Matt, I love you, but you are describing indentured servitude, which was used during Jamestown. It is grotesquely immoral, and the knock on effects are subhuman.
Indenture in Jamestown led directly to slavery, as debt peonage was essentially human ownership. What if someone can’t pay their debts? Do they get deported? Imprisoned? Do they have rights as citizens (check recent Supreme Court rulings before you answer)?
This is an insanely bad idea, though oddly not the worst to come out of Silicon Valley these days.
My idea is that you come here, you pay and then you can do any job you want. You can even start a company. No limits on what you can do. You are not tied to a specific employer or any of that BS. You get all the same normal rights as a permanent resident.
You just gotta pay. If you don’t pay or can’t pay, you have to leave.
It’s like a car loan — you can do whatever you want with the car as long as you make payments on it. Don’t pay? Lose the car. Same deal.
After 5 years of regular payments and good behavior — boom, you’re a US Citizen.
What I am proposing is a vastly more humane approach to immigration than our current system.
I disagree. Try living in soviet down under (Australia) for a month. You'll quickly realize why hard working and talented Aussi's are so desperate to escape.
Huge taxes. Suffocating red tape. Arrogant bureaucrates on million dollar salaries. Tall poppy syndrome everywhere. A cradle to grave welfare state. China-loving politicians. Vaccine mandates EVERYWHERE.
Abandoned shop fronts are the norm. An entire generation of young people have left, never to return. Homeless and drug dealers are now in all city centers.
All we Aussi's want to do is start a business in a country that appreciates entrepreneur's like America, and live our dream.
You are soooooo lucky. Let us in you bastards.
No one has 5 mill. But most have $25,000 a year they'd invest, to make a new start in a country that appreciates achievement.
I like President Trump's plan: $5 trillion could go straight to debt reduction. Plus those 1 million extra high net worth bodies would probably generate much more tax revenue per capita than the average American, helping to close the annual budget deficit without raising tax rates on existing citizens. Your plan doesn't generate nearly enough revenue to make much of a dent in either the debt or the deficit (unless I'm misunderstanding your numbers).
If the U.S. really wants to stem the tide of illegal immigration, we need to export freedom and democracy to countries whose governments (or cartels/gangs) are so repressive that they encourage their citizens to flee to the U.S. Not sure exactly how we do that, but let's face it: we have a much smaller illegal immigration problem from our northern border than our southern border. If Mexico (and other Central American nations) had bustling economies and PPP-adjusted per capita incomes that rival the U.S., I sincerely doubt we'd see the level of illegal immigration that we face today.
Well, under that theory, USAID is spreading our soft power. Whether that is successful is unclear. It was once a way to spread democracy. Under your stated goals, we would need to lower the barriers to entry for legal migration. This means investing in judges and technology to manage people while they wait, changing the laws such that people applying for asylum under refugee status can have work permits, and creating pathways to citizenship for existing undocumented people. I personally don’t think that illegal immigration is even the problem it is made out to be in the media. Congress could pass laws to make entering between border crossings a greater offense but for now that is a misdemeanor and the vast majority of people who are considered illegal are people whose visas have expired and DACA recipients. However, what @Matt Mireles appears to be saying is that this is a complementary plan for the non-billionaire classes. I tend to subscribe to Stephanie Kelton’s framing modern monetary theory (MMT) about our debt. It can sound a bit fantastical but I believe debt is another boogeyman to drive consent in cutting basic services. That said, if Trump applied the earnings from visas to a dividend to the American people as @Matt Mireles suggests, I think it would change opinions on immigration. You can read more about Kelton’s MMT here https://www.npr.org/2024/01/03/1222600843/the-national-debt-tops-34-trillion-a-record-high-how-worried-should-we-be
I think you missed the big idea here: $0 goes to the government. 100% of the net income (ie revenue minus operating costs) from this program would be paid directly to the American people as a cash dividend. This money would not flow into the general fund or be fodder for Congress spending.
Also... our history with nation building is pretty abysmal. I don't know if you were around for the Bush era, but "let fix other countries broken economies" is tried idea that has failed many times.
Matt, I love you, but you are describing indentured servitude, which was used during Jamestown. It is grotesquely immoral, and the knock on effects are subhuman.
Indenture in Jamestown led directly to slavery, as debt peonage was essentially human ownership. What if someone can’t pay their debts? Do they get deported? Imprisoned? Do they have rights as citizens (check recent Supreme Court rulings before you answer)?
This is an insanely bad idea, though oddly not the worst to come out of Silicon Valley these days.
My idea is that you come here, you pay and then you can do any job you want. You can even start a company. No limits on what you can do. You are not tied to a specific employer or any of that BS. You get all the same normal rights as a permanent resident.
You just gotta pay. If you don’t pay or can’t pay, you have to leave.
It’s like a car loan — you can do whatever you want with the car as long as you make payments on it. Don’t pay? Lose the car. Same deal.
After 5 years of regular payments and good behavior — boom, you’re a US Citizen.
What I am proposing is a vastly more humane approach to immigration than our current system.
I disagree. Try living in soviet down under (Australia) for a month. You'll quickly realize why hard working and talented Aussi's are so desperate to escape.
Huge taxes. Suffocating red tape. Arrogant bureaucrates on million dollar salaries. Tall poppy syndrome everywhere. A cradle to grave welfare state. China-loving politicians. Vaccine mandates EVERYWHERE.
Abandoned shop fronts are the norm. An entire generation of young people have left, never to return. Homeless and drug dealers are now in all city centers.
All we Aussi's want to do is start a business in a country that appreciates entrepreneur's like America, and live our dream.
You are soooooo lucky. Let us in you bastards.
No one has 5 mill. But most have $25,000 a year they'd invest, to make a new start in a country that appreciates achievement.
I like President Trump's plan: $5 trillion could go straight to debt reduction. Plus those 1 million extra high net worth bodies would probably generate much more tax revenue per capita than the average American, helping to close the annual budget deficit without raising tax rates on existing citizens. Your plan doesn't generate nearly enough revenue to make much of a dent in either the debt or the deficit (unless I'm misunderstanding your numbers).
If the U.S. really wants to stem the tide of illegal immigration, we need to export freedom and democracy to countries whose governments (or cartels/gangs) are so repressive that they encourage their citizens to flee to the U.S. Not sure exactly how we do that, but let's face it: we have a much smaller illegal immigration problem from our northern border than our southern border. If Mexico (and other Central American nations) had bustling economies and PPP-adjusted per capita incomes that rival the U.S., I sincerely doubt we'd see the level of illegal immigration that we face today.
Well, under that theory, USAID is spreading our soft power. Whether that is successful is unclear. It was once a way to spread democracy. Under your stated goals, we would need to lower the barriers to entry for legal migration. This means investing in judges and technology to manage people while they wait, changing the laws such that people applying for asylum under refugee status can have work permits, and creating pathways to citizenship for existing undocumented people. I personally don’t think that illegal immigration is even the problem it is made out to be in the media. Congress could pass laws to make entering between border crossings a greater offense but for now that is a misdemeanor and the vast majority of people who are considered illegal are people whose visas have expired and DACA recipients. However, what @Matt Mireles appears to be saying is that this is a complementary plan for the non-billionaire classes. I tend to subscribe to Stephanie Kelton’s framing modern monetary theory (MMT) about our debt. It can sound a bit fantastical but I believe debt is another boogeyman to drive consent in cutting basic services. That said, if Trump applied the earnings from visas to a dividend to the American people as @Matt Mireles suggests, I think it would change opinions on immigration. You can read more about Kelton’s MMT here https://www.npr.org/2024/01/03/1222600843/the-national-debt-tops-34-trillion-a-record-high-how-worried-should-we-be
I think you missed the big idea here: $0 goes to the government. 100% of the net income (ie revenue minus operating costs) from this program would be paid directly to the American people as a cash dividend. This money would not flow into the general fund or be fodder for Congress spending.
Also... our history with nation building is pretty abysmal. I don't know if you were around for the Bush era, but "let fix other countries broken economies" is tried idea that has failed many times.