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This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing dem

This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. Immigrants children grow up to greatly out earn their parents pay way more in taxes than they their parents. The only immigrant group that could be considered a liability are older low skilled workers who have passed the age to have kids and live a couple of decades of working years. The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.

whoaisme 5y ago
Meanwhile people who live in the real world know what you just said is a crock of nonsense.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nostromo 5y ago
Their point is that is becoming less and less true and will likely be false soon. Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages and the view of large families not as assets but as liabilities. You can try to spur local demand by expanding your population (via birth or immigration) but what we really care about is GDP per capita. Most very populous countries are not wealthy.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages You're assuming an efficient market, which we've long known is a flawed assumption.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    Where is that assumption? I'm not seeing it in the claim.
    - delecti 5y ago
      Taking stagnant wages to imply that the labor is worth less is taking for granted that reduced prices means reduced value. It's probably more accurate (though still oversimplifying) to view it as a cartel suppressing wages.
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
> The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place. This is so simplified that it is basically false. There are a range of reasons for not supporting immigration, but basically no one wants to "keep society in place". I will note that the USA had historically low immigration in the post-war period that was associated with rapidly rising wellbeing[0]. [0]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Ann...
- spothedog1 5y ago
  That was almost entirely due to America rebuilding Europe and every other major industrial power knocked off their perch for a couple of decades. It had nothing to do with immigration. Additionally Americans were still having lots of kids at that point so the population was growing without immigratiom.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration (including Switzerland and the Nordics, which were not affected much by the war). It may have nothing to do with immigration, but you certainly haven't proved that. Edit: Currently the poorest parts of the US population are stagnating at best, at a time when rates of both legal and illegal immigration are quite high. It is hard to make the argument that immigration is preventing things from getting worse.
    - stevula 5y ago
      > Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration That doesn’t seem correct, at least not universally. Germany invited a large number of immigrant workers to deal with its labor shortage after WW2. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter
      - dtech 5y ago
luckylion 5y ago
> They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. That heavily depends on the immigrant group, and is, on average, not true in most of Europe where many immigrants heavily depend on welfare and it turns into intergenerational dependency. I'm sure it's different in countries that aren't offering full benefits to immigrants, and are much harder to reach via illegal migration, i.e. the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, but that kind of blanket statement isn't accurate.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  I’ve read about this and a big reason is it’s simply so much easier to get a job in the US. You’re not dealing with unions and America just has way more low paying jobs. You can def argue this isn’t a good thing but working a low paying job is better than working no job.
  - pastage 5y ago
    More low paying jobs just leads to more misery for poor people, and more money for me. That is not how I want to live.
throw37388 5y ago
There is limited supply of housing and low qualified jobs. Maybe read what Marx wrote about Irish immigrants to UK. And those already spoke local language and shared similar culture.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  Limited supply of housing is an artificial local government constraint using tools like zoning and permitting to stop the construction of new housing keep prices high for incumbent owners. I agree it’s a huge problem but I would rather fight the constraint on supply than limit demand (partially immigrants) when they contribute so much else. We shouldn’t restrict economic growth and deny millions of people the chance at a better life to appease NIMBYs. USA is amazing at assimilating immigrants. Mostly the places the furthest away from any immigrants that don’t actually interact with them have a problem. The melting pot isn’t a myth it’s real.
  - throw37388 5y ago
    Please. We have 40% unemployment in Greece among young people. Housing is bloody expensive to build. It is not some goverment conspiracy! Did you actually try to immigrate into US? It is one of the worst countries at accepting immigration. Any normal country gives citizenship after 5 years of residency. In US it is like 30 years. And from far away it looks like your melting pot is broken. Too many groups fighting each other.
    - spothedog1 5y ago
      Not familiar with housing in Greece. I should have clarified I’m talking about the US where housing is quite cheap to build but regulations make it illegal to build most types of housing. I was born in the US but a lot of my family are immigrants and I know how tough the system is, I’m arguing to make it much easier. I’m sure on the outside it does look broken and there are lots of issues to fix, but take a walk around pretty much any American urban metro area and it’s working amazingly well. I can understand the situation in Greece is much different, especially when compare the amount of refugees compared to the population of Greece. But I think a lot of the issues boil down to Greece having a quite shit economy at the moment causing more issues. If jobs were abundant in Greece then I think immigration wouldn’t be as contentious. Although that’s just me taking from no experience. I’m interested in hearing your view.
ses1984 5y ago
You’re thinking in humanistic terms, not geopolitical terms.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  I’m thinking in purely economic terms
fleddr 5y ago
Maybe we have to rethink our economic system so that producing more humans just to create new customers is a perverse incentive. Less humans means less demand means less work. In our current paradigm, this is a problem. In a healthy paradigm, it is a solution. Less people? Rebalance human development with nature. Less consumption of resources? Wonderful. Less jobs? Great, let's all work less and live more. Many would call this utopia, I call it sanity. I'd also say that couple not reproducing or doing so at increasingly old age, is the ultimate sign of how our economic system doesn't even support one of the most natural things there are: to form a family. It is openly hostile to this option. And we want do double down on that? The trend of economic security is going to be even less, not more.
princeb 5y ago
> They buy goods and services the wonder of economic development is that as a country's quality of life and wealth increases, consumption increases. the typical american probably consumes about 4000x as much energy as the typical DRC. we still have a long, long way to go before we can accommodate the whole world living like an american. even as population growth stalls, or even reverses course, the ability of humans to keep expanding its appetite for the finer things in life can never be quelled.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  The average energy usage per person in the USA has been going down in the past few decades as appliances and electronics get more efficient. It will continue to go down as more things electrify and shift to renewables. We can decrease resource consumption through smarter growth policies like building denser, public transit while growing our population for economic benefit.

whoaisme 5y ago

Meanwhile people who live in the real world know what you just said is a crock of nonsense.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nostromo 5y ago

Their point is that is becoming less and less true and will likely be false soon. Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages and the view of large families not as assets but as liabilities. You can try to spur local demand by expanding your population (via birth or immigration) but what we really care about is GDP per capita. Most very populous countries are not wealthy.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
> Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages You're assuming an efficient market, which we've long known is a flawed assumption.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  Where is that assumption? I'm not seeing it in the claim.
  - delecti 5y ago
    Taking stagnant wages to imply that the labor is worth less is taking for granted that reduced prices means reduced value. It's probably more accurate (though still oversimplifying) to view it as a cartel suppressing wages.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

> The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place. This is so simplified that it is basically false. There are a range of reasons for not supporting immigration, but basically no one wants to "keep society in place". I will note that the USA had historically low immigration in the post-war period that was associated with rapidly rising wellbeing[0]. [0]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Ann...

spothedog1 5y ago
That was almost entirely due to America rebuilding Europe and every other major industrial power knocked off their perch for a couple of decades. It had nothing to do with immigration. Additionally Americans were still having lots of kids at that point so the population was growing without immigratiom.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration (including Switzerland and the Nordics, which were not affected much by the war). It may have nothing to do with immigration, but you certainly haven't proved that. Edit: Currently the poorest parts of the US population are stagnating at best, at a time when rates of both legal and illegal immigration are quite high. It is hard to make the argument that immigration is preventing things from getting worse.
  - stevula 5y ago
    > Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration That doesn’t seem correct, at least not universally. Germany invited a large number of immigrant workers to deal with its labor shortage after WW2. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter
    - dtech 5y ago

luckylion 5y ago

> They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. That heavily depends on the immigrant group, and is, on average, not true in most of Europe where many immigrants heavily depend on welfare and it turns into intergenerational dependency. I'm sure it's different in countries that aren't offering full benefits to immigrants, and are much harder to reach via illegal migration, i.e. the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, but that kind of blanket statement isn't accurate.

spothedog1 5y ago
I’ve read about this and a big reason is it’s simply so much easier to get a job in the US. You’re not dealing with unions and America just has way more low paying jobs. You can def argue this isn’t a good thing but working a low paying job is better than working no job.
- pastage 5y ago
  More low paying jobs just leads to more misery for poor people, and more money for me. That is not how I want to live.

throw37388 5y ago

There is limited supply of housing and low qualified jobs. Maybe read what Marx wrote about Irish immigrants to UK. And those already spoke local language and shared similar culture.

spothedog1 5y ago
Limited supply of housing is an artificial local government constraint using tools like zoning and permitting to stop the construction of new housing keep prices high for incumbent owners. I agree it’s a huge problem but I would rather fight the constraint on supply than limit demand (partially immigrants) when they contribute so much else. We shouldn’t restrict economic growth and deny millions of people the chance at a better life to appease NIMBYs. USA is amazing at assimilating immigrants. Mostly the places the furthest away from any immigrants that don’t actually interact with them have a problem. The melting pot isn’t a myth it’s real.
- throw37388 5y ago
  Please. We have 40% unemployment in Greece among young people. Housing is bloody expensive to build. It is not some goverment conspiracy! Did you actually try to immigrate into US? It is one of the worst countries at accepting immigration. Any normal country gives citizenship after 5 years of residency. In US it is like 30 years. And from far away it looks like your melting pot is broken. Too many groups fighting each other.
  - spothedog1 5y ago
    Not familiar with housing in Greece. I should have clarified I’m talking about the US where housing is quite cheap to build but regulations make it illegal to build most types of housing. I was born in the US but a lot of my family are immigrants and I know how tough the system is, I’m arguing to make it much easier. I’m sure on the outside it does look broken and there are lots of issues to fix, but take a walk around pretty much any American urban metro area and it’s working amazingly well. I can understand the situation in Greece is much different, especially when compare the amount of refugees compared to the population of Greece. But I think a lot of the issues boil down to Greece having a quite shit economy at the moment causing more issues. If jobs were abundant in Greece then I think immigration wouldn’t be as contentious. Although that’s just me taking from no experience. I’m interested in hearing your view.

ses1984 5y ago

You’re thinking in humanistic terms, not geopolitical terms.

spothedog1 5y ago
I’m thinking in purely economic terms

fleddr 5y ago

Maybe we have to rethink our economic system so that producing more humans just to create new customers is a perverse incentive. Less humans means less demand means less work. In our current paradigm, this is a problem. In a healthy paradigm, it is a solution. Less people? Rebalance human development with nature. Less consumption of resources? Wonderful. Less jobs? Great, let's all work less and live more. Many would call this utopia, I call it sanity. I'd also say that couple not reproducing or doing so at increasingly old age, is the ultimate sign of how our economic system doesn't even support one of the most natural things there are: to form a family. It is openly hostile to this option. And we want do double down on that? The trend of economic security is going to be even less, not more.

princeb 5y ago

> They buy goods and services the wonder of economic development is that as a country's quality of life and wealth increases, consumption increases. the typical american probably consumes about 4000x as much energy as the typical DRC. we still have a long, long way to go before we can accommodate the whole world living like an american. even as population growth stalls, or even reverses course, the ability of humans to keep expanding its appetite for the finer things in life can never be quelled.

spothedog1 5y ago
The average energy usage per person in the USA has been going down in the past few decades as appliances and electronics get more efficient. It will continue to go down as more things electrify and shift to renewables. We can decrease resource consumption through smarter growth policies like building denser, public transit while growing our population for economic benefit.