Links from the Honorary Ordinaries

Michael Drew says:

So in Mark’s last immigration post I wrote this, noting (as you can see) that what I was suggesting would have much wider significance than just those on attitudes toward immigration policy:

@Cascadian, This is indeed the dark, foreboding side of the point I make above. We need growth, to include job growth. And this is getting away from the immigratoin question somewhat, because if it is the case that what we have is a real structural adjustment where the entire paradigm of an expectation that full employment will flow from successful firms in the context of general economic growth can no longer be reliably assumed, then a whole lot of policy questions even more fundamental than immigration (which is pretty fundamental) whose previous equilibria relied on a certain social contract’s validity will (could) suddenly be thrown into considerable doubt, since the current, or perhaps it’s better to say most recent, social contract (which is to say post-war industrialist) relies very heavily on the assumption that success for firms broadly within strong economic growth (notwithstanding cyclical downturns) will result in full employment in the land.

That was obviously pretty crudely put, and D.C.’s post goes into much greater detail, but is I think concerned with much the same question. David Frum has been as well. I’d actually say (and did in the above) that an economic breakdown like this would go even beyond the question of inequality to the very sustainability of our social-political structure, not at the Constitutional-republican level but one level above – that of the political culture that has developed on top of that and been largely taken as a given for the better part of a century, and the tacit social agreements that have kept it that way.

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts about this.Report