Oddly, it is anti-immigration conservatives who should be more complacent about increasing welfare spending. Furthermore, the less immigration selects on formal credentials and a points system, the more important it is to attract the properly ambitious by setting the right incentives and the right bat signal in place. The more open is immigration, the more important it is to have the right incentives for selection and to be sending out the right bat signal. So the selection of those immigrants really is of vital importance. Of course, if America is headed toward one billion people (or even much less) in the foreseeable future, most of the country will end up being relatively recent immigrants and their descendants. You want to send out the inegalitarian bat signal. To me it is obvious that you should prefer the structure of rewards that attracts the harder-working, more ambitious people. Now, on which basis do you wish to select people arriving into your country? Do you wish to offer them a lower-risk, more secure, more egalitarian, less upside option? Or do you want to reward ambition to a disproportionate degree? Don’t forget you are building up the home base for most of the world’s TFP! And the right people can be very hard to find and attract, as I think Matt also has noted. That is, you need to get the right people into your firm, start-up, media venture, non-profit, or whatever.
If you ever have done hiring, and I believe Matt has at Vox, you will understand that so, so often selection is more important than ex post incentives. To be clear, I also favor a much larger population.
I never understand how this squares with this desire to reach one billion Americans in the not too distant future. Matt recently wrote a (gated) piece arguing that we should raise American taxes and increase the American welfare state.
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