“I’m okay with racial prison camps if it makes us powerful” is the exact sort of moral bankruptcy to be expected from the people who defend this administration.
replyFalse equivalence. The claim was:
reply"the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
The rest of the world was bombed to pieces while the USA had an untouched industrial output.
replyThat’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....
replyWhether or not what you say is correct, it does not at all contradict GP’s two claims.
replyIt 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.
replyI think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
replyIf 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.
There was not any particular discontinuity in GDP per capita growth during the post WWII period compared to previous periods: https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/09/14/the-remarkable-s....
replyBombed to pieces by the USA, ironically enough.
replyWould you have preferred that the US military stay at home during WW2 to avoid bombing anyone? You know that Japan was killing something like a Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth of civilians every month?
replyI 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.
replyWe also had strong unions and income tax rates as high as 95% on the highest income brackets.
replyYeah we should also have very high income tax rates.
replyI believe that human flourishing is a better goal than state power relative to its rivals.
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replyMmmmhmmm. 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.
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