During an embargo, I would rather be in a net exporting nation. At least you'd be able to feed and supply yourself with the raw materials to survive. You'd have plenty of labor freed up to produce things your country may need as opposed to the world.
On the other hand, if you import your consumption goods, commodities, and agriculture, you suddenly need to provide those yourself. With an unemployment of 5% and a frictional rate of 3%, you only have 2% of the workforce free to take those amazing "new jobs". There's simply not enough people. You could retrain everyone who currently exports to provide domestic goods, but again we have a smaller export workforce than is needed to provide our imports. In addition, we would be shifting people from high productivity jobs which generate much of our wealth to the low productivity jobs we used to shove on others.
The difference is exporting nations hurt while they shift labor. Importing nations hurt because they simply cannot provide enough.
I've been denied at the border before. Well, actually my Canadian wife (I'm American, immigrated to Canada) was denied for a 2-day trip and I had to drive her back. She is Indian, had a degree in CS, and was self-employed at the time. Apparantly, they wanted copies of our lease to prove she planned to stay in Canada and had no interest in taking American jobs - they didn't tell us this was the problem until after we were denied. We could have easily proven we had two cats at home waiting.
The Canadian agent told us it was very common - they would see a dozen denials some hours. Although biometrics were not related, I think being denied at the border must be far more common than people expect.
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During an embargo, I would rather be in a net exporting nation. At least you'd be able to feed and supply yourself with the raw materials to survive. You'd have plenty of labor freed up to produce things your country may need as opposed to the world.
On the other hand, if you import your consumption goods, commodities, and agriculture, you suddenly need to provide those yourself. With an unemployment of 5% and a frictional rate of 3%, you only have 2% of the workforce free to take those amazing "new jobs". There's simply not enough people. You could retrain everyone who currently exports to provide domestic goods, but again we have a smaller export workforce than is needed to provide our imports. In addition, we would be shifting people from high productivity jobs which generate much of our wealth to the low productivity jobs we used to shove on others.
The difference is exporting nations hurt while they shift labor. Importing nations hurt because they simply cannot provide enough.
I've been denied at the border before. Well, actually my Canadian wife (I'm American, immigrated to Canada) was denied for a 2-day trip and I had to drive her back. She is Indian, had a degree in CS, and was self-employed at the time. Apparantly, they wanted copies of our lease to prove she planned to stay in Canada and had no interest in taking American jobs - they didn't tell us this was the problem until after we were denied. We could have easily proven we had two cats at home waiting. The Canadian agent told us it was very common - they would see a dozen denials some hours. Although biometrics were not related, I think being denied at the border must be far more common than people expect.