> but immigrants purposely encouraged to come to america with a false promise of "opportunity" In other words, a profit motive on the part of those immigrants.

> but immigrants purposely encouraged to come to america with a false promise of "opportunity" In other words, a profit motive on the part of those immigrants. They desired to make their lives better. That the opportunities were false doesn't mean they were not being sought out. > This was as clear cut a handout to build infrastructure as you can get, and then we let these same companies pretty much explicitly become robber barons. I agree the grants had inadequate oversight and because of that, it's fair to call it a handout. But again, just because land and money were handed out does not mean that you get a working railroad on the other side, or that public funding is the only way to get large infrastructure works done. Were some of the risks subsidized by the public in the case of the transcontinental railroad? Sure. The same thing happened with Solyndra, and nothing of value was produced at the end of that. So clearly government handouts aren't the necessary and sufficient precursor to success; at least the transcontinental railroad was built. And mind you, back in those days, US government spending as a percentage of GDP was in the single-digit percent, compared to the behemoth it is now at over 35%. If the redistribution of public money through taxation really generated wealth, we should all be living like kings given current levels of government spending. > Gifting land to private individuals or companies used to be America's favored way to set up the next generation of wealth. None of the descendants of the railroad tycoons are still so rich that they're worth being written about[0]. Cornelius Vanderbilt was estimated to have been worth 1/87th of the US GDP at the time of his death. His famous heir, Anderson Cooper, is estimated at the upper end to be worth $200M. In contrast, even the poorest state in the union, Mississippi, has had a billionaire from playing music, of all things[1]. [0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/12/17/billion-dollar-dynasties-these-are-the-richest-families-in-america/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/12/17/billion-... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Buffett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Buffett