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Empirical evidence is not on your side here considering net immigration from Mexico to the US (or many other poor country / rich country pairs).
by harryh 13y ago
Empirical evidence is not on your side here considering net immigration from Mexico to the US (or many other poor country / rich country pairs).
- rayiner 13y agoThere is a big difference between the medians in those two places. I'm thinking more like the U.S. versus European countries.
- harryh 13y agoIs there data on this? I'm having trouble finding it. Do we think that, say, more people move from US -> France than the opposite every year? I'd bet money on the reverse.
- thirsteh 13y agoIt sounds like you're looking to feed confirmation bias. Picking a country that most Americans love to hate isn't really going to give you accurate results. Try comparing the U.S. to Germany and Switzerland, or the U.S. to the Scandinavian countries. Also, keep in mind that statistics on emigration only show you how many people moved between the countries. It doesn't show you whether people in Germany are more likely to be curious about the U.S. than vice versa, or whether the people are happier and have more freedom. I am a European living in the U.S., and I agree the U.S. is a terrific country to be in if you are making a lot of money. But most people don't. The poor here are far worse off (and the rich are far better off--indeed, that is the definition of inequality.)
- harryh 13y agoI picked France at random from the set of rich Western European countries. It was just the first one that popped into my head. /shrug/ I would predict the same outcome for England, Germany, Switzerland or Sweden. Too your second point we were talking about where people would prefer to live not how happy they were or how free they were. Perhaps people would prefer to live someplace where they are less happy or free if it came with other benefits. Who knows. Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine where people prefer to live.
- thirsteh 13y ago> Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine where people prefer to live. I don't think it is. I would prefer to live in the U.S. because my family lives here, but it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here, and has taken many years. Similarly, it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries.
- harryh 13y agoConsidering that it's generally harder (legally speaking) to migrate to a rich country than to a poor country only strengthens my point.
- thirsteh 13y agoNo it doesn't. And it's quite laughable that you seem to be calling Germany and Sweden poor countries.
- harryh 13y agoI wasn't calling Sweden or Germany poor. That would quite obviously be a silly thing to say. The US, Sweden & Germany are all pretty rich and they all fairly restrictive in terms of how difficult it is to legally migrate to them. I thought that was what you means when you said "it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here" and "it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries."
- thirsteh 13y agoYeah, let's ignore Canada and all the European countries.
- harryh 13y agoI was just using the most striking example. But we can talk about Canada and Europe too if you would like. More people move from Canada to the US every year than the opposite. More people migrate from (poorer) Easter Europe to (richer) Wester Europe.
- thirsteh 13y agoYou seem to equate riches with inequality. Just because a country is richer doesn't mean there is more inequality. In fact, many of the poor countries have startling inequality in comparison. Now compare Western Europe and the U.S.: They're capitalist, but it's hard to find "empirical" evidence that unbounded Darwinian capitalism is superior in this part of the world, since most of these countries top the U.S. in nearly every measure of human development--life expectancy, literacy, economic freedom, social mobility, and so on.
- harryh 13y agoAnd yes, I'm nearly certain, more people move from Western Europe to the US than vice versa. Perhaps all of those measures of human development aren't all they're cracked up to be in comparison to other things? Actions reveal preferences.