Benefactors of Immigration Lobby

            Nearly six months ago Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg teamed up with other tech industry big names like Bill Gates, Netflix’s CEO, and founders of companies like Dropbox and LinkedIn to form FWD.us. As this article highlights, FWD.us is an organization that lobbies for immigration reform; specifically an increase in the number of H-1B Visas which are visas for high-skilled STEM workers. Because of the STEM shortage in the United States tech companies across the country are desperately seeking qualified work to fill their growing demand for STEM employees and have begun to look overseas to find that talent.

            While nearly all technology companies would like to see an increase in the H-1B visa cap, FWD.us is composed of only a few major tech firms that are collectively funding a major lobbying effort on behalf of their entire industry, making the members of FWD.us benefactors to a privileged group.

            This is an example of a privileged group because members of FWD.us have enough to gain from H-1B reform that they are willing to bear lobbying costs on behalf of the entire high-tech industry while smaller firms have the opportunity to free-ride on FWD.us’ efforts. As discussed in class, whatever gains FWD.us receives will greatly benefit the industry, and will help FWD.us’ members, but will never quite reach Q* for the entire high-tech market because of the smaller firms who are free-riding on the group’s lobbying efforts.

Airline Regulations eased or new ones added?

          This CNN article describes major airline reactions to the latest change to Airline regulations  electronic devices are now allowed during all parts of a flight.  The only hitch is that you have to get each aircraft approved by the FAA to be able to do this.  US Air and Southwest will be among the first to  receive approval (They are also among the largest airlines in the US).  Spirit Airlines (a smaller airline) on the other hand did not give a time table of when their aircraft will be approved.
          While this may seem like deregulation, this could be another example of rent seeking by the large players in the airline industry.  The cost of filing the additional paperwork to get the luxury of allowing electronics at all times on aircraft is more easily covered by the incumbents in the industry with larger market shares and deeper pockets.  At first glance, this appears to benefit passengers, but the new regulations could concentrate the market even further raising both profits for larger airlines and prices for their passengers.