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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

It could be a good thing if we didn't have an economy-- in particular, retirement and health care schemes-- that essentially requires a pyramidal population distribution, and collapses if it goes inverted. We should be working to fix that, but if the inversion happens before the change does, we could be in real trouble.

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America already has an easy, useful, and generally positive solution to a decline in birthrates: immigration.

We'll just need to move beyond the current xenophobia and remember what we use to know.

I mean, I agree, but "just" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I've had to accept that there's a finite amount of immigration that societies will take before you get a nativist backlash, and that amount appears to be much lower than the amount you need to sustain a healthy demographic pyramid. All the Vox articles in the world about how immigration is a net economic positive don't seem to have made a difference. I don't like it, but you have to work with the political situation you have, not the one you wish you had.

Then fix the issue of what to do with the displaced (in a way that doesn't presume fault with said displaced persons).

Writing people off as this or that is not the answer.

Why would the immigrants have any allegiance to the US? If you try to force more immigrants in than can be properly vetted for assimilation, then you're going to get Sharia Law slums and the Irish/Russian/Italian mafia all over again.

Should we incentivize our own population to breed or ship in foreigners wholesale? Seems like self-subversion to opt for the latter.

You may not know this, but the native american population in the US is <2% of the total population. If you are part of that <2%, I understand your bitterness.

The other 98% of americans are immigrants or the children/grandchildren/great grandchildren/etc. of immigrants.

Some of my ancestors immigrated from Ireland and Italy to the US, but despite that, I've decided to work in software engineering instead of the mafia.

You're wrong. The US isn't an ethnostate. It's a group of individuals who believe in a core set of values and ideals. Letting too many in risks letting in those who have no affinity to the US Constitution. It has nothing to do with genetic heritage.

Empirically, I'm not wrong.

98% of the population are immigrants or the descendents of immigrants.

The people who wrote the US Constitution were immigrants or the descendents of immigrants.

All the presidents, including the current one, have been the descendents of immigrants.

The US Constitution has survived this reality for 200+ years.

I realize some people, like my aunt (whose grandfather was an italian immigrant), want to pretend there is a difference between immigrants coming to america today and those who came 50, 100, 200, 300 years ago. But the difference is primarily in her mind, and now she treats new immigrants the way her grandfather was treated by people who decided italians should not be welcome in america.

It seems to be a constant tension here that I don't expect to every really go away.

I'm sure in countries without immigration people find other things to use to classify each other into groups that are convenient to dislike and scapegoat.

Have you looked at the population distribution? To make the 60+ brackets go inverted would require a remarkable improvement in life-extending medical technology. It narrows pretty fast at retirement age.

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