Not sure how much demand there is for a thread on this topic, but I guess we shall see. Sort of inspired by the recent DACA happenings.

I remember reading a post in the old forum which kind of opened my eyes on this topic. Unfortunately I forgot who the poster was, but he made a point that he believed ideally the U.S. should let ~50M more immigrants in. The post shocked me at first, but as I dove into the subject I found that the position was not as crazy as it first appeared.

As the U.S. birth rate is now below replacement level, a steady stream of immigrants is probably needed for continued economic growth. I think Japan is the cautionary tale in this regard, and they have begun an about face on their immigration stances recently.

I am very interested in reading well thought out, rational, anti-immigration stances. I am actually somewhat sympathetic to the idea that we should be vetting immigrants for desirable skills/occupations. I am not so much interested in reading xenophobic garbage.



P.S. thread title sucks. Someone think of a better one please.

The more immigration you have, the less of a welfare state you can have, or vice-versa.

with voter ID laws the way they are it has already happened

People have been bagging on immigrants for ages. And yet I'd say it's a pretty clear cut case that immigrants have been a massive benefit overall. Not to mention, often today's immigrant haters were immigrants themselves not all that long ago.

And that's ultimately the reason why you get mixed messages out of pols. Anti-immigrant rhetoric plays well with the crowd--but the reality is we need them to keep the machine cranking along and growing. They'll try to distract you with silly **** but it's always about the loot at the end of the day.

My post is not anti-immigrant, but an acknowledgement of reality. The idea that you can have these pie in the sky welfare programs (UBI, UHC), and the immigration the US has, is not supported by economics. Also, you can't judge historical impact of immigration and think that's what's going on in the future, given the advancement in scale one farm has, and the loss of low-skill and manufacturing jobs to poor countries (which is NOT a bad thing). The left wants to keep more loot in the US, as opposed to sharing some with El Salvador, or other poor countries. The left and it's unions have to understand we are post-industrial revolution.

i'd argue largely the opposite, with declining birth rates we cant have the current welfare programs we have WITHOUT increased immigration.

1. UHC is not "pie in the sky." Implementing UHC will on net save like a trillion dollars a year. What is crazy is insisting on paying the extra trillion dollars to needless middlemen.

2. Immigrants are net tax payers, and that doesn't have to change if we implement UHC.

Immigrants may incur some costs initially--but rather quickly they're a big net benefit. Most people call that an investment

Somehow I feel that line you're taking of '(only) the left wants to keep the loot here and not share' would get you ran out of any group of conservatives out in the wild I don't know--it certainly would among many I know. trump was elected on an anti-globalism(which is ultimately what you're describing) sentiment. Yes, there are many working class people that share that sentiment--they are hardly all Ds though at this point.

Immigrants, for the most part, aren't coming here to sit around and collect welfare. They're here to and for the most part are working. There's actually a pretty good argument many are contributing(social sec+consumer spending) with w/o receiving all of the attached benefits of contributing.

Your rebuttal is "but Trump"?


UBI and UHC....and it's likely just like all other Americans, only 40% will pay taxes, less in the first generation. Look at that strain increased immigration has put on the nordic countries, and even their increased immigration has orders of magnitude less immigration than the US.

So the argument against immigrants is 2 things that don't exist? That's convenient. And how would more people contributing make those things impossible? Seems like it would make them even more realistic.

Yeah, the idea that you add a whole bunch of people to a system (whether UHC without the insurance companies, or the current one) that is already running a deficient is not going to increase debt substantially is lefty math as it's finest.

No, it's an argument against increased entitlements.

If a country with ~60m can afford uhc--doesn't it stand to reason that a country with ~330m should be able to handle it pretty easily? Does the math break down at higher numbers or something?

You want to **** over black people? Hit the Tax to GDP ratio and implement a VAT. Go for it.

The broader issue is, we run a deficit per citizen....increased entitlements per citizen increases the deficit per citizen, and increasing the number of citizens equals increased net debt that has to be made up with increased positive economic activity (which is a broken window fallacy). Increasing the number of citizens increases the deficit , and the argument that increasing the number of citizens will lead to increased GDP to offset increased debt to gdp levels is not based on anything other than historical trends that do not take in account globalization and automation that leads to less and less low skilled and other high volume labor requirements. You are just using debt to fuel growth, and you will never grow enough to make up the amount of debt you take on.

I mean hey go for it--but you'll be ******* over way more than black people it'll basically be everybody. Our country simply isn't making enough people on its own to keep the monster fed.

Well, I'm the rare bird who does not think our country needs to substantially improve our standard of living, and our standard of living is fueled by debt, at least manageable debt right now. What I mean is, it makes it that much harder for black people to get ahead. In other words, I'm tying a negative consequence to another lefty priority.

The left wants to pretend you can have both the level of immigration and increased entitlements. But you will have to make a choice to prevent a greek like spiral to economic collapse...I choose keep immigration.

No I totally hear what you're saying man. I'm not in charge of it all. I'm just telling you what I think is most likely going to happen. But I'm sure they'll be trash talking immigrants the entire time, because it plays well, while they're waving everybody in. Otherwise they're likely to do even more damage to their precious gdp The way things are currently set-up requires a continual supply of bodies to keep it all going. Place a giant roadblock in the way and the thing will collapse in on itself soon enough.

Framing it as a lefty priority is kinda disingenuous though--because if there's anything the top(i.e. capital) needs most to keep them there it's bodies.

Your chief argument is becoming less and less relevant. The US needs a haircut, and they don't want to accept it. The world will be better off with a richer El Salvador poor person, et al, than a richer poor American.

Genuine question because I can't remember if you have ever weighed in much on more general tax/economic stuff but were you in favour of the Trump tax cuts/republican economic policy more generally? Because your arguments in this thread against increasing welfare spending are along very similar lines to leftist criticism of republican economic policy since Reagan.

See I have all ways been in favour of immigration quotas (obv going through the proper vetting process first for criminal records, etc) and for any extra, to fill skilled labour shortages in certain industries. Any issues you can see with this approach?

I was not supportive, but not vehemently against them. I don't worry much about tax cuts/increases, becasue it's much easier to raise/lower taxes than it is to reverse spending/entitlements. I know democrats when in power will likley raise taxes and republicans will lower them, so it balances out. I'm more concerned by spending by both parties.

I don't know about pie in the sky programs but we can easily spend 10% more of GDP on welfare programs, 20% would be preferable. I know of no economics that says we can't. I know it's not politically feasble, but that's not economics. You're confusing the two

Uh, adding more people who are net contributors to a system that is running a deficient [sic] is indeed a good idea, and the math backs me up.