Most people didn't get it yet.
The average Joe from working class doesn't think immigrants are incapable - probably the opposite. His problem is that they may take his job and his life will not improve because one of them built a Dropbox.
The average Joe from working class doesn't think immigrants are incapable - probably the opposite. His problem is that they may take his job and his life will not improve because one of them built a Dropbox.
The problem is more deeply rooted in the human condition namely fear and envy.
Yes, the average Joe doesn’t want an immigrant taking his job but mainly the average Joe doesn’t want to feel as if he’s below average.
“People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.”
-James Baldwin
To copy/paste what my other reply said:
And this ties into a problem that Eric Weinstein is trying to bring attention to that the whole of society importing talent/allowing them to tap into the network and stability should be getting a dividend from that talent's produce, along with the misunderstanding that it's technology and automation taking jobs away. The main part of the solution is UBI - or as Andrew Yang calls it, a Freedom Dividend - citizens as shareholders.
For one, your base needs might be food and shelter but within Average Joe’s social circle his base needs may be...
- Ford F-150
- Cable TV
- Time for hobbies
- NASCAR tickets
UBI doesn’t solve for people’s need to be superior.
Solution: Cap executive pay and return more shareholder value/wealth to employees. You’re not going to achieve equality but you can make sure that more wealth is returned to society while preserving their need for superiority.
“The bottom 80% of Americans own 8% of stock market wealth and the bottom half own essentially zero.” - Andrew Yang
You can’t have strong entitlements and liberal immigration policy.
Long story short: the amendment passed, was challenged in court, the state decided not to defend it, and that resulted in the amendment being overturned in the courts. Illegal aliens today have incredibly broad access to taxpayer-funded services in California.
It's frustrating. People are constantly saying the people of California deserve the current social situation—because they "voted for it"—but the truth is they voted against it and were simply overruled and betrayed by their own Government. If the government is unresponsive to the will of the people, what, exactly are the people supposed to do (short of an armed rebellion)? What they've actually done is move to other states…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_18...
This can explain why affluent urban professionals, whose economic and social position is relatively secure might vote for liberal economic and social policies. They live in a world where their marriage is more likely to be stable, their opinion is more likely to be taken seriously, and their values are more likely to be validated by movies/TV/media. More immigration is not going to diminish his/her relative position in society. It might even make it higher as a lot of these immigrants aspire to be in that professionals' position.
On the other hand, it can also explain why some working class white and Hispanic voters might vote for candidates/policies that sell a narrative of traditional values (anti abortion, church + family in place of a gov't social safety net, etc). They live in a world where their families are less likely to be stable, and where their values are increasingly looked down upon in movies/tv/media. Greater immigration might diminish their relative position in society (even if it makes them slightly richer .... ). There might even be greater competition for admission for their children into T25 schools (which are lately seen as gatekeepers into the "affluent urban professional" class).
This is especially true with the manufacturing class, which has watched foreign factories whittle and carve away at them for two decades.
I think the people who voted this way were definitely thinking of their economic position and not social position.