Have We Hit The Top?

[Dinar]

1 hour ago, Cod Liver Oil said:

Mike, This is a big number!!!! Can you post a link to the cost? I am confused about our immigration policies.

Do we have any? What is the rationale?

https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/583-23/as-city-nears-arrival-100-000-asylum-seekers-since-last-spring-mayor-adams-lays-out-updated#/0

 

Free food, lodging, medical care, schools, et cetera. 

[Dinar]

1 hour ago, gfp said:

Immigration might be a drag on certain state and local economies but it is a positive for the national economy.  Especially when you have labor shortages, low birth rates, undesirable demographic issues.  

 

Actually, that is not true.  It is if you import Phds in STEM and doctors & nurses.  Not true if you import people without a high school education and no skills.  Also, immigration drastically reduces wages for workers in the US and leads to social problems as people cannot find work or welfare pays more.  Why hire an American comp sci major for $100K when an Indian or Russian or Chinese immigrant will do the job for $50K?  Why hire an American high school drop out for $20 dollars an hour when an African immigrant will work harder for $5 or $10 per hour?  Then watch the unskilled Americans go on welfare, and engage in alcoholism and drugs.

[Dinar]

58 minutes ago, thepupil said:

From henceforth, 80-90% of you all won’t pay income taxes…lol

The problem is that for many low income Americans, it does not pay to hold down a job, since due to withdrawal of benefits + income tax, marginal tax rates could easily be 70-80%+.  Think someone making $19K in NY and on Medicaid, then income goes to $30K and you lose Medicaid.  

[gfp]

4 minutes ago, Dinar said:

Actually, that is not true.  It is if you import Phds in STEM and doctors & nurses.  Not true if you import people without a high school education and no skills.  Also, immigration drastically reduces wages for workers in the US and leads to social problems as people cannot find work or welfare pays more.  Why hire an American comp sci major for $100K when an Indian or Russian or Chinese immigrant will do the job for $50K?  Why hire an American high school drop out for $20 dollars an hour when an African immigrant will work harder for $5 or $10 per hour?  Then watch the unskilled Americans go on welfare, and engage in alcoholism and drugs.

 

There is work for everyone, including immigrants.  Not working is a choice.  The price of labor is not suggesting we are near a problem like you describe.  I'll take more hard working immigrants over the unskilled American currently choosing not to work.

[RedLion]

7 minutes ago, Dinar said:

The problem is that for many low income Americans, it does not pay to hold down a job, since due to withdrawal of benefits + income tax, marginal tax rates could easily be 70-80%+.  Think someone making $19K in NY and on Medicaid, then income goes to $30K and you lose Medicaid.  

Exactly this! 

[Dinar]

1 minute ago, gfp said:

 

There is work for everyone, including immigrants.  Not working is a choice.  The price of labor is not suggesting we are near a problem like you describe.  I'll take more hard working immigrants over the unskilled American currently choosing not to work.

You clearly have not been to immigrant neighborhoods.  When 70 year olds come over, and immediately get Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, supplemental security income and home attendants, that's a drain on the economy.  (And yes, I personally know a few examples.)  Work for everyone?   When unskilled wages are less than government benefits, why would people work?  Fifteen years ago Economist magazine published a study that stated that a woman with two kids in NYC would need to make over $100K per annum before she was better of financially working than being on the dole in NYC.  Today, the figure would be over $200K.  How many single mothers with kids can make over $200K?  

[gfp]

1 minute ago, Dinar said:

You clearly have not been to immigrant neighborhoods.  When 70 year olds come over, and immediately get Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, supplemental security income and home attendants, that's a drain on the economy.  (And yes, I personally know a few examples.)  Work for everyone?   When unskilled wages are less than government benefits, why would people work?  Fifteen years ago Economist magazine published a study that stated that a woman with two kids in NYC would need to make over $100K per annum before she was better of financially working than being on the dole in NYC.  Today, the figure would be over $200K.  How many single mothers with kids can make over $200K?  

 

Right.  So everything you are saying is causing a problem is about policy and the social safety net, giving free stuff and services to immigrants and locals.  Not what I am talking about, which is immigration being positive for the economy.  I'm not debating you on the policies above, those sound problematic.  Immigration isn't the issue - those policies are.

[Gregmal]

Just think, all you NYC high earners…you’re paying 50% of you’re earnings to the government so we can let in illegals, have them bused to a city of their choosing, allow them to beat up cops, and then let them loose with prepaid debit cards….

[cubsfan]

The problem is with the President's core constituencies - blacks & hispanics. They put him in office.

And then he fucked them. He told them their lives would improve - and they have gone backward.

They understand for a year, maybe. But when it goes on a dive for 4 years - they know they have

been screwed. Those groups pay the biggest price for unchecked immigration and destruction of

the cities. When they turn on him - it will be because he failed to keep his promises.

 

 

 

 

[thepupil]

1 hour ago, Dinar said:

You clearly have not been to immigrant neighborhoods.  When 70 year olds come over, and immediately get Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, supplemental security income and home attendants, that's a drain on the economy.  (And yes, I personally know a few examples.)  Work for everyone?   When unskilled wages are less than government benefits, why would people work?  Fifteen years ago Economist magazine published a study that stated that a woman with two kids in NYC would need to make over $100K per annum before she was better of financially working than being on the dole in NYC.  Today, the figure would be over $200K.  How many single mothers with kids can make over $200K?  

 

can you point to any data that backs this impression? 

 

it goes against my anecdata (which is that immigrants are, for the most part, working their asses off to make the next generation better) 

[gfp]

The thing about economies is that more is more and less is less.  If you have a larger economy with more people producing, consuming, creating, moving, eating, sheltering, and, yes, even convalescing, you have more.  

 

Decisions to hand out money or services or bus immigrants to a high cost city they would not have gone to themselves based on market forces are completely separate policy decisions.  They can be stupid or wrong and probably are.  They are separate decisions.

 

An illegal Honduran immigrant just knocked on my door because they needed a key to my neighbors house.  They have children attending public school for free.  They also pay rent that directly funds the property taxes that fund the school their kids go to.  Some of their pay goes back to Honduras as remittances and leaves our country (bad for us).  They also pay sales tax on the rest of their income because 100% of what is not remitted to Honduras is spent in the local economy.  So they are directly funding city government through property taxes and sales tax.  They receive no free money or services, they are here illegally.  No hand-outs unless you think the fire department and school that they are funding are hand-outs.  I would prefer if they also paid income tax but that is a policy I do not control.

 

One of the best "features" of immigrants is that they will move around in response to market forces to meet the needs of the economy much more than native born workers.  They are not going to sit in the rust belt doing nothing waiting for some long-gone economic paradigm to return because that is what and where they used to do it.

[Dinar]

2 hours ago, gfp said:

 

Right.  So everything you are saying is causing a problem is about policy and the social safety net, giving free stuff and services to immigrants and locals.  Not what I am talking about, which is immigration being positive for the economy.  I'm not debating you on the policies above, those sound problematic.  Immigration isn't the issue - those policies are.

https://nypost.com/2024/02/05/metro/migrant-moped-crew-busted-after-stealing-cellphones-right-out-of-nyers-hands-sources/

 

No crime either from immigrants.  

[Dinar]

55 minutes ago, thepupil said:

 

can you point to any data that backs this impression? 

 

it goes against my anecdata (which is that immigrants are, for the most part, working their asses off to make the next generation better) 

Talk to people in the Section 8 office in NY, go to doctors' offices in immigrant neighborhoods and see what medical insurance they use, go to immigrant neighborhoods and see how many pay with EBT (food stamps.)  Try to hire a Russian speaking nanny in NYC on the books, and you will be surprised how difficult it is.  A friend tried and out of three dozen offers he made, not a single one was accepted.  They were all on the dole (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing), or working officially as home attendants for forty hours a week already... 

[changegonnacome]

A woman who walks/buses/hitchhikes up from Honduras with two or three kids in tow to start a new life in America leaving everything and everyone she knows, saving for months for the journey, strategizing & networking her way to get here while solving upteempth complex issues on the way......is NOT headed to NYC to sit on her ass, collect welfare cheques and watch Dr.Phil. I can assure you of that.

 

THIS woman and the 1000's or 99% of people like her who enter through the southern border are, in the main, like many many immigrants before them deeply deeply congenitally motivated people...industrious, hardworking, smart etc......

 

Folks dont get it - look out the window of your home, your train, your airplane....this country is literally built on the positive selection bias that has come from the various waves of immigration (Poles, German, Irish)....each one like this one feared at the time cause it might change the nature of the country but in retrospect turned out to be a boon for everybody here right now and yet to come. This wave is no different - in some respect the positive selection bias has only increased as the immigration system has become ever more byzantine.

 

Could a system be put in place to make it more structured - for sure - thank the dipshits in D.C......the system in all its craziness right now......has one positive aspect....and it's what I laid out...it is not easy to 'get papers' in the US....those that do have already showed at least a top decile, if not a top 1% level of smarts and industriousness..

[Dinar]

1 hour ago, gfp said:

The thing about economies is that more is more and less is less.  If you have a larger economy with more people producing, consuming, creating, moving, eating, sheltering, and, yes, even convalescing, you have more.  

 

Decisions to hand out money or services or bus immigrants to a high cost city they would not have gone to themselves based on market forces are completely separate policy decisions.  They can be stupid or wrong and probably are.  They are separate decisions.

 

An illegal Honduran immigrant just knocked on my door because they needed a key to my neighbors house.  They have children attending public school for free.  They also pay rent that directly funds the property taxes that fund the school their kids go to.  Some of their pay goes back to Honduras as remittances and leaves our country (bad for us).  They also pay sales tax on the rest of their income because 100% of what is not remitted to Honduras is spent in the local economy.  So they are directly funding city government through property taxes and sales tax.  They receive no free money or services, they are here illegally.  No hand-outs unless you think the fire department and school that they are funding are hand-outs.  I would prefer if they also paid income tax but that is a policy I do not control.

 

One of the best "features" of immigrants is that they will move around in response to market forces to meet the needs of the economy much more than native born workers.  They are not going to sit in the rust belt doing nothing waiting for some long-gone economic paradigm to return because that is what and where they used to do it.

What is exactly the property tax that the illegal is paying and what is the cost of the kids attending public school?  Who is paying for the health insurance for the family?  Given that the cost of the educating a kid in public school is at least $15K per annum, and the cost of health insurance is at least several thousand per person per annum, is the family really paying $30K per annum in property tax?   Yes, the family is a drain on the economy under any honest accounting, before taking into account the fact that the family depresses wages and increases cost of housing for the working class.   

[gfp]

3 minutes ago, Dinar said:

What is exactly the property tax that the illegal is paying and what is the cost of the kids attending public school?

 

The exact same mechanism for every single native born renter in the country.  Jesus man.

[Dinar]

30 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

A woman who walks/buses/hitchhikes up from Honduras with two or three kids in tow to start a new life in America leaving everything and everyone she knows, saving for months for the journey, strategizing & networking her way to get here while solving upteempth complex issues on the way......is NOT headed to NYC to sit on her ass, collect welfare cheques and watch Dr.Phil. I can assure you of that.

 

THIS woman and the 1000's or 99% of people like her who enter through the southern border are, in the main, like many many immigrants before them deeply deeply congenitally motivated people...industrious, hardworking, smart etc......

 

Folks dont get it - look out the window of your home, your train, your airplane....this country is literally built on the positive selection bias that has come from the various waves of immigration (Poles, German, Irish)....each one like this one feared at the time cause it might change the nature of the country but in retrospect turned out to be a boon for everybody here right now and yet to come. This wave is no different - in some respect the positive selection bias has only increased as the immigration system has become ever more byzantine.

 

Could a system be put in place to make it more structured - for sure - thank the dipshits in D.C......the system in all its craziness right now......has one positive aspect....and it's what I laid out...it is not easy to 'get papers' in the US....those that do have already showed at least a top decile, if not a top 1% level of smarts and industriousness..

Except that they are begging on the streets on NYC and getting free food handouts at neighborhood churches.  They don't speak English, and don't have any marketable skills.  The world has changed.  One hundred years ago, there was plenty of work for unskilled people, today there is very little.   As for how great Polish, Irish or German or English immigration was, why don't you ask American Indians whether they are glad that all these people came over here?

Edited February 5 by Dinar

[ValueArb]

3 hours ago, Dinar said:

Actually, that is not true.  It is if you import Phds in STEM and doctors & nurses.  Not true if you import people without a high school education and no skills.  Also, immigration drastically reduces wages for workers in the US and leads to social problems as people cannot find work or welfare pays more.  Why hire an American comp sci major for $100K when an Indian or Russian or Chinese immigrant will do the job for $50K?  Why hire an American high school drop out for $20 dollars an hour when an African immigrant will work harder for $5 or $10 per hour?  Then watch the unskilled Americans go on welfare, and engage in alcoholism and drugs.

 

Why hire an American CS major for $100K when you can hire an Indian, Russian, or Chinese developer for $50k and have them work remote? Why not let them immigrate here so they pay US taxes?

 

Immigrants aren't taking jobs, they are creating jobs. Paying people to clean my house and do my landscaping frees time for me to make 5-10x as much with those hours. American high school dropouts work at McDonalds, not doing landscaping for half the pay.

 

When I ran product development for a PC software company many moons ago I got a resume and sample application demonstrating graphic algorithms from a foreign developer. It was so impressive that we paid to fly him to interview, hired him on the spot, and spent over $20,000 (in 1990s dollars) to get him a green card in order to stay and work for us. The product we built became so important it was about a third of our revenues, which meant it created roughly 40 high paying jobs. If we hadn't hired this genius, he would have almost certainly been hired by a foreign competitor and most of those jobs would have gone to them. 

 

The reason the US is so wealthy is because we saved and attracted immense amounts of capital, and that capital creates new higher paying jobs and makes us more productive at existing jobs. But we have a problem in that our declining birth-rate makes it hard to fill all the jobs, and having immigrants come in to take the worst lowest paying work on pushes americans up to better jobs. And over time those immigrants work hard and advance and save and help create even better jobs. We should target the smartest, hardest working foreigners and get them to immigrate here instead of throwing up roadblocks. A simple system of work visas would eliminate almost every problem we have with illegal immigraiton.

 

[rohitc99]

9 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

Why hire an American CS major for $100K when you can hire an Indian, Russian, or Chinese developer for $50k and have them work remote? Why not let them immigrate here so they pay US taxes?

 

Immigrants aren't taking jobs, they are creating jobs. Paying people to clean my house and do my landscaping frees time for me to make 5-10x as much with those hours. American high school dropouts work at McDonalds, not doing landscaping for half the pay.

 

When I ran product development for a PC software company many moons ago I got a resume and sample application demonstrating graphic algorithms from a foreign developer. It was so impressive that we paid to fly him to interview, hired him on the spot, and spent over $20,000 (in 1990s dollars) to get him a green card in order to stay and work for us. The product we built became so important it was about a third of our revenues, which meant it created roughly 40 high paying jobs. If we hadn't hired this genius, he would have almost certainly been hired by a foreign competitor and most of those jobs would have gone to them. 

 

The reason the US is so wealthy is because we saved and attracted immense amounts of capital, and that capital creates new higher paying jobs and makes us more productive at existing jobs. But we have a problem in that our declining birth-rate makes it hard to fill all the jobs, and having immigrants come in to take the worst lowest paying work on pushes americans up to better jobs. And over time those immigrants work hard and advance and save and help create even better jobs. We should target the smartest, hardest working foreigners and get them to immigrate here instead of throwing up roadblocks. A simple system of work visas would eliminate almost every problem we have with illegal immigraiton.

 

+1 elon musk is a prime example. Not every immigrant is a genius, but a few more than make up for the downsides. sergie brin and more.

 

Almost like an index fund approach to human capital. 95% are average and then we have 1% outliers 

[cubsfan]

A country can handle only so much immigration and assimilation at a time - that is the major problem.

The poor are an enormous drain on services provided to our own disadvantaged population.

No one is against immigration, but when you are primarily bring in totally unskilled families, you are killing your own country at the same time. It's an enormous burden that is supported. Otherwise, how in the world could Mayor Adams say this will cost the city $12B??  It's paid by the taxpayers and it's certainly NOT an investment - it's a burden that is taxed.

 

To make it worse - you let in criminals and make cartels/gangs rich. 

The US is basically an escape valve for Mexico - whereby they can export their social problems.

 

Europe is basically destroying itself through unchecked immigration - and it's happening here.

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregmal]

Immigration is not a one size fits all issue. It must be categorized and by each there’s different levels of usefulness or cost.
 

On a specific date, about 3 years ago, there was a very obvious surge in the lawless and destructive type of immigration at the southern border. This is 100% the response brought about by the actions of politicians and the people that voted for them. Same as the wars. We went from mocking one guy for making peace efforts with our enemies while asking freeloading allies to step up and pay what they should to where we are now where  you’ve got a new war popping up every year. 
 

The type of immigrants we want are the type that Canada wisely sifts through. The types tech companies and medical facilities seek out. The types in Southern Florida who came over from socialist countries and work 7 days a week. These are not the same types of people flooding NYC and SF.

 

 

 

Edited February 5 by Gregmal

[thowed]

Wow, I sure missed the Politics Board...................................................

 

Aren't ALL Americans immigrants?

[changegonnacome]

56 minutes ago, Dinar said:

They don't speak English, and don't have any marketable skills.  The world has changed.

Speak English?…you know where these folks end up working right…it’s not Google or Facebook…you don’t need English in a restaurant kitchen in NYC dishwashing you actually NEED Spanish or Portuguese  - you don’t need English to have a pile of construction trash pointed out to you and the dumpster where to put the stuff.

 

Who I see on the street in NYC begging are born and raised American’s with mental illnesses & drug problems….whom in another country would be identified as such and be in drug treatment centers or mental institutions…many US cities seem to prefer the open air mental asylum model….that model is clearly breaking down….it should never have been allowed to get to this.

[cubsfan]

6 minutes ago, thowed said:

Wow, I sure missed the Politics Board...................................................

 

Aren't ALL Americans immigrants?

 

So no reason for borders? What's the point?

 

How's that working in Europe?

 

Why isn't Canada opening their borders for 2M per year?

[Sweet]

Should we just let anyone in?  I doubt the board would say yes.  So there should be rules and a process to migration - so figure out what a large majority agree on and work from there.

 

What is certainly not ok is to just allow millions of people to ignore all those rules, break the law by entering illegally, and skip in front of those who have the decency to go down the proper legal avenues.

 

What’s this got to do with the top though?  Unless some are predicting the end of America?