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We don't ask of every baby that is being born in the US how they will make the country better. But if given the option to bring in a fully grown adult, who alre

We don't ask of every baby that is being born in the US how they will make the country better. But if given the option to bring in a fully grown adult, who already saves us the cost of an education, is of prime working age, and wants to be in this country, we suddenly care?

toomuchtodo 2y ago
When every US citizen who wants a job in the US has one, one they can live off of with a living wage, sure, it’s up for a conversation (when legitimate labor shortages exist vs faux shortages leveraged as labor cost controls). Why am I going to support immigration that drives down wages for capital returns? Because it makes “the country” more wealthy by making a select few wealthier? Ineffective policy imho. I am never going to be super wealthy, so why would I advocate for such policy? I will always be closer to a minimum wage worker. Some may call the rhetoric “class consciousness”; I think it’s simply being macro economically rational.
- legitster 2y ago
  By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born. But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs. If anything, immigrants create many more jobs than they take. The deadweight to an economy is it's non-working population (retirees, children) so an influx of young, working families increases wages overall for natives.
  - programjames 2y ago
    I mean, you've just invented eugenics. Restrict the number of children being born that would not help the economy out. The government did do this once upon a time, but there are tradeoffs like riots you have to take into account. The difference between immigrants and babies is the immigrants can't riot within the US, so the US has no need to cater to their desires. However, immigrants that create more jobs than they take, or raise wages and innovation do have a pretty easy time immigrating to the US (e.g. investor and o1/e1 visas).
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    > By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born. I disagree with this assertion. Controlling immigration is reasonable and proper when a nation state has boundaries, citizens vs non citizens, and an economic system to balance. Forcing people who want children to not have children is neither reasonable nor proper. With that said, we are in luck: the fertility rate is rapidly declining in almost every country [1], so this is not a problem we face. The future faces a worker shortage as the world ages rapidly, but we still must solve for today. > But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs. To look at "jobs" in a vacuum is myopic. Are they good jobs? Do people need two or three jobs to survive? If not, we do not have enough good jobs, just jobs. We should be measuring someone's resulting quality of life from their economic activity, not the job(s). As I mentioned previously, if you cannot find domestic labor to perform a job at a market rate living wage, then perhaps immigration should be considered. We are at full employment and workers are still struggling to make ends meet. This does not call for more immigration; this calls for mechanisms to more rapidly push wages up. Take construction jobs for example. At any time, there are about ~300k-400k construction jobs that are going unfilled due to lack of labor. Would those jobs be filled if domestic workers were trained and wages pushed up? Or would builders prefer to hire immigrants to do the work at wages on offer [2] [3]? The evidence shows the latter. There is a market clearing price for every job to be filled. TLDR Maximize economic success for citizen workers, and then turn the knob on immigration accordingly. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fertility+rate&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [2] https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumented-construction-workers-us/ https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumen... [3] https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/03/states-and-construction-trades-most-reliant-on-immigrant-workers-2022/ https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/03/states-and-construction-tra...
    - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
      Interesting how legitster's reductio ad absurdum argument got missed here. They're using the birth rate comparison not to actually advocate for birth restrictions, but to expose a flaw in the original economic reasoning. Legitser is pointing out that every person you add to the population is not just a supplier, but also a customer. They create demand for goods and services even as they help produce them. This makes job creation/job filling calculations a bit more complicated than straight linear/zero sum behavior. Some quick back of envelope maths suggests job growth might even outpace population growth. I suppose it would have to, else -as legitser points out- the economy would have imploded long ago. And... we haven't even gotten around to the actual figure that matters: Net migration - People Emigrate too!
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Most unicorns in the US have immigrants founders. It’s extremely shortsighted to think the way you’re thinking. The immigrants are in essence the ones providing jobs for a lot of us.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Who reaps most of the gains from US unicorns? Founders and early VC investors. This is not a material economic cohort to optimize for, versus workers in the aggregate; visa paths for exceptional talent are still available.
- zerr 2y ago
  Have you ever heard "the middle of nowhere"? There are many such places. Now imagine vibrant cities and towns in such places.
  - milesrout 2y ago
    "Vibrant" is an interesting word with so many lovely meanings and connotations. Have you considered the people that live in what you dismissively refer to as the "middle of nowhere" might not want their towns replaced with "vibrant" cities full of foreigners?
    - zerr 2y ago
      The context of the current sub-thread is an economic development and wages. So yes, vibrant cities contribute positively to this. As for keeping "cozy" places, that's not a zero-sum game. We can have both.
      - milesrout 2y ago
        "Vibrant" is a euphemism. The economic effects of unrestricted mass immigration of unskilled people from third world countries cannot be divorced and analysed separately from the social and cultural effects. You need only look at any of the places in the US that have already been subject to these waves of illegal invasion, or the various places in Europe that have been flooded with unwanted illegal aliens falsely claiming asylum after travelling through safe countries (with less generous welfare systems) on their journeys to see why people want their countries to prioritise the welfare of their own citizens.
        zerr 2y ago
        You are talking only about extremes. There is a huge uncovered middle-ground. As for "illegal" immigration, it will always be the case when legal immigration is nearly impossible.
programjames 2y ago
In the early 1900s, the government implemented eugenics for this reason. Nowadays, people feel the country is better off just letting people plan their own pregnancies, which is a looser form of this. The difference between restricted immigration and open immigration would be akin to having a baby when you want to have a baby, versus being assigned random kids to foster.
rags2riches 2y ago
A society that regulates child birth is very different from one that regulates immigration.
afiori 2y ago
we don't "allow" people being born because peoples have a right to be born, it is rather that people have a right to have children.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

When every US citizen who wants a job in the US has one, one they can live off of with a living wage, sure, it’s up for a conversation (when legitimate labor shortages exist vs faux shortages leveraged as labor cost controls). Why am I going to support immigration that drives down wages for capital returns? Because it makes “the country” more wealthy by making a select few wealthier? Ineffective policy imho. I am never going to be super wealthy, so why would I advocate for such policy? I will always be closer to a minimum wage worker. Some may call the rhetoric “class consciousness”; I think it’s simply being macro economically rational.

legitster 2y ago
By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born. But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs. If anything, immigrants create many more jobs than they take. The deadweight to an economy is it's non-working population (retirees, children) so an influx of young, working families increases wages overall for natives.
- programjames 2y ago
  I mean, you've just invented eugenics. Restrict the number of children being born that would not help the economy out. The government did do this once upon a time, but there are tradeoffs like riots you have to take into account. The difference between immigrants and babies is the immigrants can't riot within the US, so the US has no need to cater to their desires. However, immigrants that create more jobs than they take, or raise wages and innovation do have a pretty easy time immigrating to the US (e.g. investor and o1/e1 visas).
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  > By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born. I disagree with this assertion. Controlling immigration is reasonable and proper when a nation state has boundaries, citizens vs non citizens, and an economic system to balance. Forcing people who want children to not have children is neither reasonable nor proper. With that said, we are in luck: the fertility rate is rapidly declining in almost every country [1], so this is not a problem we face. The future faces a worker shortage as the world ages rapidly, but we still must solve for today. > But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs. To look at "jobs" in a vacuum is myopic. Are they good jobs? Do people need two or three jobs to survive? If not, we do not have enough good jobs, just jobs. We should be measuring someone's resulting quality of life from their economic activity, not the job(s). As I mentioned previously, if you cannot find domestic labor to perform a job at a market rate living wage, then perhaps immigration should be considered. We are at full employment and workers are still struggling to make ends meet. This does not call for more immigration; this calls for mechanisms to more rapidly push wages up. Take construction jobs for example. At any time, there are about ~300k-400k construction jobs that are going unfilled due to lack of labor. Would those jobs be filled if domestic workers were trained and wages pushed up? Or would builders prefer to hire immigrants to do the work at wages on offer [2] [3]? The evidence shows the latter. There is a market clearing price for every job to be filled. TLDR Maximize economic success for citizen workers, and then turn the knob on immigration accordingly. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fertility+rate&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [2] https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumented-construction-workers-us/ https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumen... [3] https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/03/states-and-construction-trades-most-reliant-on-immigrant-workers-2022/ https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/03/states-and-construction-tra...
  - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
    Interesting how legitster's reductio ad absurdum argument got missed here. They're using the birth rate comparison not to actually advocate for birth restrictions, but to expose a flaw in the original economic reasoning. Legitser is pointing out that every person you add to the population is not just a supplier, but also a customer. They create demand for goods and services even as they help produce them. This makes job creation/job filling calculations a bit more complicated than straight linear/zero sum behavior. Some quick back of envelope maths suggests job growth might even outpace population growth. I suppose it would have to, else -as legitser points out- the economy would have imploded long ago. And... we haven't even gotten around to the actual figure that matters: Net migration - People Emigrate too!
dyauspitr 2y ago
Most unicorns in the US have immigrants founders. It’s extremely shortsighted to think the way you’re thinking. The immigrants are in essence the ones providing jobs for a lot of us.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Who reaps most of the gains from US unicorns? Founders and early VC investors. This is not a material economic cohort to optimize for, versus workers in the aggregate; visa paths for exceptional talent are still available.
zerr 2y ago
Have you ever heard "the middle of nowhere"? There are many such places. Now imagine vibrant cities and towns in such places.
- milesrout 2y ago
  "Vibrant" is an interesting word with so many lovely meanings and connotations. Have you considered the people that live in what you dismissively refer to as the "middle of nowhere" might not want their towns replaced with "vibrant" cities full of foreigners?
  - zerr 2y ago
    The context of the current sub-thread is an economic development and wages. So yes, vibrant cities contribute positively to this. As for keeping "cozy" places, that's not a zero-sum game. We can have both.
    - milesrout 2y ago
      "Vibrant" is a euphemism. The economic effects of unrestricted mass immigration of unskilled people from third world countries cannot be divorced and analysed separately from the social and cultural effects. You need only look at any of the places in the US that have already been subject to these waves of illegal invasion, or the various places in Europe that have been flooded with unwanted illegal aliens falsely claiming asylum after travelling through safe countries (with less generous welfare systems) on their journeys to see why people want their countries to prioritise the welfare of their own citizens.
      - zerr 2y ago
        You are talking only about extremes. There is a huge uncovered middle-ground. As for "illegal" immigration, it will always be the case when legal immigration is nearly impossible.

programjames 2y ago

In the early 1900s, the government implemented eugenics for this reason. Nowadays, people feel the country is better off just letting people plan their own pregnancies, which is a looser form of this. The difference between restricted immigration and open immigration would be akin to having a baby when you want to have a baby, versus being assigned random kids to foster.

rags2riches 2y ago

A society that regulates child birth is very different from one that regulates immigration.

afiori 2y ago

we don't "allow" people being born because peoples have a right to be born, it is rather that people have a right to have children.