Typically, not friends. I’ll greet them and make small talk.
I walk my dog multiple times a day at similar hours and other neighbors do as well. So I’ll run into the same people regularly. We’ll talk a little bit. Sometimes I’ll talk a few minutes, sometimes it’s just a greeting.
I have asked on two occasions in 3 years for a neighbor to take out the dog. So generally no, but it has happened
are you saying that those construction projects won’t get done
No, but it would both
a) slow down significantly
b) costs would rise significantly
The issue is it’s hard to find laborers. Americans simply don’t work as hard as immigrants. I’ve been doing this for about a decade now and that’s one thing I’ve learned. You don’t hire Americans to dig holes. They will work half as hard, complain 5 times as much, and leave as soon as they find something better.
But Pablo and Juan will work with a smile on their face, don’t care about being nomads working from state to state without complaints, and they’ll work Saturdays and even Sundays if you let them. You gotta basically force them to take days off.
Low-skill Americans prefer easy jobs like working at a cashier where they can stand around all day. That’s what they’re good for. Skilled Americans do office jobs, management, supervision, etc.
So let’s say we get rid of all illegals. During a time where we already have a labor shortage, we would eliminate 10~15 million people from the economy that basically fuel key parts of our economy.
What would happen? An exacerbation of the labor shortage and inflation. Large construction companies would see their costs jump up. Productivity would lower. Which would mean less demand for construction materials. Which would lead to price instability - aka more inflation. Small businesses would be most effected.
That’s just construction. We would see effects in many industries such as landscaping or agriculture as well.
I mean, this is they way the left makes it sound… as if, we DON’T support illegal immigration, our country is doomed… and it’s ridiculous.
First, I want you to remember being pro-illegal immigration is a right-wing capitalist policy. Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to all illegals. His economic advisor, Milton Friedman, advocated for open borders.
The reason being because immigration is essentially an extension of economic policy. The labor market is a market like any other. The more regulations you put, the worse it gets for business. Regulations include, for example, restricting the importing of labor or artificially removing labor from the population (aka mass deportations)
Second, I would like to remind you that Obama deported more people than Trump did.
This entire conversation has nothing to do with left versus right. Both parties are more or less in agreement on the general trends. There has been no significant immigration reform for decades, even though there have been multiple instances of GOP majorities and DNC majorities. Why?
Because of the reasons I outlined above. It’s actually really beneficial to the economy for us to have an underclass of cheap labor that has less rights than everyone else. It’s essentially a mini and voluntary slavery. Sort of like how Dubai imports Indians. Lots of pros, very little cons.
Thirdly and lastly, it’s only been since 2016 or so that we have seen the anti-illegal and anti-immigrant rhetoric in general start increasing. You want to know why?
Because our society has been taken over by populists. Our country is in its death throes and vultures are already picking at the corpse.
This once free market economy that produced the strongest country in the world is being destroyed bit by bit. They want to restrict the market as much as possible. First, you put in tariffs restricting the free flow of goods. Then you artificially freeze the labor market.
The end goal? An economy designed for only the largest corporations who are allied with those in power. That is what we are becoming and they are accomplishing that by pulling the wool over your eyes.
I understand this phenomenon and it goes all the way back to Socrates. There’s that famous quote.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
And he even used to complain about the new invention of writing. Said it would weaken people’s memory because they wouldn’t have to remember everything.
So I get it. I understand what you mean.
But I think this is different. Because let me posit this.
Cigarettes existed for a very long time, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that they started being produced en masse. Very quickly, the majority of the country was smoking and smoking a lot. Much more than before.
That eventually caused a dramatic increase in lung diseases because a lot more people were smoking. You could say “Tobacco has been around forever. Every generation has fads”
But in reality, it was different. It was a new thing. Cigarettes were hand-rolled before. Now you could buy a pack and smoke your 20 a day much more easily.
I think this is more similar to what we are seeing with social media today. I consciously make an effort not to judge the youth. And I’m not judging the youth. The social media “epidemic” does not only concern the youth, but all generations. Smartphones in general but modern social media specifically operate in manners we don’t fully understand.
Look at the brains of gambling addicts. Your brain literally gets rewired when you play slots all day. Social media operates in a similar manner as slots. We are all rewiring our brains in a way that has never happened in human history.
It could cause permanent damage for all we know. We just haven’t had the time or studies to confirm this. And if we look at research that exists right now, social media does increase rate of anxiety, depression, etc. It’s not so simple.
There’s also obviously plenty of, for lack of a better word, entrepreneurs
Yeah, it’s interesting.
Over the course of the last two decades or so, the government has slowly been enforcing the I9 verification process. Where employers have to get some information from you when they hire you. Social security number, driver’s license, etc. This makes it so illegals shouldn’t be able to work most jobs.
Of course, there are ways around it. I’ve worked for smaller sized publicly traded companies that simply look the other way. I knew a middle manager who was illegal and the company knew about it- but didn’t really care. So they just cooked the books, so to speak, so the employee could continue working. I remember when he got deported. His wife wanted her niece from their home country to come visit and stay with them for a couple weeks. Girl was 16. Customs officer thought it was suspicious, started asking girl some questions. Officer did not like the responses.
So they waited at the airport with the girl until employee went to go pick up his wife’s niece. Officer then questions employee, he doesn’t have appropriate documents. 8 months later, after the standard deportation procedures (which involves going in front of an immigration judge, etc), he was deported.
Moral of the story? If you have to pick up someone from the airport and you’re illegal… find a friend with documents and send them instead. Safer
One way to get around as an illegal that seems to be very popular is just to start a company and work as a 1099 subcontractor.
So for example, you don’t need documents to start a business. You start a business, apply for an EIN number with the IRS under that business. Then when you go work for some construction company, you don’t work as an employee. You sign up as a 1099 contractor.
That way the company hiring you is not legally liable for anything - they are simply hiring a company to provide a service. They aren’t hiring illegals to do work- whoever the contractor chooses to hire or not is not a concern of the host company. Uncle Sam gets his taxes and everybody is happy.
Vast swathes of the construction industry work using that system. I don’t want to name names, but some very big-name companies would suffer quite a bit should we actually deport even a small % of illegals.
My main point is that the system is designed to keep undocumented immigrants in the “informal economy” by paying under the table
I understand the point you’re making and I agree with you. It’s designed to keep them in the shadows. Although keep in mind, it’s not always under the table. Like I outlined above, a lot of it ends up being taxed and documented properly. I know illegals that get paid $2000 weekly salary, have a work truck assigned to them, and have their rent paid for. They do their yearly taxes and Uncle Sam doesn’t care because he’s making his cut.
There’s a high demand for people that speak both English and Spanish and have both a) technical skills (aka can work spreadsheets, emails) and b) have construction experience. It’s really hard to find these people and many of them tend to be illegals.
You want to really hurt illegals? Get rid of the ability to do what I just outlined. But then Uncle Sam would lose $$$. So that’s what I’m curious what Trump is actually gonna do.
There absolutely are illegals being put in similar situations as Dubai does with the Indians. For example, the Chinese love doing this. They’ll start a Chinese restaurant and then import Chinese to live and work there for pennies on the dollar. Other examples are Mexicans working in agricultural in the SW of the country.
But that certainly isn’t the only way and in my experience isn’t that common.
I’ve worked all over the rust belt / bible belt in a little over a dozen states doing large construction projects. At least for my industry, the vast majority of the laborers are illegals. They don’t disappear after getting paid. I’ve worked with some regularly for over 5 years.
From what I’ve heard from people in California, your experience is not typical
Undocumented immigrants don’t “do the work legal citizens aren’t willing to do” or “work harder than legal citizens”. Those are both racist liberal talking points
majority of my life was spent as an illegal immigrant. i’ve been embedded in illegal immigrant communities my whole life. i’ve worked with many and have known many more
it’s my experience that both of those statements are true.
a) they do work citizens aren’t willing to do and b) they work harder
i can elaborate on why I believe those things are true, but absolutely if I’m looking for a laborer for specific types of work… I will always avoid the native-born citizen.
whole ecosystem of fear is designed to keep immigrants working jobs below minimum wage and/or in appalling working conditions
believe it or not there are many illegals that make wages higher than what most americans make.
there’s many types of illegal immigrants. there’s not one size fits all to make generalizations. but the majority of them are similar to oil drill workers.
a working class male goes far away to a labor-intensive job that nobody wants to do. they do this because they can make a relatively large salary and then use that money to do something back at home.
so for example Mexicans will come and work in construction. They can make upwards of $300+ a day of work with experience. this is many times more than what they could reasonably expect in Mexico. but not only that, they’re making more than many native born American citizens.
it’s just lower skilled Americans tend to flock to low salary and low effort jobs like retail or food service.
We have never had machine learning algorithms that exploit human psychology to give precisely timed hits of dopamine. Algorithms that know you better than your family members do.
I think in the near future we’re gonna be looking at the modern social medias similar to how we see smoking cigarettes today. Addictive and bad for you.
I wonder if he’s gonna actually do it. An actual real concentrated effort to remove illegals would cause serious problems.
Inflation would spike, lots of industries would slow to a crawl, certain commercial areas would be essentially destroyed.
For example, in many different fields of construction the majority of the hard labor comes from illegals. Big companies hire contractors who then hire contractors who use illegals because they are much more productive than Americans and you can pay them less.
If we get rid of them, they would have to both dramatically increase their labor cost and the projects would slow down.
That would raise the price of doing business which is inevitably always passed down to the consumer. Then you have certain areas with ethnic markets and ethnic restaurants and such. Many of those would lose half or more of their business overnight.
This would be so disruptive it’s hard to understate. And I know Trump knows this.
That’s my burning curiousity right now. Is this whole thing similar to the Wall™ ? A symbol that isn’t meant to accomplish anything meaningful beyond giving the droolers something to point to? Or is he serious?
If he’s serious, we’re about to begin a radical shift. He would not be doing this if he wasn’t ready to radically change things.
now trump will use the killing to push a hardcore agenda of police and constant surveillance to make sure it won’t happen again
see, I think if Trump did it he’s gonna go a different route
he’s gonna harness the populist support for this killer and he’s gonna go “we need universal healthcare because Americans are suffering”
and he will be seen as a hero and cement his dictatorship
well, two things can be true. he could have committed serious crimes and it could be a case of the DOJ being used a political weapon.
realistically most people who do the things Hunter Biden did get away with it just fine. It’s perfectly fine to be a criminal when you are part of that group. so if he weren’t Biden’s son, he would be fine (although he also probably wouldn’t be receiving millions of dollars from Russian convicted criminals).
honestly, I think it’s one of the final nails in the coffin of our democracy.
i think a lot of people need to start paying attention to what happens in Brazil. I’ve been seeing so many parallels. We had Jan 6th, they had their own Jan 6th a year later… except a more intense version
A few years back, the president conspired with the justice department to try and put the opposition candidate in jail. the thing is - the opposition candidate was corrupt. but the whole trial was orchestrated not to seek justice, but to put the guy in jail so they would win the election.
the trump-like candidate in Brazil got attacked in a crowd. helped him win an election. Trump got shot in the ear, helped him win an election. etc
so many parallels
we’re seeing similar weaponization of the justice system here
couple of things
I spent the majority of my life as an illegal immigrant in the US. I didn’t become a citizen until well into my adulthood. I was brought here illegally at a young age
do you really think I am a Trumper? that I’m a red hat wearing Maga bible thumper? i would be a traitor to my own kind- being damned to spend eternity in the lowest level of hell freezing right next to Marco Rubio and Judas
come on man stop drinking the koolaid it’s OK to admit Biden’s son is a criminal.
Let’s see. Biden was charged with and pleaded guilty to 3 felony counts. One count of tax evasion and two counts of filing false returns. And then 3 misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay taxes
Everyone’s favorite actor Wesley Snipes got charged and convicted of 3 misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay taxes. significantly less than Biden was charged with.
he got sentenced to 36 months and served 28 months
baltimore police commissioner served 10 months along with community service and probation. he got 3 counts of willful failure to pay taxes
so what is the typical? it really depends. there’s a lot of nuance to it. but Biden is/was facing some serious serious charges. 3+ years of prison would probably be the minimum expected
the police commissioner tried to hide about $60k of taxes from the government
Biden tried to hide $1.4M
so yeah, I’d be really grateful to dad if I were him
yeah i just try not to think about it. I’m glad I was in the myspace generation during my teenage years. so I was actually able to just delete my myspace later on as an adult
i feel worse for the kids growing up today. they don’t fully understand the implications of what they are posting online. anything and everything is being recorded forever. my generation got a chance to be a stupid kid and have it be forgotten. today’s kids don’t get that opportunity
the best you can do, though, is just stop posting potentially damaging things online. you can’t change what you already posted. and 999 times out of a thousand, it’s not gonna hurt you.
i understand the overwhelmed feeling though
the safest perspective to have is this -
every single thing you send online is going to be there forever. “the cloud” is someone’s server and constitutes online. even end to end encryption isn’t necessarily going to save you.
for example iCloud backup is encrypted. but Apple in the past has kept a copy of your encryption key on your iCloud. why? because consumers who choose to encrypt and lose their passwords are gonna freak out when all their data is effectively gone forever.
so when FBI comes a’knocking to Apple with a subpoena… once they get access to that encryption key it doesn’t matter if you have the strongest encryption in the world
my advice
never ever ever write something online that you do not want everybody in the world seeing.
to put on my tin foil hat, i believe government probably has access to methods that break modern encryptions. in theory with quantum computers it shouldn’t be difficult
sad story. it’s emblematic of a mentality that is all too common in “ivory tower” positions
whether you work for a university or a news agency or a government organizations, etc. everyone ends up self censoring because they realize that rocking the boat is bad for your personal interests. after working so hard to get into this little elite club, you don’t want to jeopardize your position. your identity and sense of self worth is tied up with it
the few that end up trying get quickly chewed up and spit out by the whole.
it’s essentially group think and self censorship. too bad this guy killed himself instead of trying to move forward in his life with another avenue.
i don’t think the always thrown around “more education” is an effective answer to everything
you can educate kids up and down about the harms of smoking- if smoking is advertised as cool in popular media, there are cigarettes with colorful and fruity flavors, and it’s easy for the kids to obtain then they will inevitably smoke cigarettes. everybody has known smoking causes cancer for a half century know.
if you don’t want kids smoking, then you must act with force to restrict something. whether it’s the restriction on subliminal advertising, the ban on colorful cigarettes, or prohibition of selling to underage smokers- you need some sort of ban.
i firmly believe in the near future we will view social media as we know it similar to how we see smoking. addictive little dopamine hits that will over time change the structure of your brain. we look back at the 50s and think it was crazy how they smoked cigarettes on airplanes, drank whiskey at work, and everyone bathed in lead and asbestos. they’re going to look back at our time period and see us similarly
so if I were to say “should kids be using social media?” I wholeheartedly believe they should not be using it until their brains are developed. much like I don’t think kids should be smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or smoking weed
but the ultimate question is- what are the potential harms of a government ban and are those potential harms worth it?
that’s where I am conflicted. a minor not being able to buy cigarettes is something that I don’t really think hurts society very much.
but a ban on a minor accessing certain online spaces… how do you accomplish that? well, you will need to track people’s identities online somehow. this is the part where I think maybe the harms of kids using social media is not worth giving the government power to monitor and regulate social media websites.
most democratic countries cosplay as democracies. just like most communist countries cosplayed as communist.
ideology in its purest form. After the death of God, you need something to fill that unapproachable void. So you inject ideals- civil service, egalitarianism, tolerance, justice, etc – values that are virtuous and aspirational, but ultimately are just shiny veneers over a darker truth. it functions as scaffolding for systems that serve the interests of raw power. it is theater. performance. spectacle. underneath, the mechanisms of control, inequality, and corruption remain unchanged.
don’t make the mistake of believing that India is somehow unique here
let your children come to their conclusions on their own. do not try to force them into believing one thing or another. share what you believe is right and let them critically think and analyze the world for themselves
it’s perfectly natural for teenagers to rebel against their parent’s world view- especially when they feel like they are being forced into it. it’s part of growing up and crafting your own unique identity. nobody has it all figured out when they are a teenager, even though they think they do. so they may seem arrogant and ignorant… but that’s perfectly normal. if you successfully imparted them the values of empathy and compassion when they were young, they will eventually come to proper belief systems
as for present, you know your son a lot better than any of us will.
I really need to figure out how to get a single work app to work on Linux reliably
what work app?
I use it for like 99% of my work, so a virtual machine is kind of useless
i mean, it depends on your computer (like if your cpu & motherboard supports virtualization) but you can in theory get a VM with pretty decent performance
on my m1 macbook i have a windows VM that runs very smoothly and i can effortlessly use a gesture on the touchpad to switch between them. it’s pretty cool
on linux it’s a little harder to set up (i had to pay like $100 for the software on the mac) but it’s doable
my tip is just to greet people loudly with a smile. say good morning, talk about weather, whatever
i’ve found that most people will do as you say. just try and look away and go about their day. some people can even look mean with a face that is not inviting at all.
but if you say hi in a friendly way one day, they look at you surprised a mutter something back.
the next time you see them, they have a smile on their face and they greet you more warmly.
really this is the thing about human connection. someone has to bridge that gap. and it’s not hard to do