3 ms·

I'm just confused as to why the US population needed to grow by almost 100 million since I was born without any sort of infrastructure undertaking to sustain th

I'm just confused as to why the US population needed to grow by almost 100 million since I was born without any sort of infrastructure undertaking to sustain that massive immigration. My local community is terrifically swollen with people and everything built for 1/3rd the population is now crumbling under that weight.

hguyer6 1y ago
[flagged]
- seneca 1y ago
  [flagged]
ajross 1y ago
Most of suburban America wasn't built yet when you were born. I don't understand this point at all. You don't think sprawl counts as infrastructure? It may not be the housing you (or I) personally think should have been built, but it's absolutely housing. And it was built in great quantity at great cost, and even turned out to be great investments. And it came with schools and strip malls and freeway interchanges and substations to connect it all. Living in the modern US is paradise in almost all quantifiable ways. It's also, it needs be said, wasn't built to support (sigh[1]) "massive immigration". You can find a few H1B holders peppered around, but the sprawl is for the middle class, 100%. [1] Seriously, why must everything become a callout to right wing grievance politics these days?
- catigula 1y ago
  I think you trying to transmute this to polemic weakens the points you've attempted to make. Obviously we disagree but the point I feel most compelled to push back against is your assertion that "living in the modern US is paradise in almost all quantifiable ways". This is such a problematic statement that clearly labors heavily under the burden of its own premise. A crude metric is quite telling: suicide has trended upwards in the past 20 years. I presume if the data went back further the picture would be more stark. Living in a time with gizmos and gadgets and economic plenty that is weakly distributed and calling that "paradise" is very insulting to people's lived experiences and part of the reason I think the economic message of the politics you represent alienates average folks. Based on your posts it seems like you've been a wealthy developer for decades and likely have employed, or employ, cheap labor. Kind of feels like a rugpull, Ross. Personally, I've managed many teams with cheap foreign developers, I'm just straight about it. Also, when do you think I was born? You think the US hadn't been built in 1982? Absurd claims all around.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    I looked for older suicide rate data and it doesn’t support what I think is your view above. At the turn of the previous century, suicide rates were markedly higher than today, even though today is worse than 20 years ago. https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-us-suicide-rates-since-1900/ https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-us-suicide-rates-since-19...
    - catigula 1y ago
      I'm not sure what point you think is being made but your own chart shows suicide exploding during the exact timeline we're discussing. It's probably not causative, as that would be quite silly, but economic plenty for extremely wealthy people caused by a massive influx of cheap labor is clearly not a net boon on this metric. The US made its bones well before this insane population explosion we only very recently had. (Yes, we've had large amounts of immigration before. We also built infrastructure and were vastly less developed).
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        It shows it increasing after a notably low period. It’s increased back to a level similar to 1950, which are both dramatically lower than 1900-1940. What’s the “right” reference point? Was 2000 an anomaly while today’s rate is a mere reversion to the mean? Or a reversion to a measure which is still better than the 100-year mean?
        catigula 1y ago
        Putting aside my concerns about the integrity of the data, the clearly "correct" reference point is the one it takes to falsify the parent comment's claim: that this extremely brief period of gizmos, gadgets, economic plenty and mass immigration is somehow an unparalleled land of milk and honey. You could directly correlate our literal exact debate as negative evidence of his assertion.
        sokoloff 1y ago
- tzs 1y ago
  > Most of suburban America wasn't built yet when you were born. That doesn't sound right. They said that the US population has grown by almost 100 million since they were born. That would put their birth year around 1989. Some searching suggests that in 1989 about 50% of the population lived in suburban areas. That would have been about 120 million people. It is still about 50% which is 170 million people today. That suggests that around 70% of the suburbs were already built when they were born.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > That doesn't sound right. Which is usually how these arguments go. Are there more or fewer homeless people in the US than in 1982? There are fewer. Is the number of people per household larger or smaller than in 1982? It is smaller. Is the average home larger or smaller than in 1982? It is larger (very significantly so). Do the math. We're building housing faster than population growth. QED. And, overwhelmingly, we're building that housing in suburban sprawl, because that's where it's cheap to build housing. Now, there are many arguments about whether this is good or bad or whether policies could be better or worse. And I think you'd find you agree with me on more than you don't. But statements like the above that seem to take as a prior that "massive immigration" (sigh, again) is somehow creating an infrastructure crises are simply wrong. Period. Start with correct arguments, then tune. Don't yell about one because your priors tell you it "doesn't sound right".
therealpygon 1y ago
You believe the increase in population has been caused by “massive immigration”? We’ve had roughly 4 million births and 2 million deaths per year since 1980. That is roughly a difference of 90 million. Additionally, when people cite immigration numbers, they frequently leave out negating numbers; the amount of people who were here temporarily, the amount of people who were deported or left voluntarily, and those who are “repeat offenders” in terms of migration that are frequently counted multiple times. So while yes, the number of immigrants as a percentage of population has increased in that time, the entire population increase is not a direct result of the roughly 10-15% they account for, which also aligns with the roughly 10-15% of the population they account for. Also, if you go back further than just when you were born, the US had roughly 14% immigrant population since 1900. Racism (in the form of nationalism/anti-immigration/etc) and nationalist changes to immigration laws reduced that number to 3% in the 20s, which has been slowly returning to the same 14% level since the 70s. The US population growth has slowed overall since you were born, averaging a rate of 1% +/- 0.5% over that time and currently lower than when you were born. During that same time, our average infrastructure spending has grown from 300 to 600 billion a year; a 100% increase over that time compared to 1% growth in population per year. So, given all these facts, how do you reconcile your statements that we have added 100 million due to massive immigration with no increases in infrastructure, when the facts seem to directly refute your assertions?

hguyer6 1y ago

[flagged]

seneca 1y ago
[flagged]

ajross 1y ago

Most of suburban America wasn't built yet when you were born. I don't understand this point at all. You don't think sprawl counts as infrastructure? It may not be the housing you (or I) personally think should have been built, but it's absolutely housing. And it was built in great quantity at great cost, and even turned out to be great investments. And it came with schools and strip malls and freeway interchanges and substations to connect it all. Living in the modern US is paradise in almost all quantifiable ways. It's also, it needs be said, wasn't built to support (sigh[1]) "massive immigration". You can find a few H1B holders peppered around, but the sprawl is for the middle class, 100%. [1] Seriously, why must everything become a callout to right wing grievance politics these days?

catigula 1y ago
I think you trying to transmute this to polemic weakens the points you've attempted to make. Obviously we disagree but the point I feel most compelled to push back against is your assertion that "living in the modern US is paradise in almost all quantifiable ways". This is such a problematic statement that clearly labors heavily under the burden of its own premise. A crude metric is quite telling: suicide has trended upwards in the past 20 years. I presume if the data went back further the picture would be more stark. Living in a time with gizmos and gadgets and economic plenty that is weakly distributed and calling that "paradise" is very insulting to people's lived experiences and part of the reason I think the economic message of the politics you represent alienates average folks. Based on your posts it seems like you've been a wealthy developer for decades and likely have employed, or employ, cheap labor. Kind of feels like a rugpull, Ross. Personally, I've managed many teams with cheap foreign developers, I'm just straight about it. Also, when do you think I was born? You think the US hadn't been built in 1982? Absurd claims all around.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I looked for older suicide rate data and it doesn’t support what I think is your view above. At the turn of the previous century, suicide rates were markedly higher than today, even though today is worse than 20 years ago. https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-us-suicide-rates-since-1900/ https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-us-suicide-rates-since-19...
  - catigula 1y ago
    I'm not sure what point you think is being made but your own chart shows suicide exploding during the exact timeline we're discussing. It's probably not causative, as that would be quite silly, but economic plenty for extremely wealthy people caused by a massive influx of cheap labor is clearly not a net boon on this metric. The US made its bones well before this insane population explosion we only very recently had. (Yes, we've had large amounts of immigration before. We also built infrastructure and were vastly less developed).
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      It shows it increasing after a notably low period. It’s increased back to a level similar to 1950, which are both dramatically lower than 1900-1940. What’s the “right” reference point? Was 2000 an anomaly while today’s rate is a mere reversion to the mean? Or a reversion to a measure which is still better than the 100-year mean?
      - catigula 1y ago
        Putting aside my concerns about the integrity of the data, the clearly "correct" reference point is the one it takes to falsify the parent comment's claim: that this extremely brief period of gizmos, gadgets, economic plenty and mass immigration is somehow an unparalleled land of milk and honey. You could directly correlate our literal exact debate as negative evidence of his assertion.
        sokoloff 1y ago
tzs 1y ago
> Most of suburban America wasn't built yet when you were born. That doesn't sound right. They said that the US population has grown by almost 100 million since they were born. That would put their birth year around 1989. Some searching suggests that in 1989 about 50% of the population lived in suburban areas. That would have been about 120 million people. It is still about 50% which is 170 million people today. That suggests that around 70% of the suburbs were already built when they were born.
- ajross 1y ago
  > That doesn't sound right. Which is usually how these arguments go. Are there more or fewer homeless people in the US than in 1982? There are fewer. Is the number of people per household larger or smaller than in 1982? It is smaller. Is the average home larger or smaller than in 1982? It is larger (very significantly so). Do the math. We're building housing faster than population growth. QED. And, overwhelmingly, we're building that housing in suburban sprawl, because that's where it's cheap to build housing. Now, there are many arguments about whether this is good or bad or whether policies could be better or worse. And I think you'd find you agree with me on more than you don't. But statements like the above that seem to take as a prior that "massive immigration" (sigh, again) is somehow creating an infrastructure crises are simply wrong. Period. Start with correct arguments, then tune. Don't yell about one because your priors tell you it "doesn't sound right".

therealpygon 1y ago

You believe the increase in population has been caused by “massive immigration”? We’ve had roughly 4 million births and 2 million deaths per year since 1980. That is roughly a difference of 90 million. Additionally, when people cite immigration numbers, they frequently leave out negating numbers; the amount of people who were here temporarily, the amount of people who were deported or left voluntarily, and those who are “repeat offenders” in terms of migration that are frequently counted multiple times. So while yes, the number of immigrants as a percentage of population has increased in that time, the entire population increase is not a direct result of the roughly 10-15% they account for, which also aligns with the roughly 10-15% of the population they account for. Also, if you go back further than just when you were born, the US had roughly 14% immigrant population since 1900. Racism (in the form of nationalism/anti-immigration/etc) and nationalist changes to immigration laws reduced that number to 3% in the 20s, which has been slowly returning to the same 14% level since the 70s. The US population growth has slowed overall since you were born, averaging a rate of 1% +/- 0.5% over that time and currently lower than when you were born. During that same time, our average infrastructure spending has grown from 300 to 600 billion a year; a 100% increase over that time compared to 1% growth in population per year. So, given all these facts, how do you reconcile your statements that we have added 100 million due to massive immigration with no increases in infrastructure, when the facts seem to directly refute your assertions?