Alex Wilson writes at Dow Jones:

MELBOURNE -(Dow Jones)- Globalization will lower the real wages of unskilled workers in advanced economies with or without the free flow of labor between countries, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said Thursday.

King said the flow of labor from Eastern European countries to the U.K. has accelerated the growth of the labor force there.

However, a decrease in real wages in developed countries will occur regardless of efforts to cut back migration, he said.

“The impact of globalization, in terms of the impact on real wages, will occur anyway through the movement of free trade in goods and services, even if we limit migration,” he told a Melbourne Center for Financial Studies luncheon in Melbourne.

“The downward pressure on the real wages of the unskilled in advanced economies doesn’t require migration to bring it down - trade will do the same.”

King said that while economists see benefits in the free trade of goods and services and the free flow of capital, it is up to governments to set their own policies on labor flows as migration raises “deeper policy issues”.

Governor Mervyn King needs a few basic lessons. First off, the present situation of WTO managed trade is far from “free” trade. WTO managed trade is made possible by among other things enormous borrowing in the part of the United States. Now, I would agree that bad trade deals are a bigger factor than immigration in reducing wages and disposable income in developed countries (probably by a 2-1 ratio).

However, these insane, unsustainable trade deals aren’t the only possible arrangements here. Furthermore, there are big productive factors in the developed economies other than wages. How returns to property and wealth is distributed is largely a matter of political consensus. There is no particular reason for enormous returns to real estate or legal activities like we have seen in reason decades. Other arrangements could be made by a fundamental change in political consensensus and different policy decisions. As Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, the well to do have been among the most common targets of genocide in the last century. If “leaders” like Governor King are unable or unwilling to really work at making a world that works both for a larger number of its citizens and improves the situation of citizens of their own countries, then there is every possibility that at some point Governor King will learn the same lessons as other members of failed elites that didn’t tend to business learned.

What no one has done yet is put together a viable political and economic ideology in the west that involves immigration restriction, containment of concentration of wealth and political power and guarantees of balanced trade.

We have a clear existance proof in the existence of Japan that a country can be viable in the world economy, restrict immigration and maintain high levels of wealth equality.

If the West develops similar aspirations again, statements like Governor King’s come to be seen as completely out of line.

The Times runs its second article of 2006 on how micronutrient fortification can help reduce the problem of low IQs in the Third World, equaling the number VDARE.com ran in 2004 (see here and here):Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa’s Future By Michael Wines, December 28, 2008.[See more on Isteve.com.]

One of the basic problems with the issue of immigration is the degree to which there has been enormous media distortion-and fundamental differences in the composition of congress compared to a cross section of the American Public. Some VDARE.COM readers are a bit suspicious of democracy. However, when it comes to the immigration issue, it isn’t democracy that is the problem, but the nature of the particular groups that get extra representation in the present system.

Unlike most of my VDARE.COM colleagues, I am neither a conservative nor a Republican. That gives me a certain freedom explore how immigration reform can be handled in ways that have been missed by the conservative republicans who have largely focused on this issue in recent years.

We have a practical example of an attempt to radically inprove democratic process near by my home in Washington state.

The citizens of British Columbia, Canada, explored changing their election process by appointing a “Citizens Assembly” of voters selected a random from the voter roles to explore options for electoral reform. The basic idea was to give a cross section of citizens a staff, and time to seriously explore a question. I was personally impressed that the system they supported was, STV, a system with substantial academic support-and the system of proportional representation which tends to put the least power into the hands of party leaders.

The basic approach of a Citizens’ Assembly could be used for any issue. Why not appoint a Citizens Assembly to explore the immigration issue? The Corporate Stooges that make up the bulk of congress seem to have neither the ability nor the aptitude to really handle the issue.

The BC Citizens’s Assembly was government sponsored from its onset–and was a body that put an enormous amount of work into the one issue of electoral reform.

I would suggest that something less large and elaborate might be constructed using private funds–perhaps as a means to force the government into more substantial action.

The average American has simply never had access to the most basic of information on the issue of immigration. I think if the case of organizations like VDARE.COM, NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies were made to a cross section of the American public, it would get even more of a reception than it has gotten from congress to date.

Long run, I think substantial political reform along the lines the BC assembly recommended is necessary to present corporate oligarchy from becoming utterly repressive in the US. I would also suggest that such reform is an an important means for the VDARE.COM constituency to get immigration reform.