CIO Fox guest: "Great blessing" that old Americans can't afford to retire

[DavidB.]

Horrible. This is why I fully understand why some Americans are attracted to the ideas of AOC and Bernie. But their blind spot is multiculturalism. Their open borders fantasy will always enable capitalism to foster.

The combination of capitalism and multiculturalism really leads to the worst possible outcome for the general populace, especially those in worse socio-economic positions.

[DavidB.]

Horrible. This is why I fully understand why some Americans are attracted to the ideas of AOC and Bernie. But their blind spot is multiculturalism. Their open borders fantasy will always enable capitalism to foster.

The combination of capitalism and multiculturalism really leads to the worst possible outcome for the general populace, especially those in worse socio-economic positions.

Are you legitimately trying to claim that multiculturalism has an actual tangible negative effect on national economics and the lower class?

I've seen arguments like this regarding illegal immigration, but multiculturalisn? This is a massive crock of sh__.

Multiculturalism causes social cohesion to decline and individualism to increase. The result: less willingness to pay into a system that upholds a welfare state. Moreover, mass immigration of working-class people drives down wages (and slows down automation and innovation). The main losers of such policies are the native working classes (of whichever color). Middle-class people lose too, as they benefit from a welfare state and good public facilities (also thinking of education here) too as well as being affected by the decrease of public safety. The only ones who benefit are the literal 1%.

[DavidB.]

Horrible. This is why I fully understand why some Americans are attracted to the ideas of AOC and Bernie. But their blind spot is multiculturalism. Their open borders fantasy will always enable capitalism to foster.

The combination of capitalism and multiculturalism really leads to the worst possible outcome for the general populace, especially those in worse socio-economic positions.

Are you legitimately trying to claim that multiculturalism has an actual tangible negative effect on national economics and the lower class?

I've seen arguments like this regarding illegal immigration, but multiculturalisn? This is a massive crock of sh__.

Multiculturalism causes social cohesion to decline and individualism to increase. The result: less willingness to pay into a system that upholds a welfare state. Moreover, mass immigration of working-class people drives down wages (and slows down automation and innovation). The main losers of such policies are the native working classes (of whichever color). Middle-class people lose too, as they benefit from a welfare state and good public facilities (also thinking of education here) too as well as being affected by the decrease of public safety. The only ones who benefit are the literal 1%.

Multi-culturalism doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with ongoing mass immigration. If Trump completely shut the borders and closed the airports today and stopped allowing foreigners to even vacation here, it would still be a multi-cultural nation going forward.

And even then the U.S. would be very multicultural and, partly because of it, have way lower public support for the type of extensive welfare state that you would see in Western Europe. It's possible to overcome this in a couple of generations if you close the border and use civic nationalism to push for integration (which I think is the right way forward), but even then, the further away immigrants are from American culture, the more difficult it gets - especially because we should increasingly beg the question what it is exactly that immigrants should integrate into: the consensus on this has completely been eroded.

[DavidB.]

"People are racist therefore they hate welfare that isn't only for whites. However, the LONG-TERM solution is to appease the racists!"

You sound like a clown. I'm sorry.

A strawman, a personal attack and no argument. Pretty weak.

[DavidB.]

Horrible. This is why I fully understand why some Americans are attracted to the ideas of AOC and Bernie. But their blind spot is multiculturalism. Their open borders fantasy will always enable capitalism to foster.

The combination of capitalism and multiculturalism really leads to the worst possible outcome for the general populace, especially those in worse socio-economic positions.

Are you legitimately trying to claim that multiculturalism has an actual tangible negative effect on national economics and the lower class?

I've seen arguments like this regarding illegal immigration, but multiculturalisn? This is a massive crock of sh__.

Multiculturalism causes social cohesion to decline and individualism to increase. The result: less willingness to pay into a system that upholds a welfare state. Moreover, mass immigration of working-class people drives down wages (and slows down automation and innovation). The main losers of such policies are the native working classes (of whichever color). Middle-class people lose too, as they benefit from a welfare state and good public facilities (also thinking of education here) too as well as being affected by the decrease of public safety. The only ones who benefit are the literal 1%.

Somewhat interestingly, off topic or not, but I have been reading a book ("l'archipel français" to be precise), by Jerôme Fourquet - which included a load of analyis about the experience of North African migrants in France. And what stood out is that they were following a broadly "normal" pattern of integration (increasingly likely to marry out of their community, increasingly likely to choose "french" rather than "muslim" names for their children, increasingly likely to benefit from social mobility and move out of the banlieues...) until this process actually started going backwards around about the year 2000. Ie, more or less the time that neo-liberal "there is no alternative" capitalism was becoming hegemonic across the globe.

In fact, in many societies, you actually have this ultra-liberalism coming into place before they became multicultural (eg Thatcher was elected at a time when the UK was still 98% white); which I think undermines the argument that Multiculturalism is something that undermines social cohesion.

So I would tend to think that the cause of social fracturing and individualism was not multiculturalism - but instead, it was purely down to neoliberalism, which drove both everything you described about social cohesion, but as a consequence, drove the failure of integration of recent migrants (and that includes the rise of the Islamist identatarian movement, which was also clearly fuelled by neoliberal globalisation as much as anything else). I mean, I wouldn't dispute that "neoliberlism" has been a driver of increased migration to Europe, but I think you have the causality the wrong way round.

I was focusing on America in my post. When it comes to Europe we thankfully haven't become like America yet, both in terms of the weakening of our national identity and social cohesion and in terms of the (lack of a) welfare state. But with mass immigration in Europe continuing, the effect will sooner or later be exactly as I described it and exactly as it has been in America, which is why it is my number one priority to end it.

I definitely think that integration takes place much better in an environment with relatively high social mobility (i.e. a country in which income inequality is low and education opportunities are relatively equal) and that the wave of neoliberalization of the 80s and 90s has negatively affected integration (while not really changing the fact that many immigrants rely on welfare). I also think neoliberalization has further damaged the social fabric of our societies in Europe, which were already negatively affected by all sorts of developments that probably fall under 'modernization': secularization, urbanization and suburbanization, individualization, you name it... So I don't disagree with your analysis for the European situation at all.

[DavidB.]

"People are racist therefore they hate welfare that isn't only for whites. However, the LONG-TERM solution is to appease the racists!"

You sound like a clown. I'm sorry.

A strawman, a personal attack and no argument. Pretty weak.

Not a strawnan at all. Please explain what part of my summary of your ideas about welfare and race and the solution to that problem is inaccurate, wording aside. I'll wait.

Nah. I'm not going to waste my time responding to your trolling explaining why your simplified and distorted version of my argument is wrong. You can simply respond to my argument.