'Poll': Rebuild Our Inner Cities OR 'Open the Floodgates' on Immigrants & Refugees?

I see these conflicting arguments that 'we need to rebuild our inner cities' & 'we need to help all those Muslim refugees (by bringing them here with 'just the shirts on their backs')' & 'we need to help our impoverished minorities' & 'building a wall is immoral'. Often times, it seems people are for all of those angles.


Okay. Let's assume those are all 'good ideas we can all agree on'. BUT we had to choose which route to go, given the reality that we can't do all of the above wide open without creating yet harsher conditions for not only our existing impoverished but the yet more that would come with such all-out policies.


FACT: The US is already NEARLY $2,000,000,000,000 in debt. The numbers are DAUNTING. Have you seen this: www.usdebtclock.org... ? I implore you to open that, and take a real good look. Just let it play for a good 10 minutes or so. Really study it as it goes. Let it sink in real deep. And then lets get real!

Now lets take a quick look at other figures / realities:

The War on Poverty After 50 Years
In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began. www.heritage.org...

Clinton Refugee Plan Could Bring In 620,000 Refugees In First Term At Lifetime Cost Of Over $400 Billion
WASHINGTON— An analysis by the Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest finds the refugee plan of presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has announced her desire to admit at least 65,000 refugees from Syria – on top of the existing refugee flow already entering the United States. What Clinton has not explained, however, is that in addition to the clear national security implications related to accepting more refugees, there are massive financial costs that would be borne by federal, state, and local governments.‎

Assuming Clinton's desire to bring in 65,000 Syrian refugees is in addition to the Obama Administration's current goal of admitting 10,000 this fiscal year (out of 85,000 total refugees), that would amount to an increase of 55,000 refugees. ‎55,000 on top of 85,000 totals 140,000 refugees. The Obama Administration's target for FY 2017 is actually 100,000 refugees, meaning that adding 55,000 refugees to that would result in 155,000 refugees each year. Due to statutory flaws in our Refugee Admissions Program, the number could be as high as Hillary Clinton desires. Assuming her goal is to admit 155,000 refugees each year during a hypothetical first term in office, a Clinton Administration would admit at least 620,000 refugees in just four years – a population roughly the size of Baltimore. www.sessions.senate.gov... -billion

The U.S. Spends $35 Billion Helping Out The World… But Where Does All this Money Really Go?
The United States provided approximately $35 billion in economic aid to over 140 countries* in fiscal year 2014. In the map below the relative size of each country is proportionate to the aid received from the United States and the color of each country indicates GDP per capita.

There's an old saying that "You Cant Help Others If You Can't Help Yourself'. "America" is on its last 'stub' folks. It's legs have already been chewed off. To anyone who supports all of the ideas in the opening paragraph above, you can't have it every which way. Consider the idea that if anything maybe it'd be better to send that $400B outbound, than to bring those problems in bound. If we can't maintain stability here, how can we ensure the ability to help people here or anywhere else?

So lets "pretend" that we face real safety issues in such wide open policies in regards to the different 'exotic' situations that could very well 'hitchhike' along in with each group. Therefore, lets "pretend" that such dangers would mean further destabilization of our own domestic front, thus making it harder and harder over the long run ensuring that a stable 'environment' to boost domestic prosperity IF we continue on as is wide open down this path we've been on. Let's "pretend" that it might be a good idea to therefore tighten up on these fronts for a while while getting out own house in order therefore ensuring both enhanced safety & prosperity for our own (meaning that we may be in better form to help others even more moving forward as a result).

Let's "pretend" we can't have such cake (all of this together), and eat it to!

So what's it going to be:
Remain on this open border path while deliberately increasing the 'import' of overseas 'refugees'?
OR
Tighten up, boost stability & prosperity and therefore increase odds of being an even better 'global steward' moving forward'?

That's a false choice. We can do both of your "choices" and many other things at the same time.

Not to mention, we could always get the money by increasing taxes on the wealthy, their investment vehicles (like hedge funds), and other corporate structures. We can also get the money by scaling back the size and costs of our military expenditures, reduce the number of bases and troops we have overseas, and cut out a lot of unnecessary corporate tax breaks and subsidies. Some of the most powerful multinationals pay virtually no taxes at all, and even major oil/energy companies and drug companies are getting govt subsidies.

In fact, screw all of that. We can reduce the number of immigrants simply by helping improve the living & economic conditions in their countries of origins. Our current form of globalization relies on keeping labor and resource costs artificially low in some countries specifically so wealthier countries can exploit these cheaper labor and resource pools. International trade organizations like the IMF and WTO push austerity measures onto those countries, which keeps wages low & labor rights to a minimum. Want to know why Western apparel companies love making their goods in places like Bangladesh? Look at their crappy wages and lack of labor rights. If you were making 35cents an hour, you'd probably also leave to go to a country that pays drastically more, especially if it's for the same quality of labor.

Then there are the constant wars we support all over the world. The NATO-backed war in Libya caused tens of thousands of Libyans to flee to refugee camps, specifically the "black" Libyans who were being targeted by the NATO-backed rebels (they never talk about that, do they?). Afterwards, many of them tried to flee to the safest place they could: Europe. Want to know why so many of those Syrian, Lebanese, Somalian, and Iraqi refugees are also fleeing to the West? They're not only fleeing to the West, mind you, as millions have also fled to neighboring countries. But you can guarantee that if we stopped supporting wars in their lands, fewer of them would try to flee their lands.

ETA: In fact, have you ever looked into the prices of uncut diamonds from diamond producing countries like Zimbabwe? If not, you definitely should. Sham systems like the "Kimberley Process" make sure that these diamond producers have to go through Western middlemen in order to get into Western markets. And guess who makes the majority of the profit? Look into the prices for those uncut diamonds and it'll answer itself.

In fact, a lot of the anti-"conflict minerals/blood diamonds" programs (and WTO-led Aid-For-Trade programs) are similar scams which keep the poor resource-producing countries poor while transferring the bulk of the profits to wealthy countries and their middlemen. "Poor" countries like South Africa, the DR Congo, and Zimbabwe could pull themselves out of poverty if these types of systems and domestic corruption weren't so prevalent. So if we really want to entice their citizens and others in similar situations to stay in their home countries, we could always stop exploiting them economically while backing their corrupt leadership. Then their resources could build up their own lands and they wouldn't need to find better paying jobs elsewhere.

You can migrate here if you will put 5 years into rebuilding our nation, with just basics provided -- food / shelter. In return you will receive a permanent work visa to make your own way after that. You cant vote but your kids will be citizens. Corporations that hite illegally will be penalized harshly so that it is rare. No wall. No welfare for visa holders, only citizens are eligible.

Good compromise imo.

Build a wall large enough to put cities in and let the immigrants and refugees build the cities within.

originally posted by: JDeLattre89
Build a wall large enough to put cities in and let the immigrants and refugees build the cities within.

In other words, segregated Bantustans, reservations, or open air prisons?

a reply to: JDeLattre89

Nothing bigoted about your statement at all.

Trump supporter?

The debt doesn't matter, seriously... it just doesn't. What does matter are deficits and a political willingness to not default on the debt.

Deficits are an easy matter to fix. Cut some spending (redirecting the money to more efficient programs) and raise taxes. If we increased the average effective federal rate in the US from 13 to 18%, which would change incomes from effectively 50% of money earned to 45% of money earned we could increase revenues from 3 trillion per year to 5 trillion per year. After eliminating the deficit that would leave us with 1 trillion in spending which could be dumped into education, transportation, and R&D... all of which pay for themselves many times over, saving us money in the long run.

Another thing we could do (which would cancel out the pain of the tax increase) is move to a single payer health care system. The money saved there would offset a large chunk of the tax increases.

When it comes to Syrian refugees, it's actually a good thing. Strategically, one of the US's biggest weaknesses is that our population density is so low. This increases the costs of our infrastructure spending many times over. Everything from cell phone coverage, to internet speed, to road networks. A higher population density makes all of that easier to build which in turn benefits us.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

The answer is take care of American Citizens First.

It is that simple. We can never win the so called War on Poverty if we keep importing more poverty.

If we really want to increase our population, provide tax incentives / breaks for working citizens to have more children.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

As most of the time, I can at least appreciate your viewpoint, I can see where you're coming from, like I usually did the "Democrat's" of the last decade, even if I don't agree with it. It was usually the same for me with the "Republican's" of the last decade, outside of the overblown warhawk type stuff which was the bulk of their extremism now. I 'always' got along with the Dem's of that era at least (outside of environmental extremism anyways). Today I fear you're an 'endangered species'.

On point,
You've got some really good ideas. Things that should have 'always' been. The problem is they haven't, and now we have this $20T debt nightmare. Right now what I see even making the best of your proposals is we might be able to hit PAUSE on the increasingly debt accumulation ordeal. But the problem we still face is then putting it in reverse. TO maintain this 'wide open' approach, as is (with the economic metrics), I highly doubt we could even hit PAUSE on the debt, while I cant see at all how we could hope to reverse it in any meaningful way.

What I see with this debt crisis is an inevitable COLLAPSE. The kind of stuff there might not be a true recovery from not for a long time. So much lost by the time. And that was before with mass 'race war' situation was the new norm (which is part of why my hairs been so on fire this summer). It's already stacked beyond any historical precedent before it.

So that's why in here I proposed this sort of 'take a step back' approach to tightening up on the inflow stuff (which is loaded with serious pitfalls including mass murder and endless & increasingly worsening Identity Politics debate), take our bearings, get our domestic situation on order, boost prosperity, lift of our own / we already have here, and then start loosening up and go from there. Part of my take PAUSE concept is we have a LOT of other stuff to call into review such as esentially every 'law' in place that each consecutive Congress / POTUS have been stacking on top of one another 'forever'. Although 'the Internet knows', no one human even has any clue any more all the endless stacks of laws and pork and so forth. There's just SO MUCH to review and fix and get back within reason its just crazy to me the idea of bringing yet more problems into our fold on economics alone (and then this ISIS crap thats tearing up the EU now and causing diversionary social conflicts).

Right now, across the board with all this liberal agenda stuff, I'm just not seeing any room for any kind of compromises in these debates. With a general lack of ability to take a joke now this this PC stuff, these 2 fronts alone I find about as troubling as anything could be. All things considered, even cleaning up some stuff, everything just so far gone now to keep slugging forward more or less as is it's just 'radical'.

originally posted by: Aazadan
The debt doesn't matter, seriously... it just doesn't.

To me, that kind of thinking is even more dangerous than this race war agenda crap.

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

originally posted by: Aazadan
The debt doesn't matter, seriously... it just doesn't.

To me, that kind of thinking is even more dangerous than this race war agenda crap.

LOL,

I almost agree only because it is already over. The currency will collapse as there is absolutely no way to keep our economy above water without burning through an "extra" trillion or two a year now.

It is not a matter of "if" anymore but "when". I think the Europeans will crash first causing a chain reaction on all of our fiat currencies. Could be months, could be decades but it is already "unsustainable".

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
To me, that kind of thinking is even more dangerous than this race war agenda crap.

Here's the reason debt doesn't matter. With fiat currency, when you have the ability to create as much as you want, the only thing that matters is that people buy your bonds. If they're buying your bonds, it means they have faith in your currency. That faith in those bonds is then used to back other assets.

If you pay down the debt and get some of those bonds out of circulation, you not only start removing the foundation of what other assets are backed on, but you remove the instruments that are creating faith in our currency. The dollar with 20 trillion in debt out there is stronger than the dollar with 10 trillion in debt, which is stronger than the dollar with 5 trillion in debt.

So basically, paying down the debt not only removes assets from circulation, thereby shrinking the money supply, but it also makes that money supply more unstable.

Paying down the debt is a very bad idea.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Easy fix:

Cut the spending for your Military Industrial Complex / change your foreign policy accordingly.

Less spending = less debt.

Less war = less Refugees.

Step two:

Fix your monetary system (end the petrodollar / put something real behind the USD) and cancel your alliance with the House of Saud.

Less Wahabism = less support for radical islamic terrorism = less war = less refugees.

a reply to: Aazadan

I GOT an idea how much could we save by Liquidating DHS,DEA,and TSA?

a reply to: Aazadan

Okay, so following your logic it should be $100 TRILLION and the dollar would be even stronger. Woohoo! You have any kind of data to support these notions, because I'll tell ya I've been keenly interested in this issue for a decade, and this thinking run counter to every single economist I've ever listened to.

This is the same logic like I saw the other night some 'liberal' was arguing we need to fully merge with Mexico and let the entire bulk of them move in 'all at once' it might as well be, even though hardly anybody would want to go down there (including that person), and everything will just be peachy!

If a nation were a person these kinds of things would be suicidal tendencies.

a reply to: Aazadan

You strike me as being 100% oblivious to the concept of Value of the Dollar, and metrics related to it.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

I'm so sick of this trope. We don't need to tax the 1%... we need to seize the money of 20 or so people who have absolutely destroyed the global economy. Soros, Buffet, Zuckerberg... several others. Take their I'll gotten gains. They're all so big on importing refugees. Time to put their money where their mouth is. Time for them to get a real job and live in the conditions we all do.

Let's see how excited they are then? No more living behind a wall. If they want to make a difference let those most able sacrifice for those most in need. Those assholes could split their wealth to the poorest Americans and immediately put them all in the middle class with homes they owned.

Of course they won't do that. They earned their billions... God forbid they actually practice what they preach. No, instead people less filthy rich than them should sacrifice more.

When Soros, the Kochs, Zuckerberg, and Buffet, are struggling to pay for their double-wide next to me... then I'll buy in to their #.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

First, I appreciate the kind words.

Second, I don't have a problem with us putting a pause on many of our federal programs. We just may be disagreeing on which ones. For example, we spent at least $3.3 trillion just on the Defense Department between 2010 and 2015. And powerful industries like Wall St. and energy companies still get tax breaks and subsidies. It doesn't make sense to me to cut funding to poor people while still giving corporate welfare to contractors and banks.

Third, our federal budget's problem is more a problem of insufficient revenue than of overspending. The last few years of Bill Clinton's presidency had a federal surplus, with a high of a $236.2 billion surplus in 2000. Of course, he and Congress had also agreed on lower military budgets and higher taxes, too (among other things).

But instead of continuing the programs that gave us a surplus so that we could actually pay off the deficit, the Bush tax cuts and "War on Terror" military spending sank us back into huge deficits. And Pres Obama and Congress made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, while keeping our military spending far above the levels during Clinton's administration.

So it's not like there isn't a blueprint for how to change a federal deficit into a surplus. But people have to be willing to actually pay it off instead of seeing yearly surpluses and giving that money back to taxpayers instead. But we can't even get people to agree on a strong single payer healthcare system, which would dramatically lower federal healthcare spending. In other words, people say they want to decrease the federal debt without focusing on programs that are proven to decrease it.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

I would vote to rebuild the "inner cities",
Detroit for example, on a National scale.
Then, once that is accomplished,
we could discuss additional migration.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

That's a false choice.

And that is all that is need to be said about this thread.

The entire premise of the OP is a logical fallacy.