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Comment by tosseraccount | Hacker News Reader

"Open borders" but a firm embrace of a welfare state?

That's an invitation to migrate for welfare.

"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," -Friedman.

(dang, thanks for the down votes. Parent gets a dig in for "open borders" and pointing out that concept has a serious cost is "unmutual" thought here at HN? How about some serious feedback instead? )

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The downvotes were probably because this is a generic ideological tangent, and those make a thread more contentious and repetitive, and therefore less interesting in HN's sense.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10767016 and marked it off-topic.

But if all countries were more like Norway, there probably would not me welfare immigration, since every country would have it.

I too wish I was sitting on near-infinite reserves of natural resources. The Norwegian economy and social state can sustain itself for generations on oil income alone. Its population literally doesn't need to work and can still support the current quality of life.

On the other hand, the example of other countries with oil makes me feel lucky that mine doesn't have.

The difference between Norway and most countries with Oil is how Norway manages the proceeds. It has a very long term plan and doesn't allow too much of the money to reside in Norway thereby artificially inflating the economy.

Yes, agreed. The recent drop in oil prices has caused Canada's economy to plummet, due to mismanagement, for example.

http://credbc.ca/norways-oil-gas-policy/

Couldn't you just limit welfare access? e.g. Must live or work in the country for x years before having access to welfare.

Then the Scandinavian countries would have two levels, like the Persian Gulf countries. We tried hard to create a society without a "gastarbeiter" group; no real poverty and no desperate/hungry people.

Because how immigration has been handled the last few years in Sweden, that ambition seems to fail the coming years. The social contract will need a rewrite. :-(

The shocking part is that seems mostly to be a result of party politics.

"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," -Friedman.

Well that's not necessarily true. If you have welfare in which those able to work only qualify if they are actively seeking work, and an economy in which increased demand leads to increased need for workers, and thus increased jobs, immigrants don't have the option of not seeking work and literally create new jobs that need to be filled, ending up net contributors to the state.

What qualifies as, "able to work" and "actively seeking work" are pretty subjective and there are some prominent examples where these rules are in place and easily gamed.

The most notable example that comes to mind is the rampant fraud in the US Social Security Disability fund where there is a cottage industry in certifying people as disabled and unable to work when they are in fact not. The problem has gotten so bad that the fund has been paying out massively more than it has been taking in in recent years (30 Billion in 2014 for example) and will be insolvent within the next year.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/social-security-disability-...

What qualifies as, "able to work" and "actively seeking work" are pretty subjective and there are some prominent examples where these rules are in place and easily gamed.

I don't disagree, but as retort to the blanket Friedman quote, it's valid, because those problems are orthogonal to immigrants; actually, I seem to recall that the natives are disproportionately represented in welfare fraud, but I don't have my sources to hand.

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