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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor".

Being the best of a bad bunch isn't good enough (and it isn't as if the EU and commonwealth don't also have tons of immigrants, so we can't blame nativists for their poor performance). Unless I'm missing something, real GDP growth in the US was worse in the 2000s (and far too much of that growth went to the healthcare sector) than it was in the 80s and 90s and has been thoroughly mediocre since. Aside from the post-covid rebound in 2021 the average Millennial has never seen real GDP growth exceed 3% during their working lives.

Of course, thanks to the fact that federal spending has grown far faster than the economy during the last 25 years, VA-7 is doing better than most.

Of course, this is mostly population aging. Old people don't grow the economy.

Do immigrants help? IDK.