Ben Powell Talks Immigration, Socialism, and Booze

On September 24, 2019, in a lecture aimed at mitigating the stigma of immigration, economist Ben Powell addressed Dartmouth students and community members on the potential economic opportunity that could ensue following free trade in labor. 

Standing tall with a flaming head of hair, the forty-one year old economist from Massachusetts, Powell gingerly discussed economics and economic public policy. Powell mentioned his previous book, Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World. Announcing his excitement for a future lecture, again here at Dartmouth, where he may even be able to indulge in an alcoholic beverage, Powell quickly transitioned to the sobering economics of modern America. 

Powell holds numerous positions in academia—he is the Director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, where he also serves as an economics professor at the school’s Rawls College of Business. In addition, Powell is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, an American think tank focused on issues pertaining to politics, economics, social science, and law.

Powell began by introducing his recent book, Immigration: A Case for Free Trade in Labor, which details how immigration talks among the general public differ a great deal from the debate between social scientists. He makes the case for free migration, which he says could substantially stimulate economic growth, while also addressing potential noneconomic roadblocks to the prospective upturn. As an apparent proponent of free trade, Powell said that free trade is “not so controversial… at least among economists.” Powell’s view of immigration seemed to coincide with his overall economic philosophy: free trade bolsters the global economy, thus the free mobility of people between countries—those who provide labor and expedite capital—would, as well.

Speaking to a crowd of elderly citizens and students with little to no economic output, Powell’s lecture harnessed an engaging teaching style, repeatedly asking for student answers to economic questions. When he prefaced his questions with an informal poll gauging the level of economic knowledge in the student audience, roughly half of students admitted to ever taking an economics course in Dartmouth’s renowned economics program. Thus, it seemed odd that a later question regarding a simple supply and demand curve was met with an extended moment of silence. 

Powell described aspects of immigration by focusing on educational qualifications and the fact that immigrants tend to complement, not substitute, native workers. To describe the educational levels of immigrants, Powell referred to a quasi-hourglass shape, wherein there is a large amount of uneducated immigrants (those with a high-school diploma or less), a small amount of partially educated immigrants (those with a high-school diploma or college diploma), and a relatively large amount of highly educated immigrants (those with more than a college diploma). In contrast, the American workforce, when graphed to portray education levels, appears to be more diamond-shaped. It follows that those graphical shapes complement each other, thus increasing economic output. Powell estimates that free migration could increase the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) by roughly 50-150 percent.

Powell explained that the effects of free migration would lift many individuals out of poverty. In doing so, he estimates there to be an increase in more than $50 billion to current residents. And while this figure is relatively small compared to the size of the overall economy, Powell tells that it is still a mutually benefiting relationship. 

Addressing claims that immigration leads to a loss in American jobs, often due to a willingness to work for lower wages, Powell discussed an unseen reality. Economic analyses, according to Powell, have demonstrated that an increase in workers with a virtually endless desire for goods and services leads to the creation of new jobs. Studies have shown that immigrant workers, when introduced to a new culture with greater access to resources and increased economic incentives, tend to have a change in productivity—in the case of the United States being the destination country, that change is predicted to be positive. Powell ended his talk by alluding to famous economic theorist Milton Friedman, saying that optimal immigration rates would be achieved if people were “free to choose” when and where to migrate.

After Powell finished his roughly one-hour-long lecture, he sought questions from listeners in the audience. In his responses, Powell specified that his position does not coincide with open borders; rather, his claim states that the government should not place quantitative restrictions on immigration. When a member of the audience asked whether or not a large migration from a departure country would affect remittance rates and subsequently its GDP, Powell answered claiming that he was more concerned with lifting Haitians out of poverty than the GDP of a particular rock otherwise known as Haiti. Infusing humor into an academic conversation, Powell said, “No one walks around saying Antarctica doesn’t have enough GDP.”

Powell returned about a week later to discuss his aforementioned book, Socialism Sucks—keeping his promise of indulging in an alcoholic beverage during the lecture as he had jested the previous week. His lecture, ironically, came just a day after self-proclaimed Democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders spoke on campus. 

Powell took the audience on a world tour of socialist countries, providing insight, critiques, and warnings on alcoholic beverages available in each country. His joint project with fellow economist Lawson began back in 2016, partially due to Michael Moore’s tweet, “Most polls now show young adults (18-35) across America prefer socialism (fairness) to capitalism (selfishness),” and The New York Times’ Red Century columns that covered “Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism” instead of actually providing historical accounts of the actual damage that socialism has caused. According to Powell, most people advocating for socialism in America do not actually know what the ideology means or entails. To displace some of the popularity of socialism and reveal socialist realities to many of its supporters, Powell travelled to a broad range of socialist countries and drank a whole lot of beer while doing it.

To demonstrate the adverse effects of Socialism, Powell travelled to Sweden, Venezuela, Cuba, Korea, China, Georgia, and finally the “USSA.” In his travels, Powell found that when the means of production are controlled by the government, there is little incentive on the behalf of the population to maintain high quality establishments. Powell showed the audience pictures of their hotel room in Cuba. The room was missing ceiling tiles, used soap and toiletries were left over from the last guest, and the water would randomly shut off. Powell, making light of his hotel horror, noted that “When you pay musicians and plumbers the same wage, guess what you get? A lot of musicians. Clogged toilets.” To contrast this government-owned “sh*thole”, Powell showed pictures of a comparatively luxurious privately-owned apartment that he stayed in later on during his visit to Cuba. There’s no incentivization to maintain the quality of the hotel room, and thus, it is not maintained. A well stocked convenience store in Cuba will only have twelve items. Additionally, all restaurants have the same bland menu—there’s no reason to try to attract customers because there is no incentive to thrive and compete. These are self-evident economic truths that millenials and young socialism-touting activists fail to recognize. As Powell puts it, “socialism promises equality, but what they deliver—if they deliver at all—is sameness.” Powell was particularly upset at the lack of variety in beer. 

Similarly, Powell showed that the diversity in products in quasi-socialist countries (no countries can achieve pure socialism) is severely lacking. Even in private establishments such as restaurants in Cuba, since the government controls the imports in types of food, there are few options in everyday luxuries. As an additional consequence to such governmental intervention, Powell explained from first hand experience that “North Korean beer is god-awful.” In a similar vein, upon tasting this beer, his co-author Lawson, said that if he lived in North Korea he would drink the beer, but he “would hope it would kill him before the state does.” On the contrary, China, a “Fake” socialist country, provided a wide array of beer including a belgian beer bar that Powell frequented in his travels. The lesson: the closer a country approaches pure socialism, the worse the beer. Next time, if you want to gauge the economic freedom index of a country, go crack open a cold one.