stuper1 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:29 pm
Here's a good example for you, Vinny, and actually probably the best example: immigration.
Who benefits from having high immigration to a country? And who loses?
The people who benefit are super rich business owners. They get lower labor costs because there is more supply of labor. At the same time they get more consumers to buy their products of toothpaste, toilet paper, etc.
The people who lose are the poor and middle class people who were in the country originally before the immigration happened, because their wages go down and plus they have to put up with living with a bunch of people from a foreign culture who have different ways of doing things. The rich people in their gated communities hardly notice the things that cause friction between people of different cultures because the rich are insulated from all that by their wealth.
I just finished reading Thomas Sowell's book "Migration and Cultures" which is an excellent book, highly recommended by me, discussing many of the major migrations of various peoples through history. One thing that stuck out to me is that many times it really didn't work out because of a clash of cultures. For example, Indian people migrated in large numbers to eastern Africa around 1900 and lived there for generations, but later got kicked out when the situation changed. Something similar happened in Malaysia, Indonesia, Fiji, and Guiana.
Here's another example: the Covid lockdowns. Who benefited from those? Well, let's see, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and some other large businesses that were exempt from the lockdowns. Who suffered: thousands or millions of small businesses that went bankrupt.
I assume you are referring to LEGAL immigrants?
So unless you are a descendent from an American Indian you have some immigrants in your background?
I have always described myself as a first generation and one-half since my father came from Italy as well as my mother's parents. That has biased me to hold immigrants in high esteem. My father came here around 1926, 1927 as part of a poor family at a time when in parts of the country Italians were looked upon as being no better than blacks and there were the severe immigration restrictions between the early 1920s until they were finally lifted in 1965. Under those conditions I have no idea why they let him and his family in.
I'd say that it is the immigrant who benefits the most. My father had a bitter attitude towards Italy. He said he was poor there and he would have remained poor if he had stayed there. As an immigrant to our country he achieved the American dream.
We all benefit from immigration as initially many of the lower skilled ones will take jobs that many Americans will not take.
We all further benefit from it when my father turned into the highly productive worker he was plus produced highly productive children like me and my sister.
I'd say all businesses benefit because they either get lower priced labor or labor that no one else will do. Plus they all have a larger customer base.
I grew up in Rhode Island and it was practically "Little Italy" where I grew up. I'd say that of the 2,000+ students that were in my three year high school that about half of them were thorough-bred, 100% Italians such as myself. But we had zero Italian culture, little Italian identify. Little doubt it was because their parents or grand parents came here like my father for the American Dream and we were, thus, brought up to be Americans and not Italian-Americans.
I went to Amazon to add to my list your Sowell book. Quite surprised to see that for a 25+ year old book it still maintains such a high price, even for a used version.
Your examples of who did or did not benefit from the lockdown is true. But, again, I don't believe that was the result of the concerted efforts of those big businesses and government to do it that way. It was just the way it happened. There was no grand plan as to how to handle the pandemic. Everyone was trying to figure out on a day-by-day basis how to best handle it.
