Greenspan: Open The Borders!

On a recent episode of "Democracy Now," whose website bills itself as "a daily radio and TV news program on over 500 stations," host Amy Goodman and, primarily, investigative journalist Naomi Klein, recently interviewed former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, continuing his tour to promote his memoir "The Age of
Turbulence: Adventures in a New World." Although the questions covered a fairly wide range of economic issues (even the war in Iraq was viewed in part in this context), a portion of one of Greenspan's responses caught my eye- or ear, when I heard it:

And I also argue in the book that we ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labor from all sorts of -- from all parts of the world, because if we were to do that, we would increase the supply of skilled workers, which our schools have been unable to create, and as a consequence of that, we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country.

There are several interesting arguments made here, each disturbing:

1) "Our schools have been unable to create" an adequate "supply of skilled workers," a claim refuted by evidence, and offensive to the hordes of men and women highly trained in technology upon graduating colleges and universities each year;

2) "Lower(ing) the average wage of skills" would "reduce the degree of income inequality in this country, an implication which suggests that reducing income of workers somehow decreases income inequality, a bizarre idea;

3) "We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labor... from all parts of the world," although clearly the United States has done so.

All in all, a worthwhile interview, for which Naomi Klein deserves credit- as does Alan Greenspan, whose argument here is seriously wrongheaded. He stuck with the interview even though he wasn't treated with the same reverence that he had come to expect from the American media.