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Something I didn't mention is that immigration is big biz' way of keeping wages down. That's why Z'berg has his "fwd.us" to try to get more tech worker immigrants, and why the Koch Brothers have alwys supported increased immigration. In 1980, most meat packers were Black, and earning decent middle class wages. By that decade's end, most …
Something I didn't mention is that immigration is big biz' way of keeping wages down. That's why Z'berg has his "FWD.US" to try to get more tech worker immigrants, and why the Koch Brothers have alwys supported increased immigration. In 1980, most meat packers were Black, and earning decent middle class wages. By that decade's end, most were immigrants, earning barely above minimum wage working under atrocious conditions, where amputations were common. See: Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, $14 on Amazon.
Shoiuld we be putting immigrants over the descendants of slavery? That's what we're doing!
Among other things, the author makes the point that people who have the gumption to make their way to the US are probably the ones who could greatly improve matters in their own country, if we didn't operate as a pressure release valve for badly run countries.
And we ARE in a climate emergency. And not only do people who come to the US from third world countries increase their emissions, but when you move millions of people into the US, wilderness is turned to urban sprawl and farmland, releasing large quantities of carbon to the atmosphere. There are around half the numbers of insects (much of the bottom of the food chain) that there were 50 years ago; the numbers of birds, reptiles, amphibians, etc. are way own as well. I remember x-country road trips from my youth where at the end of a day's drive, loads of insects were plastered to the grill. Doesn't happen now. And much worse, according to the NYT, we're running out of groundwater, putting our agricultural industry at risk, and according to Propublica, MILLIONS of Americans will become climate refugees in the next several decades. Do you really think we should be letting our population increase with those two things happening?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-drying-climate-change.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/climate-change-will-force-a-new-american-migration
Additionally, I can tell you that over the last 50 years, during which time the US population has increased from 207 million to 335 million, the quality of life has gone down in ways that are directly attributable to that population growth, and wilderness has been disappearing.
I've been driving between Boston and DC for the last 30 years (at xmas time and some times at other times). In the '90s, bad traffic was rare. Now you can almost depend on it unless you leave in the late evening and drive at night. And in the Boston area, I never used to get stuck in traffic outside of normal rush hour. Now, if I go anywhere, I need to look at google maps before I go, to see what the traffic is doing. And I don't know what sort of driving you do, but driving in traffic is stressful. It's the kind of thing that puts plaque in your arteries, as is noise pollution, which has also gotten worse.
Before the pandemic, one day I was seeing my doc for an annual physical. Someone called her, and she took the call, something she'd never done in the previous 20 years which I"d been seeing her. When she got off, I asked her about that. She said that the traffic had gotten so bad that people were often calling her, stuck in traffic, to ask if they could come a bit later.