Gregory Cochran asks a good question: If economist proclaim that letting in tens of millions of poorly educated Latinos is Good for the Economy, why don’t they push for merging with Canada so Americans can get the benefit of adding tens of millions of decently educated Canadians?
And yet virtually nobody in America cares about acquiring Canada.
Cochran explains:
Would the original inhabitants gain economically from this merger? Strikes me that this could only happen from economies of scale – since nothing has changed other than a 10% increase in overall size. There might be some diseconomies of scale as well.And of course most of the economies of scale are available from trade agreements, so almost nobody in America cares about pushing for closer political union with Canada. It’s a non-issue.
Moreover, American economists would likely shudder at acquiring Canada’s French language problem. Why would you want all that divisiveness?
Now, because French Canadiens are white and Christian and non-Hispanic, Americans feel free to say that they sound like a pain in the ass to keep happy. Anglophone Canadians don’t feel free to say that, but that strikes most Americans as a good reason not to tangle with that tar baby.
But of course we Americans don’t feel terribly free to say things about more salient forms of Diversity than the Quebecois.
So why do we want more Diversity?
