Was There Anything Unusual About Miami’s Economy in 1980-84?
25th March 2015
Steve Sailer does an entertaining fisking of Yet Another NYT Thumbsucker.
In “Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant” in the new NYT Magazine, we see another tribute to the golden oldie study by economist David Card that because wages in Miami didn’t fall relative to four other cities from 1980 to 1984 despite the Mariel Boatlift of May 1980 increasing Miami’s supply of labor, ergo that proves that the law of supply and demand doesn’t apply to immigration.
But, was ceteris truly paribus in Miami in 1980-84 relative to Card’s control group of other American cities? Or was there anything else boosting the economy of Miami from 1980 to 1984 that wasn’t happening on the same scale elsewhere?
To research this apparently extremely obscure topic in economic history, I spent a half hour on Youtube. I’ve interleaved some video evidence regarding the unique source of Miami’s early 1980s prosperity above and below.