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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

It isn't "America bad" at all! I believe America is the greatest country in the world, its economy is clearly second to none, and it's clearly the best trading partner for the vast majorities of nations. I also believe America will almost certainly recover from whatever dark period it's (probably) about to endure.

But I'm also well aware of the fact the US has gone through extremely dark periods and its past success is not a promise of future success. At the end of the day a country very possibly plunged into Great Depression II and almost certainly with trade policy changing by the day is not a good trading partner.

There is a very real possibility that we deport our way into a famine. The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised and are already being put into motion by the incoming administration.

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This was also said about slavery and the economy prospered post-slavery. The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages. In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.

I didn't say anything about long-term viability. I am talking about near-term shocks and then questioning how long a recovery would take. The south's economy was in ruins post-Civil War and only revitalized through immense subsidy, aid, and debt programs. Broadly speaking, the South was in deep, destitute poverty until the New Deal (that is more than sixty years for anyone counting at home!).

Obviously most of that devastation was from the war itself, but if every enslaved person in the country were shipped back to Africa (as many proposed at the time), it absolutely would've had deeply negative near-term consequences. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that economies don't actually depend on labor. Dismissible on its face! And to be explicit: those near-term consequences were morally necessary to bear anyway.

> In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.

Not sure what this is responding to, tbh

> > In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.

> Not sure what this is responding to, tbh

I think this is related to this here:

> The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages.

They do have a point there - their argument (as I read it) is that the widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor and the exploitation of these laborers in agriculture has led to an economic gridlock situation: employers make big bucks by not paying their fair share in social security and taxes, fair employers have a hard time competing on price because the cost of fair, legal labor is too high, and they cannot raise prices to a sustainable level because the consumers have no money to pay for that because they themselves don't get paid fairly.

The associated economic theory is commonly associated with the economic effects of minimum wage hikes - these lead (despite all the Corporate Whining) to economic growth because the lowest rungs of society, those actually living on minimum wage, go and immediately spend their additional money, similar to what happened with the Covid stimulus checks, while the upper levels of society hoard additional income and do not directly contribute to economic growth.

My rebuttal is that no one is arguing to encourage illegal labor and immigration.

"The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised" is not saying "an economy cannot function without illegal labor." It is saying exactly what it says: an economy cannot sustain (i.e. remain healthy through) the mass expulsion of a huge portion of its lowest level labor force.

I made it explicitly clear that I am talking about an (almost certainly) non-permanent problem: "I also believe America will almost certainly recover from whatever dark period it's (probably) about to endure."

By analogy: The statement that the US economy cannot sustain a 90% reduction in equity values market-wide doesn't mean an economy can't exist that's 10% the size of the United States'. It doesn't mean an economy 10% of the size of the United States' can't grow to become as big or bigger than the United States'. It doesn't mean a 90% drop in equity values would delete the United States from existence.

It means that a sudden 90% drop in equity values would shock the system in intensely undesirable ways.

Mass deportations as proposed would be a gigantic shock to the system, and that shock will almost certainly make the US an undesirable trading partner for some time.

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