[vkou]

Let me flip it around for you.

Would the country benefit if skilled young people started fleeing it? People that you've invested decades of labour and education into?

Surely, this would be great news for the ones who remained. Why shouldn't we pursue policies that result in just that?

---

If net emigration of that demographic wouldn't be a net benefit, why do you think the reverse is a net harm?

[Saline9515]

A democratic State is supposed to work in the interests of all of its citizens. Degrading the economic environment to lead young graduates to "flee" is clearly against this mandate.

The strategy that you mention is however used, with success by countries that are either dictatorships (e.g Algeria) or that have too many men, due to archaic sexist traditions of aborting females (e.g India). Maybe you'd prefer that the USA become more like those two examples?

[donkeybeer]

You failed to understand a warning vs an endorsement.

[amanaplanacanal]

Some folks are basically against all immigration, not matter how you frame it.

Which seems weird to me as an American. All of our ancestors were immigrants, immigration is what made the US what it is. It feels like they want to turn the US into something completely unamerican.

[Saline9515]

The framing is weasely. Saying that black is bad does mean that white is good. If you need such argumentation to "prove" a point, maybe you are wrong from the start.

[Balinares]

Strong disagreement -- your point sounds more weasely to me, to be honest. The situation as described is zero-sum; a talented youth leaving place A in favor of place B leaves the same amount of talented youth in the overall picture. If their departure is detrimental to place A, then the value that goes missing in that place does not vanish, it ends up in place B.

So, the point stands. If talented youth left the USA in significant numbers, would that be detrimental or beneficial to the USA? And you can feel either way about the answer there; however, you then can't have it different for talented youth leaving their own current home to bring their talent to the USA. Not in good faith anyway.

[Saline9515]

The problem here is that you allude to a vague definition of what is good - "the USA" is an abstract idea.

Is it the people living in the USA? The citizens? The State? The companies? The US stock market? A benefit for companies can be a big problem for citizens - environment, or privacy come easily to mind.

It is also context-dependent: is there a real unsatisfied need for skilled professionals in the sector that affects everyone in society (e.g in healthcare)?

Otherwise the added workers will just push down the wages for the other workers - but companies and investors may benefit, true. However, should a State policy be decided for the interest of companies against the citizens? Why is there even a need to vote then?

So yeah, oversimplifying a situation and then implying that if A is bad B should be true is sophistic, sorry. I could do the same, and ask if skilled immigration is good, why not remove quotas and let 3 million Indian ninja/x100 software engineers in per year.

If not, how much is the right quota? How do you define it? And you're back at the start.

[vkou]

> The problem here is that you allude to a vague definition of what is good - "the USA" is an abstract idea.

> Is it the people living in the USA? The citizens? The State? The companies? The US stock market?

Exactly! You're understanding the thrust of my argument, and the main problem of the dichotomy I've presented (net immigration or net emigration of skilled young people, and whether it is good).

It's a question of values, and what you're optimizing for.

> but companies and investors may benefit, true.

And consumers. You've forgotten consumers. Most especially the unproductive class of consumers that does not work - retirees are prominent in this, but there are others.

> However, should a State policy be decided for the interest of companies against the citizens?

Should it be decided for the interest of investors + consumers against current workers?

That's the main thrust of this question. For its entire history, the prevailing values of the United States overwhelmingly bias towards the welfare and prosperity of the first 2 groups at the expense of the third.

Supposing that you believe that we should bias towards the interests of current workers, why are you concerned about immigration, when you should be concerned about AI. Computers on aggregate, will do more work than those 80,000 immigrants/year, while demanding less pay.

If you're looking to optimize the welfare of workers, at the expense of investors and consumers, that's a perfectly reasonable set of values to have. But in that case, you shouldn't be fighting like mad against immigration - you should be fighting like mad against AI automation, because that's a far bigger, far more impactful threat to the former.

If worker welfare is the goal, why doesn't every LLM person-seat-subscription come with a $100,000 head tax? Why are we allowing Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, etc, spin up millions of instances of robot slaves, to take away our work?

If national wealth is the goal, then we should be pursuing both.