American Politics Discussion Thread

[Amicalola]

I think it is a generally accepted fact that mass immigration on average improves the quality of life for native upper-class/old people, and degrades it for native working-class/young people. Particularly from a housing/employment competition perspective. We are seeing the former become a massive problem in Aus, I hear Canada is too. Unsure about the US.

With that said, preventing immigration is more complicated from a human rights perspective, particularly for asylum seekers. Is it really the correct choice to prevent desperate people from entering, particularly when your country may be the cause of their shitty situation in the first place? Developed nations are going to see this dilemma a lot with climate change refugees very soon.

[Mjmd]

A lot of the economic activity in Australia and Canada is centered around only a few cities. And cities (places with lots of people to note) in general have the problem that the more successful they are it drives up home prices. The more successful they are the more people want to move there plus the people who are being paid well at the top really can pay more for the land thing I mentioned earlier. This is an issue in certain parts of the US. There is a reason when I was outlining how immigrants should be distributed that I didn't recommend sending 100% them to NYC. But the US has many cities and many different kinds of economic activities. The challenge in my mind is how to distribute so that yes one area isn't overly impacted. I can understand some of Texas frustrations. And again, personally I know my uneducated wife has benefited from immigrants helping jobs just exist. Hard to quantify true. However, you can see the wages in lower pop states without a lot of economic activity. When there aren't many employment options or economic activity wages also stay low.

Greenline is not concerned with human rights or that they are people, so I've been focusing elsewhere. But yes the US specifically has partial responsibility for a lot of the destabilized countries.

[greenline]

Higher education is a cornerstone of an advanced economy and keeping those graduates employed is important. See China youth unemployment rate.

It's worth bringing this up because this is mostly incorrect. The ingredients needed to jumpstart an industrial economy are not a large amount of university graduates. The recent examples are China and now Vietnam, both of which had an economy consisting primarily of laboring subsistence farmers and a small amount of technically knowledgeable and wealthy citizens able to build capital. It was instead the result of that industrial economy increasing wages that then led to a surge in parents sending their kids to universities, both over there and historically in the US itself. A higher amount of university students does not actually lead to hyper productive citizens because most of them will go on to not participate in any sort of productive work at all. 

The US does have productive workers and productive factories even now. It's also a lot harder to build and operate such facilities than it was many years ago. If one counted all US employees who work at places like 7/11 or the DMV, the real average productivity would be much lower, and one would see how the large "productivity gain" was actually just outsourcing.

Immigration is not the primary reason that cities like NYC have sky high rents, but rather various laws and practices making construction very expensive. People like Pelosi have spent a lifetime upkeeping those sort of NIMBY policies, probably because they happen to own or know people who own such properties. And one could make the reasonable argument that the bourgeouis city goers would prefer not to have any more slums full of people willing to stab them on the public transportation. But they cannot seem to extend that reasoning to the various other criminal elements whose interests they typically advance...

With that said, preventing immigration is more complicated from a human rights perspective, particularly for asylum seekers. Is it really the correct choice to prevent desperate people from entering, particularly when your country may be the cause of their shitty situation in the first place? Developed nations are going to see this dilemma a lot with climate change refugees very soon.

The new isolationist right under Trump would like to see less immigration and less overseas destabilization all at once. This seems ideal to me.

[Mjmd]

Our economy is beyond the jump start phase. We are an advanced economy. That gives us quite an advantage, but the key is to keep it and grow it.

I mean yes there are a large number of factors to cost of living and I will keep it at that. I was merely pointing out sending 100% of immigrants as you suggested to a high cost of living location wasn't smart.

Isolationism always sounds nice, but it rarely works out. It worked for the US for a while, but mainly because Britain was fulfilling keep trade flowing role in the world. Most of the Central & South American instability is from longer ago. Although I will point out the farm bill subsidies again. You can pretty easily argue that we should try to help out these countries more if you wanted to stymie the flow of immigrants, but mind you Trump cut that.

[greenline]

Splendid isolationism actually did wonders for the US economy. Part of the huge post 40s boom was the economies of Europe and Asia being so damaged by war that it allowed many US companies to further corner the market. If the goal was enriching US citizens, then merely backing off and selling weapons to all parties of any future conflicts would be one quick method of doing so. What isolationism is not good for is for satisfying the egos of crooks and tyrants. Woodrow Wilson, who came up with all that garbage about "our democracy" that you still are bleating out years later, could not stand the idea of staying out of war because he had an idiotic idea for a League of Nations that he then got pissed he couldn't ram through Congress.

[Mjmd]

Isolation is excellent for tyrants. I feel like a lesson in why alliances is good might be in order here. But basically the way current world alliances work is US is the lynchpin and we are allied or friendly with all major powers except China (I don't count Russia anymore). I get some people don't like that, but it does heavily reduce the chance of major war, which I count as a good thing. Instead of there being a balance of alliances say pre WWI, there is just a network of alliances leading to and from the US. This does other good things like prevent nuclear proliferation (because nations like South Korea and Japan are under US nuclear umbrella / general protection). I am very firm that less nukes is better.

So lets go to the next morally horrendous part of your plan. I feel like you are skipping the part post WWII where there wasn't a war on anymore and trade could flow freely and economies worldwide could do non war things. I'll also note even pre war / during war our friends and allies controlled the seas. Yes us being unharmed was great for us, but there being peace at the time was also great. Again, economic prosperity comes from economic activity. I have no clue how you would run the numbers, but in general I'm pretty sure just encouraging wars worldwide and the destruction it would create would result in less economic activity and therefore less economic prosperity not just for billions but also for the US. You might realize some short term gains, but long term seems bad. The world is the most connected its ever been. Even if you could reshore all the many random industries we rely on to the US the material requirements would still be international. Although destabilizing more central and south american countries would probably solve the extra labor requirements you would need.

Edit: I'll also quickly note a lot of our economic prosperity comes from international corporations and they aren't food and weapon based.

[Boro]

Ever heard of a firing order and minefields? It used to be the norm pre-1990.

You need to provide sources. MINEFIELDS? Come on.

Hungarian-Yugoslav border pre-1953 and part of the croatian border in the 1990s/2000s, and iron curtain (at least between Hungary and Austria until the late 1960s, so I was wrong on the date in both ways.

[Cyneheard]

Ever heard of a firing order and minefields? It used to be the norm pre-1990.

You need to provide sources. MINEFIELDS? Come on.

Hungarian-Yugoslav border pre-1953 and part of the croatian border in the 1990s/2000s, and iron curtain (at least between Hungary and Austria until the late 1960s, so I was wrong on the date in both ways.

We're talking about the US-Mexico border and you bring up militarized borders that have never been the US context, that's on you for not explaining your point. And "let's recreate the Iron Curtain" is also a ridiculous thought too.

[Boro]

Well, what else can you do? Stop creating unlivable conditions in their home countries by supporting puppets who let your companies practically steal their resources, have them work for pennies while doing so, and destroy the local environment in the process?

It's not like the elites will consent to that while it is still profitable and brings massive amounts of vulnerable cheap labor to the country to push down local wages.

[Mjmd]

Sigh. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin isn't running in 2024. He is at the top of house Republicans I actually have respect for.