Advertisement
The guy can’t walk a straight line on immigration, for the love of god.
Our opposition to immigration is primordial – deeply instinctive. But we mustn’t let it blind us to the benefits immigration brings. Don’t forget that, without immigration, our low natural increase (births minus deaths) thanks to a fertility rate (number of kids over a woman’s lifetime) of 1.48 and likely to go lower, our population would be falling.
Any economist will tell you that you don’t want to live in an economy with a falling population. Opportunity doesn’t grow, it contracts.
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe
About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
Advertisement