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This doesn’t fix your problem if the people you let in cost more than they contribute in taxes. See for example the Netherlands where non-Western immigrants are large net negative contributors and their children are no better. https://docs.iza.org/dp17569.pdf

Similar results apply in Denmark. https://docs.iza.org/dp8844.pdf

EU style negatively selected immigration where easily a billion people are eligible for asylum and refugee status with easy family reunification means immigration is a large net negative fiscal contributor.

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throwaway473825 5 days ago | parent [-]

They might still create more value than they cost. For example, a bus driver enables many people to work, but has a low wage and hence pays little in taxes.

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simianwords 5 days ago | parent [-]

On average you are paid according to your value so this doesn't track.

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ahtihn 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Where are you getting this from? The value you provide sets a kind of ceiling on what you can be paid. But you are paid based on how easy it is to replace you.

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garfield_light 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So a top TikTok influencer is more valuable than a surgeon?

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simianwords 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes. They provide a scaled entertainment. You are forgetting the reach that this person has.

Compared to a surgeon who's impact is more local, they might help a few patients in a week.

Do you think a combat soldier is more important than a VP of Google?

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ModernMech 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Here's how you determine who brings more value to society: If they were to just stop coming to work tomorrow, would society keep going?

If every ticktocker quit tomorrow, would society still function? Yes. Things would go on like nothing ever happened.

If every surgeon quit tomorrow, would society still function? No, people would die, they would become timid and afraid of being hurt, because minor injuries would be fatal and life changing. Not only that, we would lose centuries worth of knowledge and be forced to learn it all from scratch again from books instead of trained surgeons.

The danger in your logic is it leads to thinking like this: "ticktockers provide more value than surgeons because they can scale their reach, therefore in order to maximize total value to society, we can maximize the number of ticktickers and we don't have to worry about surgeons. We can just offset the lost value by the value brought by all the ticktockers."

That's an obvious bad idea and straw man, but people really try to go down that slippery slope in non-obvious cases. The realm of education comes to mind. "MOOCs are more valuable than universities because they have more reach, therefore in the future we will close down universities and only have MOOCs" is something I've heard seriously proposed before.

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garfield_light 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You have the delusion that true value is the same as a fungible one dimensional number, that externalities (negative or positive) don't exist, we have perfect information and local minima aren't real.

The original example is that certain economic activities are force multipliers, the guy who actually does a good job in servicing the metro in my city (we avoid 10 minutes of delay) has more impact than most local CEO day to day. A good supply of bus drivers make certain services possible, which in turn boost productivity.

The social influencer entertains like shitty cocaine, we don't have a lack of inane shit, their absurd payout exists because ZIRP happened. Bad entertainment has costs beyond the directly measured by dollars.

Getting everybody addicted to nicotine is profitable but bad, correct?

A hypothetical world were we "stagnated" on MySpace equivalents could've existed and surely the generated value would be higher.

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simianwords 4 days ago | parent [-]

if you think the metro guy/girl provides more value then he/she should be paid more. tough luck because its not the market that decides his wage unfortunately.

	▲	garfield_light 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah we knew that, that's the point.