Hey, Bernie supporters: Mass immigration is driving income inequality
By Ryan Girdusky | March 30, 2016
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Bernie Sanders supporters are triggered by the growing income inequality in the U.S. It’s a very real issue, but rather than blaming the wealthy for being successful, they should realize that importing over a million poor people a year is making the problem worse.
Bringing millions of individuals over the last two decades negatively has affected the gap between the rich and poor. A study done by Ping Xu, James C. Garand, Ling Zhu, of the London School of Economics found the mass immigration has significantly increased income inequality.
“Our findings that low-skill immigrants raise income inequality while high-skill immigrants lower income inequality for certain selective income pairings point to the importance of considering the values that undergird American immigration policy,” the study concluded. “One possible way to mitigate the effects of immigration on income inequality is to see changes in immigration policy that result in a change in the mix of immigrants admitted to the United States.”
It’s no wonder that the influx of immigrants have depressed wages among the working poor, considering the U.S. foreign-born population is older, more uneducated, and less skilled than the native-born Americans.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the U.S. imported 1.7 million legal and illegal immigrants in the last year, which brought the nation’s total immigrant population to a record high of 42.1 million. The Migration Policy Institute reported the average immigrant is 43 years old, and 30 percent do not have a high school diploma.
The millions of Americans who are struggling with increased competition from foreign workers are about see things go from bad to worse.
On Wednesday, Vox reported that President Obama’s economists fear 83 percent of jobs that pay less than $40,000 annually will be automated in the near future. This is also the case for 31 percent of employment that pays between $40,000 and $80,000 a year.
The robotic revolution is at our doorstep — there’s no stopping it — the only question is what to do next.
If Sanders supporters insist that the U.S. must continue to import millions of poor, uneducated people, then they’re going to exacerbate the income inequality crisis and the rich don’t have enough taxable money to redistribute to a post-robotic revolution poor population.
Democratic-socialists in America must either take a more European national approach (low immigration with a strong social safety net), or live in a country with a permanent underclass that grows by the millions each decade.
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