Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Title:: The static state and the technology of economic reform / Thomas Nixon Carver

Collection:: Economics Books

STATIC STATE AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ECONOMIC REFORM 35 The law passed by Congress soon after the war restricting immi- gration is wholly responsible for the present labor shortage. If this law had never gone on the statute books, if our portals had remained as free to immgration since the war as they were before the war and as they have been throughout our history, our inflated wage scale would have been well liquidated before now. This furnishes an excellent example of the efficacy of the method of controlling price by playing with an economic equilibrium. It would take Mr. Munsey’s class a long time and much hard fighting to beat down wages by the direct method. By simply removing the restriction upon immigration, the thing would, after that was accomplished, work automatically. Immi- grants from all the low wage countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Islands of the sea would swarm here seeking jobs. They would force wages down without further effort on the part of employers. If wages can be forced down by this simple device, they can also, if other factors remain the same, be maintained at the present level, or forced even higher, by further restriction, that is, by putting the American Continent, as well as Europe, on: the quota basis. Again, if it is found that one factor in the equilibrium of the demand for and supply of labor is a low standard of living on the part of native laborers, that is, if it is found that they have such a low standard of living that they will multiply and keep the labor market well supplied on a low wage, then it will begin to appear that if the standard of living can be raised so that they will not multiply and offer themselves at such low wages, a new and higher equilibrium wage will establish itself automatically. That is to say, where laborers have a very high standard of living, one generation after another, it will take a very high wage to induce as many laborers to offer themselves for hire as employers are willing to hire. If no one would marry and undertake the support of a family until he could have a savings deposit, a life insurance policy, a home, or an automobile, it is obvious that no children would be legitimately born except in homes where these things could be afforded. That would, in a generation or two, eliminate low wages and poverty. If, however, the attempt is made in the opposite direction, and wages are merely advanced artificially without first raising the standard of living, such a rise may, with the exceptions noted in

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