5 ms·

What is he right about?

toomuchtodo 11mo ago
Hire Americans first before importing more immigrant workers. When America reaches full employment (which we are a long way from as of this comment), feel free to tap other countries. If you are in US public office, and advocating for or fighting for more immigration while American workers are desperate for work, you should be run out of office, at a minimum. Your duty is to the citizens you represent, not corporations, not foreign workers, and certainly not a small population of the wealthy who receive the gains from increased shareholder value from imported immigrant workers.
- SilverElfin 11mo ago
  That doesn’t seem right. You would just not have any immigrants at all, because full employment is not possible, and many companies will move elsewhere or shutdown if they cannot get the right talent here. And then people will wonder why there are so few employers. Running a business is already very difficult and risky. It just wouldn’t be worth it for many employers. Also the reality is that a lot of American workers are simply not employable in the industry they want to be in. It’s not a question of cost - H1B visa workers are paid slightly more on average. The most important American companies - like big tech - pay immigrant workers the same as anyone else. And to be honest I don’t think training is an issue. For example there are thousands of unemployed engineers who have a degree - but still aren’t fundamentally skilled enough for most companies to want to hire them. Many of those people are blaming immigrants for their unemployment but I don’t think they’re correct. I do agree that it’s ideal to support the current residents. But I just don’t think it’s realistic to see every single one of them employed in the best jobs. Maybe the best we can do is improve our investments in education?
- derektank 11mo ago
  We are at full employment. The federal reserve estimates the natural rate of unemployment at being between 3.8 and 4.5 percent. Currently, unemployment is 4.4%
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    We are not, based on corporations laying off workers to reset wages downward, offshoring to India and LATAM, and it taking 6-12 months for workers to find jobs. Large US companies are making every effort to disempower workers, and they should be provided no advantages in acquiring talent when it exists domestically. Layoff announcements top 1.1 million this year, the most since 2020 pandemic, Challenger says - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/layoff-announcements-this-year-top-1point1-million-the-most-since-2020-when-pandemic-hit-challenger-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/layoff-announcements-this-ye... - December 4th, 2025 The Fed can't help America's young tech workers who are struggling to find a job - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705212 - October 2025 Millions of Workers Are Left Out of the 'Low-Hire, Low-Fire' US Job Market - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414795 - September 2025 Transcript of Chair Powell’s Press Conference - https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20250917.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon... - September 17th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308049 (citations) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/ EDIT: @SilverElfin: I remain supportive of the idea of issuing O-1 visas to exceptional talent, if exceptional ability and achievement can be proven in an objective manner. A degree or credential does not make one exceptional (imho).
    - derektank 11mo ago
      Labor reallocation occurs even during periods of full employment. Companies lose market share to rivals, businesses decide to spend money on capital expenditures that automate away existing roles, etc. If your goal is to stop immigration until layoffs cease to exist, you’re essentially calling for a permanent moratorium.
      - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
        I am calling for a temporary moratorium for issuing new worker visas based on the current economic macro and existing immigrant worker base in the US companies can pick from, yes. I support the current $100k H-1B fee, in perpetuity. The domestic workforce exists, it is a choice to not pick from the domestic labor pool. Choices have consequences.
- krapp 11mo ago
  >Your duty is to the citizens you represent, not corporations, not foreign workers, and certainly not a small population of the wealthy who receive the gains from increased shareholder value from imported immigrant workers. We're a capitalist society, "the business of America is business" as Reagan said. The first duty of a capitalist government is to the capitalist class and corporate sector. Preferring less expensive foreign labor with fewer rights over domestic is simply practicing good capitalism. Until Americans are willing to work sweatshop hours for sweatshop wages without even the meager labor rights and social safety net they have, they simply aren't worth the investment. If you want socialism just say you want socialism.
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    > A recent survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov paints a troubling picture: 62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34 percent say the same of communism. Big fan of socialism, so I'm in good company at the moment. Are we a capitalist society? TBD based on the death rate (~2M of the 55+ population die every year in the US, ~5k/day; 31% of US wealth is held by those 70+), and if these values mentioned above stick as these folks age. I admit its hard to predict outcomes of electorate turnover over time, but we're directionally headed in the right direction imho. 60% of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their income, half a million Americans go bankrupt every year from medical debt, and ~750k are homeless as of this comment; I'm of the opinion capitalism has failed and change is required, but I understand other opinions will differ based on some combination of lack of data, lived experience, mental models, etc. https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much-thats-problem-libertarians-must-fix https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much... https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher-taxes-next-year https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher... https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-people-over-70/ https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-boomers-now-gobbled-nearly-185807558.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-boomers-now-gobbled-near...
  - collingreen 11mo ago
    I appreciate the honest capitalist-as-government take here because of how grisly a view it is in a pure form - essentially the claim is that government is neither for nor by the governed and it should only be used as a tool to further the interests dictated by the capital holders. Personally I dont think this is anywhere near right or ideal - letting the movement of capital in free (as in speech not free as in beer) markets dictate what is produced by the economy at large has nothing to do with if a government should enact the will of its people or protect them. One is how and why governments exist (ie, democracy vs monarchy vs theocracy, etc) and one is how to plan an economy (capitalism vs various versions of a planned economy). tl;dr - where government derives its power isn't the same as how an economy should decide what to make. Conflating the two is a way to hand-wave away a lot of harm done by unchecked greed.
- enraged_camel 11mo ago
  I've always respected your writing, but will have to disagree. The first line of your 'about me' section says: "Always Systems Thinking". However, I don't believe you are thinking in terms of systems here. You are thinking in a single-loop fashion, by treating immigration as a one-way input (i.e. more workers -> fewer jobs for Americans) and as the gate for a massively multi-input system. You said we should wait for full employment first. The issue with that logic is that full employment isn't a finish line you reach and then "unlock" other labor sources. Even a hot economy has frictional unemployment, skills mismatch, geographic mismatch, and people moving between jobs. Using full employment as a policy trigger sounds clean but doesn't map to how labor markets actually function. Empirically, the US is not a long way away from full employment: we're at 4.4% unemployment (or were, as of September 2025) and JOLTS showed 7.7 job openings in October. That's a cooled market, but not mass desperation across the board. Jobs are not a fixed pie either. In a closed, fixed-input model (which is what underlies your thinking), adding foreign workers could mechanically reduce citizens' chances. But real economies are endogenous: Immigrants aren't just labor supply; they are also demand. They pay rent, they buy groceries, they need childcare, cars, you name it. That demand supports additional hiring. In addition, immigration can relieve bottleneck in sectors such as healthcare (which is suffering greatly at the moment, especially in rural areas), construction, logistics, agriculture, elder care, and so on. This is why high-quality syntheses generally find small aggregate impacts on native employment and wages, not the large scale negative effects the "hire Americans first" framing implies. A major National Academies consensus report [1] concluded that the long-run impact of hiring immigrants on wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, if not non-existent. And any negative impacts are most likely from prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. The report found that immigration as a whole has a positive impact on long-run economic growth. Many meta-analyses [2][3] have found similar results. The solution is not to restrict foreign workers, but to protect wages and working conditions by strictly enforcing labor standards and preventing exploitative hiring (across both the foreign and native labor forces), and to use targeted immigration that addresses genuine bottlenecks. Using a single unemployment threshold is not logical because labor markets are segmented and dynamic. [1] https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-03/publication/23550 https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-... [2] https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immigration-on-the-employment-of-natives-in-regional-labour-markets-a-meta-analysis https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immig... [3] https://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2025/wp2025-07.pdf https://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2025/wp2025-07.pdf

Hire Americans first before importing more immigrant workers. When America reaches full employment (which we are a long way from as of this comment), feel free to tap other countries. If you are in US public office, and advocating for or fighting for more immigration while American workers are desperate for work, you should be run out of office, at a minimum. Your duty is to the citizens you represent, not corporations, not foreign workers, and certainly not a small population of the wealthy who receive the gains from increased shareholder value from imported immigrant workers.

SilverElfin 11mo ago
That doesn’t seem right. You would just not have any immigrants at all, because full employment is not possible, and many companies will move elsewhere or shutdown if they cannot get the right talent here. And then people will wonder why there are so few employers. Running a business is already very difficult and risky. It just wouldn’t be worth it for many employers. Also the reality is that a lot of American workers are simply not employable in the industry they want to be in. It’s not a question of cost - H1B visa workers are paid slightly more on average. The most important American companies - like big tech - pay immigrant workers the same as anyone else. And to be honest I don’t think training is an issue. For example there are thousands of unemployed engineers who have a degree - but still aren’t fundamentally skilled enough for most companies to want to hire them. Many of those people are blaming immigrants for their unemployment but I don’t think they’re correct. I do agree that it’s ideal to support the current residents. But I just don’t think it’s realistic to see every single one of them employed in the best jobs. Maybe the best we can do is improve our investments in education?
derektank 11mo ago
We are at full employment. The federal reserve estimates the natural rate of unemployment at being between 3.8 and 4.5 percent. Currently, unemployment is 4.4%
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  We are not, based on corporations laying off workers to reset wages downward, offshoring to India and LATAM, and it taking 6-12 months for workers to find jobs. Large US companies are making every effort to disempower workers, and they should be provided no advantages in acquiring talent when it exists domestically. Layoff announcements top 1.1 million this year, the most since 2020 pandemic, Challenger says - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/layoff-announcements-this-year-top-1point1-million-the-most-since-2020-when-pandemic-hit-challenger-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/layoff-announcements-this-ye... - December 4th, 2025 The Fed can't help America's young tech workers who are struggling to find a job - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705212 - October 2025 Millions of Workers Are Left Out of the 'Low-Hire, Low-Fire' US Job Market - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414795 - September 2025 Transcript of Chair Powell’s Press Conference - https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20250917.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon... - September 17th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308049 (citations) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/ EDIT: @SilverElfin: I remain supportive of the idea of issuing O-1 visas to exceptional talent, if exceptional ability and achievement can be proven in an objective manner. A degree or credential does not make one exceptional (imho).
  - derektank 11mo ago
    Labor reallocation occurs even during periods of full employment. Companies lose market share to rivals, businesses decide to spend money on capital expenditures that automate away existing roles, etc. If your goal is to stop immigration until layoffs cease to exist, you’re essentially calling for a permanent moratorium.
    - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
      I am calling for a temporary moratorium for issuing new worker visas based on the current economic macro and existing immigrant worker base in the US companies can pick from, yes. I support the current $100k H-1B fee, in perpetuity. The domestic workforce exists, it is a choice to not pick from the domestic labor pool. Choices have consequences.
krapp 11mo ago
>Your duty is to the citizens you represent, not corporations, not foreign workers, and certainly not a small population of the wealthy who receive the gains from increased shareholder value from imported immigrant workers. We're a capitalist society, "the business of America is business" as Reagan said. The first duty of a capitalist government is to the capitalist class and corporate sector. Preferring less expensive foreign labor with fewer rights over domestic is simply practicing good capitalism. Until Americans are willing to work sweatshop hours for sweatshop wages without even the meager labor rights and social safety net they have, they simply aren't worth the investment. If you want socialism just say you want socialism.
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  > A recent survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov paints a troubling picture: 62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34 percent say the same of communism. Big fan of socialism, so I'm in good company at the moment. Are we a capitalist society? TBD based on the death rate (~2M of the 55+ population die every year in the US, ~5k/day; 31% of US wealth is held by those 70+), and if these values mentioned above stick as these folks age. I admit its hard to predict outcomes of electorate turnover over time, but we're directionally headed in the right direction imho. 60% of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their income, half a million Americans go bankrupt every year from medical debt, and ~750k are homeless as of this comment; I'm of the opinion capitalism has failed and change is required, but I understand other opinions will differ based on some combination of lack of data, lived experience, mental models, etc. https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much-thats-problem-libertarians-must-fix https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much... https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher-taxes-next-year https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher... https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-people-over-70/ https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-boomers-now-gobbled-nearly-185807558.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-boomers-now-gobbled-near...
- collingreen 11mo ago
  I appreciate the honest capitalist-as-government take here because of how grisly a view it is in a pure form - essentially the claim is that government is neither for nor by the governed and it should only be used as a tool to further the interests dictated by the capital holders. Personally I dont think this is anywhere near right or ideal - letting the movement of capital in free (as in speech not free as in beer) markets dictate what is produced by the economy at large has nothing to do with if a government should enact the will of its people or protect them. One is how and why governments exist (ie, democracy vs monarchy vs theocracy, etc) and one is how to plan an economy (capitalism vs various versions of a planned economy). tl;dr - where government derives its power isn't the same as how an economy should decide what to make. Conflating the two is a way to hand-wave away a lot of harm done by unchecked greed.
enraged_camel 11mo ago
I've always respected your writing, but will have to disagree. The first line of your 'about me' section says: "Always Systems Thinking". However, I don't believe you are thinking in terms of systems here. You are thinking in a single-loop fashion, by treating immigration as a one-way input (i.e. more workers -> fewer jobs for Americans) and as the gate for a massively multi-input system. You said we should wait for full employment first. The issue with that logic is that full employment isn't a finish line you reach and then "unlock" other labor sources. Even a hot economy has frictional unemployment, skills mismatch, geographic mismatch, and people moving between jobs. Using full employment as a policy trigger sounds clean but doesn't map to how labor markets actually function. Empirically, the US is not a long way away from full employment: we're at 4.4% unemployment (or were, as of September 2025) and JOLTS showed 7.7 job openings in October. That's a cooled market, but not mass desperation across the board. Jobs are not a fixed pie either. In a closed, fixed-input model (which is what underlies your thinking), adding foreign workers could mechanically reduce citizens' chances. But real economies are endogenous: Immigrants aren't just labor supply; they are also demand. They pay rent, they buy groceries, they need childcare, cars, you name it. That demand supports additional hiring. In addition, immigration can relieve bottleneck in sectors such as healthcare (which is suffering greatly at the moment, especially in rural areas), construction, logistics, agriculture, elder care, and so on. This is why high-quality syntheses generally find small aggregate impacts on native employment and wages, not the large scale negative effects the "hire Americans first" framing implies. A major National Academies consensus report [1] concluded that the long-run impact of hiring immigrants on wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, if not non-existent. And any negative impacts are most likely from prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. The report found that immigration as a whole has a positive impact on long-run economic growth. Many meta-analyses [2][3] have found similar results. The solution is not to restrict foreign workers, but to protect wages and working conditions by strictly enforcing labor standards and preventing exploitative hiring (across both the foreign and native labor forces), and to use targeted immigration that addresses genuine bottlenecks. Using a single unemployment threshold is not logical because labor markets are segmented and dynamic. [1] https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-03/publication/23550 https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-... [2] https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immigration-on-the-employment-of-natives-in-regional-labour-markets-a-meta-analysis https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immig... [3] https://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2025/wp2025-07.pdf https://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2025/wp2025-07.pdf