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Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

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Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#361
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because you end up with more people working and for low wage jobs there isn't all that much room to cut wages. At the moment we have pretty good job growth combined with low unemployment so new people starting working aren't putting downward pressure on wages (evidence of this is that we are seeing wage growth).

Thanks, that explanation makes sense to me.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it fit just fine until a few short weeks ago. Mexico was getting wealthier, people were more likely to return to Mexico. Ironically this whole border wall + move jobs back to the USA thing has made the chances of illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA for a given individual go up rather than down. As for who would make Mexico wealthy: that would not be the US government but market forces and corporations, t…

> As for who would make Mexico wealthy: that would not be the US government but market forces and corporations, the things that America has historically been such a huge proponent of. Market forces are merely a means to an end. The U.S. Government should only permit them to operate to the extent that has the effect of making the majority of Americans more prosperous (which it usually does). Do trade policies that hav…

> The U.S. Government should only permit them to operate to the extent that has the effect of making the majority of Americans more prosperous (which it usually does).

The US Government should do what is best for the country and it's surroundings in the longer term, not what is best for isolated groups of Americans in the short term, and it was doing mostly that.

Trade policies that only work to the advantage of one of the trading partners are bad for everybody in the long term, they need to be win-win to really work.

> Americans seem to think not.

Americans by and large seem to think things are reasonably ok, as they should given the fact that the country is doing amazingly well. All this talk of doom and gloom is mostly a stage show set up to galvanize the votes of the dis-enfranchised.

It's a natural reaction: who cares if the country as a whole on average is doing much better if your little pocket of it is doing much worse? Who cares about the world as a whole doing better if your part of it is sliding backwards.

Adapt or die is easy to say when you're the one that has adapted, it's a lot harder if you're likely in the part of the population that will simply die.

And that's the heart of the problem, not whether or not the median American is getting richer, if that were the case nothing should have been changed because that was exactly what was happening already.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the populist parameters used to define usefulness of a person is incorrect. You think a person from Mexico is more useless than a person from Canada?

More importantly, how can you not think that? Logically a Canadian is going to be culturally a better fit, financially better off, and more educated and skilled. It's got nothing to do with race or nationality, just a statement about the average Mexican vs the average Canadian. Don't throw logic out the window in service to liberal ideals.

Why would a Canadian be a better fit for southern california or texas? Is their experience moose hunting going to help in 100 degree heat?

Why would we even want someone who's "culturally" a better fit? I'd love it if the people around me were more diverse, it makes life richer and more interesting.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#364
post #358
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When merely being a person gives you rights to government-issued finite resources, it has to be a utilitarian argument.

You need to be a lawful permanent resident to qualify for any federal public benefits.

Tell that to the emergency care centers that aren't allowed to turn away anyone or else they will not receive medicare reimbursements.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#365
post #10

Whenever I see "Immigration" in the title, i think anti-Trump and get sad. No one is trying to stop legal immigration. Tech companies are mad because they are cracking down on H1-B Visa abuse. This is not a bad thing.

"No one is trying to stop legal immigration." You are misinformed: "GOP Senators Move to Limit Legal Immigration A pair of Republican senators are teaming up with the White House to introduce legislation to restrict legal immigration by slashing the number of visas and green cards available each year." https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-02-07/sen...

Stop != Limit

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is an artist useful? Are they a respected contributor in their field? Can they afford to support themselves here?

Start running down the list of classic famous artists and you may be surprised at how many wouldn't have met those criteria at the time when they created their most important work.

To be fair... a lot were. If anything, most of the artists we still remember from before the modern era did their best work under wealthy patrons or a purpose (David's Death of Marat and Oath of the Horatii both being pseudo-propaganda for the French Revolution).

The view of the starving artist doing their best work for free is compatible with our modern, post Industrial Revolution views but largely inaccurate.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is also called the slippery slope fallacy.

It's not a slippery slope when it's supported by evidentiary claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...

There is no list of examples long enough to get the gun control people to understand why none of the pro-gun people trust them at all. Why should evidence matter here?

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#369
post #7

What percentage of all startups are founded by immigrants? If it's on the order of 51%, you can't rule out the possibility that this number just reflects the base occurrence rate of immigrants in the "population" of all startup founders.

Good studies must discuss denominators as well as numerators. The 51% is misleading. What would be important to know is how many immigrants were founders with a denominator of how many founders were there. Moreover, there is some (wrong) assumption that an American could not have been a founder in place of the immigrant founders of a similar company. H1-B visas were created for the intent of not displacing Americans…

  The 51% is misleading. What would be important to know is 
  how many immigrants were founders with a denominator of 
  how many founders were there.
The statistic here is: "51% of unicorns had at least one founder who was born in another country". Palantir, for example, is included as an "immigrant-founded company", which it is, but Peter Thiel (Germany) is one of five co-founders. So with a subset of one company, only 20% of founders were immigrants.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

universities have limited classrooms and labs to fill. A country is not limited.

Of course a country is limited. Limited territory, limited resources.

Most immigrants pay more taxes than they owe. In other words they add resources rather than cost them.
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