Tweet [1]
… is from my colleague Bryan Caplan’s recent EconLog post entitled “Krugman’s Cursory Case Against Open Borders [2]” (links original):
What the history of immigration restrictions shows, however, is that decent folk should nevertheless be deeply uncomfortable with democracy [3]. Why? Because most voters are nationalists [4], and nationalist voters consistently do to foreigners what low-income voters almost never do to the rich: Strip them en masse of their basic rights to work, reside, and travel. Why? For the flimsiest of reasons. Flimsy reasons like: Trapping millions of foreigners in dire poverty and bloody repression probably makes our safety net somewhat stronger.