4 ms·

> If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Make sure your infrastructure can handle it. Make sure there's enough

> If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Make sure your infrastructure can handle it. Make sure there's enough housing and regulations to handle it.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
We did fine for a century without any of that.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Did we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville > Hoovervilles served as a common ground for many different nationalities and ethnicities. Economic disparity in the United States during the 1930s was not limited to American born individuals. Migrant workers and immigrants greatly suffered from the lack of work and made up a large portion of the Hoovervilles across the country
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Hoovervilles aren't a story of a lack of infrastructure, housing or regulation. They're the outcome of an economic depression. You're not going to anti-immigrate out of recessions or depressions. Modern immigration controls grew out of racist impulse. That's not all they are today. But many of them fail the Chesterton's fence test.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      All I'm saying is you need to make sure housing available. Otherwise the cost of rent skyrockets because demand outmatches supply. Similarly, when you have a lot of low-skilled labor coming in, the salaries for those jobs plummets / competition becomes tougher which pushes out locals. That all can combine to make the homeless problem and political problem worse (immigrants don't get to vote). Now high skilled labor, that's OK. The salaries are already sufficiently high that down-pressure because of immigrants isn't an issue - it's skilled labor so you should be upleveling your skills such that you're not competing with "common" skills that are shared by more people.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > I'm saying is you need to make sure housing available This isn't the story of Hoovervilles! There was enough housing. People couldn't afford anything because there wasn't work. (I agree with your take on skilled and unskilled labour, broadly, though with significant caveats, given how little we understand about those labor markets. Skyrocketing housing is an explicit American policy choice. We could change it any time, but we prefer to be wealthier and the "feel" of our neighborhoods.)
        vlovich123 3y ago
        Not having enough work is what you’d have with an influx in unskilled labor. Again. I’m not trying to say that immigration will cause Hoovervilles or that it’ll cause a similar situation. You’re correct - the Great Depression was a very different situation. I’m just trying to bring an analogy of a situation with some of the same structural similarities. It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s meant to highlight the risk of laissez faire immigration (which I’m generally more in favor of) coupled with poor planning / bad policies on the infrastructure side. I think we’re in agreement that there are structural risks at opening up the border in certain ways at the same time as we have a clearly bad housing situation and matching political crises.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  That was when we still built housing.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  A century largely without government provided social benefits and with minimal taxation. The local, state, and federal tax in 1910 was $380 per capita (adjusted for inflation!) compared to >$20,000 per capita today. Government revenue has increased from 7% of 500B in 1910, to 35% of 20 trillion in 2020 in inflation adjusted dollars. This means that real, inflation adjusted taxes have increased ~200X.
- phd514 3y ago
  > We did fine for a century without any of that. Did we? I think there's an overly-romanticized view of late 19th and early 20th century immigration to the US. Go to Ellis Island and look at the receiving facilities there where prospective immigrants were evaluated for physical health, mental health, criminal backgrounds, and employment prospects before being admitted into the US. Regardless of how fair or unfair the policies may have been, admittance was not simply open to anyone who showed up on a boat.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > admittance was not simply open to anyone who showed up on a boat One could interpret those as checks that someone could "work, and pay taxes in the US." They were cruel. But brief and unconstrained with respect to housing, infrastructure and regulation. I'm not arguing for a return to Ellis Island. Just that our fine control of immigration is a modern phenomenon without a strong argument for existing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >We did fine for a century without any of that. That's completely wrong. As phd514's comment accurately alludes, every single person who came through Ellis Island * was a legal immigrant * had passed a medical inspection * had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same * was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US. PS - One more thing: Every single person who came through Ellis Island was coming to a country with an enormous demand for unskilled labor. This is no longer true.
tshaddox 3y ago
I mean, nothing legally prevents Americans from moving from one state to another. States can’t close their border “until our infrastructure can handle it.”

> If someone wants to live, work, and pay taxes in the US, they should be free to come. Make sure your infrastructure can handle it. Make sure there's enough housing and regulations to handle it.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

We did fine for a century without any of that.

vlovich123 3y ago
Did we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville > Hoovervilles served as a common ground for many different nationalities and ethnicities. Economic disparity in the United States during the 1930s was not limited to American born individuals. Migrant workers and immigrants greatly suffered from the lack of work and made up a large portion of the Hoovervilles across the country
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Hoovervilles aren't a story of a lack of infrastructure, housing or regulation. They're the outcome of an economic depression. You're not going to anti-immigrate out of recessions or depressions. Modern immigration controls grew out of racist impulse. That's not all they are today. But many of them fail the Chesterton's fence test.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    All I'm saying is you need to make sure housing available. Otherwise the cost of rent skyrockets because demand outmatches supply. Similarly, when you have a lot of low-skilled labor coming in, the salaries for those jobs plummets / competition becomes tougher which pushes out locals. That all can combine to make the homeless problem and political problem worse (immigrants don't get to vote). Now high skilled labor, that's OK. The salaries are already sufficiently high that down-pressure because of immigrants isn't an issue - it's skilled labor so you should be upleveling your skills such that you're not competing with "common" skills that are shared by more people.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > I'm saying is you need to make sure housing available This isn't the story of Hoovervilles! There was enough housing. People couldn't afford anything because there wasn't work. (I agree with your take on skilled and unskilled labour, broadly, though with significant caveats, given how little we understand about those labor markets. Skyrocketing housing is an explicit American policy choice. We could change it any time, but we prefer to be wealthier and the "feel" of our neighborhoods.)
      - vlovich123 3y ago
        Not having enough work is what you’d have with an influx in unskilled labor. Again. I’m not trying to say that immigration will cause Hoovervilles or that it’ll cause a similar situation. You’re correct - the Great Depression was a very different situation. I’m just trying to bring an analogy of a situation with some of the same structural similarities. It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s meant to highlight the risk of laissez faire immigration (which I’m generally more in favor of) coupled with poor planning / bad policies on the infrastructure side. I think we’re in agreement that there are structural risks at opening up the border in certain ways at the same time as we have a clearly bad housing situation and matching political crises.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
That was when we still built housing.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
A century largely without government provided social benefits and with minimal taxation. The local, state, and federal tax in 1910 was $380 per capita (adjusted for inflation!) compared to >$20,000 per capita today. Government revenue has increased from 7% of 500B in 1910, to 35% of 20 trillion in 2020 in inflation adjusted dollars. This means that real, inflation adjusted taxes have increased ~200X.
phd514 3y ago
> We did fine for a century without any of that. Did we? I think there's an overly-romanticized view of late 19th and early 20th century immigration to the US. Go to Ellis Island and look at the receiving facilities there where prospective immigrants were evaluated for physical health, mental health, criminal backgrounds, and employment prospects before being admitted into the US. Regardless of how fair or unfair the policies may have been, admittance was not simply open to anyone who showed up on a boat.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > admittance was not simply open to anyone who showed up on a boat One could interpret those as checks that someone could "work, and pay taxes in the US." They were cruel. But brief and unconstrained with respect to housing, infrastructure and regulation. I'm not arguing for a return to Ellis Island. Just that our fine control of immigration is a modern phenomenon without a strong argument for existing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TMWNN 3y ago
>We did fine for a century without any of that. That's completely wrong. As phd514's comment accurately alludes, every single person who came through Ellis Island * was a legal immigrant * had passed a medical inspection * had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same * was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US. PS - One more thing: Every single person who came through Ellis Island was coming to a country with an enormous demand for unskilled labor. This is no longer true.

tshaddox 3y ago

I mean, nothing legally prevents Americans from moving from one state to another. States can’t close their border “until our infrastructure can handle it.”