That's a result of political choices made in many jurisdictions, it's not a law of nature. The EU made a very conscious decision to tie free movement of labor to free movement of capital within its operating zone (probably the only such economic agreement of its kind).

The choices that the US has made are entirely favorable to capital, and entirely disfavorable to all non-professional labor. The only upside I can see (and I'm not alone in this) is cheap consumer goods that have obscured the true cost and depth of wage stagnation over 35 years.

Or is your point that only some stuff is cheaper, but the total standard of living supportable by average wages has nevertheless dropped?

Wage in currency is a lot simpler. The only real manipulation possibility is currency value and some minor tinkering in the definitions.

[1] For example a major criticisms of the euro-zone inflation index is that it excludes housing cost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonised_Index_of_Consumer_P...

There used to be "white-collar cost of living comparisons", maybe there still is. The headline in the newspaper would be "Copenhagen most expensive city in the world" or somesuch. The major reason for that was that hiring a full-time nanny to look after your children was expensive in Copenhagen, and a full-time nanny was included because that was considered necessary for white-collar professionals in some of the cities om the survey, and for fairness it was included everywhere. But in Copenhagen, there are excellent creches and kindergartens. Only a kook hires a nanny, so those attempts at fair comparisons compared kooky behaviour in Copenhagen with sensible behaviour in, say, Pune or Bangalore, and found that being a kook in Copenhagen is expensive.

But how can you do it better? How can you compute the cost of living (which is tightly connected to purchasing power) so well that you can compare year-over-year and capture 2% changes reliably? If the city provides more/better creches, should you start counting 19.2% of the cost of a nanny instead of 19.4%?

People don't need a car where I live. I know areas nearby where a family like mine would have at least one, perhaps two cars. Cars are cheaper there (renting off-street parking space costs a fortune here) but how would you factor the cost of a car into purchasing power and compare fairly? If the city builds new metro rail, how do you change the weight of the family's first car in your calculation, and the cost of the second car?

This is difficult stuff.

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/census-renters-incomes-still-laggi...

But hey! US$200 4k TVs! Portable handheld computing devices with access to a good chunk of human knowledge (and humanity) ! No problem!

That would be deflation, but we've actually had inflation over the past decades. We can ofcourse discuss how wrll we are measuring it, but generally speaking some life necessities like housing have skyrocketed in price.

It definitely makes it more difficult, but a lot of it is a "law of nature" because moving is expensive, time consuming, risky, and you give up your local connections. There's a reason for the metaphor "putting down roots."

But it ignores the extent to which we've deliberately worked very hard to make capital mobile. As noted elsewhere in the thread, feudal societies used to see most wealth accumulated in the form of real estate, which is more or less the definition of immobile capital. We've built huge and complex social institutions around making capital mobile, and even allowed them to suck up a rather notable percentage of GDP.

Imagine what a world would look like that put as much effort into the free movement of labor. And note: not all capital is internationally mobile, and in the same spirit, nobody would sensibly suggest that all labor would or should become mobile. There's plenty of room and benefits for investing both close to home (which is all part of "putting down roots"). It's a question of balance between local, regional, national and global for both capital and labor mobility.

how is this any different for the US?

I'm pretty certain Floridians don't need a work visa if they choose to go and work in California?

The US has essentially never existed in this form. From the moment of its founding, it has been a federal, democratic republic.

Before the EEC/EU, investing across Europe was much more difficult, and labor migration was limited to "high skilled" workers. There have never been any such limitations in the US.

this isn't true at all, what about the first US constitution: The Articles of Confederation?

Article II stated that the States are sovereign (bar delegated powers), and Article IV established freedom of movement and freedom of capital

essentially the same structure as the current EU (with many of the same flaws)

The EEC/EU was preceded by nations, continues to feature nations (1) and still has no actual federal structure (though quite a lot of Europeans wish it had more, and quite a lot of other Europeans wish it had less).

(1) consider how easy it was for even the Schengen zone nations to close their borders and think about how difficult it would be for a state to do the same.

I don't remember claiming otherwise

> If you're a historical revisionist, you could make the claim that the separate colonies constituted separate nations before the AoC, but I wouldn't agree with you

I didn't claim this either

my only point was EU is not unique, it's a confederation and there have been many throughout history, several with freedom of movement and capital, including the rather well known United States (post-AoC but pre-federalisation)

you may disagree, but that would be historical revisionism

I hate to quote Wikipedia, but:

Little changed politically once the Articles of Confederation went into effect, as ratification did little more than legalize what the Continental Congress had been doing. That body was renamed the Congress of the Confederation; but most Americans continued to call it the Continental Congress, since its organization remained the same

So basically we're disagreeing over whether or not a 12 (or 8) year period between 1777 (or arguably, 1781) and 1789 represents a confederation in which the concepts of free movement of labor and capital existed in a way at least somewhat analogous to the way they do in the EEC/EU.

I'd say they do not. Given that Wealth of Nations was only published in 1776, I'm not even sure that these concepts existed clearly in the minds of most of the people it would have to existed in in order for the post-AoC-pre-federal USA to be usefully said to be anything like the EU.

so you're disagreeing that the following sentence establishes freedom of movement and capital?

> the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from Justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively

ok

if the AoC did nothing more than codifying what was already the case when the land was just a bunch of GB colonies, I don't see how the AoC can be seen as analogous to the EU, which started from a set of distinct nations. it seems that all you're saying is that "within the colonies, there was free movement of labor and capital, and that continued after the revolution". that doesn't seem even remotely suprising - they were all colonies of a single nation.

we haven't mentioned the currency side of things - when the EEC/EU began, there wasn't even a common currency in use.

If it doesn't let me paint a picture. CEO comes in and checks their email. There's an email from his development team lead. "Dear CEO, The team and I had a discussion and and we no longer have confidence in your ability to usher this project to a successful outcome and have decided to work for company X in country Y. We have ceased development for your project at 8:17am and will be working for X as of 8:18am.

On the whole, these legal protections strongly advantage capital vs. labor, though California residents might benefit from their state’s hostility to non-compete clauses.

Those are empty threats if the team is not from the CEO's litigious country.

While this could have some downside re compensation, I look forward to employers smoothing the on/off-boarding process. Nothing is more frustrating than engaging with incompetent coworkers who are only around because it is too hard to find a replacement.

For example, you can relatively easily buy citizenship in the US, canada, most of europe, etc if you have enough capital. But if you are a person or worker, you have to jump through a lot more hoops to get citizenship in another country.

The world is capital-centric rather than people or labor centric.

Good luck crossing without documents

There is, however, a very loud minority of people whose business revolves around actively violating US financial laws, who run into problems when they provide their services to the US market.