Immigrants and jobs.In "Comprehensively Awful" (June 11), John O'Sullivan John O'Sullivan is the name of:
adj. 1. Of or based on deduction. 2. Involving or using deduction in reasoning. de·duc model, which is a basic tool of economic analysis, yet must be tested against reality in each practical case. Such a case was offered by the Mariel boatlift The Mariel boatlift was a mass movement of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. The boatlift was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, leading to simmering internal tensions on the island of 1980, when Castro allowed some 125,000 Cubans to leave the country. Of those who fled, about half settled in or around Miami, raising the labor force of the city by 7 percent. Where the abstract model of academic economics had it that the Marielitos would take jobs from blacks and depress their wages, Prof. David Card David Edward Card is a Canadian labor economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Card earned his B.A. from Queen's University in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1983 from Princeton University. of UC-Berkeley showed that the contrary had happened. The sudden infusion of labor afforded Professor Card what he called a "natural experiment." He checked what had happened in Miami against four "control cities" with large black populations and stable labor markets. Other economists jumped in to examine other "natural experiments," and found like results. Whether Mr. O'Sullivan's model will prove true we can't yet say, and it will depend partly on elements such as progress or stagnation Stagnation A period of little or no growth in the economy. Economic growth of less than 2-3% is considered stagnation. Sometimes used to describe low trading volume or inactive trading in securities. Notes: A good example of stagnation was the U.S. economy in the 1970s. in education and religion, which are unquantifiable for the most part and can be tested only by history. The imperative point is to distrust theory until the character and culture of the people involved in each case are factored in, and their role revealed by history. Patrick G. D. Riley Wauwatosa, Wis. |
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