Frank Buckley writes:
The Great White North is a much more economically mobile country than the U.S., which is increasingly an aristocratic society of fixed classes. One measures these things empirically, by comparing the correlation between the earnings of fathers and sons. In Britain it’s 0.5, which means that if a father earned £100,000 more than the median, his son will earn £50,000 more than the average member of his cohort. The most mobile society is Denmark, with a correlation of 0.15. The U.S. is 0.47, almost as immobile as Britain. Canada is 0.19, not far off from highly mobile Denmark. (…)
Canada doesn’t have a serious problem with illegal aliens — it deports them, at least those who don’t qualify as refugees. As for the legal intake, Canadian policies have a strong bias toward admitting immigrants who will confer a benefit on native Canadians. In absolute numbers, Canada actually admits more immigrants under economic categories than the U.S., most of whose legal immigrants qualify under family preference categories. On average they’re less educated than U.S. natives (not the highest of bars), and unlike in Canada, second- and third- generation U.S. immigrants earn less than their native-born counterparts. In short, the U.S. immigration system imports inequality and immobility. If immigration isn’t an issue in Canada, that’s because it’s a system Donald Trump would love. (…)
With its more traditional legal system, Canada better respects the sanctity of contract and is less likely to weaken property rights with an American-style civil justice system which at times resembles a demented slot machine of judicially sanctioned theft. Americans are great ones for talking about the rule of law, but in reality don’t have standing to do so.
RELATED: Old post by me about what’s weird about America.
