The Validity of Public Opinion on Immigration

Statistically speaking, a lot of people are stupid, right?

It's like George Carlin, who I mentioned earlier.

He had a joke about this.

He said, think how stupid the average person is.

Now imagine half of them are even more stupid than that.

Right.

But nonetheless, you have to also recognize that just because someone

doesn't have an IQ of 150 and a PhD does not mean that they're

incapable of knowing the circumstances of their own life better than you.

You don't need to have a high IQ or university education to know that

your wages are being driven down because lots of low skilled people

have come from another country and who are now doing the same job as you.

You don't have to be super clever to do that.

So just because people don't talk well, or even if they're not actually

that clever does not mean that their opinion is invalid, their opinion

may well be more valid than yours.

If they're talking about something in which they have actually a direct

stake, they have skin in the game.

So, you know, not everyone is going to be super smart or sound super

smart when talking to James O'Brien.

That doesn't mean that they're factually wrong about the things that

they're saying about the impact of mass immigration, for example.

I bet you someone who, who works as a plumber making 30 grand a year

knows a lot more about the impact of low skill mass immigration on this

country than James O'Brien, who doesn't have to compete with someone from

Romania or from India or from wherever to actually put food on the

table for their family.

So, um, I, I, I've never been one to like, this is very fashionable on the

populist right to be like, well, everyone's really clever and you can't

call people, some people really are stupid, but even if they are, it doesn't

mean that you get to overrule their opinion, particularly when it comes

to things that affect them.