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Immigration is the easy fix for this.

by gumby 3y ago

linksnapzz 3y ago
...sorta like putting a penny in a fuse box.
i2cmaster 3y ago
[flagged]
- gumby 3y ago
  As the article makes clear up front, the number of people in the USA of working age is diminishing faster than the rate of overall population is growing. Yes, raising pay will bring some retirees into the workforce (is that good or bad for those people?) but won’t materially increase the size of the pool. If your country’s population is growing you are “giving away” the land to other people, and of course different people have different attitudes…what is considered “culture” changes regardless.
  - i2cmaster 3y ago
    This only makes sense if you think of people as fungible. Also one of the main drivers of the low birth rate in the US is the housing/land shortage. Recovery depends on the population shrinking.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Maybe, but if you aren't begging immigrants to come to America in the next ten years I'll eat my hat. We should be competing for immigrants right now. Unless you like economic stagnation (save for a possible AI productivity revolution).
  - i2cmaster 3y ago
    [flagged]
- jhbadger 3y ago
  In the 19th century people in the US seriously thought the influx of all those Irish immigrants with their weird ways and weird Catholic religion would similarly "dilute" the traditional English Protestant culture of the early US. Now people treat Irishness and Catholicism as just normal parts of US culture.
  - i2cmaster 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - i2cmaster 3y ago
    [flagged]
robocat 3y ago
However you need to increase housing and build infrastructure: I wouldn’t call those secondary problems easy to fix. I live in New Zealand where ~30% of our population is people that were not born here (compared to ~15% in the USA). That means NZ need 50% more houses and 50% more of everything else than we would with zero immigrants. I support immigration, but it does cause large issues. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and...
twelve40 3y ago
No it's not. It's kicking the can down the road a little bit. Worldwide the fertility is plummeting, it's already below replacement in most countries that used to stream people into the US: Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, etc, not to mention India or China. Perhaps except Guatemala, which is already tiny and trending down as well. The "solution" here is to make conditions in those countries much worse, so that even the existing population starts to leave and the immigration gets sustained. Otherwise it will be trending down, because the replacement is no longer there and those countries will start facing labor shortages of their own in a couple of decades.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  Incentivize fertility even more? Perhaps free childcare (france), making parental healthcare free (conception to end of maternity leave for example), right to return to work laws for parents (finland iirc), tax breaks, and perhaps even an values/propaganda campaign? I think there are economic solutions that could help, but I will admit i'm uncertain it can be accomplished in the american political environment. It would require some folks to accept there's a problem needing fixing (the kinds of conservatives who just want everything to stay the same), some folks would have to get off their high horse and realize they did a crap job of building society (boomers who think that rigging the game is a form of winning), some folks would have to accept that parenthood/mothering is a virtuous/higher calling (the kinds of liberals who think a woman who sacrifices motherhood for career is some how superior -- at least make them equal) ...

Immigration is the easy fix for this.

by gumby 3y ago

Immigration is the easy fix for this.

linksnapzz 3y ago

...sorta like putting a penny in a fuse box.

i2cmaster 3y ago

[flagged]

gumby 3y ago
As the article makes clear up front, the number of people in the USA of working age is diminishing faster than the rate of overall population is growing. Yes, raising pay will bring some retirees into the workforce (is that good or bad for those people?) but won’t materially increase the size of the pool. If your country’s population is growing you are “giving away” the land to other people, and of course different people have different attitudes…what is considered “culture” changes regardless.
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  This only makes sense if you think of people as fungible. Also one of the main drivers of the low birth rate in the US is the housing/land shortage. Recovery depends on the population shrinking.
datavirtue 3y ago
Maybe, but if you aren't begging immigrants to come to America in the next ten years I'll eat my hat. We should be competing for immigrants right now. Unless you like economic stagnation (save for a possible AI productivity revolution).
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  [flagged]
jhbadger 3y ago
In the 19th century people in the US seriously thought the influx of all those Irish immigrants with their weird ways and weird Catholic religion would similarly "dilute" the traditional English Protestant culture of the early US. Now people treat Irishness and Catholicism as just normal parts of US culture.
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  [flagged]
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  [flagged]

robocat 3y ago

However you need to increase housing and build infrastructure: I wouldn’t call those secondary problems easy to fix. I live in New Zealand where ~30% of our population is people that were not born here (compared to ~15% in the USA). That means NZ need 50% more houses and 50% more of everything else than we would with zero immigrants. I support immigration, but it does cause large issues. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and...

twelve40 3y ago

No it's not. It's kicking the can down the road a little bit. Worldwide the fertility is plummeting, it's already below replacement in most countries that used to stream people into the US: Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, etc, not to mention India or China. Perhaps except Guatemala, which is already tiny and trending down as well. The "solution" here is to make conditions in those countries much worse, so that even the existing population starts to leave and the immigration gets sustained. Otherwise it will be trending down, because the replacement is no longer there and those countries will start facing labor shortages of their own in a couple of decades.

maerF0x0 3y ago
Incentivize fertility even more? Perhaps free childcare (france), making parental healthcare free (conception to end of maternity leave for example), right to return to work laws for parents (finland iirc), tax breaks, and perhaps even an values/propaganda campaign? I think there are economic solutions that could help, but I will admit i'm uncertain it can be accomplished in the american political environment. It would require some folks to accept there's a problem needing fixing (the kinds of conservatives who just want everything to stay the same), some folks would have to get off their high horse and realize they did a crap job of building society (boomers who think that rigging the game is a form of winning), some folks would have to accept that parenthood/mothering is a virtuous/higher calling (the kinds of liberals who think a woman who sacrifices motherhood for career is some how superior -- at least make them equal) ...