I wonder what the numbers look like without stocks. On that front, the cognitive dissonance is kind of interesting. On one hand, people say that Elon Musk has 700 billion dollars and we should tax it to pay for free healthcare. On the other hand, people say that Tesla isn’t worth that much, and Elon didn’t create much value.
Like, both of those things can’t be true. If it’s fake money, why do we care that some people have a ton of it? If Tesla is only worth as much as GM, Musk’s share of it is only worth $11 billion, not $200 billion+. Even if you confiscate that it’ll run the federal government for less than a day.
The United States of America was created by British settlers who displaced the American Indians and created a new nation built on English language, law, and culture, and out of ideas that had been floating around during the English Civil War. In the 20th century we came up with these feel-good narratives about immigrants to help assimilate the massive number of immigrants that we had taken in during the late 19th and early 20th century. But we did that at the same time as we severely restricted immigration under the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act.
And even though British Americans long ago became a minority--the single largest ethnic group is Germans--there is shockingly little influence from any other group in America's core political, legal, and civic institutions. Our constitution and laws have more ideas from ancient Rome and Greece than from all contemporary foreign cultures combined. The Ivy League schools that still dominate our bureaucratic and professional class were founded by British Americans as copies of Oxford/Cambridge. Silicon Valley arose around Stanford University (Stanford being an English surname) and a U.S. military that at the time was still dominated by British Americans. Wall Street is a direct descendant of London's financial sector, though it has some influence from New York's history as a Dutch city.
That's the reason the United States is economically, politically, and culturally more similar to Australia than to Mexico, despite being on the opposite side of the planet from Australia and diverging politically 250 years ago. To the extent the U.S. is an "immigrant nation," that is only in the sense that many immigrants and their descendants happen to live here. But those immigrants are governed and organized by the (now nearly dead) hand of the Anglo-Protestants, through their law, norms, principles, and institutions.
The military is German, not British. Eisenhower, Nimitz, Oppenheimer. Operation Paperclip. The maneuver tactics you see in Band of Brothers were copied from the Prussians — that is going back to the 1870s. Patton’s speech to the Third Army is the least British speech imaginable; if Rudyard Kipling heard it then he would have exploded. USMC has a web page basically apologizing for being so German: https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/why-the-german-example/
It's so baffling to see you on this site consistently implying that Italians, Germans, or $WHOEVER are somehow worse Americans. Because if that were true, then you'd also have to acknowledge that you and I are worse Americans, which I don't think you believe.
And in general, your obsession with of the British is strange to me, because as you note, most Americans are not British and it's been that way for most of American history. Of course, there have been many great British Americans. But if we're weirdly keeping score, it's seems obvious that there would be a larger number of great Americans who weren't British?
For immigration policy, the issue is the aggregate cultural, political, and social impact of large groups of immigrants. It has nothing to do with individuals.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, reflects the impact of mass German immigration. Little Bangladesh in Queens reflects the impact of mass immigration from my country, Bangladesh. Would I rather live in a country where the government, institutions, etc., were like Little Bangladesh, or like Cedar Rapids? That’s not even a serious question. My fear about immigration is that, over time, the country will become more like Little Bangladesh and less like Cedar Rapids.
Most Americans aren’t British, but most Americans do carry on British culture and norms to varying degrees. If American soil really was magic, and you could take 100,000 Bangladeshis and they’d become cultural New England Puritans instantly, I’d be in favor of open borders.
Being “productive in our economy” shouldn’t be the test. People are hardworking and productive all over the world. People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh work really fucking hard. That’s not what makes America different from Bangladesh.
The test should be, if we put the immigrants on an empty plain, could they recreate Iowa or Massachusetts? I.e. a bottom-up democracy characterized by self-government, rule of law, weak extended family ties and strong civic institutions. Because if they couldn’t recreate those things they can’t maintain America. Instead, what’ll happen (and is happening) will be a slow reversion to the global mean.
As we have seen time and time again with democracy experiments in the third world, these things are rare innovations and can’t be conveyed to other cultures just by writing government structures and laws down on paper. The corollary to that is that there is no guarantee we can perpetuate these things in America against immigration just because they’re written down on paper.
A lot of current American cultures with centuries of history would fail that test. The Amish have very strong extended family ties, and I think Pennsylvania would lose a lot of its culture if the Amish disappeared or assimilated.
Do you have any examples of immigrant groups establishing or asking control of communities in the US without self-government, rule of law, or strong civic institutions?
You don’t end up with communities that lack those things entirely, because they’re within America. Instead, what happens is that higher organizational units compensate by imposing the organization that’s lacking internally. These communities become dependent on others to provide law, organization, and civic institutions. That distorts the structure of society, making it a top-down structure rather than a bottom-up structure. The lack of social cohesion between different cultural groups further increases the need for top-down control and administration to manage that conflict. But I don’t think that’s sustainable over generations. Because over time those immigrants will start changing the culture of the host population.
> A lot of current American cultures with centuries of history would fail that test
Well we created a lot of national myths in the mid 20th century to reconcile our historic immigration trajectory. But we have a lot of data from which we should be able to draw conclusions. If we take Denmark as the benchmark for rule of law, civic institutions, and good governance, which place looks more like that: Minnesota, or New Jersey? The answer to that question should guide our immigration policy.
> If we take Denmark as the benchmark for rule of law, civic institutions, and good governance, which place looks more like that: Minnesota, or New Jersey?
Violent crime rate in 2024 according to the FBI DB (incidents per 100k population)
Crime rates don’t measure the quality of democratic governance. You can have very low crime rates by having a top down authoritarian government like Singapore. They are also unreliable metrics across states because of differences in measures and reporting rates. Homicide is the most reliable metric. Homicide rates in Minnesota have been historically among the lowest in the country, almost at Canadian levels.
That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.
Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.
Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.
This comment is starting to turn gray for me, which means that it’s being downvoted.
I don’t know much about this topic, but all of the factual content mentioned above seems to be true.
Can anyone who disagrees with ‘rayiner here explain why they downvoted? Is it just an unpleasant observation? Is it a disagreement with his conclusion in the last few sentences? Is it just a downvote against the commenter (iirc, he tends to make conservative talking points)? Something else?
I genuinely want to know, as this seems like it would be an important set of talking points around immigration as a whole that any policy maker would want to consider.
Thank you. I’m very familiar with the guidelines. I’ve think I can play my OG card on this one.
I added substantial commentary that makes it more than a “why the down votes?” type of comment.
‘rayiner gets beat on here a bit due to what appears to be his conservative stances on some issues.
While I don’t agree with many of the things ‘rayiner says, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water if we’re going to have meaningful discussions here — especially ones that are intellectually stimulating.
IMHO, one of the reasons we (in the US) are where we are politically is precisely because we ignore, or downvote, or denigrate views from the opposing side (whichever side that is). It’s not really prudent to blithely downvote a considered and articulate comment without commentary just because you disagree with it or dislike the implications. In the case of hacker news, this type of behavior is antithetical to the goals of the site — intellectually stimulating content.
So, while I appreciate your citation of the rules (which may itself be a middlebrow dismissal), I stick by my original comment, and I look forward to anyone who could reply to it.
For me it’s because he’s having to go back to the fucking 1970s in reference to Silicon Valley companies instead of what any modern day person thinks of, to refute their point.
As a piece of historical information, or if we were discussing that time period, cool. The discussion wasn’t about that.
I don't think it's wrong to go back that far. I think SV is it what it is because of those companies but also the schools, some local charm and quirks, etc. and the same reasoning applies there. The tech companies begot more tech companies basically. Before Meta and Alphabet it was Microsoft and Yahoo and before MS it was Sun and Netscape and before that Oracle maybe and the list keeps going back and add in hacker culture in the Bay Area I guess which existed for a long time. It's a fair thing to point out.
Immigration to SV is probably a result of SV success not the other way around. Likewise, why would immigrants even come here if there was nothing for them before they arrived? I think the adulation of immigration is historical revisionism. Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.
> Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.
"If you bulid it, they will come".
In the power curve growth of SV fortunes "home grown" second, third, fourth generation, and longer immigrants certainly built the groundwork, drawing upon education from schools founded upon Oxbridge and other offshore inspirations, absolutely as you say, all the same more recent first generation immigrants played a big part in inflating it sky high.
With no additional immigrants drawn to SV it's not hard to imagine SV stalling out at 1980s Microsoft levels, impressive but far short of where it is today.
I think in a discussion about the effect of immigration on the current state of an area, in this case Silicon Valley, you can totally reference its history if you are making a claim about a chain of events. If instead, you skip over 50 years of history which includes multiple generations of how the industry worked and multiple generations of immigration policy, to start talking about
> The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants
then you are making a narrative that has nothing to do with the point, and I am unwilling to accept your framing.
> A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants
Successful industries stick in particular geographic locations. Why is New York the epicenter of the financial industry? It’s not because it’s the best place you’d choose in 2025. It’s because the city was the country’s preeminent port and stock brokers set up a financial exchange under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street in 1792.
Similarly, Silicon Valley’s success traces to its origins in the 1950-1980. Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then. So it’s highly relevant that America was able to build Silicon Valley in the first place during and only shortly after a highly restrictive immigration policy.
But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunification. Whatever contribution you think immigration is making to Silicon Valley today can be accomplished with 1/30th of the immigration levels we had over the last few years.
> Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then.
Define “leading”, then tell me what companies are still around. I can think of two off the top of my head and one of them has an immigrant CEO.
> But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunifications.
Ah, I’m done responding to you with this conflating illegal immigration with family reunification
> But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunification.
He snuck in “family reunification” in a discussion about mass emigration and conflated it with illegal immigration in scope.
I went through the family reunification process. It was a benefit extended to me by the government as a citizen, and I’m native born before the jingoists join in.
You have to sign up to take care of said family’s welfare until the point that they have made enough payments into the system that they are no longer a burden. I remember having to calculate it for my spouse during the citizenship application for them a decade after the green card application.
I legitimately detest this person and their views over this, their attempt to lump in all forms of immigration with violating the law, and now you know why they get comments grayed out whenever enough people hear their dog whistles.
I am also here on someone else’s H1B. I wasn’t even a citizen until high school. It doesn’t matter, it has nothing to do with the aggregate effects of immigration on the country. I’m sure you’re a highly intelligent person. You should be able to separate yourself from the analysis. Even more than that—we should be skeptical of conclusions that flatter our own personal narratives.
Family reunification is a broken feature of our immigration system. It’s why a handful of skilled immigrants from my home country have begotten massive enclaves of poorly educated and poorly assimilated immigrants in places like Queens. They're transmission vectors for home-country culture. The New York Times did a great podcast that covers the broken promises of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and how family reunification was a major loophole in it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
In Ontario, it would be about 38%, and that’d include healthcare. Canada is very efficient though. At least a decade ago, Canada’s non-defense spending per person was less than the US’s.
In Germany it would be about 44% total. Of course, in Germany, $200k is a top 2% income. In California it’s only a top 8% income.
That's what's directly taken out of your check right? But how much more do you pay after that in other taxes? And if you go even further, how much higher are the prices of everything that you purchase due to the various taxes involved in their production?
Does your Germany figure include healthcare and church tax? That could push it over 50%. Though church tax is optional and you can go private for healthcare.
That's the wrong way of looking at it. We have evidence that national cultures affect prosperity, and that, at scale, immigrants bring their cultures with them: https://www.rorotoko.com/11/20230913-jones-garett-on-book-cu... ("For the last twenty years I’ve been asking the Adam Smith question: Why are some nations so much more productive than others? I’d found some new answers in my own research, summed up in my earlier book Hive Mind. But at the same time, I kept reading findings by a separate group of researchers, especially three excellent professors at Brown University: David Weil, Louis Putterman, and Oded Galor. Their work on the 'Deep Roots' of economic prosperity suggested that many of the important economic differences across countries began centuries, even millennia ago.").
The U.S. takes in millions of immigrants a year. At that scale, it's not a question of the individual merits of a single immigrant from a country. It's about the merits of the community that will be formed when 100,000 immigrants from that country come to the U.S. and settle in the same place and socialize their children into their culture. And the evidence we have is that, when that happens, they'll bring with them a lot of characteristics of their origin countries.
Am I wrong? You acknowledge that food preferences are cultural, right? Wouldn’t it be weird if culture just affected the kinds of food people like and how they dress, but not the kinds of civic institutions they form?
Not at all! I think it’s the opposite! That population was small and scattered. They had limited capacity to create cultural enclaves, develop ethnic social identity, etc. They ended up absorbing much more culturally from Americans and had little cultural and social impact on the communities where they moved.
H1B processing is hopelessly backed up for the 60-70 thousand visas we give out annually. We would have to massively cut immigration inflow, from the 1-3 million annually we have today, to make those granular determinations feasible.
I don't think individualized determination are even possible. Unless you take very few people from each country, they'll inevitably find each other and form communities. And the kinds of communities they form will be driven by their cultures. The question isn't "would this one Bangladeshi be a good immigrant." It is "when 100,000 Bangladeshis inevitably form a cultural enclave in some city, will that be better or worse than what was there before?"
I went to GT and was just at a football game with my teenage daughter. She had a blast and commented how many “brown girls like her” were there compared to her very WASPy, super-liberal Maryland school. She also commented about there being babies everywhere, which was also a plus for her.
My cousin just bought a house in the Atlanta suburbs and my two other cousins moved to the DFW area. They all love it. The south is the most culturally Bangladeshi/Indian part of the U.S., for better and for worse.
Why would the amount of babies at a football game have an influence at your daughter's college preferences? Maybe I'm missing something.
If I had a college age kid, I definitely would encourage them to avoid some of the southern schools caught up in the MAGA cultural revolution. There's been a big movement to crush free speech and academic freedom, especially in the Texas university system.
A big recent example is Texas A&M booting any professor who doesn't fall into the party line - most recently punishing a professor for teaching Plato in an intro philosophy course. [0]
She likes babies. I've raised my kids around WASP liberals because I want to socialize my kids to be orderly, but there's a definite baby shortage in that circle. Also, a lot more guilt and less people having fun than at a southern state school football game. It’s a lot closer to a big Indian wedding (which she also likes for some reason) than anything you find among the Annapolis yacht club circle.
I don’t have a view on where she goes to college—we just had a good season and I wanted to take her to a game. If I had a choice, maybe I’d want her to go to Oxford or Cambridge.
> She had a blast and commented how many “brown girls like her” were there compared to her very WASPy, super-liberal Maryland school.
Does that have anything to do with Georgia or have anything to do with GT being a primarily engineering school with a very large international engineering student population?
To answer that question, try going to a football game in Athens next…
A case can be made for Atlanta and Richardson/DFW because there is a fairly large preeexisting community already, but you can't deny that Vandy's yield protection is an issue.
Additionally, the CHE article is primarily talking about southern public flagships like UT, Georgia, etc which are targeting a different demographic compared to a Vandy - a university that continues to try and market itself as the "Harvard of the South" and tends to benchmark itself against Ivies, UChicago, and other T15 programs.
> The south is the most culturally Bangladeshi/Indian part of the U.S., for better and for worse
Yeah no. I'd say the Bay Area and NYC remains the primary hubs for the Desi community, and that's reflected in demographics as well. I don't have complete visibility into the Bangladeshi community, but based on the handful of Bangladeshis I know (families affiliated to BAL or the Army) they and their family ended up in the NYC or DMV with the tech-minded or Hindu Bangladeshis ending up in the Bay.
Vanderbilt's yield is over 60% in recent classes: https://vanderbilthustler.com/2025/04/11/record-low-4-7-of-a.... That's right around Cornell and Columbia: https://www.ivywise.com/blog/college-yield-rates/. That's entirely consistent with Vanderbilt's ranking and relative lack of international recognition. Nobody in India or China knows what Vanderbilt is, but they know what Cornell and Columbia are. And the "Harvard of the South" framing doesn't mean they think Vanderbilt is comparable to Harvard. It means it's as good as Harvard in the South.
>> The south is the most culturally Bangladeshi/Indian part of the U.S., for better and for worse
> Yeah no. I'd say the Bay Area and NYC remains the primary hubs for the Desi community, and that's reflected in demographics as well.
I mean the southern U.S. is more culturally similar to India/Bangladesh than other parts of the country. SF and NYC remain the hubs because the vast majority of the U.S. Desi population is post-H1B migration and chain migration from that, and those places are where the H1B jobs are. NYC also has the ethnic enclaves and support networks. Bangladeshis don't go to Queens because they love freezing their asses off in winter.
Like, both of those things can’t be true. If it’s fake money, why do we care that some people have a ton of it? If Tesla is only worth as much as GM, Musk’s share of it is only worth $11 billion, not $200 billion+. Even if you confiscate that it’ll run the federal government for less than a day.
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