> I struggle to see how your idea would be better for any Americans
A rising tide (growing economy) lifts all boats. Think of all the services that would need to expand -- markets, restaurants, hair salons, etc.
Furthermore, immigrants contribute more to the tax base than citizens because they pay the same income taxes without getting all the deductions, they pay sales taxes and other taxes, and do not get the same benefits.
It's well established that an immigrant with a job is a net contributor to both the economy and the tax base.
Do this thought experiment -- so many immigrants come to the US and contribute so much to the tax base that there is enough to pay every US citizen $75,000 a year in UBI and provide universal healthcare for citizens. Now you can do whatever you want, work or not, it doesn't matter.
You are proposing a huge, non-citizen working class, who's labor is taxed to support citizens? That is not what I was expecting. Yes, that may be good for citizens.
So a thought experiment for you. Can you find any historical precedence where these two-tier systems were implemented. And how did that work out?
The largest example would be undocumented immigrants and it seems fairly mediocre. A large portion of the country resents them, there's large demographic/cultural changes, another portion of country/political class wants to provide citizenship/welfare(voiding the GP's calculus), racial/cultural tensions are still issue.
Well heeled thinktanks can continue to try and bamboozle people but after watching every contracting crew in my area become 99% low paid latino immigrant I have no reason to want the same thing to happen to software development when it's one of the few remaining paths to a nice middle class life. I guess I'm supposed to retrain as an attorney or something right?
You are both correct. Immigration does increase GDP, and wages are also stagnant. The problem is that the GDP gains created by both immigrants and native born workers have concentrated in the holdings of the capitalist class (to which even many upper middle class Americans belong in varying degrees), because of low taxes and asset price inflation.
As a result, public investment funded via taxes has moved to deficit spending and sporadic and selective philanthropy, exacerbating both the inequality of wealth and opportunity.
> A rising tide (growing economy) lifts all boats.
Funny, most Americans who aren't working for FAANG would absolutely disagree with you here. It's almost as cliche as the "wealth trickles down" or supply side economics.
Maybe that's just cause I'm old enough to have seen these bullshit statements evolve.
The "rising tides" lie started in the 80's and 90's and was constantly used by our leaders and the media to ensure the blue collar workers who were being devastated by offshoring and the beginning of a huge surge in immigration. Don't worry guys - even though all your factories are being dismantled and reassembled in S. China and Mexico, the gains will be spread around for everyone. And, something something retraining...
By the 2000's, enough blue collar workers, especially in the Rust Belt, had never seen any improvements, so the lie changed. It was now, "You need to get an education". I think if you're old enough here, you should remember that during GW Bush and into Obama's presidencies, that was combined with "Some of these jobs just aren't coming back..." which was appended because our leaders knew that wages weren't rising enough in the third world to ever bring the manufacturing back - not when the system now depended on a permanent devalued Chinese Yuan, Mexican Peso, etc.
So now we get to somewhere around Obama's times, during the Great Recession, when tens of millions were already unemployed and now almost NO college grads were getting offers. That was when the game was upped: "Did you idiots think we were talking about any degree? You need to get one of those STEM degrees. Haha, underwater basket weaving ain't gonna help you", cried the Boomers at the WSJ and Cato Institute. That was after college costs had been rising exponentially for a decade, so now those non-STEM majors were fked. Oh well.
But the truth is that most STEM majors aren't even having an easy time in most areas outside SV and during bubbles. Do you think the average EE or Chemistry major is getting a dozen offers in the labs when they're also filled up with hundreds of thousands of foreign students on Opt visas and who don't have to pay payroll taxes (neither their employer)? CS isn't any better: Go on to https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/ and you'll find post after post with decent CS grads giving up after applying for 12 months without getting a single call back. We have recruiters here that tell us they get 1000 applications for every job, so this isn't surprising.
The whole H1B system should be shut down, all those who are not being paid minimum $250K given 1 month to leave for each year they've been here. Those who are get a Green Card. That $250K is tied to housing costs in each city, too. They go up, so does the minimum.
Shut off the L1 and Student OPT programs completely, too, and give our burdened students a chance at a decent job. Better than them joining Antifa and burning down shit.
Let's dare these billionaire executives to either start spreading the wealth around to the whole country which gave them their opportunity, or they move themselves, their families, and their companies to the third world where they seem to find most of their workforce nowadays.
Then Silicon Valley might be actually forced to hire "diverse" black, hispanic, etc. Americans instead of giving it lip service while employing 70% non-diverse Brahmins from India.
A rising tide (growing economy) lifts all boats. Think of all the services that would need to expand -- markets, restaurants, hair salons, etc.
Furthermore, immigrants contribute more to the tax base than citizens because they pay the same income taxes without getting all the deductions, they pay sales taxes and other taxes, and do not get the same benefits.
It's well established that an immigrant with a job is a net contributor to both the economy and the tax base.
Do this thought experiment -- so many immigrants come to the US and contribute so much to the tax base that there is enough to pay every US citizen $75,000 a year in UBI and provide universal healthcare for citizens. Now you can do whatever you want, work or not, it doesn't matter.
That's why it's good for citizens.