It's a really dumb issue but how many?
What and why do yo imagine it would be a race to the bottom? That is not intuitive to me.
For starters - if people shop around for whatever jurisdiction gives them the best deal for their particular circumstances, then those who require government-funded services (the sick, the disabled, the elderly) will gravitate towards places with higher welfare spending, while those who are young and fit and potentially high-earning will go someplace else (with low taxes). That's not a sustainable situation. There's a reason why state regulation of labour competition developed (and was fought for) in the first place. Obviously, as a libertarian (which you clearly are) you don't support any kind of redistribution in the first place, but ultimately completely open borders (in the absence of a world government) makes any such redistribution untenable.
Same for things like minimum wage or health & safety and labour regulations - different countries will have a huge incentive to undercut each other.
There's also the point that people are not rootless, mobile units of labour, they are social creatures. Not everybody is infinitely mobile, and without any kind of borders those with weaker ties can undercut those who are less able to change country. One gripe I have with the EU is that those who are tied to the UK, and who have to think long-term in terms of UK costs of housing and pensions and supporting children, can find themselves competing for work with those, temporarily resident, from places where all those things are much cheaper. The only way to truly compete on a level playing field would be to relocate your children to Warsaw and plan your retirement in Sofia. I don't see it's fair to expect people to do that.
In general the EU gets into trouble by only going half-way - e.g. common currency with no fiscal transfers.
Most of that problem goes away if considering only traditional, permanent, immigration, especially if it's not at relentlessly high levels. I think that's a different thing and perfectly manageable. But if you have constant churn, with an endless flux of workers coming-and-going and undecutting those here, I don't think that is good. Transience makes it hard to build a stable society. I'm jokingly inclined to say anyone can come here, but they can't leave again.
The labour market is not a free market, there's a huge asymmetry between labour and capital in terms of power and information, so some external regulation is required. With very high levels of immigration that disparity becomes more glaring.
The other thing is, with regard to the US, that country has such a low population density to start with that part of me doesn't see why the current occupants should get to keep such large proportion of the world's surface to themselves just because they got there earlier (they weren't even first, after all). Americans didn't create that land.
The whole issue seems to lead to a choice between two unpaltable sides - neo-liberalism and it's ever-increasing inequality, or ein-volk fascist reaction. I find it very depressing.
That seems strange. Canada, Russia, Australia all have lower population densities when compared to the US. Why is population density a valuable metric?
So...send all our illegal immigrants to Russia...great idea!
You picked Russia knowing that Australia must be the penile colony...
And while Australia might have started as a penal colony...I don't think they can compare to the Soviet gulags...
So after 10 years 20% or more of a nations population would be immigrants?I think around 1-2% of total existing population of immigration would make sense , so, somewhere between 3-6 million or so.
So after 10 years 20% or more of a nations population would be immigrants?
We hit 20% in 2011. Country seems to be doing ok.
So after 10 years 20% or more of a nations population would be immigrants?
Liberalism will cause inequality and at the same time raise the standard of living at the bottom more than equality would. So for that part, I'm good with inequality as a way to help the poor.
Dude Canada is a socialist shit hole. People have health care, the streets are clean, and there is tons of ethnic food, and the tax system is progressive. It is just horrific.
Our neighbors behind us are refugees from Russia. There was a wave of them that came over some years back. They have zero interest in being Americans. They home school their children and only speak to them in Russian. The father blasts Russian news over a loud speaker in the back yard, where everyone seems to spend all their time. These people do not work and are home all the time. We have tried to engage them and so have other neighbors. They have no interest in communicating with anyone, other than themselves and their Russian friends who come over, from time to time. And, we all wonder who is paying their bills? I want to see people come in who want to be Americans, not those who want to colonize and act like they are a separate country, among themselves.
You do understand what a refugee is, don't you? Someone who seeks refuge from something? Something sufficiently horrible (which in all likelihood was a controlling part of the society they lived in, making them unlikely to easily trust a new society, let alone one that is utterly foreign to them) that they're unlikely to be the kind of person who takes something utterly insignificant like leaving behind everything they've ever known out of absolute necessity and act like it's water off a duck's back?
You do understand that immigrants and refugees are often conflated into one group of jobs/benefits stealing foreigners that the dregs of society are trained / train themselves to hate?
This is the group of people you expect to integrate completely and be happy little Americans?
So after 10 years 20% or more of a nations population would be immigrants?
They've been here for over 12 years. He's an asshole. He has zero respect for the neighbors and is always out hammering things, sawing things, listening to loud music, or working on a car, at like 2 am. When we've tried to talk to any of them, they just look the other way and keep walking. Again, I ask, who is paying their way? Just because you're a refugee, you shouldn't be an asshole and live off government assistance. His brother got busted for running a car chop shop, then again for stealing a few Honda cars, a few years back.
The hell? I see your non-sequitor, and raise you a contradiction.
Dude Canada is a socialist shit hole. People have health care, the streets are clean, and there is tons of ethnic food, and the tax system is progressive. It is just horrific.
Legal immigration is a great thing in that, we get to choose, vs. illegal invaders. I'm all for it. Some of the best surgeons, as an example come from India. I'd like to see more emphasis on those kinds of people, rather than the ones who come here to live off the system and don't want to assimilate.
Our neighbors behind us are refugees from Russia. There was a wave of them that came over some years back. They have zero interest in being Americans. They home school their children and only speak to them in Russian. The father blasts Russian news over a loud speaker in the back yard, where everyone seems to spend all their time. These people do not work and are home all the time. We have tried to engage them and so have other neighbors. They have no interest in communicating with anyone, other than themselves and their Russian friends who come over, from time to time. And, we all wonder who is paying their bills? I want to see people come in who want to be Americans, not those who want to colonize and act like they are a separate country, among themselves.
5 Million a year is far too many. 1 million seems like a better number to me.
So your worry is that those young people will move away from the old sick people and thus the taxes they would pay would move away too leaving the old people unfunded so you cant allow people to move freely.
I will ask another question, which is there any amount of this you are okay with? Right now any US citizen can move from one state to another freely, and, while there is lots of federal taxes to pay for those people, the incentive you are talking about is still there.
So you would rather people not have the ability to compete with wealthy people to protect the wealthy way of life? I don't mean that as a jab, but that seems to be your position stated from the other side.
If standard of living goes up for everyone, who cares about wages?
You say this as if free markets are mutually exclusive to situations where power is not distributed evenly. Can you explain that?
That seems strange. Canada, Russia, Australia all have lower population densities when compared to the US. Why is population density a valuable metric?
Liberalism will cause inequality and at the same time raise the standard of living at the bottom more than equality would. So for that part, I'm good with inequality as a way to help the poor.
Not the same thing if it is within the same country with a single government. Besides, I don't regard the US as a model to follow in any respect. That some point to the US as some supposed model for the EU just makes me more skeptical about the EU.
That doesn't address the point I made, which is that it's not a level playing field because people have different roots and circumstances. It also presumes this is the only way to improve the lot of the potential migrants, that it _has_ to be at the expense of those only slightly better off than themselves. Under no circumstances should it be those like yourself who have to pay the price for that, of course.
And I don't think the people I am talking about are 'wealthy'. Nor are they in any way responsible for the economic condition of the rest of the EU. Personally I would say it's a different case for migrants from countries the UK actually exploited. I'm in favour of liberal migration laws for those countries, because there's a real debt there, and for accepting refugees because it's the moral thing to do.
It's a bit tiresome to hear someone who is clearly a professional-class affluent white American referring to poorer working class communities wanting to have some sort of stable life as 'protecting the wealthy way of life'. That's really quite revolting, in fact. The wealthy way of life is what _you_ have. I don't see you being in any great hurry to give it up.
That's what annoys me about this argument. Even while I would favor liberal immigration laws, it's so often the rich in the rich countries who are quick to tell the poor in the rich countries that they have to make the sacrifice for the benefit of the poor in the poor countries,...and it's just an unfortunate side-effect that the process also benefits the rich in the rich countries. It reeks of bad-faith, and it seems to breed a disastrous reaction.
But that's a big 'if'. That's kind of the point. It isn't going up for everyone.
Don't know what you are trying to say. Your argument - which appears to be that no state regulation is needed, the labor market will find its own equilibrium - depends on the idea that the labour market is a free market. It isn't.
Because land is a source of value. Not all the US's wealth comes from it's labour. Just natural justice suggests that, as Locke said, God gave the land to all mankind in common. Canada is indeed in the same boat.
However, that's just my personal gripe, more a personal resentment than any political principle, as this country is very cramped and housing consequently is very very expensive. Seems to me the US has even less reason to moan about incomers than other wealthy countries. You can fit loads of them in without even noticing.
Seems rather simplistic. It doesn't seem to be helping all of the poor, not within the West. I suspect its going to get worse.