We try to prevent the creation of artificial rents. Rather than setting up quotas to stop imports we levy a tariff, that would be better. Or we pay wages in the public sector which are roughly equivalent to the productivity in the private sector and we don't therefore make it a special benefit to get a bureaucratic position.

How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel?

Politicians and bureaucrats are no different from the rest of us. They will maximize their incentives just like everybody else.

If you create an artificial scarcity through public policy, artificial rent so to speak - setting up a new import quota or giving out a particular office that is very beneficial - people are going to invest money, time and resources in trying to secure that opportunity. If the value is created independently of the search for it, the search for it is wasted.

America is perhaps excessively mobile in the sense that there is sometimes not enough stability in communities. Dynamism in the economy is not necessarily the "be all and end all".

People share a universal behavioural trait: if there are profits to be made, the effort to get that money will attract investment. This is true in the private sector, the market sector, as well as the public sector.

We want to limit the exploitation of the fiscal capacity of the richer regions by keeping down the rate of immigration to a level that would be meaningful and efficient. One way to do that is to have a scheme of equalization which essential bribes people to stay in the poorer regions.