Comment by saimiam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saimiam | Hacker News Reader

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(Not an economist. Current h1b visa holder about to leave the US to grow my company in India.)

A country whose indigenous population growth is stagnating, whose indigenous population does currently not pick up all available jobs, whose economy is 6x as big as Canada and Australia combined is choosing to turn away immigrants.

From a purely numerical standpoint, an 18T dollar economy built by 330M individuals will start to become unstable if the population starts falling and aging. This is a distinct possibility when you only invite highly educated, skilled immigrants since education negatively correlates to family sizes. Falling population will be another reason to push for more automation (see Japan) leading to wage stagnation.

America, be careful what you wish for. Read this demographic report. It's eye opening. Childbirth rates are 1.82. If you bring in Nobel prize winners, you'll get brainy people who will not beget brainy kids.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Sta...

America isn't turning away Nobel Prize winners. This system is open to those who are educated and/or skilled. It's difficult for those who aren't.

Many countries have similar immigration standards. It's only when America does it that people get angry. It's quite difficult for skilled workers to get visas to the EU. Far harder than it is for Europeans to move to America.

I can't speak for most of the EU, but I know that for the UK, it's a lot of paperwork, but overall not difficult to get a visa if you have a job offer from a UK employer and they've sponsored visas before.

And while not a part of the EU, it's quite straightforward to get a visa for Norway if you have a job offer in IT or other professional fields, with the major exception being healthcare, where it can be difficult to get your credentials recognized, and you have to pass an exam showing proficiency in Norwegian.

Nobel prize winners on down, the more educated you are, the less likely you are to have children. The fewer children you have, the less likely it is that your population levels will stay stable and not decline. A declining population will lead to stressed in the the economy because there will be fewer buyers, fewer producers, fewer young people and so on.

I for one, am not angry that America is debating this policy. They are entitled to it. I'm adding my voice to the debate with points which favor a liberal, come-one-come-all immigration policy.

The fact educated people aren't having children is a global phenomenon. The US relying on poor, undereducated immigrants is a temporary solution for what is becoming a bigger problem by the day as more and more countries become developed.

We need to start wondering why educated people aren't reproducing and work to fix that, instead of hoping there will forever be at least one impoverished country to do the reproducing for us.

I don't think you realize the unfeasibility of you're suggesting. You're asking for

1. 15-20% of the world which have higher education degrees to have enough kids to carry the burden of the remaining 80-85%

2. You're also asking that same 15-20% of the educated world to voluntarily have more children with the knowledge that some of them will have to do less than salubrious work.

Would you take on such a burden yourself?

Developed countries as a whole have dropping birth rates. Europe, America, and East Asia are facing an impending crisis because their birth rates are dropping so fast.

The current solution is "don't worry just bring in poor people." The problem is as the countries those immigrants come from develop, not only do the birth rates of those countries drop, but those people have less reason to migrate since their home is good enough. It's why Americans don't emigrate. It's why Japanese emigration dropped off a cliff.

Loose immigration is a bandage and people who think otherwise don't realize the long term unfeasibility of what they're suggesting. Maintaining local birth rates is going to be a colossal problem 50 years from now, and immigration to Western countries will be less of a solution as Asian/African economies grow and become more desirable places to live.

And it seems you're trying to make it sound like I was saying that the highly educated need to reproduce more than anyone else. That isn't at all what I'm saying. The problem is developed countries as a whole have falling birth rates. We need to find a solution to the whole educated population=dropping population problem and find out how to stabilize it.

> Maintaining local birth rates is going to be a colossal problem 50 years from now

Evolution and natural selection would solve that problem: children of people who have more kids - are more likely to have kids themselves.

>It's only when America does it that people get angry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

> ...whose indigenous population does currently not pick up all available jobs

Aren't U.S. companies responsible for retraining workers to meet their needs? Are U.S. companies entitled to business models that aren't supported by U.S. demographics?

The idea that employers should just import workers doesn't help underemployed citizens. And it doesn't improve wages of employed citizens.

Fruit picking (which the indigenous population doesn't want to do) is one such business model. Nothing is more nationalistic than living off the land of that nation and that is something native born Americans don't want to do.

You can't train away reluctance.

You can pay better.

You can do a lot of things including eating ONLY lab grown food but will you do it or not is the question.

If natives don't want to pick the fruit (ignoring the cost question) then the fruit just doesn't get picked? Perhaps fruit growing in USA is simply not a viable business, importing underpaid laborers (frequently illegally) is not the correct solution to this non-problem.

A direct outcome of such a choice will be that biodiversity dies out. If produce in America is expensive to produce, your solution will let it go extinct. Extending this train of thought, as different areas of the world become wealthy, their flora will succumb to market pressures of the type you're envisioning.

In the end, everyone will be eating foods from the least developed area today.

I'm pretty certain you wouldn't want this outcome.

(Edit1 for clarity.)

Biodiversity is already dead my friend. Corn and Soy absolutely eclipse other crops in USA because they are the most profitable to produce.

I'm also pretty sure we are talking about different things here, you seem to be speaking of the natural flora while I am speaking of the agricultural uses. I don't understand your point.

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