It may be churlish to describe a comic book as being oversimplified, but there are many instances in which Professor Caplan’s arguments do not even address fairly obvious counterarguments. For example, he notes that unskilled workers who migrate from poor countries to rich countries make ten times as much money for the same work, but does not make a very persuasive argument that with immigration on the scale he is here considering (hundreds of millions to the United States alone) the labor markets of the rich world still will produce comparable results. He describes immigration controls as “global apartheid” and argues that immigration controls are the moral equivalent of Nazi laws restricting where Jews could live and work, a variation on the Berlin Wall, etc., which is rhetorically incontinent in the familiar High Libertarian mode. Estimates that open borders would double world economic output are, let us say, highly theoretical.

So, I’m not sold. But Professor Caplan’s argument is multifaceted, energetically presented, fun to read, and worth giving some real attention to if only as an exercise in clarifying one’s own thinking about the question.

Where does Bryan Caplan live?