Baywatch and protectionism (Do foreign workers steal domestic jobs?)

This article provides an interesting example of issues raised by protectionism, describing a summer guest-worker program in the US, under which young foreigners take short-term jobs in the US at the expense of higher unemployment among young Americans. A particular example given is lifeguards at swimming pools. Employers admit a number of reasons for preferring guest workers to hiring more Americans, such as cheaper labor (no need to pay high taxes), greater availability during the season, lower demands posed by the workers, and a shortage of Americans willing to work as lifeguards etc.

Protectionism here is expressed by a visa policy that restricts foreign workers from competing in the labor market. Thus, guest-worker programs are the easing of protectionism. This style of protectionism is very common and therefore often overlooked; indeed the very existence of nation-states aims at giving a group of people (the nationals of a particular state) various advantages over foreigners, particularly, in access to the domestic labor market. While many countries practice visa-free regimes for tourist visits, working invariably requires obtaining a visa. Even within the European Union employers are encouraged to prefer domestic workers.

Getting back to the situation at hand, there are four different groups of actors involved: the companies/employers, consumers of services (i.e. those who are using swimming pools), domestic workers, and foreign workers. Companies and the two types of workers are engaged via the labor market.

Economically, the outcome of hiring is most efficient if the domestic and foreign workers have equal access to the labor market so companies can employ the maximum number of workers under the most profitable conditions and provide cheaper and higher quality services to their consumers.

Socially the economically efficient outcome is not necessarily the best. One might, for example, see higher social value in ensuring maximum domestic employment while disregarding foreigners. Tightening visa requirements may force companies to put more effort in finding domestic labor, and to offer better salaries/work conditions/employment periods in order to hire a sufficient number. The downside of this outcome is that it will hit negatively at the domestic producer (i.e. the companies/swimming pools), as well as at the domestic consumer, who will have to pay a higher price for using a swimming pool, or be at greater risk of drowning due to the shortage of lifeguards, or face the closure of some pools due to their economic inefficiency or lack of lifeguards.

What I find most interesting is how this simple case raises uncomfortable questions regarding the traditional “right vs. left” political views as they exist in the US and Europe.

In particular, the moderate “left” (represented, for example, by Barack Obama and François Hollande) advocates government involvement to improve market outcomes, along with more compassion towards foreign workers (i.e. potential immigrants). Here, government interference (i.e. tightening visa rules) would improve the market outcome domestically, but hit immigrants.

Conversely, the moderate “right” (Mitt Romney and Nicholas Sarkozy) would find it hard to reconcile a pro-free-market position with its tougher views on immigration.

In this light it is not surprising that the positions of nationalists (such as Marine LePen) and Communist-like movements (Jean-Luc Melenchon) are often so similar and isolationist: the right sees protectionism as a way to hit hard against disliked immigrants, whereas the left sees protecting domestic workers as a convenient justification for striking “the rich” (i.e. the companies).

On war

Here is an article by Senator Joe Lieberman, making a case for US intervention in Syria:
"What is happening in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe, with at least 10,000 dead, more than 1 million people displaced and horrific human rights abuses perpetrated daily, including the widespread and deliberate use of rape and other sexual violence as weapons of war."

Predictably, many of the comments following the article accuse Lieberman of  war-mongering and being a "neo-con". As I show below, there is no perfectly moral way to take a position in regard to a war, but there is one way that is clearly wrong: making one's position fit the one's biases or political preferences.

One may oppose any war and all violence. This is a highly principled, although a somewhat naive position. On the surface it also looks like a highly moral one. Yet, the morality of confronting violence with inaction is questionable, as is illustrated by the famous poem "First they came...".

One may adopt the "responsibility to protect" attitude, and always take the side of victims against the oppressors. This is a principled position as well, which perhaps culminated in the George W. Bush's "Freedom agenda". The problem is with deciding who is a victim and who is the oppressor, since one can easily transform into the other. In addition, killing in the name of protecting someone is still killing. Oppressors are no less human their victims.

One may adopt a "realistic" view and support a war when one may benefit from it economically, politically or in terms of one's own safety, while opposing it when no benefit is forthcoming. This is a cynical and cruel attitude, but it is a consistent position... and perhaps the only one that a national leader should adopt.

The attitude that one shouldn't adopt is the hypocritical one: such as supporting the military action initiated by a Democratic President, while opposing the "Republican" wars; or supporting the "resistance" by Hamas/Hezbollah, while opposing Israel's self-defense measures.

Unfortunately, the fact that the events in Syria are largely overlooked, while much smaller scale events in other places, for example in Israel, trigger worldwide protests, is a testimony to the widespread hypocricy. The same can be said about those who passionately oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while cheering the "real leadership" that President Obama has shown in ordering the raid against Osama bin Laden, in "leading from behind" the "humanitarian" strikes in Libya, and in waging the "smart war" using unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan and Yemen, which has taken thousands of lives.

Gay marriage vs. equal rights

The Obama's recent announcement that he now supports a "gay marriage" deserves a few comments.

1. Why Obama does it?
First and foremost, it is not a secret why such a sudden change of his position came now - in order to be re-elected in November Obama has to make maximum effort to distract voters from the economic issues. Recently he tried to tout his assassination of Bin Laden, but the attempt backfired - both due to the absurdity of the assumption that another president would not make a similar decision, as well as because of the strangeness of a Democratic president playing a tough guy, G.W.Bush-style.

2. How Romney should respond?
It would be really interesting to see how Romney responds to this announcement. He will lose a lot, if he picks this culture war fight. In my opinion, acknowledging publicly that the issue is important, but pointing out that the President is merely trying to distract the Americans from the economic problems would be the strongest answer.

3. Should there be "Gay marriage" or... equal rights?
"Gay marriage" is really an absurd combination of words, since it necessarily involves a collision between the civil rights and the religious idea of marriage. The right thing to do would be to separate completely the civil rights granted to long-term couples (homosexual and heterosexual alike) and the religious "marriage", as performed by a priest, rabbi or an imam.  This is the way how it is done in many civilized countries. French couples, for example, are quite content saying "We are not married - we are PACSés" - meaning that they prefer not to deal with religious issues. One step further would be to simply acknowledge the rights of the de-facto long-term couples - married or not.

Obama himself is perfectly aware of this, since up till recently he supported the civil unions, but not the marriage. I dare say however, that the President is now more interested in picking a fight with conservative Christians, then he is interested in the human rights.

Update:
It is now unclear what the buzz is about, since Obama has not promised to actually do anything, but only expressed his personal views. A quick internet search will convince you that Obama
i) supported the gay marriage in 1996, when running for the Illinois senate: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."
ii) opposed it when running for the US senate in 2004: "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman but I detest the bashing and vilifying of gays and lesbians."
iii) and again supports it now, in 2012: “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” 

Palestinian problem is not only Israel's problem

A rare article about an important issue: Palestinian problem is not only Israel's problem - it is not only Israel's fault and it is not in Israel's power to solve it.

The reason: majority of the Palestinians do not live under Israel's control: millions of them live in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Those in Jordan constitute Jordan's indigeneous population, as originally Jordan was a part of the Brtish Mandate "Palestine" intended to be split into Jewish and Arab (i.e. Palestinian) states.
Those in Syria and Lebanon are descendants of the refugees in the second/third and even fouth generations. They are technically designated as refugees, because neither of these countries is willing to grant the citizenship rights to people who were born in it, if these people have Palestinian ancestry.

These obvious facts are largely unknown to the "international community", which continues to insist on the "two-state solution", i.e. the resolution of the Palestinian problem at Israel's expense only. Israel undoubtedly will have to leave most of the West Bank territiries that it currently controls - this will solve the guilt problem for the Israeli left... yet, it will not solve the national problem for the Palestinians.

Solving Palestinian problem requires democratization of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and larger Middle East and giving the Palestinian people the full rights in the countries where they live now. It may also require re-unification of teh Palestinians living in Jordan and the West Bank (aka East and West Germany.)

This is not likely to happen soon, since the Middle Eastern dictators have all the reasons to hold to their power... and the enlightened West has all the reasons to support these dictators by insisting on the "two-state solution" and ensuring teh continuous flow of oil.

The article quoted in the beginning out lines the Jordanian King's efforts to disfrinchise the Palestinian people in Jordan of their citizenship rights:
"King Abdullah is seeking to complete the divorce proceedings between Jordan and the Palestinians which his late father, King Hussein, began in 1988.

The separation began in July that year, a few months after the eruption of the first intifada.

King Hussein realized back then that it was not in the interest of his kingdom to maintain a linkage to the West Bank, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

His biggest fear was that the intifada would spill over into Jordan, where the Palestinian majority would rise against his monarchy. [...] 


In 2009, Amman quietly began revoking the Jordanian citizenship of thousands of Palestinians, triggering strong protests from human rights organizations and pro-Palestinian groups around the world. [...]

Talk in Israel and elsewhere about turning Jordan into a Palestinian state has also left the king worried about the future of his kingdom. That explains why he is not even prepared to receive 1,100 Palestinian refugees who have fled Syria in recent weeks, while at the same time welcoming more than 100,000 Syrians who crossed the border into Jordan.

The Jordanians have no problem absorbing tens of thousands of Iraqis, Syrians and Libyans. But when it comes to the Palestinians, it’s a completely different story. The last thing King Abdullah needs is another 500,000 Palestinians in the country. "

Romney's litmus test for intellectuals

The paradox
One of the striking paradoxes of modern democracies is that most people do not choose a candidate/party that would most closely represent their political views! Indeed, more often one simply adopts the positions of the candidate that the one supports.

I could support this thesis with many examples,but none of them would match the absurdity of the presidential campaign that has been unreveling in the US: it so happened that the Republican party is about to nominate a centrist, or perhaps even center-left, candidate (Mitt Romney) to compete with Barack Obama who, despite his class war rhethorics, has borrowed most of his successes from the book of his conservative predecessor (drone war in Pakistan, targeted assassinations, economic stimulus, auto-industry bail-out.)

Etch-a-sketch
For example, here is the criticism of Romney's "etch-a-sketch" changeable political views, aimed at rather educated audience (those with the knowledge of at least quantum mechanics.) Yet, one would think that the intellectual readers who are able to appreciate such an analogy would have worried that their views on Romney match those of some hardcore conservatives. But do they?

Of course, there is nothing new about "etch-a-sketch" (flip-flopping) attitude in politics. In particular, in the US it is a common practice for the candidates to "run to the right/left" during the Republican/Democratic primaries, and then "run towards the center" during the general election. The candidate competing against a sitting president is naturally at disadvantage, since the president usually does not have to compete in his party primaries. This, for example, allowed George Bush campaign to successfully brand his 2004 challenger John Kerry as a "flip-flopper".

Obama himself recently gave an example of this tendency of politicians to put their election campaign above the ideological integrity in his overheard comments to the Russian President.

Ironically, the most memorable example of "etch-a-sketch" comes also from Obama: the statement that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided" has generated a great applouse among the Jewish audience in the 2008 AIPAC conference, but was retracted by Obama immediately after the speech was over. 

Comparison
A few points for comparing Mitt Romney and Barack Obama:

1. Obama's signature achievement in domestic policy is his healthcare legislation. This legislation was however modeled after a similar law introduced earlier in Massachusets by Romney. In fact, the two laws were even designed by the same people!

2. As a governor of Massachusets Romney was supportive of pro-choice groups and sexual minority rights. Despite formally abandoning these positions in the primary, he has enjoyed ovewhelming support among the female voters, and has continued to be attacked for his liberal views by other Republican candidates.

3. During the primaries Romney has adopted unusually harsh stance on illegal immigration. However, Obama has a record of merely paying lip-service to immigration reform, while significantly ramping up the number of deportations.

4. Romney's views support for exerting US military power around the world will be matched by the Obama's pride of the "smart" drone war in Packistan, the targeted assassinations of Bin Laden and US citizen Anwar al-Aqlaki, and keeping open the detention camp in Guantanamo - all morally questionably undertakings of the kind which the Democrats has been outraged about since George Bush years.

5. Obama hardly can be blamed for the current economic troubles - he happened to be president at the low of the economic cycle, whsoe downward swing dates back not only to teh Bush presidency, but also to the economic growth bubble of teh Clinton years. Yet, the intellectuals will have hard time explaining why they would rather entrust the US economy to the law professor (Obama) than to the career businessmen (Romney). 
 

Inequality and economic growth

A worthy new addition to my "Theatre of the Absurd" section, coming from no one else but President Obama himself:
“In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few. It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class,” Obama intends to say, according to the prepared text. “That’s why studies have shown that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.”

Yes, just look at Europe...
(I presume the President had in mind capitalist countries, because there is even less inequality in Cuba or North Korea.)

Is terrorism right or left?

This article tries to identify the causes of the home-grown terrorism, addressing the particular example of the recent terror attacks in Toulouse, France. It hits however an important point:
"Many French initially and secretly hoped that what happened in and around Toulouse would prove to be a repetition of the attacks in and around Oslo in 2011 – that the terrorist would turn out to be the product of the extreme right. Merah claimed to be acting in the name of fundamentalist Islam; in reality, he was the product of a bloody and deviant sect. How can a petty delinquent, a lost child of the French nation, fall prey to terrorist hatred of any variety?"

In short, we have by now witnessed equally horrifying attacks originating from the extreme right and from the extreme left. What causes the terrorism is not the part of the political spectrum that one belongs to, but how far one is ready to go in order to impress his/her views onto the others.