- cross-posted to:
- neoliberal@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- neoliberal@lemmy.world
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Decades of talkings heads offering an explanation for rural decline, that’s how. Look back to Rush Limbaugh and his predecessors.
The irony is rampant immigration (and our tolerance to it) was an economic miracle for the US, an envy of the world. We’d be facing a population cliff like S Korea, Japan, China or Russia without it. But now that’s coming for us too :(
Definitely a misdirect from the corporate takeover of everything.
I grew up in a shitty small rural town, but while I was in high school I watched the shitty “mom and pop” stores slowly disappear and the local factory vote against unionization only to be closed a few years after I moved away. You know what immediately moved in to fill the void? Wal-Mart and Dollar General.
My dad was so focused on immigrants taking his job and other insane republican economic talking points that he lost that job when the company decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate in the US anymore.
You must have lived down the street from me. We had a few mom and pop joints, two local restaurants, and “the plant”. They didn’t get Walmart but now they’ve got the world’s worst Dairy Queen, the world’s second worst Sonic, and two different brands of dollar store.
TBH some of the points were right. Democrats took big bucks from corporations too, especially Big Tech and basically anything focused in metros.
And it was also a distraction.
Rural folks should have voted differently, yeah, but it was an easy trap to fall into. I blame propagandists and cowards taking money, not them.
The “population cliff” is a made up boogeyman for capitalists. That’s because they’ve relied on population growth for market growth. What’s the harm in population stagnation or even decline?
And I don’t want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That’s a man-made problem that has solutions. Just not the kind of solutions capitalists can abide. (and if you think about it, it’s a temporary issue anyway).
And I don’t want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That’s a man-made problem that has solutions.
Well, okay. I have a bridge to sell you.
Look. Everything is a “man made” issue with solutions.
It doesn’t matter what economic system we want or have; fact is something has to put a ton of work into taking care of old folks, unless you kill them off or let them rot. Hope and ideology isn’t going to fix one’s body/mind, and that has nothing to do with capitalism.
…Will we automate the problem away some day, WallE/Star Trek style? Sure. That’s the goal. But we aren’t close to there yet. Overloading the young taking care of the old IS our short term problem, and we have plenty of land to support a growing population with room for expanding conservation, as long as we don’t do stupid shit like ranch excessively and expand oil. Then we can level off the population. But we can’t do any of that if entire counties collapse from the pressure/burden of support.
But okay. Let’s say tomorrow, every country on the planet rises up, abandons capitalism, and embraces cooperative economics, with a magic snap of the fingers. That’d be great.
But we continue to let populations in developed countries age.
Then what?
How does that change the needs of elderly folks at all? How does that change the math of young people needing to devote more and more of their energy to them?
Reducing overconsumption and overproduction will help a ton. We do not need nearly as much stuff as we are currently consuming. In addition, there are a lot of jobs these days that are just… not necessary. Take advertising for example, or all the job positions that are all about how to fuck over the consumers the most, then all the energy and work into fixing it or counteracting it, everything that is done not because it’s efficient, but because it’s profitable
We are far far more productive today than we ever were before in human history. It’s all about prioritization
I wouldn’t make that generalization.
We aren’t even close to post-scarcity in, say, healthcare. Keeping people alive and healthy is expensive and labor/education intense, even without the current structural inefficiencies.
Distributing healthy food is not trivial either, which ties into that.
You also shouldn’t overlook just how much is done because it’s profitable, and not efficient, though
The simple example is of course enshittifying services. But it’s also things like making 30 different versions of chips and candy and so on while putting lots of resources into preventing local homeless people from stealing any of the food they need for survival. Investing lots of research in making hyper-palatable foods that are addicting instead of how to make more efficient logistics towards everyone.
And then there’s of course the part where it being a competitive system means stopping others from making use of your research/effort and sharing things, because that means more and stronger competition, which leads to doubling of efforts and so on…
And I mean, I could go on, but the point is that, if you look closely enough, you’ll start seeing this everywhere. Inefficiencies made in the name of competition and profit seeking, not what is actually good for society and would be considered a job done well. A restructuring of society would help massively. From paying medical specialists more and making their jobs more tolerable instead of squeezing as much profit as possible, to opening up more human resources from other areas of society which could in theory help out more either directly or in the peripherals
We are massively massively more productive today than in the past. There is no excuse
And yeah, of course it isn’t the be-all end-all. But I would argue it would help more than it might seem on the surface. Directing resources towards where they are needed, and not just where they are profitable
Keeping people alive and providing healthy food is not as expensive as it’s made out to be. Socialism for the wealthy, now that’s expensive! Elon Musk could feed the entire world three times over! And there are lots of solutions, money just doesn’t back them.
For example, Holland had two issues. College students didn’t have places to live or couldn’t afford places, and they didn’t have enough people taking care of the elderly. So they put them together, the students have a place to live and the elderly are being taken care of. It was just something they tried and the results were spectacular!
The problem in the states is that we don’t even TRY ANYTHING! We have more resources than smaller countries and we don’t even try. We could try 50 different solutions in 50 different states, use the scientific method to measure the results, and then implement the methods that worked. We could even try thousands of different solutions by trying different methods in different counties of each state. But instead, we CHOOSE to continue to argue and bicker between ourselves. What a waste of time and energy!
I agree that the capitalists economy is a complete scam. Americans are so used to having so much land, that we just continue to shit up as much as we want and then move on to shit up another area. The earth cannot support continued population growth, especially with climate change. And even America will eventually run out of land to shit on. Other smaller countries have to respect what land they have and how to use because it’s limited. We could learn a thing or two from these smaller countries.
In France we have the “30 glorieuses”, 30 years of unprecedented economical growth. Guess who came and worked tirelessly to make it happen? And guess who waxes poetic about this blessed moment in time?
Of course the difference is that at the time, the immigrants lived in slums outside major cities, and they knew their place if you catch my drift.
Because any kind of minority is inferior to white straight people and they’re the reason for every ill in the world today.
It’s truly just racism. It’s worked for 4000 years, since the establishment of civilizations.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” - LBJ
Well you see, they are coming here to steal all our jobs but they are also jobless losers stealing all our welfare
Reagan was an evil genius with the “welfare queen” branding.
Hateful branding is always easier than inclusive branding. Just think about how many different words Americans have historically used for black people: all “they” have to do to turn a positive term into a slur is to say it with a sneer.
These are the same people who were simultaneously protesting “Stop the count” and “count the votes” on election day in 2020.
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Don’t forget that they stick to themselves and form parallel communities while also stealing our wives
Easy.
There is a huge portion of the country, about 1/3, that knows they aren’t living the American dream, but they work hard and don’t understand why.
Then, someone tells them something slightly true. That there’s not enough pie to go around (semi-true), and that the reason there’s not enough pie is all the immigrants and freeloaders who aren’t working and are taking handouts (false).
What they aren’t told is there could be enough pie to go around, if the top 1% was willing to share. They aren’t. And they now control ~35% of wealth in the USA.
And then the top 1% uses that extra capital to tell that 1/3 of people that their Hispanic neighbor is the problem.
You are now banned from Piefed. Please lay down while the death squadron comes for you.
If magas could read a post this long they might get it
Not a chance.
This is how it plays out locally: I live in a low cost of living town in Northeast PA. Our area has historically not been very diverse. Over the past 20 years they’ve ben building a lot of huge warehouses and distribution centers in our area to take advantage of the low cast of living. The industrial parks in the area all competed with each other to land these “job-creating” warehouses, and they competed by offering tax-free deals for x number of years.
So they build these warehouses, and when they hire, everybody apart from the 4 managers are hired part time, and can only work up to max of 28-30 hrs per week, to prevent the company from owing them any kind of health care retirement. Mostly, the only people desperate enough to move here for those jobs are immigrants, and since there’s no attachment to one warehouse or another, as soon as there’s slightly better offer, they move right on out. Our schools are getting hammered because their tax revenue hasn’t increased, but instead of of 1-2 new students per year in a grade level, they’re dealing with 5-6 new kids per WEEK, and a good number them come in with little to no English. Frequently, the families have to separate to get here, and that just makes everything even harder.
Now, if you’re not paying too close attention, you look at the area compared to 20 years ago, and think,
- There are more immigrants
- The school have less money and test scores are down
- Crime is worse
- Wages are unliveably low …
- Immigrants did it
The “nice” thing is if you own a warehouse, you don’t even need to spend any money “convincing” people to blame immigrants, you just make a bunch of money, pay them as little as possible, and watch the nightly news talk about all the danger and crime in the area.
Once you get down to the bottom half they are all together possessed of only a single digit share of wealth between them
This pretty much
Racism
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I have yet to see any Lemmy nazis, are they coming from any specific instances?
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I just adore when they talk about how other cultures have things like child-marriage as examples of what we need to protect ourselves from
Child marriage is legal right now in a bunch of states. Can’t blame immigrants for that one.
My favorite is when MAGAts claim immigrants are taking our jobs, while also claiming immigrants are sucking off the government teat getting free rent, healthcare ect because they are too lazy to work. Schrödinger’s immigrant.
Never forget that many of the the biggest MAGA bootlickers have their income subsidized by the government…
Red states boast cheaper… everything, because they get money from all the blue states. Buncha welfare queens.
It’s one of the better reasons why a national divorce from the blue states and red states sounds like a better and better idea each and every day into this administration.
Not every blue state is a net contributor. Vermont and Maine don’t deserve that fate
Vermont at least has a cool progressive city that elected Bernie Sanders for mayer 3 times before becoming a senator, and Graham Platner is a progressive, rockstar senate candidate in Maine, so there’s some redeemability there IMO. The real zit to pop in the northeast would be New Fucking Hampshire.
It’d be a pain in the ass to workout a divorce, but I think it’d be a whole lot easier than dealing with the fucking deathtrap we’re heading into. Not to mention some redemption on the global stage for better relationships with our virtually former allies? “See, we are not with those fucking assholes! And we got all the money!”
I live in a blue state and while I definitely do not want to live in a dictatorship, I am also not ok with abandoning the impoverished in the red states to that either. Just because the government of the red states are idiots doesn’t mean the population is worthy to be sacrificed.
I’d be in agreement with you before the 2024 election when I still some semblance of a belief in bipartisan left. But now, not so much; I learned that Republicans / MAGA are in a fascist death cult, and are in fact demons that we share the country with.
But common, we’re not demons. There’d are red state refugees that’d make great blue state people whom we can take in.
The other major problem with this idea though is that the state with the most Republicans is California. So you need to deal with the fact that it’s largely an urban/rural divide, not a state/state divide. But even then Maine and Vermont have extremely liberal rural areas that buck that trend too. And optimistically I sometimes think most Republicans are victims of propaganda and that they don’t deserve to be left behind as a result of being manipulated by the wealthy.
Imagine suddenly shifting freely open state borders to restricted international ones. It would be ridiculously disruptive.
They have a point though. Musk did indeed take the US president’s job for a while and was simultaneously living off welfare (gov subsidies for his private businesses). Oh and according to his brother, he’s an illigal immigrant too.
He’s the only example I can think of.
That’s due to Immigrant Jorge. He works ten million jobs and is a statistical outlier, he should not have been counted.
I mean fuck them and everything truly, but is this really such a paradox? It’s not like both can’t be true: say the men get jobs and the women and children get welfare. Or some immigrants take jobs and some are lazy and don’t. You can even get welfare while working if you are poor enough.
I’m just saying - trying to fight this mindset by calling it an impossible paradox will not work because that doesn’t even make basic sense. I know you’re only parroting what’s been said in a million tweets, so I’m not blaming you for inventing this idea. Just maybe stop repeating it like it’s a super clever gotcha. It isn’t.
Illegal immigrants do not get welfare. Undocumented immigrants cannot receive things like cash assistance, food stamps (SNAP), Medicare, or regular Medicaid.
Your typical MAGAT would tell you that those might be the rules but they aren’t followed, or are defrauded. Fraud does exist, at least.
If immigrant families are getting benefits when adults in the household are working jobs, this means they are below the federal poverty line that makes them eligible. (Usually if a child was born in the US to immigrant parents, the family will qualify for some benefits because the child is an American citizen.) This means that immigrants are working jobs where they are being underpaid, because no American in their right mind would want to work a job that pays wages below what it takes to stay alive. The narrative that these people are getting free benefits, and Americans aren’t is a bullshit narrative. Immigrants aren’t stealing jobs; their labor is being exploited in positions Americans don’t want.
You can’t think of a single thing an immigrant has made worse?
Then you must not heard of Elon Musk.
Racism.
It puts downward pressure on wages. That pressure is way overblown by Republicans and there are plenty of solutions to address it that don’t involve sending icestapo in to break up families though.
Pretending that this pressure doesn’t exist just makes people like us who want to stop this seem out of touch to the normal person who has concerns about immigration, which the election showed is a very large chunk of Americans and westerners in general.
These concerns should be addressed by showing the relative magnitude of the problem compared to benefits gained from immigration along with solutions for stagnating wages, not outright dismissal.
It puts downward pressure on wages
This is not the fault of immigrants. It’s the fault of billionaires exploiting one of the most vulnerable people in the country for profit. It only exists because of capitalist greed.
It’s the fault of billionaires
Agreed. Glad I can count on you not to vote Democrat or Republican ever again.
First of all, no, all illegal are not hired by billionaires, that a really stupid thing to think.
Second, Republicans are the ones who took healthcare from 17 million Americans to give tax cuts to billionaires. So take your “both sides” bullshit and shove it.
No, this one can’t solely be blamed on billionaires. They’re hired by all manner of private companies, the majority of which are not owned by billionaires.
How has immigration affected the average voter?
Tasty ethnic food. There are tasty tacos around, some good Pho, there was an Ethiopian place around here, and tabouli with BBQ.
The remaining Caribbean place around here is really disappointing and the pulled pork is dry, so there is that.
It’s not just ethnic food. It’s all food. Did your food come from a farm? An immigrant worked on that farm.
Fuck the taco vote might break elections if people realize
The average American eats tacos with pre shred cheddar and sour cream. And it’s not bad, I like some Americanized foods, I liked Taco Bell before it became more expensive than getting the real thing. Most haven’t had a Mexican taco.
For anyone here, who isn’t satisfied with “white people taco night” and wants something better, I found a wonderful woman who is sharing her cooking knowledge from her beautiful outdoor Mexican kitchen:
A few years ago, she posted a recipe for her Nana’s sopa de tortilla Sopa de Tortilla and it’s so good I’ve made it twice in the last few weeks.
I’ve been watching her cook for years, and I’ve learned a lot. Great recipes! You don’t need to know much Spanish to follow either!
Sounds like a good way to practice cooking Mexican food and Spanish at the same time, thanks!
How has immigration affected the average voter?
More competition on the job market, housing market and so on? Especially visible in big companies and big cities?
And immigrants famously will work longer hours for less, thus the capitalists are using them to keep wages low.
our shit wouldn’t be as cheap however and nothing is stopping people from building enough housing save the desire to keep prices artificially high. Lacking demand they could have just built less to maximize their gain. Given more demand yet they could have built more but little enough to again maximize gain. Seeing a pattern here?
nothing is stopping people from building enough housing save the desire to keep prices artificially high
I don’t know where you’re located. I live in a big European city. The space here is limited. The new housing is mostly being built outside of the city really, and it will take years for it to get the proper treatment (like buses, trams, metro line). The immigrants are directly competing with me for the in-city apartments. This could be different if you’re located in, IDK, Iceland, where the space is not really a problem, or in USA where you don’t have public services.
our shit wouldn’t be as cheap
Our cheap shit is imported from cheap countries though?
Given more demand yet they could have built more but little enough to again maximize gain
In 10 to 20 years. But the problem of competing for limited resources is now. Seeing a problem here?
Seeing a problem here?
Not really. This is not a new problem. This is not a surprise. This is the result of putting off change until it becomes a more serious issue.
Given the nature of politics, of people, problems will always be ignored until they become critical
The space here is limited… The immigrants are directly competing with me for the in-city apartments.
More desirable locations will be too expensive for many, or most, people to afford. As local economies change, and different locations become desirable, people will be priced out and forced to move. Good city planning decisions can slow this down to allow people to adapt, but trying to freeze things in place is futile.
It’s not really possible to set up city planning regulations so the population stays exactly the same. If a city were successful in making itself an undesirable place to live so that no one new would move there, it would probably start losing its population, which (like growth) forces its own hard planning decisions.
Thank you captain obvious. What’s your point in the discussion, as you havent made one in that comment.
Seems like a good reason for unions and worker protection. Let’s have a good highly visible corp prosecution as a lesson
Seems like a good reason for unions and worker protection
Yes. There’s not enough unions in the EU and the power is overwhelmingly favouring the employers (interestingly that is the effect of allowing mass immigration into the EU: more workers who didn’t unionise and were willing to work more hours for less money tends to weaker the worker class power; I have no idea how to give us more power short of literally eating the rich). I don’t even want to think how shit the worker situation is in the USA.
No, not at all. Most Americans aren’t being threatened by immigrants. There are a few places where the uber rich immigrants flock to, but people in Average America, Iowa aren’t competing with immigrants.
Immigrants create more jobs due to an increased need for services. Immigrants are a net positive to an area, and they can fill in skill gaps.
Capitalists can keep wages low by rigging the game via bribing politicians to reduce social programs. They don’t need immigrants to do that. They need immigrants as scapegoats. They need people to buy into their warped view of the world, and they need people to turn against each other, like you’re doing here.
Capitalists use sticks, live poverty, homelessness, and healthcare, to keep people inline and eating up their bullshit. Without the sticks, the capitalist have no power, and they know this.
I was thinking on this just the other day. Without immigration, and native people alike, we wouldn’t have such good food. How can’t you hate people with such good food!?
People hardly ever bring up how any company that knowingly hires illegal immigrants should be fined out of business. But of course it’s the workers that must face the consequences.
The explanation is racism.
- They are willing to work for less than a normal American living wage. This reduces the amount that an American can work for for the same job. Globalists love this.
- They bring and establish a different culture eroding a way of life that is considered American.
Those are two things I think someone might say about immigrants. Additionally, there’s general disdain for the poor and many immigrants come here to escape worse poverty.
3- housing and rents go up in every city with more migrants because it’s workers who just want to rent now right here at any cost compared to a city where people settle in owned houses.
4- they sent most of their earnings outside to their countries to help their families there compared to citizens who pay it all on their local economy. and if they were illegal, not even pay taxes while using and benefiting from most your services. However, the true leechers who pay no taxes are in fact the super wealthy.
In a broader picture again, it’s actually corporations and property owners who benifit the most from illegals or cheap migrant B-visa workers, and crowded cities and higher rents and housings. So ironically the rich are the ones who benefit from immegrants the most specially in areas with high local unemployments and low wages. Then they use the narrative that these dirty unassimilated immigrants who dont speak your language or share your culture are ruining your city to distract the blame from them.
In some instances, particularly in the American South and in some European cities, a large influx of immigrants has proven disruptive to local culture as well.
But as the son of a roofer, I can confirm, #1 has historically been an issue. My dad’s business, when he was still able to roof houses, was often undercut by illegal crews giving lower bids.
Of course the answer is a legit path to citizenship and resources to help people assimilate more easily and without fear, not Gestapo shit, but immigration, like abortion, is an issue that is purposely never resolved, and it never will be. This is a golden goose issue for Republicans, just like abortion is a golden goose issue for Democrats. They simply make too much money in donations and are able to grift all the public money they want in order to pretend it’s being solved, and therefore, have no real motivation to fix it.
just like abortion is a golden goose issue for Democrats.
Not anymore. That’s also not an equivalence. One side rails against illegal immigrants while hiring them at the same time. The other side wants to protect a woman’s right to choose. You don’t see how those are different?
Yes, immigrants drive down wages is the biggest issue. The second is if you bring in a large enough glut of 1 type of immigrant all at once (like refugees for a real world example) they can establish an insulated community and not actually join “the mixing pot.”
There are obviously a lot of positives and neutral points as well, but everything has a give and take. The biggest positive is that children are a pure drain on society but an immigrant doesn’t need schooling or rearing. They can simply begin working (for that lowered wage).
There is plenty of evidence that driving down wages is not true.
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/HHRG-118-JU01-20240111-SD013.pdf
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also, the simple fact that more people looking for somewhere to live means less accessibility to that housing if supply is fixed
When has the housing supply ever been fixed, though? It’s always growing, and it should always be driven by demand.
The supply is “fixed” by the people who already have a big pile of cookies. Fight them, not the dude trying for a better life for his kids
yep. housing hoarders disgust me
Illegals are KILLING People!
-Supporters of ICE!
I know you’re joking, but illegal immigrants do kill people, just at a lower rate than the general population.
A big part of the problem is that if you’re an illegal immigrant, then you have a huge incentive to keep your fucking head down and not be noticed.
So you don’t notice the vast majority whose only crime was illegally entering the country. Meanwhile, the ones who do commit crimes make national news because some people have an agenda in spreading that type of news.
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