Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You tend to do less and less for your community if it’s overwhelmed by immigrants. Especially if they look and act different than you.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s where my friends were nearly all first generation and parents were immigrants with accents, different cultures, religions, and more, my best friends are from families from Haiti, India, South American countries, and more. And now I work in a super diverse place. Not my personal experience. This xenophobia is a newer trend to me and seems driven by right wing media Charlie Kirk types, etc. Sorry but your narrative contradicts what I actually lived and experience.

Meanwhile, IGNORING your anecdotal data, where is the $20 BILLION lost in fraud, Minnesota???

Of course you would IGNORE the billions Trump and his cronies and families are siphoning off from taxpayers.

Trump gave BILLIONS to Argentina, and they have universal healthcare.

Trump gave BILLIONS to Israel for this unjustified war, not to mention the BILLIONS the US already gives Israel.

BTW, the leader of the fraud in MN is a white women, American born. But, I realize that pathetic people find it easier to blame those who are weaker than themselves for their lot. I believe the Nazis convinced most of the Germans to do just that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You tend to do less and less for your community if it’s overwhelmed by immigrants. Especially if they look and act different than you.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s where my friends were nearly all first generation and parents were immigrants with accents, different cultures, religions, and more, my best friends are from families from Haiti, India, South American countries, and more. And now I work in a super diverse place. Not my personal experience. This xenophobia is a newer trend to me and seems driven by right wing media Charlie Kirk types, etc. Sorry but your narrative contradicts what I actually lived and experience.

Meanwhile, IGNORING your anecdotal data, where is the $20 BILLION lost in fraud, Minnesota???

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You tend to do less and less for your community if it’s overwhelmed by immigrants. Especially if they look and act different than you.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s where my friends were nearly all first generation and parents were immigrants with accents, different cultures, religions, and more, my best friends are from families from Haiti, India, South American countries, and more. And now I work in a super diverse place. Not my personal experience. This xenophobia is a newer trend to me and seems driven by right wing media Charlie Kirk types, etc. Sorry but your narrative contradicts what I actually lived and experience.

Anonymous wrote:You tend to do less and less for your community if it’s overwhelmed by immigrants. Especially if they look and act different than you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone feel this way? I am struggling really hard to identify ways in which my life has gotten better in the US over the last 25 years. Everything just feels like it has gotten infinitely worse in my lifetime.

Healthcare is an absolute joke and trash in the US. Premiums skyrocket while the quality of sevice seems to constantly circle the proverbial toilet. Trying to find a PCP is a maddening experience. Then dealing with insurance companies trying to weasel out of paying for a procedure or who incessantly refuse to pay for drugs prescribed....totally exhausting.

Roads, tunnels, bridges, and infrastructure falling apart everywhere. We are supposed to be first world country, yet it takes months to fix a simple pothole, and people in Flint Michigan don't even have potable water.

Constant and oppressive gun violence. It is so bad mass shootings barely crack the national media these days, because they're just routine life in America.

Insurance rates for everything else exploding. Astronomical housing costs. Out of control food prices. Unaffordable education and childcare. $52,000 "family cars". Just absurd.

Meanwhile, US is embroiled in yet another forever war costing $3B/day. We don't have money to help our citizens afford healthcare premiums yet we have infinite dollars for shooting drones down 8000 miles away. Now out country's reputation on the world stage is utter trash and in the dumpster. We are the bad guys in billions of peoples' eyes. And we continue to blow up our national debt that's going to be so bad soon that the costs to simply service our debt will eat huge amounts of our budget for future generations. Oh, and social security? Ha, good luck expecting to benefit from it in the future. They're gonna make us work until 79 before we are allowed to tap benefits.

And finally, everything seems to be ensh*ttified (ES) or on its way to being ES. Our corporate overlords now tell us we aren't allowed to own anything. Oh, you want to use the heat in your car? Pay a subscription. Oh, you want to buy a phone? Sign all of your privacy away. Buy a fridge, dryer, or washer? ES now. Can't access their features unless ypu connect it to the internet and agree to have your home streamed with infinite ads on the main screen.

Jobs? So unstable these days. Oh you want a new job? That'll take 879 applications to get an interview. Every app requiring the use of AI to get around AI screeners. Every app asking for a resume but then asking on the next screen questions that are answerable with information from your resume and they want you to type it out all over again.

Ughh, the US is just broken. Has anyone's life gotten better over the last two decades? I'm just exhausted and done. The entire country feels like a gigantic scam and hustle that benefits the few while those of us simply wanting to live a simple life are destroyed.

End rant.

the best time for US families was when immigration was limited and companies were forced to hire/train US citizens.

“The economic and societal changes that followed the curtailment of immigration “made possible the success of the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s,” according to Stanford economic historian Gavin Wright. Without the immigration reduction, the Great Migration of Black southerners to the North and West would not have occurred as it did, and the civil rights movement would never have progressed as it did. The Great Migration and the resulting rapid rise in Black incomes spurred the increased enrollment at Historic Black Colleges and the elevated numbers of Black lawyers, physicians, clergy, and other professionals whose ranks produced the leaders of the civil rights movement. Without the Great Migration and the Great Leveling, it is difficult to imagine the civil rights movement successes in the 1950s and 1960s.

“If the trends in Black progress during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s had continued, America would be a far different society today. 
“But progress for the average Black wage earner stalled in the 1970s.”

On immigration, the Angus Deaton, a Princeton professor writes:
“I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the US was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers. I no longer think so. Economists’ beliefs are not unanimous on this but are shaped by econometric designs that may be credible but often rest on short-term outcomes. Longer-term analysis over the past century and a half tells a different story. Inequality was high when America was open, was much lower when the borders were closed, and rose again post Hart-Celler (the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) as the fraction of foreign-born people rose back to its levels in the Gilded Age.

It has also been plausibly argued that the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the factories in the North would not have happened if factory owners had been able to hire the European migrants they preferred.”

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In America, you can't even have a kid these days and get bent over the barrel when they want to play a sport because private equity keeps getting more and more involved and is buying up fields, courts, arenas and leagues. Fees constantly go up, because this wouldn't be America unless you couldn't privatize and profit as much as you can off youth sports and activities as a PE firm. Parents who can barely afford to keep things together vecause wages never rise now have to stop signing their kids up to play sports since it is unaffordable. But yeah, let's blame those illegals.

US has declined into a cyberpunk dystopian hellscape because of greed, pure and simple.

+1 Private equity has also been buying up vet practices driving the costs up as much as 50%. Dogs and other animals can bring so much joy to ours lives but it is getting to the point people can't afford to own and properly take care of their dogs due to rising costs.

Vet costs are out of control. I’d be surprised if it were just 50%, actually. It feels like costs have tripled in the last decade.

Yes, private equity sucks. Parasitic ghouls.

Yeah, vet costs are through the roof. I was quoted $4-5000 for a procedure for my cat from a big glossy new PE practice that my regular vet can perform for $700. I’m praying they don’t get bought out.

Our family no longer skis, now that private equity firms are taking over resorts and making the sport unaffordable. In 1990, a lift ticket at Vail cost $38. Now at some of the locations it’s over $300. Even where we live, a day on the slopes including rentals would set us back about $600.

Private equity is invading every space. They’re buying up gyms and dental offices and grocery stores and nursing homes, looting them, taking the profits, and shifting the risks and the costs to consumers. It’s predatory capitalism on steroids.

I think this is because at $38 a ticket, the lifts were overrun by people. Traveling is much more common and nearly a necessity for some people, so they increase the price hoping fewer people will show.

Please. Blame it on popularity when the revenue from jacking up lift ticket prices doesn't even pay ski patrol a living wage. Literally the people that prevent law suits and deaths.

And the sad thing is, we're probably losing a great number of Olympic athletes because kids can't get on the slopes.


How Vail Destroyed Skiing

How Corporate Consolidation is Killing Ski Towns

I love to ski but the world will continue to spin without skiing.

It's an example genius.

We're losing important things like jobs and healthcare and billions and billions of dollars to corruption. No one wants to hear about skiing.

Anonymous wrote:You tend to do less and less for your community if it’s overwhelmed by immigrants. Especially if they look and act different than you.

Anonymous wrote:Anyone feel this way? I am struggling really hard to identify ways in which my life has gotten better in the US over the last 25 years. Everything just feels like it has gotten infinitely worse in my lifetime.

Healthcare is an absolute joke and trash in the US. Premiums skyrocket while the quality of sevice seems to constantly circle the proverbial toilet. Trying to find a PCP is a maddening experience. Then dealing with insurance companies trying to weasel out of paying for a procedure or who incessantly refuse to pay for drugs prescribed....totally exhausting.

Roads, tunnels, bridges, and infrastructure falling apart everywhere. We are supposed to be first world country, yet it takes months to fix a simple pothole, and people in Flint Michigan don't even have potable water.

Constant and oppressive gun violence. It is so bad mass shootings barely crack the national media these days, because they're just routine life in America.

Insurance rates for everything else exploding. Astronomical housing costs. Out of control food prices. Unaffordable education and childcare. $52,000 "family cars". Just absurd.

Meanwhile, US is embroiled in yet another forever war costing $3B/day. We don't have money to help our citizens afford healthcare premiums yet we have infinite dollars for shooting drones down 8000 miles away. Now out country's reputation on the world stage is utter trash and in the dumpster. We are the bad guys in billions of peoples' eyes. And we continue to blow up our national debt that's going to be so bad soon that the costs to simply service our debt will eat huge amounts of our budget for future generations. Oh, and social security? Ha, good luck expecting to benefit from it in the future. They're gonna make us work until 79 before we are allowed to tap benefits.

And finally, everything seems to be ensh*ttified (ES) or on its way to being ES. Our corporate overlords now tell us we aren't allowed to own anything. Oh, you want to use the heat in your car? Pay a subscription. Oh, you want to buy a phone? Sign all of your privacy away. Buy a fridge, dryer, or washer? ES now. Can't access their features unless ypu connect it to the internet and agree to have your home streamed with infinite ads on the main screen.

Jobs? So unstable these days. Oh you want a new job? That'll take 879 applications to get an interview. Every app requiring the use of AI to get around AI screeners. Every app asking for a resume but then asking on the next screen questions that are answerable with information from your resume and they want you to type it out all over again.

Ughh, the US is just broken. Has anyone's life gotten better over the last two decades? I'm just exhausted and done. The entire country feels like a gigantic scam and hustle that benefits the few while those of us simply wanting to live a simple life are destroyed.

End rant.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As professional, upper middle class, South Asian Muslim expats turned citizens, I feel its easier to assimilate if you are coming with western style education and some money. However, most immigrants tend to assimilate in one to two generations. You can't expect struggling people to assimilate quickly into a new culture, language and system.

If you have to work in America, you will assimilate quickly.

I do wonder if all of the Somali problems in MN were caused by culture & failure to assimilate, or endless welfare.
If they’d been dropped somewhere without so many welfare programs, they might have assimilated faster and prospered. I read something recently that said how Virginia is a great place for immigrants. Yes, many immigrants groups have prospered here: the ones who came a while back from Vietnam, for example. But they weren’t given welfare at the levels seen today in MN.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As professional, upper middle class, South Asian Muslim expats turned citizens, I feel its easier to assimilate if you are coming with western style education and some money. However, most immigrants tend to assimilate in one to two generations. You can't expect struggling people to assimilate quickly into a new culture, language and system.

If you have to work in America, you will assimilate quickly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As professional, upper middle class, South Asian Muslim expats turned citizens, I feel its easier to assimilate if you are coming with western style education and some money. However, most immigrants tend to assimilate in one to two generations. You can't expect struggling people to assimilate quickly into a new culture, language and system.

The problem is that most people in this country are not amenable to immigrants even when immigrants make a good faith effort to fit in. Contrast that to most other places in the world where the locals will often be more welcoming unless people are deliberately trying to be a nuisance.