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Isn't that what happened here? In 1972, King County was 92% White. In 2022, it was 63% White. We imported a bunch of people who are incapable of maintaining American civilization, and they vote with their coethnics for racial spoils. In Seattle, most of this is Asians, of various stripes, but it's also Mexicans, and more recently Africans.
People like this are the reason why Seattle is circling the drain. These are the type of whites who are committed to autogenocide, and who are responsible for the lamentable condition of the city today. They are the ones who deny that there even exists a problem, because to admit it would be to admit that their opponents are correct.
It's not unrelated, it's directly related. Both of these are the result of substituting ideology for reality. There's no such thing as a transwoman, and downtown Seattle sucks and is dangerous. Yet ideology demands that you pretend otherwise, that dozens of people shooting up on the street aren't hurting anyone, that you need to call that man, "ma'am." Ignoring the reality of one goes hand in hand with ignoring the reality of the other, because the ideology demands it of its believers.
And this is also why Portland is worse. It's worse on crime and it has more transvestites. These two things have the same cause. Their ideologues are more numerous, and more committed. For Portland, there's no Bellevue across the lake to act as a beacon of sanity and order. There's no lake to keep the indigent away.
These people don't want a competent government, they want to decolonize the United States. They want to dismantle the cisheteropatriarchy. They want to tear down structures of oppression. They want, in short, to throw a tantrum and wreck their parent's house because they have no sense of civility, civic duty, responsibility, or history. Or, more likely, it's not their parent's house that their wrecking, but the parents of one of their friends, since they aren't local, and in many cases aren't even American.
I have lived in King County for the vast majority of my life. I have never lived in Seattle. I can vote for King County Council, and King County Executive, and for State Senator and Representatives, and Governor. And for my entire voting life, and for considerable time before that, every single person in every single one of those positions has been a Democrat.
Shout out to Rob McKenna, who was a Republican AG until he ran for Governor and lost to Jay Inslee in a close race. If he had won, things may have been different. To my great shame, I voted Inslee.
For the first time in my voting life, I'll be voting for a major party president in 2024, and it's not going to be for the Democrats. I'll be voting straight party ticket, too. But it won't matter. My home is being strangled by idiot gay race communists, and there's nothing I can do about it.
And now I've gotten all riled up.
Amazing to describe a bunch of Asians and Indians making $300K+ at Amazon and Microsoft as “incapable of maintaining American civilization.”
Aside from Bezos, Nadella has probably done more than anyone for property values in Seattle in the last 10 years.
The homeless are definitely a problem but it’s more fixable than this mindset of racial division that both you and the DEI people preach.
You can't blame me for thinking I'd be earning three times my wage without having to compete with that "bunch of Asians and Indians." That my grandchildren will earn less because of it, too.
That my parents earned less, too.
American civilization is one of colonization of the frontier. Wealth and technology, but also conquest on the margin. And yes, descent from the 13 colonies who threw in together against the crown. And not from the same people who chose otherwise (leafs).
I can blame you for being economically illiterate such that you think those high tech salaries from valuable companies would exist without having imported a lot of people with relevant abilities.
You wouldn’t make more if all the immigrant tech talent vanished because they aren’t what’s preventing you from having the relevant skills to have those jobs.
Zero-sum thinking is just factually incorrect here.
Just as Mexican aliens in the US drive down the employment prospects of native-born Blacks, so too do Asian aliens in the US drive down employment prospects of native-born Whites.
It doesn't have to be zero-sum in order to be a net negative me me and my kind. Also, it's not factually incorrect either.
While it’s possible for an influx of new labor to drive down wages for a short time or in a particular field without much of a barrier to entry, you’re just wrong, theoretically and empirically.
Think about babies. They start off small and helpless. All they do is consume for close to two decades, which isn’t helped by child labor laws.
But eventually, they will join the workforce, driving down the cost of labor. Right?
Except, workers are also consumers. So they work to earn money and then spend that money, which creates a demand for other people to have jobs.
A country with a high population growth rate from fertility has a very similar labor economics situation with one having the same from immigration.
Wages go up, on average, from increased productivity. Not restraining labor supply, which is ultimately self-defeating in a modern economy.
People get pissy over immigrants and over outsourcing, but ultimately it’s mostly just hating the necessary dynamism and creative destruction that makes the American economy so much better than any peer.
Do you have anything to back this?
Does remittances factor in this hypothetical?
So line goes up Meme and to hell with the rust belt. Without taking into account that that was the reason that empowered China and made it the menace that it is today.
The “anything to back this” is the explanation I go on to give. You can also read Cato, who also mentions the points that immigrants tend to take jobs we citizens don’t want, and that the large-scale entry of women into the workforce is another point of comparison for significant labor force changes.
It’s not a hypothetical, in other words. We can observe countries with different levels of population growth from births and immigration over time, as well as women entering into the workforce. What matters most is productivity. Scarcity of labor only drives up wages to the point a firm can afford.
Remittances aren’t a major variable and also foreigners buy US products.
The Rust Belt needs to adapt to a changing economy. Trying to lock in a given situation, changing factors be dammed, is the very definition of stagnation. I don’t want to end up like Europe thank you very much.
Empowering China was not a problem in pure economic terms, it was a problem in geopolitical ones. In a better world, we would had given more business to say Mexico/Canada/Brazil until China had demonstrated actual willingness to play nice with the US-led international world order. In other words, the Rust Belt can still get fucked for not being a competitive place to run a factory. Whining about it and trying to use government intervention to prevent the outcomes of markets, instead of doing a good job of competing for new industries, is some leftist bullshit that makes me very annoyed at today’s GOP.
That actually brings up another point. If you don’t let labor come to the US sufficient to keep up with hiring demands, you drive up the incentive to outsource production to where there is available labor.
So support free trade and sensible immigration policy. (I’m in the Tyler Cowen/Garret Jones camp, not the Bryan Caplan one.)
the part not mentioned at that point is "with those wages", always find it disingenuous when economists et al treat the situation as if economic incentives doesn't exist for this specific situation and the only way to have your toilet unclogged or burgers in your McDonald is by bringing more immigration, which is how you keep wages stagnant.
What I think they are missing in this excerpt, that the common man perfectly understands, is that they don't need to be perfect substitutes, they just need to be good enough. With languages as similar as english and spanish are is not all that difficult to understand each other, after all spanglish is a thing.
this is the Damore Memo all over again, and even in the same career path Peterson mentions that women are less likely to ask for a raise.
Really sure what does it matter with respect to "While it’s possible for an influx of new labor to drive down wages for a short time or in a particular field without much of a barrier to entry"? the level of elasticity of wages isn't in contention here.
why aren't they a major variable?, and foreigners may buy US products too, but if part of their wage goes to Mexico they will buy less than natives.
And we aren't living only in a economic world, but one with geopolitical considerations too.
It was shortsighted and a perfect representation of everything wrong with the "Line goes up" Meme mentality that economists et al are so fond of. Now we have a hollowed up Rust belt, a Nuclear power hostile to every value you hold dear and Cartels in your backyard. All of this with far reaching consequences like the fentanyl and homeless crisis.
the hollowing out of the rust belt proves this isn't true. Outsourcing is a product of dramatically cheaper labor costs outweighing transportation costs and import taxes.
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