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Isn't doing things in your own financial self interest > doing things for the "common good" a part of traditional American customs and values? Capitalism > socialism, individualism > collectivism, libertarian hands off government > nanny state, and similar concepts are a strong part of the American cultural core historically in my eye. The "American Dream" is precisely this idea of an opportunity to work hard and be rewarded for your own success in a free market. So I'd contest that coming to the US "because they see dollar signs" is in opposition to American values, because I believe seeking personal economic success is an American value.
I think it's especially funny to see this coming from the "conservative" side of things now. Not so long dismissing people as "too greedy" or claiming companies are "exploiting immigrant labor" and other such concepts were a predominantly progressive view. Famous conservative voices like Reagan, Goldwater, Friedman, Thatcher, William F Buckley Jr, Ayn Rand etc etc (you can find tons of examples of old school conservatives with similar views) were supportive of immigrants coming to their countries and working for a better life for themselves. A lot of this stemmed from the capitalist views these voices had, that economic self interest is a good thing for society as a whole and that people who make money through business are not "exploiting" society and greedily stealing from everyone else, but contributing to society through providing goods and services. If they were to look at things today, many of those classic conservatives would focus their blame on the welfare state and big government handouts rather than immigration. As Friedman said “There is no doubt that free and open immigration is beneficial—so long as it’s not combined with a welfare state.”
One great example of this being Reagan's whole speech where he basically says that immigrants of the time are in some sense more American than actual native born citizens with the argument that the immigrants (especially the ones fleeing the communist countries) understood this and held a love for the US and our economic freedoms and embrace of working hard for yourself and your family.
Within a social construct, yes. But when you steal bricks from your neighbor's brick road/driveway because you know you aren't going to be caught, or that you wont be punished, this breaks down.
When you make these kind of arguments, people dont simply understand that a civilization that can establish capitalism and can maintain it is the rarity. A lot of Alex Norwasteh types are like this, and as questions like, "if your culture is so good why wont it just win out?" And the answer is that it is good foor cooperation, and Cooperate-Cooperate wins out over Defect-Defect. And most places are Defect. But what happens when a lot of Defectors enter is they make a lot of local gains, enriching themselves and impoverishing the rest. And often they are able to jump from place to place so long as they are a minority. And realistically, over time they cause the place they defect in to become a defection economy, which just doesn't work.
What people who grew up in Cooperate societies want is Cooperate societies, they don't want to have to send police to every park to ensure there isn't shit and needles where their kids want to play. They don't want their son to compete against a guy using steroids in boxing or using meth during standardized tests. But the things they dont want are what they are getting.
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This is eminently reasonable; immigrants ... embrace of working hard for yourself and your family are not really what most people are upset about.
Most people are upset with immigrants who:
If you eliminate (or even harshly cut back on) the number of immigrants, legal or otherwise, exploiting the above, I bet you'd see a lot more positivity towards them.
1, 2 and 3 are obviously problematic, especially cause we shouldn't put up with anyone immigrant or native. Criminal behavior, welfare fraud or working with foreign.goverments isn't acceptable.
But this is just untrue. You're not just a worker selling your labor to a business, you're a customer buying other people's labor from a business too. Lower costs for businesses is lower costs for consumers, which you are one. This logic suggests that more people = poorer conditions, and yet it doesn't seem to pane out much in real life. In fact the opposite seems to be true and larger populations seem to be such an advantage that China, despite being ruined by socialism for decades, still manages to be a major economic and political player in the world. And despite the world population being 4x bigger than the 1920s we'll all significantly wealthier on average.
The same logic would also argue for cutting birthrates (after all, those children will want jobs in 18 years) and even eliminating fellow natives who also compete for your job. But in the same way you don't have to worry about it because each worker is a consumer and creates demand for new jobs.
To clarify more on what I mean; if you have a glut of people in a certain profession, then the wages for that profession will be lower (aka, it's a buyers marker). One thing that we saw here in Canada was that we had a lot of positions that were unable to be filled (at the current wage) shortly after the pandemic; this obviously leads to companies competing to get workers into them, which is good if you are a worker. I do acknowledge that increasing the size of industry will provide more jobs overall - the issue becomes when immigration is used as a "depress wages" button. I had the exceeding misfortune of doing job applications shortly after Canada got 5m+ new immigrants (as in, roughly 2.5% of our population); it was a nightmare as every position I applied for had 150+ applicants in the first 30 seconds. Eventually, the industry will be able to absorb them; but it won't be fast, and I only have these 80 odd years on earth. If the industry supports it in 5 years, I'll have lost 5 years where I could've been earning better wages (and as everyone knows, investing makes earlier money grow much more than later money).
To be fair, in an ideal world (for me, personally) I'd be the only person providing the service that I'd do, and I'd be able to name my price. In reality, I have a lot of sympathy for not driving people out of their home because they can't get a job there. People who were born in a country don't really have the option to leave and go elsewhere - especially when they're middle class. What this ends up being is a situation where businesses hire from the immigrant pool, knowing that they are less willing to pursue labour and employment code violations (as that may get them kicked out), which saves them money. The people who lived there before can no longer do so because the businesses have done a form of gentrification to them, pricing them out of the market. And the wealth inequality grows worse and worse.
Specifically with regards to birth rates, there is an upper limit to how quickly women can produce children - and once a country has reached a place where children don't often die young, there are also resource constraints on them. I think it's unreasonable to assume that women would suddenly jump to producing 8 children per woman when our current TFR is around 1.5 or so; even if they did, this still behaves very differently than having a similar number of immigrants pumped into the system. Women can only produce 1 child every year or so (give or take); there is time to see the developing trend, and build more housing, add more jobs, etc. as the children reach maturity. By comparison, dropping the immigrants in at around 1m per year leaves no time to expand; there are physical limitations on how quickly a business can build a new factory, or new houses can be built. As we've seen up here in Canada, the government inviting the immigrants in took no care in making sure we had space for them.
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That is no longer true in the current world of extremely progressive taxation and extremely profligate social welfare spending.
It would be the exact opposite for businessmen under your argument, as progressive taxation and social welfare spending hurts them more as they bear the cost of these programs.
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Treating America as a store where you can “buy” jobs with your promise of labor, someplace where you can earn money to send home, may have some “capitalistic” feel to it, but even conservatives, libertarians, and capitalists like to have a Real Home For My People like anyone else. And to have the “customers” pushing us out is untenable.
I don't understand what you mean here, it doesn't matter how many jobs they work or how many jobs they "create". What matters is the utility actually being created. In a proper market, people get rewarded for providing goods/services that others want and you get more rewards by providing them in better quality and/or higher amounts than others do.
Take Jensen Huang for example. He's not rich because he created some number of jobs, he's rich because he's an intelligent CEO who created and runs a major tech company supplying excellent computer chips and other electronics to customers who want them. Or Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google which manages tons of different services from maps to YouTube to android OS. There's a good chance you've used many Google products today.
You are a customer along with every other person in existence. You participate in the exchange of goods and services. You benefit when Jensen Huang or Elon Musk or Sergey Brin create awesome things for the world. While lesser, we also benefit in trade when a Santiago helps build a home or when an Isabella at a local cleaning business helps tidy it up.
No. There is a fellowship in an ethnos that goes deeper than economic relationships.
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