Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at an Ivy league university, the winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, and a columnist for the New York Times where he tries his best to explain economics to ignorant people like me. Sometimes he tries to explain the economics of immigration. He has written a number of articles on that subject for the New York Times.
He explained in one of those columns that there was a common fallacy among people who commented on immigration. In his colorful way he put it this way:
What did Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist, and François Mitterand, the socialist president of France from 1981 to 1995, have in common with Donald Trump? Both, at some point, believed in what economists call the lump of labor fallacy. This is the view that there is a fixed amount of work to be done and that if someone or something — some group of workers or some kind of machine — is doing some of that work, that means fewer jobs for everyone else.”
Donald Trump is a regular contributor to this fallacy. For example, he uses it again to explain why he believes in increasing tariffs at the border. Sometimes, tariffs are warranted, but Trump usually advocates them when they will do the most harm! He makes the same mistakes when it comes to immigration—calling for restraints on immigration when the US really needs immigrants! Then he gins up his base to hate the immigrants.
We all know Trump is hostile to immigration but many of us don’t understand the false economic basis for that position. It is important for us to understand this so we don’t follow Trump’s hatred. Trump’s fallacy is followed by many people who are opposed to legal immigration and therefore it is particularly pernicious. It gives a false economic polish to animus that is very unhelpful in discussing an issue that is permeated with bias.
Paul Krugman has a colorful name for this economic mistake: “the lump of labor fallacy.” He also refers to it as a zombie idea. By that he means an idea that has long been discredited but keeps on influencing people anyway “eating people’s brains” along the way. These are ideas we really must get rid of.
Another example Krugman frequently lambasts is the trickle-down theory of economics which says giving tax breaks to rich people is better for non-rich people than giving them actual cash. That idea too has long been discredited but clings to life among those people who most benefit from it—i.e. rich people.
Funny how that works. Not.
Such fallacious ideas make it much more difficult to solve problems that are already difficult–problems like immigration.