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Strangely enough I've found myself on the wrong (illiberal? UKIP?) side of UK immigration debates because I feel compelled to point out that "reasonable people" (e.g. sensible economist Jonathan Portes) are building their economic case for immigration precisely around this:

Yes, there are winners and losers, the theory went, but the winners can always compensate the losers, so that free trade (or even freer trade) is a win-win.
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2014 at 06:08:04 PM EST
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As Stiglitz points out later in his article, while the theory said that winners could compensate losers, nothing said that they would...

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2014 at 06:13:12 PM EST
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The winners could always compensate the losers, but they do not. This sleight of hand is called Kaldor-Hicks optimality.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Mar 21st, 2014 at 04:51:41 AM EST
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