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Yeah, that's the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves here." I

Yeah, that's the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves here." It's what the country was built on. In my home country people talked about "reciprocity" on immigration policy, like "if you admit our workers we'll admit yours", but smarter policy would be retaliatory -- "if you steal our workers, we'll steal yours!" See the UK threatening to give visas to Hong Kong residents in the last month or so. (Though calling that transaction zero sum could be debatable. When someone moves to the US, normally the US wins, the migrant wins, and the origin country usually loses unless there are remittances, but relative magnitudes can be haggled over.)

rayiner 6y ago
> Yeah, that's the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves here." It's what the country was built on. That’s some sort of retcon. The US was already one of the richest countries in the world (in terms of per capita GDP) by the 1820s (which is when the first wave of non-UK immigration began, with the Germans). It overtook the UK for the first time in 1814, and was significantly ahead of continental Europe by that time. By 1890, long before skilled immigration to the US began in volume, the US economy was as big as the entire British Empire’s excluding India. The US has done a good job assimilating immigrants, and one can imagine that it might have lost the edge in the 20th century if it hadn’t. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had. Japan and Korea had meteoric development in the 20th century with almost no immigration at all. Regardless, the US was already developing like a rocket even back when it was primarily UK people here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- repsilat 6y ago
  I think the argument survives being pushed back to colonisation, but maybe that's just me moving goalposts. I certainly don't know my American history as well as you do, and to be honest I'm more interested in learning more than I am in being proven right or wrong. Thanks for adding more substance to the thread than I did.
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  Errr... there was plenty of non UK immigration in the 19th century in the US. It wasn't voluntary, and it probably wasn't very skilled, but it certainly was hard working. The entire cotton industry was based on it.
  - repsilat 6y ago
    Oh dear. Let me be clear that my post meant only to refer to voluntary immigration.
  - OrangeKnucles 6y ago
    Sick burn
tshaddox 6y ago
Wanting your nation to compete well to attract talent is not exactly zero-sum thinking. Sure, you could consider each individual’s choice of where to deploy their talent as a zero-sum choice, since they can only directly choose one location at a time, but 1) even individual contributions can benefit the world and 2) a healthy competition for talent among nations can itself benefit the world.

rayiner 6y ago

> Yeah, that's the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves here." It's what the country was built on. That’s some sort of retcon. The US was already one of the richest countries in the world (in terms of per capita GDP) by the 1820s (which is when the first wave of non-UK immigration began, with the Germans). It overtook the UK for the first time in 1814, and was significantly ahead of continental Europe by that time. By 1890, long before skilled immigration to the US began in volume, the US economy was as big as the entire British Empire’s excluding India. The US has done a good job assimilating immigrants, and one can imagine that it might have lost the edge in the 20th century if it hadn’t. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had. Japan and Korea had meteoric development in the 20th century with almost no immigration at all. Regardless, the US was already developing like a rocket even back when it was primarily UK people here.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
repsilat 6y ago
I think the argument survives being pushed back to colonisation, but maybe that's just me moving goalposts. I certainly don't know my American history as well as you do, and to be honest I'm more interested in learning more than I am in being proven right or wrong. Thanks for adding more substance to the thread than I did.
lultimouomo 6y ago
Errr... there was plenty of non UK immigration in the 19th century in the US. It wasn't voluntary, and it probably wasn't very skilled, but it certainly was hard working. The entire cotton industry was based on it.
- repsilat 6y ago
  Oh dear. Let me be clear that my post meant only to refer to voluntary immigration.
- OrangeKnucles 6y ago
  Sick burn

tshaddox 6y ago

Wanting your nation to compete well to attract talent is not exactly zero-sum thinking. Sure, you could consider each individual’s choice of where to deploy their talent as a zero-sum choice, since they can only directly choose one location at a time, but 1) even individual contributions can benefit the world and 2) a healthy competition for talent among nations can itself benefit the world.