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Matt Yglesias posted on X an argument in favor of immigration (having trouble finding it now). The argument was basically “you like lasagna right? Well if we didn’t allow Italians to immigrate no lasagna. And now Italians are pretty indistinguishable from other Americans so clearly that will be the case with others such as Somalians. Think of the future lasagna equivalent you’d get with no cost since the immigrants will assimilate.”
Leave aside the HBD argument. It seems to me that one Matt and those who make this argument miss is the massively different technology that exists today that didn’t exist in yesteryear. If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
It is likely harder to assimilate in the modern world where immigrant populations are not cut off as opposed to the old world. So pointing to historic examples of assimilation do not hold for today because the factors have changed. Now maybe you still think there will be assimilation for different reasons. But you need to make that argument. Comparing like and unlike however cannot be your argument.
I don’t think this is some kind of groundbreaking point but why would presumably smart people like Yglesias make such a sloppy argument? Maybe they aren’t smart. Maybe they don’t encounter enough arguments to the contrary. Or maybe they are propagandists. I can’t help but think repeating a catechism has value to building political unity even (perhaps especially if) it’s fake.
There's two fallacies here. The first is that it is impossible to get ethnic food without mass immigration from that country. That's obviously nonsense, with the internet and online shopping, you can buy basically any foodstuff in the developed world, regardless of whether your country has had immigration from where that food comes from.
The second is that 'assimilation' is magic and can make everyone behave like white Americans (or even better, Asian Americans). The existence of a dysfunctional African American underclass that has existed for 400 years in spite of the end of slavery, legal equality, affirmative action and astonishing wealth (African Americans are richer than Europeans in Europe) puts paid to that.
I do wonder why Yglesias would make bad arguments like this though. I thought all the liberals were supposed to be secretly reading Steve Sailer? Maybe he genuinely has no intellectual curiosity as to why different ethnic groups have such vastly different outcomes.
(I'm assuming you meant "without mass immigration")
These days we in America have a different problem, where it's hard to get anyone at all to cook food in restaurants. The low pay and terrible work conditions just drive out any normal person with options, especially when you can make so much more in a tipped position like waitstaff. The only people doing it are either crazy people who couldn't get a job anywhere else, or immigrants. So in a way we do kinda need mass immigration to support those cheap restaurants and delivery services, and ethnic ones can get away with the most avoidance of immigration laws.
Of course we could also just cook for ourselves but who wants that.
Wouldn't less competition for such jobs lead to better pay and work conditions?
Maybe to an extent, but both factors are structural- restaurant kitchens are inherently tons of not super pleasant work performed alongside drug addicts for long and often unusual hours, and if you raise pay too much you have to raise your prices above what the market will bear.
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Maybe to some extent. But from what I've seen, the more common pattern is that the restaurants just shut down, either from lack of reliable cooks or from hiking prices to the point that no one wants to eat there anymore.
Yes. Groceries have a low elasticity of demand -- if food prices double, I might replace some brand items with knock-offs, but I still need to buy something to eat.
By contrast, restaurants have a high elasticity of demand. If restaurant prices double, people will just buy more microwave food instead.
In a way, a la carte restaurants a luxurious service: you order and someone needs to prepare your dish on demand, just for you. Sure, the specifics differ, adding toppings to a pizza or a crepe is much less labor-intensive than preparing a steak, but at the end of the day you do not benefit from the effects of scale which most industrial processes (including pre-cooked food) have.
Personally I really enjoy the simple, no frills restaurants that just have 1-3 items on the menu and make them in large quantities but really well. Unfortunately a lot of people (boomers I guess?) still seem to love the menus with a huge thick menu of 50 different things, and interrogating the waiter to find out which one of them they should choose. Hopefully restaurants find a way to adapt, like those coffeeshops where a robotic arm makes the drinks.
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