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Notes -
That appears to be true — but Google gives me population data that shows a linear increase at roughly the same rate since 1960. In other words, this level of population growth has been happening for the last 60 years. Now, it's no longer clear how this steady growth would explain the recent 65% spike in the housing market.
I consider the housing market to be generally fishy. For example, there are two ways to come to own a house:
If first way spikes 65% for no apparent good reason, ok fine — but one would expect that the second way, building a house, just keeps up with inflation. After all, it's the cost of materials and construction worker wages. If buying a house is too expensive, people would build houses instead, which equalizes the price of houses. But apparently, that doesn't happen, so something fishy appears to be going on; I bet that there is some sort of rent-seeking going on.
That may be true — but the word "outrage" makes me skeptical: How many Indian international students are raiding food banks for meals? "Outrages" typically arise from small-scale stories that gather much more attention that their actual effect size merits.
Yes, but the evidence would have to come in the form of a model in the sense of system dynamics. This kind of model was used for The Limits of Growth, for example.
My primary issues is that "direct negative" is actually hard to argue and usually not true — as the example of historical Canadian population indicates. Correlation ≠ causation.
Strictly speaking, I don't even want to claim that existing problems cannot be slightly worsened by immigration. What I am claiming is that the existing problem is the one worth fixing, and immigration is a red herring.
(I would concede half a point if the model shows that the system is unstable in the sense that a small amount of immigration causes large downstream effects. Again the stability is the underlying problem, but I concede that this would constitute a very strong aggravation.)
In fact, your other question about labor market participation got me thinking, to the point where a simple calculation shows that at least the position "immigrations steals our jobs" cannot be true. The calculation is this: Consider a city and add 1 marginal person. For simplicity, this person provides 1 person worth of labor. Now, let x be the labor that this person provides. There are essentially two cases:
The point is that it's not possible for both cases to be negative at the same time — otherwise, the only positive action would be to disband the community. After all, this calculation doesn't care whether the person comes from a foreign country or is a white neighbor from a city close by.
The resolution of this conundrum is that the second case is not negative for everyone, but that someone else reaps the benefits. And indeed: If the additional labor makes wages go down, then it must be the job provider who captures the excess labor capacity that the additional person provides. That's what I mean by "existing problem". The new person provides excess labor and could make your life better — but you don't profit from it, because someone else captures that excess labor.
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