John Kenneth Galbraith On Migration And Poverty

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book in 1979 called The Nature of Mass Poverty (not one of his better known works). He devoted the entire last chapter to migration. One passage reads: “Migration, we have seen, is the oldest action against poverty. It selects those who most want help. It is good for the country to which they go; it helps to break the equilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people so to resist so obvious a good?”