The US has one of the largest amounts of border to patrol. Furthermore, its the most attractive country for immigrants. Its no surprise that some people are gonna get through. It's gonna happen no matter what you do!!! Thats life.
Nixy, I see your concern, but capital accumulation is the key to building wealth In fact, they are one in the same. A poor country with no capital, no money in the financial markets, will not allow people to earn more income, and thus have a better standard of living. Think about it for a moment. When we look at countries, and whether they are rich or poor, we look at GDP per capita. Well, what happens to the GDP/population if there is a sudden rise in US population?
GDP per capital = GDP / population (I know, the term doesn't need explainatin, but nevertheless)
Why do you think China adopted the one child policy? Why do you think China and India are so poor? What do you think they are doing to change it? Population control is just as important as overall economic growth, at least when you are concerned with the individual, their income, and their standard of living. Low population growth rates are just as important as high economic growth when it comes to standard of living and the individual. Simply giving money to poor countries doesn't help then, not in the end. Ok, it may help them eat for one year maybe, but what about the next, and the one after that? No, there must be capital accumulation, financial markets, investments in capital, and ONLY THEN will individual wages rise (assuming of course the population growth rate is lower than the growth in the economy, if population growth exceeds economic growth, even if the economic growth is huge, living standards will fall). Further, if we send all our "excess" funds abroad to help others, rather than focusing on investment in capital at home, OUR LIVING STANDARD WILL FALL. Remember, the worker (in theory at least) is paid the marginal product of his labor. Now, if an American worker has an assembly line in a factory to work on, his marginal product of labor is much higher than some poor child rolling bede cigarettes by hand in India for example. Dont' you think? Therefore, the American, in this example lets say an auto worker, is earning much much more than the cigarette roller in India. Now, lets say they build a factory in India, with machines for the child workers to run to make say 100,000 cigarettes instead of the few hundred he/she made rolling them by hand. Don't you think he or she would earn more money? This should give you the idea of how building wealth and capital accumulation helps workers in a country. Productivity rises, GDP rises, and assuming population growth is zero, or close to it (in this case, its probably not) then the standard of living for the whole economy improves. Remember, the money multiplier and all that good stuff? Well, that means a relatively small improvement is going to have a rather large effect. The 10 year old bede roller is gonna go buy something, then who ever sold something to the bede roller is gonna make a profit, and spend that, and then the person at the other end is gonna make a profit, and spend that etc etc. You know, the money multiplier. Ok, so now its possible for futher captial accumulation, and eventually more capital is put in place, more workers become more productive, and the trend continues until less developed countries reach parity with the developed nations. This is why its GOOD that we invest directly in foreign countries, and "exploit" their low labor costs. It helps them, just not as quickly as those on the left would like it to work. Everything takes time!!! Locals learn from the example of foreign companies, they learn they can make more profits by implementing capital intensive production techniques, and follow our example. Further, they learn our techniques by example, further benefiting these countries.
Actually, its not the US you have to blame, or other developed counties, but rather the leaders of these countries that don't wish to follow the ONLY model that works!!! The USSR failed, their model was flawed, all other models are showing signs of weakness, and ONLY the competitive free market model is showing long-run viability. Look at Japan, and the "Asian Tigers" their state directed capitalism failed. Sure, it worked for a while, but eventually it was found not to be sustainable.
We are doing what we can! Believe it or now, we are. And, ironically, what helps the most, is what people on the left oppose the most!!! Simply giving money doesn't work, it doesn't set an example, it doesn't show the process of how its done or give an example that may be copied. Further, corruption in gov'ts tends to steal the money long before it gets to those who need it anyway!!!
Ok, enough econ 101 for today
