This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress.
Having grown up in the south, it is indeed a powerful and necessary story.
Values which are disappearing on the "left".
I recently lost a friend (extreme lefty) for saying that Trump was elected because of the socio-economic situation of poor white voters in the US. He just railed on about how I was racist for daring to say that the Trump phenomenon is anything more than Americans being a bunch of Klansmen...
Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough.
Edit - deleted the first edit.
THIS. Grew up in the midwest, could've told the coastal liberals that their nonstop (and unnecessary) attacks on everything even slightly valued by the flyover states was going to cost them someday. They didn't want to hear it.
Seriously, if your narrative for political change is little more than hurt feelings, maybe the "other" isn't the problem. This article should have at least showed you that putting aside the petty can have real impacts on both parties.
Secondly, this is not "hurt feelings," not that something -just- being emotionally abusive and nothing else should be an excuse for pretending it isn't a problem, but we'll go with that anyways. No, this is the fact that the middle state's economies have been struggling for years, and that was before the 2008 housing crash, which the cities and coasts have recovered fairly well from, but has left everyone else largely in the cold. Now, it's true that a lot of those issues can be fairly directly traced to the local governments and their bad decisions; some cities, for example Chattanooga, have done extremely well at modernizing. But to pretend that the constant drumbeat of the culture that being in the flyover states (itself a term of derision) is terrible, that everything they believe is dumb, that they're uneducated prudes and all the rest of it has caused an incredible cultural scar between the rural and urban portions of the nation. And successes like Chattanooga are in spite of, not because of, that divide.
What a world we live in, where a government putting their own people first is considered a bad or controversial thing...
While it is comforting to come up with a narrative which explains complex events in one neat moral parable about neglecting your own poor or extremism shutting down debate (insert personal bugbear here), it’s not helpful. Perhaps that’s what your erstwhile friend objected to.
Once again, if you ignore the root causes, you'll always get results like Brexit. Exiting the EU won't curb immigration from Pakistan, India, etc..., but it will stop workers coming from poorer EU countries (Poland, Romania, etc... BTW these countries aren't Muslim. Brexit does nothing to limit Muslim immigrants).
Keep in mind I did a degree in economics, so I studied things like this for thousands of hours...
That being said, it's a pretty basic concept that increasing the labour pool will contract wages, especially in the short run. Long term effects are generally positive, but it can take a generation or two, and for those people who are affected by the negative consequences, it's not always of much solace.
First off an increase in the labor pool inherently depresses wages only if demand remains the same which would only be true if the new members of the labor pool didn't you know buy things. This fallacy is so common its called the single lump of labor fallacy. It may be true that they increase the pool of low wage workers and displace people that are only marginally worth employing but I digress.
You yourself admit that long term effects of immigration are positive just that it takes a while. This is a failure of analysis. Its a failure to consider the whole system in motion instead of at a single point in time.
By your own argument we are constantly both paying the dues to integrate new citizens and reaping the benefits of past waves of immigration. It seems at best short sighted to stop paying current dues and thereby forfeit future benefits.
When you suggest you consider the people that are negatively effected by immigration let us be clear. Minimum wage doesn't let you depress wages beyond a clear line so what we are actually arguing for is to forgo future leaders, future doctors, future engineers so that fewer McDonalds workers will be unemployed new instead of in 5 to 10 years when machines replace them.
We are certainly seeing the results of upheaval and change leading to widespread malaise, unrest, rising nationalism and xenophobia, and I fear leading to another world war, for war is the logical endpoint of blaming foreigners, competitive devaluation and beggar thy neighbor economics.
I would urge you to study the demographics of voters in the referendum though, they were very mixed, the only clear split was urban (lots of immigration) pro-eu vs suburban/rural pro-exit. I’d strongly dispute that Brexit was some sort of rational revolt of the working class (who mostly live in cities) against an invasion of polish plumbers as you describe.
Like America First it will not end well, and certainly won’t help structural problems in the economy or dying industries. That’s a matter of National govs disgracefully neglecting their population, and as we’ll see, nothing to do with immigration.
The problem with your comment is that it takes the thread in both a more generic and a more partisan direction. A bad combination for HN (which is not to say that you're wrong).