FTA: “If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”
Because illegal immigrants do not use visas. So you would be hurting law-abiding people and encouraging circumventing the law - if you can't afford the visa anyway, the question of "should I just through the hoops to get legal visa or try illegal immigration" becomes moot.
> make them pay extra taxes
Why would they pay those taxes? They'd just work on black market and report zero income and apply for welfare. High tax burdens reliably breeds avoidance and lack of compliance, especially in population that is kinda on the sidelines of the law as it is, as it often happens with migrants. And of course it would also sell awfully in the press - imagine an article of how a migrant from Guatemala pays a higher tax rate taxes than a billionaire born in New Jersey - how that would look in next congressional debate?
> restrict their access to welfare benefits
You can do it, but then you'd get exactly what welfare benefits are created to remove - a large population of people who do not have access to basic services, and thus have high level of disease, crime, misery and human suffering. If you accept the idea that welfare benefits are necessary because we should not have too many people like that in our society, then denying people in the country these benefits because they were born in wrong place contradicts this idea. Gating the access to this system on immigration status contradicts the whole premise of having the welfare system. I don't think there's a logically consistent model of welfare state with open borders at all - unless we somehow postulate that welfare spending has a reasonably low upper bound, which I haven't seen proven anywhere.
> Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants,
Of course you could, but why charging lots of money for visa would be more effective in solving problems we have now than any other method that's been used?
> thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”
Big, sudden surges usually happen due to wars, famines, economic collapses and other such events, in which case I seriously doubt visa prices are going to change anything.
You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only), and just adjust the sales/tax yearly to balance the budget-- everyone pays taxes, no deductions are given, but GBI would guarantee people wouldn't live in poverty at all. It'd be easier to manage technically so we could dismantle welfare and handout programs as well as the IRS.
With current political and budget system, I don't see any path to this ever happening. Maybe in theory that could be a better solution (I don't know, it would need thorough analysis) but I don't see how it could happen in reality.
> You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only),
Again, same argument applies. If GBU is a benefit for society, there's no reason to gate it on citizenship - we'd be just limiting the benefit on irrelevant metric, it's like demanding to lower your own salary if your boss' last name begins with certain letter - it'd be irrational. If, however, it is not beneficial to society but is a wealth transfer which benefits one group while hurting another, because the former has more political clout - one should argue this should never be done at all, citizen or not.
Something like this could then be adopted as a global currency and have gbi paid out to all members monthly. Perhaps we could create a not-for-profit corp that creates small businesses where 100% of left over income goes back to consumers who use the store (think grocery) and workers who work in the store as a bonus.
Anything a company pays money for goes to consumption including: Wages, Power bill, Land, Buildings, Planes, Trains, Transportation of Goods.
Poor would be offset by guaranteed basic income and universal healthcare. GBI would basically be a negative income tax, the 4% is variable and can be raised/lowered yearly whether the country's in the black/red - but only 1-2 points per year w/ congress's approval. Also 4% was just a number I pulled out of ass, could be 7 or 8% instead.
I don't see how poor would suffer under this if they have a guaranteed 30-40k income if they don't work one day the entire year. Sure they might spend all of that back in food, tax, shelter, etc..but they have food, and shelter which they may not have had before.
The only stipulation on GBI would be you must have a residence to collect. (If you want to remain homeless and spend all cash on Meth, that won't work, you need to at least get housing).
I've heard of schemes that involve fully paying for GBI using ONLY land/resource taxes, but I think that wouldn't be enough to pay for things. But we don't need a military as big as we have, there's lots of places we can cut corners and spend less money.
WE need to explore our budget and use tech to lower costs across the board as much as possible and streamline things.
This would immediately make non-documented people and visitors with greencards pay a lot of taxes. It's their choice if they want to stay/pay or go and not-pay their share, but the republicans can stop whining about immigrants not paying their fair share if they pay 3 times the sales tax.
Maybe do some research before suggesting something like this.
Those who own homes/land/property will pay more because they're expenditures are more.
Example: You earn 70k per year, you get 30k for gbi. That's 100k. Of that, you spend 80% on housing, school, food, clothes, toys, w/e, and invest 20% for retirement.
Of that 80% you spend 5% on taxes via sales tax. So roughly $4,000 a year in taxes.
If you earned 30k, and didn't work at all i.e. 30k from gbi alone, and spent all of it, you'd have spent 1500 on taxes, but still be able to feed/clothe/house a family in at least some comfort.
I don't see how that makes life unbearable for everyone? If you're an immigrant who isn't a citizen yet, you'd pay a bit more, but that's the price of coming to America, deal w/ it. At least you'll never be deported, or have your family ripped away from you, etc...
This is a libertarian pipe-dream that will never happen in the current political climate. They envision free movement and no welfare/safety-net (for at least alien immigrants). Even if that is federal policy, states and cities will pick up the slack.
The rest? Just another way to end up with millions of undocumented/illegal immigrants (like we have currently with impossible standards to meet for legal immigration). Can't force someone to pay "extra taxes" if they are working under the table for slave wages.
No doubt The Economist could care less if migrants pay taxes, for them they pay their way solely by providing cheap labor to businesses.
Half of undocumented immigrants pay taxes.
Source: https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf
The total local, state, federal burden of all the benefits they receive, greatly outweighs the pitiful amount they pay in taxes. 2017 stats indicate $19B paid into the system, $135B in services taken out: a net $116B loss to America. https://www.scribd.com/document/359997156/Cost-Study-2017-We...
Even if you say that "FAIR is biased", and discount the numbers by 50%, you still have a negative impact of over $50B a year.
California, ALONE, spends over $30 billion a year on services for illegals.
$10.6 billion in paid taxes: according to your link "overall effective tax rate of 6.4 percent". Explain how that is fair, please...
People who come here legally and illegally are just like you and me, wanting the same things, to work, live, and provide a better future for their children. They are human beings.
But I get it... freedom and markets when it benefits you and exclusion and socialism when it doesn’t.
> People who come here legally and illegally are just like you and me, wanting the same things, to work, live, and provide a better future for their children. They are human beings.
That's great, but it still affects people already legally here who also want to "work, live, and provide a better future for their children". The H-1B program gets a lot of ire from these parts because it has a downward effect on salaries and job availability for US citizens in the tech sector. But I guess that's no problem when it's the same deal just for jobs none of us would ever consider.
Source - Every economists research that either does or does not come true from proposed changes in economic policy.
This is true if you define 'coyote' as anyone who transports an immigrant to their destination country. Most people would just call them 'airlines', just as immigrants used to arrive on 'ocean liners'.
>Increased demand for housing will cause costs to spike
This is only true in the presence of severe restrictions on supply. These exist in some, but not all, areas of the United States with high immigrant populations. http://www.nber.org/papers/w13071.pdf
>It's not too different from our world's current direction, except within a particular state, the absolute numbers of the wage class and the underclass would be much larger.
For a thought-provoking modest proposal to realize these potential gains and ensure they are captured by current working-class Americans, see the Posner-Weyl Sponsor an Immigrant plan. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/13/immigrati...
If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.
This is what the US does right now through the lottery system but it's just so restricted that no one in their right mind could call the US borders "open".
There are other periods of time that have been as good or better with a different political platform. In the 1950s (when America was “great”) the top tax rate was 90%.
Federal politics and the economy are linked, but not 1:1 and the net impact of changes to federal law often isn’t felt for years or decades (if at all).
50s was an anomaly with a 36% growth rate, like you said, because we were all that were left. The economy currently is very stable, diversified, and fast growing still for its size, some 70 years later.
https://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease...
I keep seeing these overly optimistic GDP growth numbers, but I can't find them.
Instead, since the 1970s, US thought leaders and business leaders of both parties long pursued similar trade policies that embraced deregulation and open markets, which allowed similar gains to be realized by US businesses operating in a globalized world (e.g. outsourcing, offshoring, integrated supply chains).
SV companies pay generously because dozens of companies flush with cash are all competing for the same pool of veterans of other companies. Any company that has less profit per employee (most small businesses) can scarcely afford to pay a premium for rank-and-file employees with domain experience; nor is there enough effortless mobility in specialty skilled manufacturing roles to make such escalating wages necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...
it would appear US is in similar leagues with Canada, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, etc, of having close to 0-1% in poverty. Check out the other countries in Asia or Africa if you really think America has it bad.
Something's clearly misaligned with the definition of poverty between your sources; you're differing by an order of magnitude
edit: strong lang.
If you look at the figures for net migration per 1000 inhabitants[1], the USA and Germany are pretty much the same for the period between 2007 and 2012: 15.94 per 1K and 15.54 per 1K respectively. For 2017, the USA sits at 3.9 (Canada 5.70).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
Not to discount your experience, i am sure you've been through a lot of paperwork (i know i sure have, and i'm yet to meet someone who enjoys immigration departments!) but the US is pretty damn tough if you are not a) wealthy and/or b) highly educated and in demand.
You can get an EB1 (greencard in 3 months if you qualify.
You can get an O/L/E visa in a few months same thing with H1b.
And you have way more ways to get in.
Also you need to make the proper comparison with EU not just cherry pick a few countries. I can cherry pick countries to where it's very hard (try Denmark for instance).
My claim was EU vs US again 11 million illegal immigrants living here and for a large part contributing to the economy that alone would never happen in the EU.
And you don't need 1Million for a EB1. It's a merrit based greencard (just like O1 visa is)
You can also work in any state the second you are in the US.
I think you got the wrong information here.
Not at all. I know a couple that tried to move to Canada after Trump got elected but were shocked to find out they'd have to deposit 250k USD with the Canadian government for 5 years in order to be considered for permanantly residency.
Not only that, the demand for people to move into the US is tremendous so the competition is obviously very steep compared to less desireable places.
edited: strong lang.
Sort by Net Migration Per 1,000 Inhabitants Australia 45.01 Canada 33.84 US 15.94
Increased demand for housing will cause costs to spike, which means that those most willing and able to pay larger amounts will live where they wish, and everyone else will be relegated to far outskirts, including nonimmigrants whose incomes fall further behind cost of living. In this scheme, generous profits will be made by landowners of high-demand locations, and shareholders of corporations who can take advantage of the influx of labor and the expanded customer base. It's not too different from our world's current direction, except within a particular state, the absolute numbers of the wage class and the underclass would be much larger.