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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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To me, increased immigration seems like a no-brainer,

Do you mean this in the sense that you would have to have no brain in order to support it?

The situation being presented makes more of a case for immigration flows to immediately go into reverse, rather than the opposite. If age ratios are changing and adjusting like this, why would you want to depress native fertility by importing a bunch of low-skilled workers who will drive up real estate values, drive down wages, create "bad school" zones that represent an additional hidden cost to family formation(amongst people who you would want to form a family), etc. Even if you give the pro-migrant cause as good of a hearing as the data suggests, the nature of it as a short-term fix means that it isn't actually a worthwhile answer to the problems in question - just kicking the can down the road.

why would you want to depress native fertility by importing a bunch of low-skilled workers

This is the first time I've heard this claim. Is there empirical evidence to support this?

I think he’s referring to the cost of housing in the US making children unaffordable. A lot of millennials and zoomers can’t afford kids at all.

This claim has always sounded like an excuse to me, because I have only ever heard it from people who are middle or upper-middle class, while families much poorer than theirs both in this country and abroad are somehow able to raise multiple kids.

They're able to buy iPhones as well, doesn't mean they can afford them.