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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Another spicy new idea from the Trump administration: Gold Cards!

The idea, as I understand it, is that global citizens will be able to pay a one time fee of $5 million USD, and enjoy a much shorter and less strenuous vetting process to become U.S. citizens. The gold card will effectively function like a green card that is paid for.

In the hearing they mention they want to use this money to pay down the deficit, which I actually think is a great idea. I'm sure it will filter for much higher quality immigration than our current setup of mostly illegal immigrants, anyway.

I'm sure the left will hate this and see it as privileging the rich. And to be clear, it absolutely is! It's extremely unfair for people who want to immigrate and don't have the funds, will never even possibly have the funds, to pay $5m USD. That being said, I like the idea because it very much singles the U.S. shifting towards wanting immigrants who actually pull their weight, and provide something to the country.

While yes of course not all rich people will be a net benefit to the country, by and large I would have to imagine if they can apy 5 million dollars they will be relatively high quality. Plus, as Trump points out, this will massively incentivize people to move their businesses to the U.S. You're a wealthy founder in China, Europe, or Latin America? Just buy a gold card and move your business over!

Anyway, I know we have a lot of libertarians here so I'm curious for thoughts on this? I was personally quite surprised he went ahead and did it - didn't even know this was on the table.

Is there any downside to this idea?

I have seen people on data secrets lox complaining that we'll importing a ruling class of foreign rich people to push Americans down a peg. But personally at that price I don't see it being an issue.

If it isn't inflation-pegged... could become an issue in the future.

It should be in gold, not dollars.

That's about 80kg at today's prices, or approximately 1700 troy ounces.

Just round it up: 1776 ty oz of gold can buy you citizenship in the USA. Today's price puts that at $5.2 million.

This is beautiful. However, it doesn't account for the collapse in the price of gold when Elon Musk takes a spaceship to Psyche 16 and flies it back with 100 quintillion USD worth of gold. We'll be using it as paperweights by the end.

It would be safer to peg it to a basket of goods.

It would be safer to peg it to a basket of goods.

Which goods, exactly? Other precious metals such as platinum? Foodstuffs like corn and pork? Livestock, such as cows and goats and sheep? Manufactured goods? Cotton, linen, silk, or wool? Does it have to be spun? Does it have to be woven, or knit? Cars, televisions, sewing machines? Or does it need to be chips? What about optics, can I buy my citizenship with monocles and telescopes?

I'd rather peg it to gold and platinum only than some nebulous basket, and the only reason I'm including platinum is because it's only possible to fake the density with more expensive and rare elements like iridium.

Psyche will be explored by NASA, with a spacecraft of the same name, marking the first time a manmade object will journey to a metallic asteroid, launched on 13 October 2023, with an expected arrival in 2029.

I think with six years of lead time we could foresee the impact and adjust, which would still be better than a basket.