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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 att

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!

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!