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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.
Population decline has little to nothing to do with immigration. It’s just affordability. Anytime the lower and middle classes (most of the population) are doing well, people have more kids.
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.
Don’t forget that they stick to themselves and form parallel communities while also stealing our wives
Alas. Will no one spare one word of prayer for the cats and the dogs of the people that live there that the immigrants are also eating
Racism
Brace yourself for the mask-wearing lemmyites who are going to say “that’s too reductive! There are very real issues with how brown people over there have different and incompatible cultuuuures, we can’t just let annnnyone in, what will happen if they all rush in and replaaaaace us?”
I’ve been fucking dealing with weird lemmy nazis for days, someone must have left out a piece of meat so they started spawning.
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. Like the west is some shining beacon of taking good care of our most vulnerable people.
I have yet to see any Lemmy nazis, are they coming from any specific instances?
I’m not versed enough in the different instances, but I run into them holistically, particularly in any post or thread that brings up immigration. It’s not nearly as much as Reddit has, but they’re around, they keep masks on for a little longer than in other places but usually it slips after a while.
You can tell when they’re desperately trying to come up with a way to wedge their hate feelings through the door when they start “just asking questions” about how to integrate cultures and what to do about “too many people coming in.”
there aren’t any.
lemmy users just call anyone who disagrees with them slightly on any social or political issue a Nazi. especially if they argue that those issues are complex and multifaceted instead of being a black/white moral issue.
immigration is complex. what is the ‘correct’ volume and distribution of immigration to allow? most people don’t even attempt to go there because whatever answer you provide will get you called racist. should American immigration policy, for example, favor people from Latin America over people from southeast Asia? there might be good and clear reasons why… but if you dare to argue or explain those reasons you are going to be considered an anti-Asian racist. should certain groups based on wealth/income, religion, language skills, etc be given favorable status over others?
The current system has it’s winners and losers already. But even acknowledging that is not an issue that most commentators are willing to touch, because they will be pejoratively labeled for doing so.
When you get into the details of this it’s hard not to get dirty. Thus people only want to talk about it at a very high level where ‘immigration good’ or ‘immigration bad’ is the only discourse.
To be honest every issue is becoming like this on Lemmy. Either you parrot the emotionally satisfying far left narrative or you are the enemy. Don’t dare criticize the left from within, or point out complexities in issues. I prefer the left leaning bent of this place to the alternative, but I’m tired of the lack of subtle thought and intellectual honesty. If this is a place for teenagers to cut their teeth on political sentiment, fine, but I suppose I’ll eventually cycle out because that’s not what I came for.
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.
a big chunk of that bloc is first gen immigrants themselves.
all my 2nd gen immigrant friends have parents who hate new immigrants and support ICE type policies and are big Trump fans.
First gen immigrants are affected by new immigrants, they’re in direct competition with the new guys and many are quite happy to pull up the ladder.
If that was all that was going on, it would be pretty understandable for that subset.
What I don’t get are the white ones with first gen immigrant partners.
most of the immigrant women I have dated wanted a conservative white guy boyfriend. probably because they were looking for a guy like their dad.
I often give the benefit of the doubt towards minorities. My internal hope is that since they are a minority, they surely have experienced bigotry, reflected on it as victims, and rejected that spirit.
That mentality of mine has been completely shattered over the last couple years. The majority of the immigrants I have known have floored me with their bigotry towards so many others. It has made me curious: Are they attracted to that part of our culture? Is this the predominant spirit of the world? What the hell does it mean?
No. they are just people. everyone is like that.
the issue is you thought people were better than they are. they aren’t.
but we can’t make any progress until we are open about who and what we really are. the lefties and the righties are both in total denial about the complexity of the world and put forth this vague bullshit idealism about who and how people are suppose to be.
most the of the rich white enlightened liberal/leftie set are incredibly sexist, racist, and bigoted towards others who aren’t like themselves. their discourse and ideals are mostly about signally to each other they are part of the ‘good people’ and it’s all the ‘bad people’ who are those things. by forming and out-group you get to get to pretend you have ‘purged’ the ‘bad’ by projecting it onto ‘others’ who don’t share your views or lifestyle. but everyone does this. everyone hates some ‘other’ bad group of people in order to claim their group is ‘good’. every immigrant group thinks they are the ‘hard working’ group and the other are ‘lazy exploiters’.
the issue is you thought people were better than they are. they aren’t.
I am very cynical, but my hope is that we can collectively improve our situation. I pull my hair out when people keep playing their tribal games. All they have to do is reason it out.
people like it when collective improvement benefits people that look like them. they don’t when the people don’t look like them.
the scandanvian models works because of the lack of diveristy. it’s starting to break down due to the influx of immigration.
people are hardwired this way. it is incredibly difficult to change it.
Is it hardwired, or trained?
I have prejudices that are wrong. I know that they are wrong. I know the kind of futures that will never exist if I exercise them. I don’t know, if it’s nature or nurture.
hardwired and trained.
for someone to not be that way takes decades of specific training and a life of abundance. most people are never going to have that. most people don’t perceive their life as being abundant, even if it objectively is.
Before you judge too harshly, remember that they can’t physically vote and probably don’t know as much about politics. It is very easy to fall into right-wing pipeline under these conditons.
More importantly, them not being able to vote means they don’t effect you as much as some people want you to believe.
A lot of democrats blamed immigrants for the 2024 election results and there was a tiktok trend of reporting the unrelated immigrant neighbors to ICE.
A lot of democrats blamed immigrants for the 2024 election results
No Democrats blamed illegal immigrants, if that’s what you mean. That just did not happen because it makes no sense.
They DID blame the people who voted for Trump, even if they were from a community with a lot of immigration. Rightfully so.
Naturalized citizens can vote. First generations can vote, and children mostly align with their parents’ beliefs.
I am not anti-immigration. At all. I am against intolerance. I am against anyone who would abuse a country’s asylum system, because it will lead to end of such lifelines.
I’m becoming more curious about whether there are biases in the type of person who chooses to immigrate (excluding refugees) to the US.
If magas could read a post this long they might get it
Not a chance.
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.
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.
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.
“Fuck you, I’ve got mine”
That’s German and Irish immigrants to the US and their descendants being portrayed as doing the same to Chinese immigrants in 1870
As drawn by a German-American immigrant cartoonist, no less.
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.
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.
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.
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).
This is less of an issue in America than it is in Europe, and I think it comes down to religion. The immigrants to the United States are generally more likely to adjust and conform since American culture is highly syncretic, and refugees are more likely to be Christian and meld into the predominantly Christian Unites States.
European immigrants are more likely to be Muslim, which clashes with European customs, cultures, and ideals. This is why they form such tight, insular communities where they can control the communities customs and ideals. You see this in Muslim and Jewish communities in the United States as well but it is less pronounced.
it’s also true in both cases that after the third generation the insularity disappears, outside of extremist groups, like hasidics, etc. most children of who came to Germany in the 1970s are now more or less integrated and fully german because they have been there for generations. Just like Italians and Irish in America. I’m a third generation immigrant and i’m fully integrated, whereas my grandparents very much were not as integrated and saw themselves as irish/italian more than american.
but that takes 50+ years.
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
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.
fixed how? it’s been artificially restricted for 50+ years now, because people want values to go up.
those restrictions didn’t exist in the 1970s and prior.
In an ideal world it should. But in reality the demand can rapidly outpace the growth.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1c9138dc24064b2e8142ff156345a719
New York added 33,000 homes in 2024 and gave permits for 15,000 new ones but you still see extremely low vacancy rates and high demand outpacing these constructions.
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys-housing-supply-challenge/
Well that’s fair enough for the larger point, at least within NY. I guess I was mostly reacting to the notion of “fixed”, mathematically speaking.
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
There’s also the fact that whether or not the undocumented are illegally voting in national elections, states currently receive representation in Congress based on their total population, not citizen population. Which is a strong motivator for blue sanctuary states and cities to want open borders, and for conservatives to push for legal deportations. This is a power struggle.
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.
companies create jobs. creating jobs is political currency for representatives.
workers don’t create jobs, they take them.
We’re talking about companies hiring illegal immigrants, you’re aware of that right?
If you oppose illegal immigration, you should crack down on companies that hire them. Those companies create the incentive for them to come here.
those companies are the ones who donate to the politicians.
Not true. Workers that are good at what they do can increase demand for the company/product/service which creates jobs.
Just like a bad worker can kill hurt a companies reputation and hurt it’s business, a good worker can bring in business, and grow the reputation.
Theoretically, it decreases the value of labor, but there’s so many better solutions to that problem.
In a world where AI fervor is already tanking the cost of labor, I doubt you could even measure the impact of immigrants.
This is the part that’s especially amusing to me.
conservatives: “NOOOOO DEY TERK ER JERBS”
Meanwhile, the exact same conservatives: “Ooooooo, AI!”
And outsourcing
That really only applies if it’s difficult for the immigrants to become citizens (ie undocumented) or if their immigration status is tied to their employment (ie h1b) that artificially drive down the value of their labor. The current setup is basically indentured servitude with extra steps.
Theoretically. But. Not really true.
We know who devalues labor. It’s the companies that only pay the bare minimum wage cause it’s the law. Otherwise they wouldn’t.It’s the companies that pay under the table to desperate people so they can avoid paying them the legal amount and often commit wage theft and there is nothing undocumented people can do about it.
Exploitative businesses are the ones devaluing labor.
Sure, but if almost nobody will do the job for minimum wage except for immigrant workers, should those businesses be allowed to exploit those workers instead of paying the wage they would need to staff their businesses?
Even though the businesses are the “guilty ones” it seems more like a policy issue than a business one, as the business will always do the bare minimum it can get away with. Especially egregious with temporary foreign worker programs. Why have programs that essentially subsidize industries that just exploit minimum wage workers and depress wages? And now racist assholes have a scapegoat in the people accepting the bad deal instead of the people who allow it in the first place.
Who pays the politicians to keep minimum wage low and fines for hiring illegals low to non-existent ?
You are right, the laws are not in our favor.
Big business owns politicians and they get policies that benefit them.
