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Does anyone have anything to say about the OBBB being passed? I was genuinely surprised to see that no one was posting about it at all in this thread.
I'm broadly against the bill but don't have much of an opinion of the specific provisions. I understand that it's meant to neuter the political power of my ingroup and neargroup and it seems like it's going to be effective at that, so I know I'm going to dislike it regardless of whether it has any actual non-partisan merit. I guess if I had to single out few things in particular, I'm selfishly in favor of renewing the R&D tax writeoffs, but also singularly terrified of the massive increase to the ICE budget... It definitely looks like trump is making a military force loyal to him personally because he doesn't trust the loyalty of the existing forces. There are... historical parallels. I'm (among other things) brazilian, and I can't help but remember the first republic's antipathy towards and neglect of the navy due to their royalist tendencies.
Fiscal discipline can only be enforced by the bond market, that is the reality. Since both Democrats and Republicans have borrowed and would borrow, the questions around deficit spending are only these:
How can we maximize spending to fiscally constrain a future opposition administration/congress?
How can we allocate the greatest possible funding to issues we care about?
This bill, while far from perfect, mostly accomplishes both. You can’t mass deport without large scale holding camp infrastructure. $50bn or whatever isn’t enough, but it’s a good start. Immigration is the only thing that matters until immigration is solved (AI matters too, but the state is powerless to stop that march of technological progress).
Psychological factors are understated. All that needs to happen is that a degree of terror is implemented that scares most of the illegal population.
Mexico - even Guatemala - is not Afghanistan. Enough random, arbitrary and terrifying enforcement and enough will leave. Legal immigration can’t be reformed overnight and Trump doesn’t have the votes in congress.
The average daily wage for unskilled labor in the US, even flyover, is higher than a good weekly salary in Mexico, even the DF or Noreste. I don't think you can stop notoriously risk averse unskilled laborers from trying to take advantage of that. You can probably stop them from sticking around though.
And that’s most of what’s necessary. Some kind of soft-kefala where the migrants don’t stay, don’t have or bring over children, and go home at the end of the season.
I don't see how this is possible when you can't even stop birth tourism from people flying in. Are they only going to work for four months or so?
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