A world of free movement would be $78 trillion richer
Yes, it would be disruptive. But the potential gains are so vast that objectors could be bribed to let it happen
A HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL is lying on the ground. An economist walks past it. A friend asks the economist: “Didn’t you see the money there?” The economist replies: “I thought I saw something, but I must have imagined it. If there had been $100 on the ground, someone would have picked it up.”
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not actually true. But occasionally it is. Michael Clemens, an economist at the Centre for Global Development, an anti-poverty think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that there are “trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk”. One seemingly simple policy could make the world twice as rich as it is: open borders.
This article appeared in the The World If section of the print edition under the headline "The $78 trillion free lunch"
The World If July 15th 2017
- What a Macron miracle could do for France and Europe
- Suppose the Trump show runs and runs
- A world of free movement would be $78 trillion richer
- Disrupting the trust business
- Following a fiduciary rule
- Without governments, would countries have more inequality, or less?
- The British economy if the country crashes out of the European Union
- How the story of human cloning could unfold
From the July 15th 2017 edition
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