5 ms·
It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the worl
by jedberg 5mo ago
It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the world. Therefore, if we want the smartest people in the world, we have to allow immigrants.
- jerkstate 5mo ago[flagged]
- jedberg 5mo agoNo? Not sure how you reached that conclusion. I'm just stating that the USA needs immigrants if we want to increase our median intelligence because we can't possibly have the smartest people in the world born here.
- jerkstate 5mo agoso in order to increase our median intelligence, we should make the process super easy?
- unethical_ban 5mo agoYes. Why should immigration be kafkaesque? It is in the US interest to have a pipeline of smart, hard-working, innovative people come to this country. The US is/was in many ways a great country for them to come, but we are not the only international destination for such talent. Why would we want to put up such artificial barriers to entry, if we agree on the premises I laid out? The purpose of this is to discourage legal immigration.
- jerkstate 5mo agoSo what prevents the incompetent and lazy from immigrating?
- solenoid0937 5mo agoSomeone immigrating is almost certainly less incompetent and lazy than the median American. Immigration requires uprooting your entire life, and it requires entrepreneurial spirit and grit. That's why many immigrant groups dramatically out-earn American-born citizens. TBH most immigrants I've met better embody the American spirit than most Americans.
- jerkstate 5mo agoWhat about the immigrant groups that don’t dramatically out-earn American-born citizens?
- lovich 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- jerkstate 5mo agoAre you implying that we should be trying to weaken Haiti?
- lovich 5mo ago[flagged]
- jerkstate 5mo agoDo you consider it humanitarian to further weaken a nation where the average gdp per capita is less than $3000 and who are in no way a threat to us? In what way do the immigrants arriving from there improve America? Can you give a coherent argument? I can easily argue the opposite from statistics: From Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (ASEC CPS): Of Haitian immigrants ages 25 to 64, 17.1 percent have not graduated from high school, 30.3 percent have only a high school degree, 30 percent have some college, and 22.6 percent have at least a college degree. This compares to 6.6 percent, 25.4 percent, 30.4 percent, and 37.6 percent for U.S.-born Americans. (2022 ACS) Of households headed by Haitian immigrants, 52.7 percent use at least one major welfare program. For households headed by native-born Americans it is 28.4 percent.5 (2023 ASEC CPS) So it’s clear that the previous immigration regime that allowed this was optimizing for something other than improving America or intentionally weakening rival countries.
- anon84873628 5mo agoObviously those smart people are going to go where they feel welcome, rather than climbing through obstacles designed purely for humiliation and malevolence.
- genxy 5mo agoJust stop being a jerk.
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo agoThe current American immigration process is not figure-out-able. As any immigration lawyer will tell you, there's strategies with higher or lower chances of success, but there's nothing at all like a roadmap which will definitely lead to permanent residency if you follow it well.
- genxy 5mo agocome on, don't do this here.
- ori_b 5mo agoThe smartest 5% are able to figure out where they're not welcome. https://yaledailynews.com/articles/international-grad-school-apps-drop https://yaledailynews.com/articles/international-grad-school...
- hallole 5mo agoThe smartest aren't uniformly distributed across the Earth.
- jedberg 5mo agoThat's true. It is possible that the smartest 5% are all here in the USA. But it is statistically unlikely that's true.
- hallole 5mo agoYou put words in my mouth. I don't claim that the smartest are clustered in the USA.
- unethical_ban 5mo agoSo your original comment was somewhat of a tangent. the point jedberg made is that it is in the interest of a country with a strong economic and academic base to welcome the smartest people from across the world, since it is unlikely that all the smartest people in the world are in the US.
- hallole 5mo agoYes, but Jedberg makes it sound as though -- given that only a small fraction of the world's population lives in the USA -- the country has little chance of succeeding if it is to go without immigrants. I disagree, and an extreme example I could offer as a counterpoint is Japan: tiny population (relatively), yet outsized performance.
- matwood 5mo agoJapan has struggled economically for decades. One of the fixes being put forth is to greatly increase immigration.
- irishcoffee 5mo agoSo we need leetcode for immigration now?