patches70 wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:How much GDP per year are y'all willing to sacrifice in order to maintain relatively closed borders?
e.g. if GDP could double if immigration restrictions drastically fell, would you end your position?
(GDP doubling is like everyone in the US getting twice as rich. GDP tends to increase by about 3% per year, so it's an insane amount of prosperity).
Hey! We could double the GDP easily! Just close the police stations and let the cities riot for a few months. The loss of life would be great but after about three months just mobilize, put down the riots and lawlessness and start rebuilding everything that got destroyed. And just to make sure that plenty of stuff gets destroyed, just have a few air wings of the Air force run daily bombing campaigns through every major city, town and village across these United States.
It would be the greatest rebuilding project in the history of the US and it would easily double the (now revised down GDP) GDP.
I dunno, GDP is a horrible metric to determine wealth, but you already know that, don't you BBS?
You know what would double most people's wealth almost overnight? A nice round of deflation and market correction to address the over inflated asset prices of virtually everything in the US. The money in people's wallets could double in value virtually overnight, and double again and again and again! Savers would be the new rich, those in debt would be the new paupers.
The slum lord who owns a ton of shit building would find those buildings become worth a quarter of the value they once held. Those who are rich because of the stocks they hold would find themselves staring at the window and that long fall outside with supreme longing as they watch their positions degrade.
The banks would find themselves smashed because the collateral they have on the loans they made would not be worth a fraction of the cost of the money they lent.
It would be glorious and anyone who is not in debt, has savings, has a recession proof job, skills that are absolutely vital no matter what the economic conditions are, they would all be fine with having any one or more of those option available to them.
Everyone else would be pretty much fucked. But hey, making money ain't always easy. Gotta break a few eggs to double one's worth, it all comes down to whom's eggs are going to be cracked, doesn't it?
Okay, dude. I'm not suggesting the broken window fallacy. Although GDP still has some problems, it doesn't follow to 'throw the baby outta the bathwater' in this context. Try answering the question by substituting "GDP" with "wealth" or "real income" if it makes you so upset to see the letters, GDP.