…and Giovanni Peri, a resident scholar at the San Francisco Federal Reserve, has the numbers to prove it. Here’s what he says about the economic impacts of migrants on the US economy:
Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers.
Peri isn’t the only respected scholar to report this finding (or something similar), and yet populist responses to immigration gain traction in so many societies. The national interest of these countries would be served much more effectively if the principle of unity in diversity were applied in public discourse on migration issues. Because at the heart of populist opposition to immigration, I believe, is a problem of discomfort with diversity.
I like the style of a new blog of the street: engendering equality. It’s the project of May Lample, who is inviting folks to participate in an online inquiry into the equality of women and men. At the centre of her blog is a discussion paper produced by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity, an agency associated with the Baha’i International Community that aims to build capacity and stimulate discussion on the spiritual dimensions of contemporary issues. Here’s what the blog is about:
This blog is intended to serve as a place for people of different backgrounds to come together to discuss the topic of gender equality. At the center of this discussion is a document entitled “Advancing towards the Equality of Women and Men” from the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP). This document, which will be posted in parts, highlights just a few among the most significant challenges remaining in the effort to advance toward the equality of women and men. Articles, visual art, spoken word and other items will be used to enhance our discussion. You are encouraged to share your understandings of the document and actively engage with the comments of others. Hopefully, we will all learn together.
When a group of friends were recently discussing the document at chez nous, we talked at length about the concept of equality as condition of spiritual reality — not just a desirable social goal. This stimulated some fascinating questions about how such an approach can accommodate or clarify attributes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ in a way that validates difference without essentializing it.
[Addition]… It turns out that May has posted on a similar theme here and here. The discussion continues…
The New Yorker points to a lesser-known quotation of Winston Churchill:
“The word ‘appeasement’ is not popular, but appeasement has its place in all policy,” he said in 1950. “Make sure you put it in the right place. Appease the weak, defy the strong.” He argued that “appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.” And he remarked on the painful irony: “When nations or individuals get strong they are often truculent and bullying, but when they are weak they become better-mannered. But this is the reverse of what is healthy and wise.”
I think the concept of ‘what is …wise’ — not to mention ‘appeasement’ — is too often absent from foreign policy discussions. Wisdom denotes the application of high principle to practical situations, which makes you wonder about what is the opposite of ‘wisdom’ in foreign policy. I guess it’s the pursuit of base material interest. What would the world look like if nations pursued wisdom in their foreign policies? How would the concept of the ‘national interest’ be understood within such a framework?
The seven Baha’i leaders in Iran who were recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for nothing more than their beliefs has provoked universal outcry at the patent injustice of Iran persecuting these harmless souls. Roxana Saberi, the American journalist freed earlier this year from her own period imprisonment, shared a cell with two of these Baha’i leaders: Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi. Her moving recollections of these two exceptional women have been published in the Washington Post. I found this section especially moving:
Despite the gravity of the accusations against them, Mahvash and Fariba had not once been allowed to see attorneys. Yet my cellmates’ spirits would not be broken, and they boosted mine. They taught me to, as they put it, turn challenges into opportunities — to make the most of difficult situations and to grow from adversity. We kept a daily routine, reading the books we were eventually allowed and discussing them; exercising in our small cell; and praying — they in their way, I in mine. They asked me to teach them English and were eager to learn vocabulary for shopping, cooking and traveling. They would use the new words one day, they told me, when they journeyed abroad. But the two women also said they never wanted to live overseas. They felt it their duty to serve not only Bahais but all Iranians.
Later, when I went on a hunger strike, Mahvash and Fariba washed my clothes by hand after I lost my energy and told me stories to keep my mind off my stomach. Their kindness and love gave me sustenance.
Our thoughts and prayers remain with those courageous souls who continue to endure injustice with equanimity and constructive resilience.
Those wishing to take action in support of the imprisoned leaders can do so at http://united4iran.com
I liked this newly-revised article on human identity by Matt Weinberg, a Baha’i writer who has produced lots of excellent, thought-provoking essays over the years:
The prevalent stance that identity is about difference is untenable. Perceiving identity through the relativistic lens of separation or cultural preservation ignores compelling evidence of our common humanity and can only aggravate the forces of discord now so pervasive in the world. The only alternative to this path of fragmentation and disunity is to nurture affective relationships across lines of ethnicity, creed, territory, and color – relationships that can serve as the warp and woof of a new social framework of universal solidarity and mutual respect. A one-dimensional understanding of human beings must be rejected.
… From a Bahá’í perspective, a universal identity is a vital precursor to action that is universal in its effects – to the “emergence of a world community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the founding of a world civilization and culture.” In emphasizing our global identity, Bahá’u'lláh presents a conception of life that insists upon a redefinition of all human relationships – between individuals, between human society and the natural world, between the individual and the community, and between individual citizens and their governing institutions.
Cities are the real magnets of economies, the innovators of politics, and, increasingly, the drivers of diplomacy. Those that aren’t capitals act like they are. Foreign policy seems to take place even among cities within the same country, whether it’s New York and Washington feuding over financial regulation or Dubai and Abu Dhabi vying for leadership of the United Arab Emirates. This new world of cities won’t obey the same rules as the old compact of nations; they will write their own opportunistic codes of conduct, animated by the need for efficiency, connectivity, and security above all else….
Taken together, the advent of global hubs and megacities forces us to rethink whether state sovereignty or economic might is the new prerequisite for participating in global diplomacy. The answer is of course both, but while sovereignty is eroding and shifting, cities are now competing for global influence alongside states.
What is interesting is that cities have historically and presently been more interested in global openness than have states. Their leaders see the economic and social benefits in rules-based international order, and their internal dynamism make them less invested in the inefficiencies of state boundaries. Could future global order be driven forward by networks of powerful cities?
British comedian Omid Djalili shares a personal reflection on the recent sentencing of the 7 Baha’i leaders in Iran to 20 years in prison: For more information, the Baha’i international community has produced a comprehensive site that details the background and trial of the 7 leaders. See here.
Are locavores doing their math wrong? They say that it’s better for the environment to eat locally, but Stephen Budiansky thinks otherwise:
It takes about a tablespoon of diesel fuel to move one pound of freight 3,000 miles by rail; that works out to about 100 calories of energy. If it goes by truck, it’s about 300 calories, still a negligible amount in the overall picture… Overall, transportation accounts for about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by the American food system.
Other favorite targets of sustainability advocates include the fertilizers and chemicals used in modern farming. But their share of the food system’s energy use is even lower, about 8 percent.
The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far.
So, what should we do?
The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies.
I guess there are lots of good reasons for eating locally, as my brother is fond of telling me: the food tastes better, it’s better for you, and you support local agriculture and small-scale farming. But if you’re looking to reduce your environmental footprint, filling your freezer with 50-mile food may not be the best way to do it.
Samuel Moyn has penned a fascinating brief history of human rights for The Nation. He argues that the concept of human rights emerged in the context of state citizenship, but it has only matured through the belated evolution of international governance. In the 1940s, human rights presented an alternative to bloody collectivist ideologies:
Human rights came to the world in a sort of gestalt switch: a cause that had once lacked partisans suddenly attracted them in droves. While accident played a role in this transformation, as it does in all human events, what mattered most was the collapse of universalistic schemes and the construction of human rights as a persuasive “moral” alternative to them.
In the 1970s and 1990s, human rights took on new meanings as a global discourse developed, bringing with it demands for international law and governance. The question that Moyn leaves with us is: “What to do with the progressive moral energy to which human rights have been tethered in their short career. Is the order of the day to reinvest it or to redirect it?”
The lesson of the actual history of human rights is that they are not so much a timeless or ancient inheritance to preserve as a recent invention to remake—or even leave behind—if their program is to be vital and relevant in what is already a very different world than the one into which they exploded.