7 ms·

It’s not clear whether America has benefited from the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico, and it is far from clear the free trade agreement with Mexic

by rmk 5y ago

It’s not clear whether America has benefited from the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico, and it is far from clear the free trade agreement with Mexico has been a huge plus. Companies have simply used trade agreements with Mexico to avoid complying with strict regulations in the US. It’s also not clear if Mexico and Latin America could have suitable infrastructure, even with massive investment. Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. The midwestern US is an industrialists dream come true: plenty of land, plentiful food, navigable waterways, excellent roadways, massive market on the coasts accessible by air and rail on top of ocean, river, and road. The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself?

helen___keller 5y ago
> The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? America stopped investing in itself because the ROI was much higher in countries with monumentally lower quality of living (and thus, lower worker wages and so on). On a long enough timescale, this hopefully becomes a self correcting problem: technology and money flows out, improving the standard of living and wages elsewhere, until one day investing in the US makes the most financial sense.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. * Investments into Education are fraught with political issues. Spend $1 billion bucks on a new Math program and everyone loses their collective minds. Buy a new teacher and people think you're indoctrinating them with Critical Race Theory. * Improve local land, and the leftists yell "Gentrification". Oh, I'm sorry I wanted to improve this area with parks and metro stations and bus stops. Yes, that increases rent prices in the area but what else did you expect to happen? * Try to build low-income houses elsewhere and people stonewall you with NIMBYism. People don't like their property values declining, which happens when low-cost housing is made. ----- At some point, its just not worth the political hassle. Americans largely don't want the money or things to change. It doesn't matter if they're right-wing or left-wing, changing cities for the better is change and scary.
  - rmk 5y ago
    > America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. This is far from the case. Case in point: nearly 3 trillion and counting in public stimulus over the last couple of years. In fact, even the Republicans are mostly on board with many items from Biden's infrastructure bill, which is in the 2-3 trillion range. > * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. This is something that is inherent in American culture, perhaps a bit more so than European countries. Americans as a group believe in 'pulling yourself by the bootstraps', more than any other group. However, support for investment into America is there. The proof is the massive stimulus bills that have passed, despite > 20 trillion of federal debt.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      > This is far from the case. Case in point: nearly 3 trillion and counting in public stimulus over the last couple of years. In fact, even the Republicans are mostly on board with many items from Biden's infrastructure bill, which is in the 2-3 trillion range. Lets think about how this would play out. Money will come down from on-high at the Federal level. States will analyze their road systems, and decide "This traffic light should be converted into an overpass, causing 20% reduction in traffic in this area" (or something similar). And what will happen with the local population? They'll go nuts. Some rightfully so (any such large infrastructure project would cause some houses to be displaced, to make room for the overpass). Others will care about gentrification and rising home prices. Still others will worry about debts and budgets. That's what I mean. You'll have to force the infrastructure down people's throats if you actually want it to get done.
HWR_14 5y ago
Brain draining the best of the Americas and increasing their economic infrastructure is nothing like "uncontrolled immigration". As for using those, or any free trade, as a dodge for US regulations, that seems like a larger problem that needs to get solved. > The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? What makes you think it hasn't? Manufacturing capacity has increased dramatically. It just happens to be in mostly automated factories which supply few jobs.
SkyMarshal 5y ago
> Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. How so exactly?
AYBABTME 5y ago
I think the US has won a lot more from all this than it lost. It exported low margin work abroad and kept high margin activities local. In doing so, it also attracted the world's best talent to immigrate and start enriching US companies (and pay taxes in the US). Aside from edge cases, the vast majority of smart people I know move _from_ Canada/Mexico _to_ the US, and not the other way around. And having a lot of smart people is a huge competitive advantage in geopolitic. People without STEM degrees on the other hand don't get to access the US via NAFTA treaty. This treaty is basically a sieve that creates a brain drain in Canada/Mexico, to the benefit of the US, in exchange for some concessions on import tariffs. And you're right that the US is an industrialists dream come true, and I think a wave of bringing back a lot of industry will happen, now that automation is more mature than it was before. And the US will be in a great position to support this, given all the highly educated people it produces locally and attracts from abroad. Basically, the US will have exported industry when it made sense to do it, and will have imported it back when the balance switched. I'd say that's not a bad deal.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >Aside from edge cases, the vast majority of smart people I know move _from_ Canada/Mexico _to_ the US, and not the other way around. This has nothing to do with the comment you were replying to, specifically >the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico
  - rmk 5y ago
    Yes, you hit the nail on the head. There is very little doubt as to whether America benefits from legal immigrants.
- rmk 5y ago
  I think Canada and Mexico belong to two separate categories. It is true that the US benefits from highly educated immigrants from Canada AND Mexico. In fact, the US benefits in this regard much more from India and China, than Canada and Mexico, which simply do not have the depth of the talent pool required to sustain US supremacy. But the massive influx of immigrants from Mexico (and Central America) over the decades has not been of this kind. It has mostly been low-skilled or unskilled workers who form a growing underclass that can not participate effectively in civic society. Of course, from the standpoint of sustaining population growth to slightly above replacement levels, immigration of unskilled/low-skilled immigrants is still a good thing. Unfortunately, the US population growth flattened out or went slightly into reverse in 2020. Whether this trend takes hold is anybody's guess, but given America's declining appetite for immigration in general, the worse may still be ahead of us. As you say, though, automation may make slower population growth moot. Who knows!
scythe 5y ago
>It’s also not clear if Mexico and Latin America could have suitable infrastructure, even with massive investment. Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. I bet Japan and Italy would disagree.

by rmk 5y ago

helen___keller 5y ago

> The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? America stopped investing in itself because the ROI was much higher in countries with monumentally lower quality of living (and thus, lower worker wages and so on). On a long enough timescale, this hopefully becomes a self correcting problem: technology and money flows out, improving the standard of living and wages elsewhere, until one day investing in the US makes the most financial sense.

dragontamer 5y ago
America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. * Investments into Education are fraught with political issues. Spend $1 billion bucks on a new Math program and everyone loses their collective minds. Buy a new teacher and people think you're indoctrinating them with Critical Race Theory. * Improve local land, and the leftists yell "Gentrification". Oh, I'm sorry I wanted to improve this area with parks and metro stations and bus stops. Yes, that increases rent prices in the area but what else did you expect to happen? * Try to build low-income houses elsewhere and people stonewall you with NIMBYism. People don't like their property values declining, which happens when low-cost housing is made. ----- At some point, its just not worth the political hassle. Americans largely don't want the money or things to change. It doesn't matter if they're right-wing or left-wing, changing cities for the better is change and scary.
- rmk 5y ago
  > America does invest into itself. But Americans generally don't want the investment. This is far from the case. Case in point: nearly 3 trillion and counting in public stimulus over the last couple of years. In fact, even the Republicans are mostly on board with many items from Biden's infrastructure bill, which is in the 2-3 trillion range. > * No one likes welfare. At best, Americans begrudgingly accept it when necessary, but many people (even poor people) refuse to accept it at all. This is something that is inherent in American culture, perhaps a bit more so than European countries. Americans as a group believe in 'pulling yourself by the bootstraps', more than any other group. However, support for investment into America is there. The proof is the massive stimulus bills that have passed, despite > 20 trillion of federal debt.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > This is far from the case. Case in point: nearly 3 trillion and counting in public stimulus over the last couple of years. In fact, even the Republicans are mostly on board with many items from Biden's infrastructure bill, which is in the 2-3 trillion range. Lets think about how this would play out. Money will come down from on-high at the Federal level. States will analyze their road systems, and decide "This traffic light should be converted into an overpass, causing 20% reduction in traffic in this area" (or something similar). And what will happen with the local population? They'll go nuts. Some rightfully so (any such large infrastructure project would cause some houses to be displaced, to make room for the overpass). Others will care about gentrification and rising home prices. Still others will worry about debts and budgets. That's what I mean. You'll have to force the infrastructure down people's throats if you actually want it to get done.

HWR_14 5y ago

Brain draining the best of the Americas and increasing their economic infrastructure is nothing like "uncontrolled immigration". As for using those, or any free trade, as a dodge for US regulations, that seems like a larger problem that needs to get solved. > The question is, why doesn’t America invest in itself? What makes you think it hasn't? Manufacturing capacity has increased dramatically. It just happens to be in mostly automated factories which supply few jobs.

SkyMarshal 5y ago

> Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. How so exactly?

AYBABTME 5y ago

I think the US has won a lot more from all this than it lost. It exported low margin work abroad and kept high margin activities local. In doing so, it also attracted the world's best talent to immigrate and start enriching US companies (and pay taxes in the US). Aside from edge cases, the vast majority of smart people I know move _from_ Canada/Mexico _to_ the US, and not the other way around. And having a lot of smart people is a huge competitive advantage in geopolitic. People without STEM degrees on the other hand don't get to access the US via NAFTA treaty. This treaty is basically a sieve that creates a brain drain in Canada/Mexico, to the benefit of the US, in exchange for some concessions on import tariffs. And you're right that the US is an industrialists dream come true, and I think a wave of bringing back a lot of industry will happen, now that automation is more mature than it was before. And the US will be in a great position to support this, given all the highly educated people it produces locally and attracts from abroad. Basically, the US will have exported industry when it made sense to do it, and will have imported it back when the balance switched. I'd say that's not a bad deal.

TMWNN 5y ago
>Aside from edge cases, the vast majority of smart people I know move _from_ Canada/Mexico _to_ the US, and not the other way around. This has nothing to do with the comment you were replying to, specifically >the massive uncontrolled immigration from Mexico
- rmk 5y ago
  Yes, you hit the nail on the head. There is very little doubt as to whether America benefits from legal immigrants.
rmk 5y ago
I think Canada and Mexico belong to two separate categories. It is true that the US benefits from highly educated immigrants from Canada AND Mexico. In fact, the US benefits in this regard much more from India and China, than Canada and Mexico, which simply do not have the depth of the talent pool required to sustain US supremacy. But the massive influx of immigrants from Mexico (and Central America) over the decades has not been of this kind. It has mostly been low-skilled or unskilled workers who form a growing underclass that can not participate effectively in civic society. Of course, from the standpoint of sustaining population growth to slightly above replacement levels, immigration of unskilled/low-skilled immigrants is still a good thing. Unfortunately, the US population growth flattened out or went slightly into reverse in 2020. Whether this trend takes hold is anybody's guess, but given America's declining appetite for immigration in general, the worse may still be ahead of us. As you say, though, automation may make slower population growth moot. Who knows!

scythe 5y ago

>It’s also not clear if Mexico and Latin America could have suitable infrastructure, even with massive investment. Geography is destiny and these regions have been cursed with poor geography. I bet Japan and Italy would disagree.