ago which slightly messes up my example, but the hurricanes are not to blame, or the immigration does not cause hurricanes or anything like that. So, I mean, if you go and take a look at Puerto Rico, yes, it's poorer than Mississippi, but it's virtually the richest country in or richest island in the entire Caribbean. And a lot of it just seems that it's because by allowing people to leave not only to get remittances, but you also get great economic connections between Puerto Rico and the US which have transformed the entire place. It's very reasonable to think Puerto Rico would be basically like the Dominican Republic in the absence of this special relationship with the US So it's not just that large numbers of people leave that they do, but it also creates new and special economic connections. So, I mean, it's really.
- [25:36]
D
One second, though. One second, though, in Puerto Rico, you. Currently, one of the biggest issues you have in Puerto Rico is the fact that they're just losing population. Year after year, they're losing population. And part of that reason is because the, the industries that were developed in Puerto Rico were not great for the Puerto Ricans. And they were, they were often just essentially not entirely tax dodges, but to a certain extent. And then when tax laws changed, they became less useful. And so they've left. And so I, this goes back to my idea.
- [26:05]
B
Like, we're talking awesome. Compared to its neighbors, it sure looks like, you know, like, like, you know, people living in Puerto Rico seem way better off because of the fact they have an open border with the U.S.
- [26:14]
D
No, and I'll agree with that. I mean, like, in the sense that. I'm not saying that more immigration would be bad. I think more immigration would be a wonderful thing. I, you know, however, I think we're still talking about this in a type of ideal universe that is not taking into account the reality of how wealth tends to be distributed. And I'm still unclear of why, if you had all of this wealth being created, but you don't really seem. You're not gonna. But people aren't, who are often creating this wealth are not gonna have any. Often probably not even be able to vote. Why you wouldn't just get a situation that is a much more extreme version of what we have now. And that's what worries me.
- [26:57]
C
That's what I wanted to go back to it. I'm glad you brought it up because it does seem like if we opened our borders without really carefully thinking about how we're going to treat immigrants, then we wind up essentially importing higher inequality because you're importing a workforce that while technically better off here than they would be in their home countries, they're still being treated at a much lower level, making much less money, and the benefits are accruing to the top. So you have even more deepening and widening of inequality, which I think is not good for the country. So you can't really do the open borders without thinking more about voting, about democracy, about labor laws, about environmental regulations, about housing. Like, you can't just open the borders. And it's all going to work out because these people will be so grateful to be here. And we can treat them, however, because it's at least it's better than where they came from. I think you have to think more deliberately about how you treat immigrants.
- [27:54]
B
Right. So I say thinking deliberately about how we treat immigrants is what we do now. And that's a lot of why we hardly let any in. Right. So right now every person we're letting in, there's hand wringing like, oh my God, well, could there possibly be this problem? Could there be that problem? Will they be treated well? Will there be environmental effects? Are the labor laws suitable? And when you do it that way, you let hardly any people in and you forfeit these enormous gains. On the other hand, when you just say, no, no, no, immigration's great and these other problems are just not very important by comparison to the enormous benefits, and we're just going to go and let them in and deal with the problems as they come. Probably inadequately, but that's okay, because letting people move from poor countries to rich countries is so tremendously beneficial for them and the world.
- [28:36]
A
But let's talk about the other form of increasing population, which is having babies. And you are very vocal on this subject, that having babies is like something which again gave me the argument, why should we all be doing it and all be doing it more than we are right now?
- [28:53]
B
Right. So I just want to be careful. So when I say I'm vocal, I'm always vocal in telling people reasons why that I think they've overlooked. I'm not vocal in getting on people's case. So none of this is about nagging people. Rather it's about saying that there is a great neglected opportunity. So I mean, just to back up so, you know, like, you know, so my first two kids are identical twins. And I actually, I'd already been reading a lot of research on twins before I even knew that I was going to be the father of twins. But definitely once I had them, I really started thinking about the meaning of the research day and night. And again, what this research says is that when you go and use these methods of studying either, you know, people either comparing identical fernal twins, or you can also go and look at kids that are adopted. When you go and study them, you realize that actually the long run effects of parenting are a lot smaller than people think.
- [29:42]
A
You mean negative?
- [29:43]
B
Yes, positive and negative. Actually positive and negative. So getting adopted by really rich home actually does not have much effect on your adult income being adopted.
- [29:51]
A
It has a big effect on parents. Right?
- [29:53]
B
Ah, well, let me get to that. But anyway, so there's just a lot of work saying that the family that raises you has a much smaller effect on how you turn out than you think. And then when I looked around at the parenting style that was being used around me, I saw that the number one by far is this extreme helicopter parenting where the parents are basically giving up almost everything else that they enjoy in life in order to benefit their kids and invest in them for their future. And I'm thinking, well, gee, according to this research, this investment does not actually pay and you are suffering needlessly. And then when I talk to people about having more kids, their usual reaction is, well, look, I'm so exhausted. I'm so miserable, so overburdened with the kids I have. I can't think about having any other so. And then they're like, well, why not just do less? Like, no, no, I can't. You must do everything that parents today are doing. And really, the heart of my book is to say, look, the science says otherwise. It is not true that parents have to make themselves miserable in order to be decent parents and give their kids a good future. So step one, obviously, is stop doing things that really make you miserable, especially if the kid doesn't like them. But step two, and this is the genesis of the whole idea, is once you have reformulated your parenting to get rid of so much needless unhappiness, then. And then, then it is time to reconsider the number of kids you want to have. Right? So, I mean, like, around the time that the book came out, there was this op ed on the theme of soccer as contraception. And it was basically a mom saying, well, yeah, we had three, two kids. They're already in soccer. We're spending our lives on these soccer games, soccer practices. We're thinking about having a third one. Mrs. Wade, if we had a third one, there'd be three sets of soccer practices, three sets of games. We can't do it. And then she said, well, maybe we could just have a third kid and not have him do soccer. And she said, no, crazy. That will lead to total disaster. We know kids must have soccer or else they will be losers. And I'm just really reversing this reasoning and saying since it's just not true that your kid needs to do these things in order to have a good future, then kids that you think of right now as being too burdensome really actually could be a great benefit to you. And I'm just putting this out there as an opportunity.
- [31:55]
C
I mean, is it one reason the birth rate in the United States is declining? I don't think has to do with the burden of helicopter parenting. I mean, some of it is the availability of birth control. Another thing is just the economic hardship of having children. I mean, I think it's like what Felix, you said in your newsletter. It's like $250,000 from 0 to 18. That doesn't even take into account college. Plus, we're talking about families in which both parents are working. So there's like, there are time constraints, plus there's no support for parents in the United. There's very little support for parents in the United States to have children. And there's just not a lot of incentive to have children. Basically, economic incentives, like, it's fine to give up soccer practice, but, like, if there's no maternity leave, if there's no help for childcare, it's a very big economic investment to have a child. And a lot of American families just can't afford to have as many kids as they used to be because they're an economic drain. Whereas in the past, you put them to work on the farm or something, and it's all good.
- [33:01]
B
So two things. First of all, suppose everything you said is true. Still, if my thing is also true, that's a reason to reconsider. And that's almost the whole point of my book is just saying, look, there is some science out there that says that the investments that you're making in your kids are a lot less fruitful and important than you imagine. And so you can give yourself a break, and once you give yourself a break, you can rethink what you're doing. So, I mean, you're saying that's for me.
- [33:25]
A
Emily's pointed out, if you have two parents who are working and you have kids who are not old enough to look after themselves, someone needs to look after those kids.
- [33:34]
B
Yeah, but we already knew that. So again, to me, I figured people already know a bunch of things. They already know that kids cost money. They already know that kids don't feed themselves, and I'm fine. And if someone says, look, I don't want any more kids or any kids at all because of that, and I don't care what else you say, then I'll say, fine, then that's cool. But on the other hand, if someone says, I have all these problems. Plus, I also know that if I don't go and do all these things for my kids, it will end disaster. That's where I'll say, well, that part is wrong. By the way, of course, a lot of what's going on with parenting and the reason why people are spending so much money is not the kids actually cost that much. It's because of a theory. Parents have a theory that they need to spend that money in order to give their kid a leg up. They need to go and pay for private school. They need to Go and pay for them to have special coaches and so on.
- [34:18]
D
That's nice.
- [34:19]
C
I mean, that's true for the middle class and the upper middle class. That. And we just had a guest on who, of course, I forgot his name again.
- [34:26]
A
Daniel Markovitz.
- [34:27]
C
Thank you. Who argued that the elite spend a lot of money on their kids, on things that they don't necessarily need. But the fact is that what costs money about having children isn't these, you know, soccer practices or tutoring. It's healthcare and housing and childcare. And those aren't optional things.
- [34:46]
B
Right. So again, here I'm just going to think, no, not. This isn't even like an economist. This is just like a salesman. Right. Like you have five complaints about a product and I say, look, two of them are wrong. Here's why. And then, and then you could either say, well, either you say, the first three complaints are still so severe that I, that I'm not interested.
- [35:03]
D
Yeah, I want to, I just want to point out something here. So, like one. And I'll say, I agree that I think that, yes, if we're talking about upper middle class and wealthy parents. Yeah, I do think they're. The parenting culture that we have makes very little sense. And, and of course, birth rates.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah.
- [35:17]
D
And I. But, but let's also just. I'm sorry, like, the elephant of the room here is that, like, women have babies. It's. It's not an easy thing. It's not an easy thing physically. It's the period of time when you are dealing with an infant is very challenging. When they're from essentially like 0 to, well, 18, but essentially like 0 to 7. I mean, like, and we can talk about a fantasy world where this is split evenly, but as long as women are still having the babies, I think that that's unlikely to happen. So part of the reason that women tend to have fewer children when they have access to education and contraception is because this is a burden on them.
- [35:52]
A
Right. Isn't there a revealed preference on the part of, on the part of women to have fewer babies that when they have access to birth control, when they have access to education, when they have more control over how many babies they have, they have fewer of them. And this is clearly, as I say, a revealed preference. And you're saying what about that?
- [36:13]
B
What I'm saying about this is everything you're saying could be true, and yet it does not go to my point. I mean, think about this. I could be someone going around passing out coupons for 25% off for chocolate. And then you say, look, but chocolate still makes you fat. And I don't like the taste.
- [36:30]
A
Is your case just that we marginally spend too much money on kids.
- [36:39]
B
Money and time and just. Also just making the process not very fun by turning it into this. Sure. So, yeah. So again, like I said, I'm not someone that would ever go and tell someone you have to have kids. And I'm not a nagger. Rather, I'm someone who likes to show people opportunities. I think of my book as like a 25% off the price of kids coupon.
- [36:58]
A
So what's the upside? Let's say that you've persuaded me that some of the downsides in terms of soccer practice in private schools, I can lose without any real damage. What's the actual upside for me to have more babies?
- [37:14]
B
Well, of course. The companionship. Yeah. So if someone says, what's the upside of chocolate? So you don't like chocolate?
- [37:19]
D
No.
- [37:19]
B
Well, then coupons are not going to be helpful. Similarly, if you look at kids and you just go, yuck, little rugrats, then what I'm saying is not relevant for you personally. However, most people don't feel that way. Most people actually do enjoy kids, if not kids in general, than their own kids. Right. Even misanthropes will say, I hate kids, not my own. I like my kids. Right. So, yeah, I mean, if someone that doesn't really find that very appealing, then we can just amicably agree to disagree. But on the other hand, if you're someone saying, I do like kids, but one more just seems really hard, this is where I'll say, well, it's really hard doing it the way that most people are doing it now. But it doesn't have to be hard. It's not the kid's fault. Rather, it's the fault of a theory of parenting that behavioral genetics has shown us to actually be incorrect.
- [38:00]
D
So just one last thing I want to just point out is also that when you're talking about women, and especially, like, if you're having multiple. Multiple kids, you're talking about those years when they're not gonna be able to work. Women are not gonna be able to work or work as much, because it is. I mean, unfortunately, a lot of women don't have this choice. But the women who do have this choice, I mean, it is very challenging, especially when you're dealing with, like, an infant, to also be working full time. So I think when you're talking about what are some of the downsides? I mean, for. For a lot of women. I mean, that is definitely a consideration.
- [38:29]
B
Yeah, of course, of course.
- [38:31]
A
It's a big opportunity.
- [38:32]
B
Yes. I mean, I'd say, you know, but, you know, this is. This is just already well known, so you don't need me to go and remind you of it. I mean, what I would say is that, you know, I'd say precisely because moms do do the lion's share of the work and the lion's share of the taking the kids to practices, the lion's share of going to the games, and the lion's share of nagging them. You know, like, you know, my message should be especially appealing to women because it's really. It really is saying that you can cut back on a lot of the things you don't like doing and still be a great moment.
- [39:00]
C
But those aren't the things that are keeping women from having babies.
- [39:04]
B
There's a lot of things that keep a lot of people. So I'm an economist. You have to think at the margin. Just remove one burden, remove two burdens, remove five burdens. And a lot of people say it doesn't change anything. But then there's the marginal people who say that it does. I mean, I've had at least 100 people say that they've had an additional child because of my book, and they seem to be happy with it. My favorite is There is a YouTube video of a dad with his daughter thanking me for convincing him to have her, which I have to say, puts a giant smile on my face.
- [39:36]
A
Okay, let's talk about what happens after the kids graduate from high school, because this is the other big idea book that you wrote. Do we massively overestimate the value and utility of tertiary education?
- [39:55]
B
Well, there's two different kinds of value. There's the value to the individual student and there's the value to society. So what I say is that we definitely massively overstate the value to society. Why? Because most of what you actually learn in school is not going to be useful in real life. Most of what you study is just not relevant to the real world. And the reason why it's so important to go and get a degree is not because you're actually getting useful skills. It's really a kind of rat race. What we have is severe credential inflation, where the more degrees that people have, the more that you need in order to be considered employable. For individuals, it's a lot more complicated. So individuals. I'm not someone who says that you can just skip college and get a great job. That's actually quite hard to do. But what I say is that we've created a system where we have encouraged education so much that you really have to do it in order to get the same job that your parents or grandparents could have gotten right out of high school.
- [40:52]
A
So going back to the immigration debate, is it not the case that the most desirable countries that people want to immigrate to tend to be the countries with the highest degrees of university education? There is something about having a lot of university education that seems to make countries better and more attractive.
- [41:15]
B
Well, I think a better way of putting it is that rich countries have a lot of education, but the rich countries have a lot of stuff. They've got a lot of skiing, they've got a lot of really nice hotels, that they have more cable stations. So the question of what's the direction of the causation? Is it that being rich leads countries to go and spend a lot on education, or is it the education actually makes them rich? There's been an enormous amount of research on this, most of it by people who desperately want to find out that education does make countries rich. So in development economics, and the standard result among the people who looked at the numbers is they come away shell shocked like, I can't understand it. The data don't tell us the answer that we know has got to be true. So in my book, I go over a lot of the effort just while we got to get better data. And then the better data is it gives, it doesn't give the right answer. And then finally there's the thing where you say, okay, we got eight different data sets. One of them says education's pretty good. That must be the good data set. But why? It really is just circular reasoning. So again, I'd say it's not so surprising that education doesn't seem to do very much for economic growth when you look at how irrelevant most of what people learn in school actually is to real life. And then of course, especially in poor countries is a further problem of a lot of times teachers don't even show up and teach basic reading and writing so you can throw more money at the problem, but if the students don't wind up learning more, it's not going to be helpful for making your country develop.
- [42:35]
C
Why would you value education simply in terms of economic growth though? I mean, obviously there's more benefits to an educated population than simply economic growth. I would think it's one of the more robust features of a healthy democracy to have an educated populace.
- [42:50]
B
Right? So I would not say that I value it exclusively. I will say that the economic benefits are the most popular argument. It's the argument that you're most likely to get from parents, from teachers, from politicians. It would be very unusual to hear a politician say, look, we all know that education doesn't help economic growth, but who cares about economics? Let's go and talk about these other benefits.
- [43:10]
A
That was actually the argument that I heard a lot when I was growing up, was that it was just important on a personal and on a civic level to be able to learn to think coherently. Much more than like a utilitarian argument of if you don't go to university, you won't make lots of money.
- [43:34]
B
Right. So you may have been in a post materialist family where they didn't worry about these things very much. Although I suspect that if you appeared to be deaf to these appeals, then they might have taken out the big guns and say, do you want to go and work at the post office? I don't think so. So in that case, Felix, you better buckle down. But you know, so I do have a chapter in the book where I go over these other broader benefits and what I say is that again, when you calm down and you don't just take into good intentions for don't confuse good intentions with results, you see that these effects too, either they're very hard to find or they're just a lot smaller than people normally think.
- [44:06]
A
They're not clearly defined effects. So let's very narrowly, the more that girls get educated, the less likely they are to get pregnant before the age of like 14 or 15.
- [44:17]
C
But that's not the outcome he wants.
- [44:21]
B
Again, like, I'm not crazy. Yes. I'm not promoting pregnancy of 14 year olds or anything weird like that. So what I would say is that, so in terms of the clearest effects of education, I think you're right. So it is clear. So I think out of all the ones where you just really tried to go and double check that the causation is genuinely going from the education to the thing, you're concerned about the effect of education on fertility, that is one where I think it's among the most solid. Although again, when we're not just talking about teen pregnancy, but we're just talking about the number of children that people have in general, then again, I'd say this requires a really hard Phil Salvo question about the meaning of human life and whether it's worthwhile existing and whether another person worthwhile for another person to exist. So I do think that there is at least convincing evidence that you can get your birth rate down just by having people spend more time in school. And again, especially women spend more time in school. Although once you're at the level where people are having a small number of kids in their 20s, then to my mind this is at least raises questions. Well, gee, that seems like a bad thing about school if it's leading to fewer people being around to enjoy being alive.
- [45:36]
D
So I think I completely agree with you about the idea that we have degree inflation, about the idea that we have this model of education that we haven't updated in a very, very, very long time.
- [45:47]
B
Yeah, about a thousand years.
- [45:49]
D
Yeah, I know it's fair, monastic and then the industrial model. Right. But I also think it also gets into what we mean when we say education. Right. Because I think there's actually a decent amount of evidence to show that a lot of countries where, as you said, you have instances where teachers don't show up or you have very low levels of literacy or numeracy, that, that is a, that really does hurt the ability of that country to develop. And I also think it is certainly true that it's not just a matter of education because if you're not creating jobs for college graduates, than just having a bunch of college graduates doesn't necessarily do anything. I think that that's also true, but I would also say so. One, I think when you're talking about kind of elementary and secondary education, I think there's a tremendous benefit to that. And then when you're talking about tertiary education, I mean, I think that there's also something to the fact that we find that people who are more educated tend to be less sexist, less racist. They tend to have a better understanding of how the world. I'm not saying that people don't have education, are, don't know anything. I'm certainly not saying that. But I'm just saying that there are definitely benefits that I think, Emily, you mentioned to having a populace who has a background in certain fields that might not be the most useful in terms of day to day, but are still overall useful in their lives.
- [47:04]
C
A population who can analyze. I mean, everyone has to vote theoretically. And wouldn't that be.
- [47:11]
A
I would love to live in Australia where everyone has to vote.
- [47:13]
C
Yeah, it would be good to have, you know, a democracy in which people were relatively well educated and they can make actually sound reasoned judgments when they go into the voting booth. Otherwise you wind up with the situation we're in.
- [47:26]
A
Now. Let's have a numbers round. Brian, you Brought a number with you?
- [47:31]
B
Yep. Just $90 trillion a year. That is a rough estimate of how much we could the world. How much richer the world would be under open borders. So I'll go with that. 90,000,090,000.
- [47:44]
A
Anna, do you have a number?
- [47:46]
D
I do. My number is 15%. This is a UN estimate of the percent of the population of Venezuela that will have left in this particular crisis. As of the end of 2019, the estimate is 15% of the population. It really is a massive refugee crisis that I don't think that part of the Venezuela story gets enough coverage.
- [48:07]
A
I have a really silly one, but I thought it was fun, so I'm going to come out with it. Anyway. I decided to do a Twitter poll, which is the most scientific form of poll.
- [48:17]
B
Absolutely.
- [48:18]
A
And. And so, but I feel like this one is actually probably understates the truth. I did a poll, I said, how often do you wear the same shoes that you wore yesterday? Less than half the time, Most of the time or nearly always. And My number is 42% is the winner of the poll. 42% said nearly always. And if you add up the people who say they wore the same shoes that they wore yesterday, most of the time, the combined total comes to 81%. So, yeah, like, people really care about, like, which shoes to choose when they're sort of buying shoes. But in practice, you just wear whatever shoes you wore yesterday. Right.
- [48:57]
D
But it's really important you pick the right ones if you're gonna wear them every day, though.
- [49:01]
C
Exactly.
- [49:02]
A
Emily.
- [49:03]
C
My number is 10. That is the Canadian dollar cost of a gram of legal marijuana. Now, that's in contrast to $5.59 for a gram of black market marijuana. This is from a Bloomberg story on how black market marijuana is cheaper than legal marijuana, which I just think is pretty interesting with the leading stuff.
- [49:30]
A
I just got back from California and. And it astonishes me to see what's happened in California since legalization of marijuana. There was this almost universal unexamined assumption when they legalized marijuana in California that overnight everyone would just start using legal marijuana rather than illegal marijuana. And all of that money that had previously been spent on illegal marijuana with that thenceforward be spent on legal marijuana. Of course, it didn't happen that way at all. And the vast majority, well, not the vast majority, but the majority of money and certainly the majority of marijuana consumed in California remains illegal. And that has had very consequential effects in terms of just how the legalization experiment has played out.
- [50:22]
C
Yes. And I also read in the US I guess black market marijuana overall is about 10% cheaper than the legal stuff. And maybe it has to do with the way legalization has rolled out, which has been super spotty. Right.
- [50:35]
A
But it certainly seems to be, it certainly seems to be the case that black market vapes are the ones which have been causing most of the vaping deaths. So it's cheaper and more harmful. On which narcotic note we are going to bring wrap up this episode of Slate Money. Brian, thank you so much for coming in. It was awesome to have you here. Thanks to Jessamy and Molly for producing. And we will talk to you next week on Slate Money.
- [51:07]
D
And one more thing, we have a message for Nick Barker. Nick, your girlfriend, Sarah Margaret sent us an email saying that you're both big fans of the show. So we just wanted to wish you a very happy 39th birthday this December 3rd.