A zero-sum mindset on a website dedicated to programming of all places? Where we literally create wealth out of nothing but coffee and the strength of our minds?
My love for my country means I want it to be the greatest in the world. Waterloo grads make America better. Period.
I've never met anyone that argued for open borders that wasn't capable of isolating themselves from the negative effects. Like say, a tenured professor like Bryan Caplan.
Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.
Hang on, are we upset that immigrants are taking the jobs of poor people in America?
I thought based on original post we were upset immigrants are taking high paying specialist jobs from the rich techies in San Francisco?
Or are they just just taking all the jobs while miraculously not spending any money and not creating any demand and not participating in economy at all?
I just want to understand this evil scourge appropriately.
P.s. (And oh, boy, will I compete in the "knowing about being poor" with anybody on HN :)
If they are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, that would imply that they are unskilled themselves. I don't see how they will be able to take advantage "opportunity tech jobs provide"--a highly skilled set of jobs.
I agree that poor Americans are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.
1. If, say, an immigrant earns 70k, they will also spend 70k. It's an equilibrium - they "create" as much jobness as they "take".
2. The easiest intuitive explanation I have is - imagine a million immigrants move in. They're basically a self sufficient city - with police and doctors and teachers and mechanics and salespeople and whatever. Doesn't bother me.
In fact, America is by definition (unless one is native American) the land of immigrants. It is clearly factually historically obvious that immigration was not zero sum and it continually expanded overall prosperity and might of the American empire. It's only when we zoom into the very here and now that some people, for some reason, freak out and feel "omg immigrants!!".
1. Immigrants send to their home countries very significant amounts of their income, so it's always going to be net-negative in that sense.
2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.
That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.
It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.
In other words:
Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.
Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.
Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.
>> Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
I think you have the mindset where there are X jobs, static, unchanging, God given or government ordained or whatever, and if an immigrant takes a job that job is gone. Array, counter, n=n-1, done.
That's... Not my mindset, and I don't think that's how it works.
Those million people don't take a million jobs from some enumerated, inflexible list, and then shutdown. They live. They consume! They earn and then they turn around and they spend, they need homes and food and clothes and education, all of which is jobs.
I think you imagined a swarm of people who displaced others, but imagine literally a million people coming and creating a new city. So of the million, some are techies and some are janitors and some are farmers and some are doctors and they have a nice little self sufficient city and don't bug or impact anybody outside of that city.
If/when/once you visualize the concept of that self sufficiency, now we can discuss the more complex case of them joining an existing city - because yes of course it's more complex than people coming in and living independently, but it's also more complex than them stealing jobs off some imaginary closed list.
Let's not imagine scenarios that may or may not have anything to do with reality.
Answer this question: what evidence would you accept to show that major American tech companies are using skilled immigration to drive down their labor costs as the expense of American citizens?
I cannot keep up with the moving targets. My honest, sincere impression based on my best read of your posts is that you are making a sweeping claim against immigration along all axis and skill levels. I disagreed.
Now your claim is that massive American tech companies are profit-focused, narrow-vision entities with no social qualms or human values, and I could not agree more :-). But that’s orthogonal to the wider immigration discussion.
Lol. Called it. Always with the moving goal posts.
Oh but remittances are high! Think of the short term effects.
I will mention my Indian coworkers parents use the remittances to buy Netflix subscriptions, Coca-Cola and American Corn but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.
Constant-pie thinking is an all consuming identity not a rational viewpoint that can be reasoned with.
Funny how you applaud yourself for being correct but make no actual arguments.
What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?
You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?
You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.
“Demand is fixed, they're coming or your jobs” is your “Temperatures always rise and fall, there is no global warming”.
I'm sorry to be this dismissive, but I've had this conversation too many times and you will simply see what you want to see. There is no convincing coal workers of global warming.
yup,Operation Paperclip. This program brought over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of whom were former members of the Nazi Party and some with SS affiliations, to the U.S. for government employment between 1945 and 1959.
The flip side should also be said, Canada and many other countries have talent drained by the US since they can't compete on pay.
It's hard to say, but who knows what could have been if the top Canadians had have to start or join Canadian companies and didn't have the option to take a higher pay in the US.
I like the way you think. As a Canadian, I’m disgusted that we educate our youth and then send them to the US to take jobs from Americans and pay taxes to the Americans. We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America.
> We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America
OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.
So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?
The American dream in silicon valley was built in part by these folks. They stay here and become Americans both culturally and legally and it's fantastic. Some of them even become Republicans.
As others have pointed out it's not a zero sum game since human capital begets growth.
Funny how H1Bs are responsible for the destruction of the American labor force but also happen to be represented most in the jobs whose salary and size have grown the most in the U.S. over the past 2+ decades.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that H1Bs are most represented in the industry that has generated nearly all the growth that has been generated in America over the past 2-3 decades.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that slave labor is most represented in the industry that generated nearly all of America’s economic growth during the 18th and 19th century.
Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.
The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.
The way many people like yourself seem to have been completely fooled by major corporations wanting cheaper labor to exploit (through both legal, semi-legal, and illegal immigration) will be studied for generations.
Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.
For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.
I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.
I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.
Your suggestion that these are "right wing" ideas when Bernie Sanders says the same thing and for the same reasons. You might accuse him of being "zero sum" but you can't accuse him of being right wing.
Not only is this mindset disgusting, it is completely wrong. Labor is not zero sum, jobs create more jobs. Immigrants are what has made this country great, allowing immigration was critical to the US becoming the industrial/financial/tech capital of the world. Shutting down immigration will weaken our economy, it will cost americans jobs.
there is no more american dream, and anyone who “creates” jobs in this economy and era of rampant hypercapitalism isn’t really enabling or transferring wealth.
if there were ample americans to do these jobs, they should be able to get them.
nationalism is a silly idea, anyway. and we should have free trade and movement with our biggest two allies. american exceptionalism is a joke
> Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans.
Americans literally voted to defund the education system, voted for administration(s) that will amplify spending money to hire foreigners to keep America center of top talent/skill across domains and most importantly voted for extreme capitalism.
There have never been more unemployed new college grads studying computer science and computer engineering. There are ample americans ready to take these jobs.
Boomers promulgated lies about "shortages" for years to lobby for relaxed visa schemes. Ironic you mention nationalism being silly, since Indians are some of the most openly caustic nationalists I encounter on a daily basis.
