> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
> How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.
The U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
That’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
It contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
I think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
I would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
Mmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
>And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
We were able to make progress on those fronts in the 1960s because we had a culturally homogenized population after decades of immigration restriction.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
White people are a global minority at ~7%. "Minorities™" have their own countries where they are majorities. If they don't want to be Minorities™, they can stay home.
No more than they like white people. The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least. Except white people. Who've been conditioned to get rid of their in-group bias. If HN supported images, I could show you the charts.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
> The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least.
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
1) not all minorities have their own countries. Examples today would include the Tamagzight people in North Africa and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey. Other examples could include Christians in the Middle East (Lebannon comes to mind, but I think there are other countries as well), Uighurs in China, or even people living in a place like Iran that is a religious theocracy who want more freedom.
2) in particular, for the case of the US, there has been, since the founding of the country, a large population of African-Americans who don't really have a home country anymore, and don't really have much of a choice but to be American, because, having lived there for hundreds of years at this point, that is the only country they know.
3) I do believe that religious tolerance, and tolerance in general, pays off in the long run. Many early American colonies were founded by people seeking greater religious freedom - Pennsylvannia, founded by a Quaker, Plymouth was founded by Pilgrims who rejected the conventional dogma of the Church of England at the time. More recently, the large number of scientists and engineers fleeing the Nazis in Europe during the early-mid 20th century did have a large impact on American industry, in fact I linked Andrew Grove's wikipedia page in another post on this thread as an example.
That doesn't follow. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the effect of nominal wage stickiness: you're not constantly renegotiating your rate, so when there's fluctuations in relative value, it matters what unit the original number is denominated in. Compare with the case of a US expat being paid a steady salary in USD and converting to the local currency to make purchases, if you want an example with a similar mechanic but very different intuitive feel and practicalities.
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
You basically nailed it. USD crashed in the 1970s after the Nixon shock, and is basically a shambling corpse losing 3-8% of its value every single year while BTC is 600x the value of a 1913 dollar... and trending up: https://i.imgur.com/PJT01T8.png
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?