Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, and we could have blown the lead in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 00s, the 10s, etc. But we didn't. We valued entrepreneurship, hard work, and being the best. 50s was an anomaly with a 36% growth rate, like you said, because we were all that were left. The economy currently is very stable, diversified, and fast growing still for its size, some 70 years later.
Where on the US Bureau of Economic Analysis' site do you find 5% GDP growth? https://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease... I keep seeing these overly optimistic GDP growth numbers, but I can't find them.
A world of free movement would be $78T richer
281–290 of 402 posts
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#282I am ok with selective immigration. But open borders is truly crazy idea at this point. If we open borders like suggested next thing we know will be - developed countries becoming like garbage dumps we see in other countries. There is a reason why some countires fall into downward spirals. If u get its people en mass without filters, you get that mentality too. Why dont we experiment in smaller scale with liberal com…
“If enough of them came, they might vote for an Islamist government...”
Given the rate of expansion of islam, i would say when not if.
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they are from US and for some very strange reason can not get enough points to pass the simplest route is 1 person from the couple goes to college in Canada (even the cheapest one) the second person can get work permit based on being spouse of a student (student can work half time too) With 1 year of work experience and a Canadian degree they will have enough points for PR.
Giving up years of your life for school isn't trivial by any means.
We are comparing US and Canada. If person already has a degree a similar degree can be chosen that will require 1+/- year of study at a cost below 10K. The spouse can work during this year and the student can work halftime. This will be enough to get PR. In US the spouse will not have right to work the student can work on campus the minimal cost will be in 30K range, after getting the degree the former student (if the degree is appropriate) can work for 1-2 years in US if employer applies for H1B and the lucky former student wins the lot. he will be able to continue working and US employer can apply for GC (subject to far more req than in Canada) minimum time to GC in US in this scenario will be 4-5 years (realistically 6-7 provided the student was not from China or India) and in Canada about 2.
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wallyworld did more to bring up the standard of living The quality of food Walmart sells is abysmal. The pressure Walmart put on food manufactures to drop prices played a significant role in the malnutrition and obesity in the us. TVs and smart phones are a very small part of Quality of Life. Having fulfilling work, good health, and a clean environment are more important aspects that Walmart worsen.
> The pressure Walmart put on food manufactures to drop prices played a significant role in the malnutrition and obesity in the us. Making food less expensive is bad? Never really understood that argument but maybe it's just me... There are studies on the percentage of income a family spends on food today vs. some time in the past (with "time" depending on whatever study you look at) and it has steadily declined. Les…
> Making food less expensive is bad?
Making equivalent food lower cost is good. Reducing food quality to reduce price is bad.
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#285"Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers. Those who cut hair find richer clients who tip better."
Like hell they do.
In the first two scenarios, the hypothetical worker is almost certainly not qualified to be operating any sort of heavy machinery. In the third, stylists/barbers tend to require certification.
I'm sure this paragraph wasn't meant to be taken literally, but it does nonetheless betray a gross underestimation of the costs of actually training someone to be an effective and safe worker in a new, more technologically-driven environment.
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#286This article (and the comments) seem to focus on migration from poorer to more developed areas.
But what if people could migrate from the developed world to resource rich regions (like Africa and South America) and have the chance to unlock the potential of those regions? All that potential wealth which is currently held back by corrupt governments and non-progressive cultural habits could be unlocked.
Wait, that happened before and was called colonialism and wasn't good for the natives. But neither is uncontrolled inflow of third worlders into industrialized nations. Is growing global wealth more important than effects on local populations?
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#287>If the worry is that immigrants will outvote the locals and impose an uncongenial government on them, one solution would be not to let immigrants vote—for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This is actually an interesting idea worth thinking about more. If the concern for those on the right is that more immigrants to the US would cause a permanent electoral Blue Wall by flipping Texas in a couple election cyc…
Ask Germany how trying to import a class of non-citizen workers worked out for them.
Details? I dont know a german to ask!
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
"immigrant-friendly" thats very far from being accurate. edit: strong lang.
Well, I guess it depends on each person's experience. but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... , US has the most immigrants at 46 million, next closest is Germany at 12 million and Russia at 11 million.
The USA is the size of a continent, so perhaps a fair(er) comparison would be to add all the immigrants in Europe. That's ignoring the fact that most people don't migrate to the USA because it's immigrant friendly but because of other factors such as proximity, language, and economy, and ease of access. Living in the USA as an undocumented immigrant is not that great. The balance is also tipping at the moment (e.g. more people are leaving the USA than entering the USA, currently).
If you look at the figures for net migration per 1000 inhabitants[1], the USA and Germany are pretty much the same for the period between 2007 and 2012: 15.94 per 1K and 15.54 per 1K respectively. For 2017, the USA sits at 3.9 (Canada 5.70).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#289Open borders will, at first, cause downward pressure on wages, as the labor pool of workers able and willing to perform work for a lower price grows. The magnitude would be more pronounced than with what we've been currently able to observe with controlled borders, because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. In fact, there would be a growth in the…
>Because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. FTA: “If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”
> why not charge them more for visas,
Because illegal immigrants do not use visas. So you would be hurting law-abiding people and encouraging circumventing the law - if you can't afford the visa anyway, the question of "should I just through the hoops to get legal visa or try illegal immigration" becomes moot.
> make them pay extra taxes
Why would they pay those taxes? They'd just work on black market and report zero income and apply for welfare. High tax burdens reliably breeds avoidance and lack of compliance, especially in population that is kinda on the sidelines of the law as it is, as it often happens with migrants. And of course it would also sell awfully in the press - imagine an article of how a migrant from Guatemala pays a higher tax rate taxes than a billionaire born in New Jersey - how that would look in next congressional debate?
> restrict their access to welfare benefits
You can do it, but then you'd get exactly what welfare benefits are created to remove - a large population of people who do not have access to basic services, and thus have high level of disease, crime, misery and human suffering. If you accept the idea that welfare benefits are necessary because we should not have too many people like that in our society, then denying people in the country these benefits because they were born in wrong place contradicts this idea. Gating the access to this system on immigration status contradicts the whole premise of having the welfare system. I don't think there's a logically consistent model of welfare state with open borders at all - unless we somehow postulate that welfare spending has a reasonably low upper bound, which I haven't seen proven anywhere.
> Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants,
Of course you could, but why charging lots of money for visa would be more effective in solving problems we have now than any other method that's been used?
> thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”
Big, sudden surges usually happen due to wars, famines, economic collapses and other such events, in which case I seriously doubt visa prices are going to change anything.
Re: A world of free movement would be $78T richer
#290This an interesting article because it reframes current immigration discussions from humanitarian issues to economic ones. I'd like to see more modelling on wage depression to see why this wouldn't have a widespread negative impact. Additionally this seems like a weird point: >Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native-born to do more lucrative work. If lucrative work were available, w…
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