[learc83]

>What’s the evidence that it is beneficial in the long term?

This is the consensus view among economists. If you do some searching it's going to be hard to find anyone outside of far right ethno-state proponents who doesn't believe that long term immigration is a net benefit.

"Economic analysis finds little support for the view that inflows of foreign labor have reduced jobs or Americans’ wages. Economic theory predictions and the bulk of academic research confirms that wages are unaffected by immigration over the long-term and that the economic effects of immigration are mostly positive for natives and for the overall economy." [1]

>In the short term it’s very clearly negative when you take into account not just wages but increased pressure on housing and infrastructure.

This is not very clear. If you take it to the extreme, sure there is some amount of immigration could cause enough such a strain on housing supply and infrastructure that it would be a net detriment. We don't know what the number is, and there is no consensus view that we've come anywhere close to reaching it.

[1] http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-ef...

[sheepmullet]

> This is the consensus view among economists.

Economists are the modern day equivalent of seers reading tea leaves.

> who doesn't believe that long term immigration is a net benefit.

1) Well the first problem is they are lumping all long term immigration together.

Yet it’s clear that not all immigration is alike. For example:

“the estimated fiscal burden of immigration is five times higher for native residents of California than of New Jersey”

2) The second problem is the focus on wages instead of total economic gain:

“They find a small but positive effect, equal to about half a percentage point, on the average wages of native workers”

And they go on to state the key reason for the lack of wage decline is because native workers are pushed out of lower skilled jobs and go into jobs that immigrants lack the skills for.

They aren’t taking into account the additional costs (whether they be additional study, higher stress, lack of flexibility, etc) to the native born.

E.g. A half percentage point pay rise from a new job is a financial net negative if I have to go to college to get the new job.

3) The third and biggest problem is they give no indication that the kind of immigration the US has is sustainable.

For example can natives continue shifting to communication heavy and education heavy roles without limit?

And if they can’t the article makes it clear that immigration will likely result in wage decline:

“both studies find that earlier immigrants experienced wage declines, on average, of 4 to 7 percent” [from new immigrants competing for their jobs]

Edit: Worse still they don’t even compare low skilled immigrants to the next best alternative. It reeks of bias.

[intended]

No- economists are the people with compasses, when the question usually are “can you help find my keys.”

Econ models are good, but their pretty useless to normal people.

For example In this scenario the reason that economist say that immigration is a net positive, is because those immigrants also need

Food Water Clothes Shelter

So the addition of those people ends up increasing total demand.

Econ is brought up to win arguments, while policy is hidden away.

The fact is that wages will go down because automation is crushing it and firms now have the ability to set prices for the market.

Immigration is a convenient concept, but ultimately useless in diagnosing or dealing with the problem.

Problem is America has a lack of good jobs, humans are hard to retrain and most of your welfare and support systems have been systematically gutted.

[learc83]

>Economists are the modern day equivalent of seers reading tea leaves.

So the experts are useless because the data is just too complex to make accurate models, but the data isn't too complex for you to use to make accurate predictions?

Or are you saying that the expert consensus is wrong because it's a product of ideological bias, but your conclusions are correct because for some unknown reason you are free from bias?

[sheepmullet]

> but the data isn't too complex for you to use to make accurate predictions?

> but your conclusions are correct because for some unknown reason you are free from bias?

Who said my predictions would be better or free from bias? I also can’t read the tea leaves!

Instead since there is a great deal of uncertainty we should treat immigration as a risk management game.

Low skilled immigration can clearly have major costs to our society and from all available data provides a very limited upside.

And once you invite people into your country it is extraordinarily difficult and in many cases immoral to kick them out.

Basic risk management techniques tell us don’t take high risk low reward actions that you can’t back out of.

[learc83]

>Low skilled immigration can clearly have major costs to our society and from all available data provides a very limited upside.

I thought you couldn't read the tea leaves? But here you are doing just that.

>high risk low reward

You're the one saying it's high risk low reward. That requires you to do a bit of prognosticating, and if you're predictions are admittedly know better then why should we trust you over the majority of economists?

America has been accepting high rates of non-merit based immigrants for our entire history. The majority of experts say that this has been beneficial. Why should we change the status quo now based on your unsupported and by your own admission, unsupportable predictions?

[sheepmullet]

> But here you are doing just that.

No I’m not. I’m talking about a possible outcome. I’m not assigning a likelihood to that outcome.

In theory there is some overlap in that I’m saying the odds are not so ridiculous that they can be dismissed out of hand.

> why should we trust you over the majority of economists?

I think you are misrepresenting the majority economic view which as far as I can tell is “more likely positive than not”.

What kind of guarantee do you think economists are offering?

> America has been accepting high rates of non-merit based immigrants for our entire history.

America is a dynamic system.

What would have happened if the Irish who couldn’t get jobs here went on welfare instead of going home?

Could you guarantee the same outcome?

The truth is in the real world lots of things are fine until suddenly they aren’t anymore.

> Why should we change the status quo now

I’m suggesting we apply basic risk management techniques.

The same techniques you would apply on a software project.

The same techniques doctors apply when recommending treatment options. Etc

I’m saying let’s apply a best practice used in medicine, law, engineering, and finance to government policy.

Why do you take issue with that?

[learc83]

>No I’m not. I’m talking about a possible outcome. I’m not assigning a likelihood to that outcome.

With no likelihood, this is completely pointless. You don't know the odds of any outcome, you're just arbitrarily deciding "high risk low reward".

I can bring up possible outcomes as well. Here's one: We don't know what will happen if population growth reverses. The native born American birth rate is below replacement, so without substantial immigration, our population will begin to quickly decline. We don't know how that will affect our economy, but it will likely cause massive damage even if we reverse our immigration policies once we are aware of the damage.

You don't get to arbitrarily decide what the inputs are to the cost benefit analysis and then declare that you're "just applying basic risk management techniques".

I've outlined a possible negative outcome to severely restricting immigration, you've outlined a possible negative outcome to staying with the status quo.

The only way to know which is more likely is to create models and predictions, which you think is futile, but economists tend to agree that my outcome is more likely than yours.

How do you feel about other issues with unknown outcomes? The clathrate gun hypothesis? AI taking over and killing us all?

Should we ban all software development just to be safe....just until we’re sure? Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s too late to go back. It’s just basic risk management.

Risk management is useless if you insist that all predictions are just reading tea leaves and there is no way to know which outcome is more likely.