Let the economy not stagnate!

La Contra interviewed Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, and he took the opportunity to declare that "simply put, without immigrants, the Spanish economy would stagnate today." A few decades ago, what we economists proclaimed was that the Spanish economy needed to grow to create jobs; today, we proclaim that immigrants are needed for its growth. This is undoubtedly a pathological way of thinking.

And what on earth does it mean when the economy stagnates? The president of Andalusia, Moreno Bonilla—interviewed by La Vanguardia a few days later—explained it to us in a didactic way: "Does Spain need immigrants? Yes, we need them [...] Who wants to work under plastic in Almería, with 50% humidity and extremely high temperatures?"

What matters for the material well-being of Spaniards is GDP per capita.

In other words, keeping the economy from stagnating means continuing to grow tomatoes in Almería in conditions we consider unsuitable for a Spaniard. And when we say tomatoes in Almería, we also mean melons in Torre Pacheco and many other activities that we euphemistically call "low added value."

To break out of this mentality, we must ask ourselves what benefits we gain from having an army of Moroccans in Almería dedicated to growing tomatoes. It's a question we can ask ourselves because we have an alternative: importing tomatoes, for example, from Morocco.

It is true that tomato production in Almería increases GDP, which would not be the case with importing tomatoes. However, what matters for the material well-being of Spaniards is GDP per capita, and, more specifically, disposable household income—which measures what citizens have to consume and save—and the availability of public services provided by public administrations with the taxes collected. The fact is that tomato production in Almería—like many other economic activities we can carry out in the rest of Spain thanks to low-skilled immigration—reduces gross disposable household income and reduces the availability of public services for citizens. Simply because the corresponding increase in GDP is more than offset by the number of people among whom we must distribute it.

Some will argue the virtues of local production and food sovereignty. These are weighty arguments, but we must weigh them against the violence of uprooting people from their places of origin simply because we prefer them to come to our country to produce tomatoes instead of buying them in their own.

We've been equating growth with prosperity for so long that the idea of the economy "stagnating" terrifies us. However, growth with salaries below €30,000 is detrimental, and that's why, despite the vigorous growth of the Spanish economy, we're increasingly worse off. We urgently need to change our way of thinking.