At 27 percent, California leads the U.S. in percentage of population who are foreign-born (Wikipedia). Many of these folks migrated from low-income countries where the typical resident is “low-skill” from the perspective of a U.S. employer.
What if a politician referred to California as “like a third world country”? We would cancel him/her/zir/them as a Trump-poisoned hater of low-skill migrants, right?
“Newsom grapples with his ‘third-world country’” (Politico):
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s frustration was palpable on Thursday, as he cleaned up trash-strewn railroad tracks in Los Angeles that have become the site of innumerable package thefts. You may have seen images of the property crimes in question. They’ve permeated California’s media markets and been beamed beyond our borders, where the coverage has often advanced a familiar narrative of California spiraling into dystopia. None of that is lost on Newsom.
“I’m asking myself, what the hell is going on? We look like a third-world country,” Newsom said
Separately, “Newsom has big plans to get rid of California’s massive homeless camps. Will they work?”:
After pouring an unprecedented $12 billion into homeless housing and services last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom now is turning to the massive tent camps, shantytowns and makeshift RV parks that have taken over California’s streets, parks and open spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a never-before-seen effort, the governor is doling out $50 million this winter to help cities and counties clear out camps and house people living outside. San Jose, Richmond and Santa Cruz are among those that might benefit. Newsom hopes to increase that investment 10-fold in the coming year’s budget and add $1.5 billion to house people with behavioral health conditions. In charge of it all will be Newsom’s new state homelessness council, co-chaired by none other than the face of California’s COVID response — Dr. Mark Ghaly.
“This is probably one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime type funding that we’re seeing from the state,” said Michelle Milam, crime prevention manager for the Richmond Police Department and a member of the city’s homelessness task force. “We’ve never seen this kind of investment from the state for encampments.”
If he/she/ze/they is canceled as a result of this hate speech, maybe Mx. Newsom will retire to state-income-tax-free 3-percent-foreign-born Wyoming?
Based on my own travels, I think that Mx. Newsom is incorrect regarding California looking like a third-world country. The major cities in the poorest countries that I have visited do not feature people encamped in tents on sidewalks, people consuming drugs out in the open, etc. See my photos from Haiti, for example (not the tourist Haiti, but the authentic Haiti). A sample:
And, from the Provincetown Public Library, taken shortly after the above photo, some migration-related titles in the Young Adult Non-Fiction section:
Related:
> at 27 percent, California leads the U.S. in percentage of population who are foreign-born.
27%? That’s nothing: “Foreign citizens make up nearly three-quarters of Silicon Valley tech workforce, [2018] report says” (could that explain why big-tech doesn’t seem to support the 1st+2nd amendments?)
> (could that explain why big-tech doesn’t seem to support the 1st+2nd amendments?)
I found that Western Europeans, Indians, and Latin Americans in high tech tend to be seriously left-wing. Asians are a mixed bunch, they tend to keep their politics to themselves, and some (particularly Chinese and Vietnamese) are quite anti-Communist. Immigrants from Ex-USSR and Eastern Bloc countries are either apolitical or right-wing (their kids usually distance themselves by being more left-wing, but no more than usual among university-educated Americans).
I think the real reason high-tech is so left-wing is that it employs lots of kids brainwashed by academia. Interestingly enough, engineering tends to be more libertarian (usually left-leaning, but still) while business, marketing, and HR are bastions of leftism. I think that’s because engineers have a habit of using logic and less tolerant to BS.
Newsom is a great Democrat politician: finally, once some people in the media go out and film how terrible their leadership is and highlight all the problems they’ve created and the destruction they’ve caused, they have to go and make an appearance to make it look like they’re taking action to do something to stop it. Garcetti is the model for this. He’s absolutely incredible as the guy who makes totally sincere and meaningless statements in front of cameras, at the appropriate time.
https://twitter.com/johnschreiber/status/1481770722271760384?
I personally conjecture that someone important didn’t get their vibrating butt plug shaped like an Oscar, or maybe something from Gwyneth Paltrow’s line of exceptionally overpriced nonsense, and with those boxes torn open and labels all over the ground, Newsom had to take action to preserve their decency! Law and Order!
It’s the best stage management anyone can have, with advice sent by the wisest! He had to get out there and make a perfunctory stand.
Tomorrow he’ll go back to doing the rest of his wine-sipping Newsom things. He just has to keep the insanity moving in his direction while not pissing off the donators, who watched that video and thought: “Christ! Some third-world miscreant has my vibrating butt plug!”
“In a never-before-seen effort, the governor is doling out $50 million”. Never before seen? Billions have been spent by government on this thorny problem. Shellenberger will be happy. More big spending by big government.
On a separate note, I read that the homeless have low vaccine uptake and little covid infection. I think PG suggested that living in squalid conditions protects against the dreaded disease. LA could start a new trend in medical tourism.
Indians are the only ones living in houses & driving Teslas here. It’s the natives who are all resorting to a life of crime. No-one wants to hire blog commenting majors from unknown midwest schools when they can hire PhD’s in EE from Mumbai.
And the funniest part is that PhD from Mumbai is on average less productive and competent compared to a product of an unknown midwest school. But once you get an Indian boss the department quickly becomes a little India, actively hostile to natives.
And many of them belong to the privileged Brahmin caste (e.g., the CEOs of Google and Microsoft):
https://theprint.in/opinion/brahmins-on-india-campuses-studying-science-is-natural-to-upper-castes/378901/
“I researched Brahmin domination in science in India. Most Brahmins I talked to thought they were natural inheritors of the scientific practice.”
But over here they are poor, oppressed BIPOC!
“once you get an Indian boss the department quickly becomes a little India, actively hostile to natives”
A friend (American-born PhD) had this experience at Apple. An Indian (not an Elizabeth Warren-style Indian, but someone from south Asia) was hired to lead the group and gradually the percentage of Indians grew and he perceived that the opportunities for promotion were limited to Indians (though perhaps if he had switched gender IDs and/or race IDs he/she/ze/they could have been promoted under a parallel Affirmative Action/diversity track?). One good thing about Silicon Valley, though, is that it is easy to walk across the street (or drive 2 miles in 30 minutes) and find a job that pays the same or better. He’s been quite successful in his post-Apple jobs (mixture of the big companies and startups).
In my observations, the Indian cultural background found an unholy match in American corporate culture. Basically, Hinduism (and other similar religions) hold that there are no ethical principles based on freedom of choice (Karma is quite mechanistic and the world is an illusion anyway) – in contrast with Christianity which makes everyone personally answerable to God which gave freedom of choice specifically to allow people to be virtuous and find absolution from the original sin. This translates into the cultures – in one it’s quite acceptable to be duplicitous and present different faces to the boss and to subordinates (Karma doesn’t care), and in another “doing the right thing” (i.e. following the rules laid by the ultimate boss in Heaven) is a major consideration. People without much cultural awareness (and that includes most Americans who don’t generally speak other languages or spent any time living in other cultures) may consider Indian subordinates to be quite cooperative and helpful – and do not realize that they are simply being told what they want to hear, without much regard to reality. This misunderstanding allows Indians to advance pretty well on the American corporate ladders, certainly better than people who insist on telling the truth even if it makes the boss feel uncomfortable and spend more than minimal efforts on craftsmanship.
(Same goes for writing resumes… I learned that a typical resume of an Indian high-tech worker contains a lot of exaggerations, if not outright lies, usually coached in “participation” terms. I.e. an engineer from a Christian culture would write “I did this, I did that…” – which is easy to verify by asking about specific details during the interview. A typical Indian resume is full “I participated in this and that project” – and usually asking about this participation reveals that the candidate has next to zero knowledge about specifics.)
Of course, this is generalizations, and individual people differ a lot.
philg :
“A friend (American-born PhD) had this experience at Apple.
Be interesting to know the demographics of the MS / PhD EE employees at Apple. My guess is the (American-born) is “minority” and would benefit from affirmative action. Although I am not sure what the hiring process is at that level and whether they have them white boarding differential equations, DSP algorithms or something.
@averros, @philG
Hinduism can’t be compared to other Abrahamic religions like Christianity or Islam. It’s not technically a ‘religion’ rather more of a culture.
My land has suffered 1000 years of invasions – first brutal Islamic & then even more brutal imperial British. They all tried to ‘convert’ the Hindus to Islam or Christians. So, Its a miracle that Hinduism (or Hindus) still exists in this land. (One wonders how?).
In this culture:
– there is no 1 universal god. no guy from the top, looking down & keeping track of who is doing what.
– there is no written ‘moral code’ (no such thing as 10 commandments…)
– your life is your own making. your own karma. (not god’s)
– karma is not just an action that u do (it’s more subtle …)
– your purpose in life is to attain moksha (through various means…..)
– many deities & gods are man’s making, for example:
– Federer, god of tennis, etc.
– etc. etc.
Even I am only a student of Hinduism, This person explains it much better than I could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyfTBWhvrEc
https://isha.sadhguru.org/in/en/wisdom/article/hinduism-not-religion
As for the Indian manager’s thing:
1. When I worked at Microsoft Bing, all the Russian managers had Russian engineers (Or at least eastern europeans) mostly.
2. Indian managers use H1B visa slavery to hire & keep Indian code monkeys in check.
” the Indian cultural background found … match in American corporate culture.”
In a sense of getting actual job done? In my long career I have not seen anyone not hiring their own. In rare cases when it happened it was because of office politics considerations.
“In a sense of getting actual job done?”
Nope, I meant in the sense of having the right mindset to successfully play corporate politics.
“I have not seen anyone not hiring their own”
There is a world of difference between not hiring their own (that is rare indeed…) and hiring only (or mostly) their own. A propos… in my previous startup the founding team I hired was two (white) Americans, a Swede, an Italian/American woman, a Canadian, an Austrian, and a French. No Russians successfully passed the interviews (which is a pity as I knew one of them for years and he simply delivers working code with minimal fuss, but I had to respect opinions of other team members). My current startup’s founding team is myself (a Russian), a Veps (with German roots), and a French/Polish woman.
averros, are you trying to make a point by your avatar?
Does it stand for Averroes or plural for sins in ashkenasi ivris?
“which is a pity as I knew one of them for years and he simply delivers working code with minimal fuss, but I had to respect opinions of other team members)”. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk disagree.
Ayn Rand noticed in the Fountainhead, that committee is there for indecision and absolution of responsibility from built-in failure down the road.
@Roger Bacon was right
“averros, are you trying to make a point by your avatar?”
Nope, just appropriated the moniker (slightly misspelled) of one Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, also known as The Commentator. One of the underappreciated great figures in the history of civilization. A story by Jorge Luis Borges played a role in the choice, too:)
“Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk disagree.”
These three essentially ran personality cults disguised as businesses 🙂 I’m not sure I can pull this (too lazy:), though I certainly get this kind of vibes from people who figure out who I am (I’m carefully avoiding publicity and have a long-standing policy of not talking to the press.)
But you are quite correct, and the startup with the largish founding team had too many cooks in the kitchen problem (which is why we parted ways… my ideas were too radical and deemed too far out by the majority of the team who preferred to focus on going to the market fast at the cost of missing the bigger opportunity.)
“Ayn Rand noticed in the Fountainhead, that committee is there for indecision and absolution of responsibility from built-in failure down the road.”
I cannot say I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand; the team dynamics is an interesting subject certainly bigger than this rather trivial observation about mores of bureaucratic committees. There are dangers in both autocratic and committee styles of leadership, and it’s usually a big mistake to antagonize key team members by simply ignoring or overriding their opinions. In that particular case I chose to yield.
We can learn from CNN that replacement theories (i.e., having the audacity to point to official migration numbers) are racist and white supremacist:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/23/politics/race-immigration-replacement-theory-demographics/index.html
“Far right White supremacist groups, conservative media personalities and now Republicans in Congress are trying to inflame nativist feelings among conservative Whites by warning that liberals want immigrants to ‘replace’ native-born Americans in the nation’s culture and electorate.”
We then learn in the same article that the replacement is actually happening and that it is good for you:
“Many of the Whites most drawn to the far-right argument that new arrivals are displacing ‘real Americans’ are among those with the most to lose if the nation reduces, much less eliminates, immigration in the decades ahead.”
There was a theory on Substack recently that many professional writers and journalists experience writer’s block or burnout because they have to lie daily (and they are aware of it).
Also, looking at the agitprop children’s literature referenced in the blog post, encouraging replacement isn’t very subtle at times.
Anon: That is an interesting CNN article. The overall message is that whites are dying out in the U.S. because they don’t have as many children as non-whites. Whites are being replaced, according to CNN, but it is a good thing because otherwise the depopulated U.S. would be a science fiction dystopia with scattered bunches of 90-year-old white people wandering confused and helpless.
The author and editors
don’t consider that immigration-driven population growth may be a significant factor in suppressing white fertility. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216/ says that working class Americans of all races suffer a reduced income as a result of immigration. If we believe Econ 101, immigration increases the cost of housing. The median annual income for a man working full time is about $60,000 per year (see https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/average-american-income/ ). If we assume 30% of income spent on rent, that’s $1,500/month. That won’t pay for the average studio apartment in the U.S. (see https://www.rent.com/research/national-apartment-rent-price-analysis/ ). How many people want to have 3 kids in a studio apartment?
See “Immigration and Housing Rents in American Cities” June 2006Journal of Urban Economics 61(2):345-371
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222418901_Immigration_and_Housing_Rents_in_American_Cities
Is there a local economic impact of immigration? Immigration pushes up rents and housing values in US destination cities. The positive association of rent growth and immigrant inflows is pervasive in time series for all metropolitan areas. I use instrumental variables based on a “shift-share” of national levels of immigration into metropolitan areas. An immigration inflow equal to 1% of a city’s population is associated with increases in average rents and housing values of about 1%. The results suggest an economic impact that is an order of magnitude bigger than that found in labor markets.
And mainstream depicts higher real estate prices as something positive (which would support the notion that the process is “elite” driven):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/immigration-and-housing-prices-explained
Heretic newspapers on the other hand call a spade a spade:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/9/turkey-border-wall-helps-secure-city-protecting-sy/
“Kilis rents doubled in some neighborhoods after the Syrians began arriving. An apartment that cost $120 shot up to $300 a month.”
From a European perspective, these rent increases can be observed in many major cities after Merkel’s unlimited immigration efforts. Immigrants are still willing to produce children even in tiny apartments, so they are the heroes that ensure the continuation of the industrial reserve army (for once I agree with Marx, whose analysis wasn’t always wrong, but whose solutions always were).
Any mention of this situation in public is met with accusations of racism/Nazism. The programming of the population by the consensus manufacturers is strong.
“depopulated U.S. would be a science fiction dystopia” Passed a couple of car dealership on the way to skiing mountain, they already look like science fiction dystopia from The Twilight Zone, no matter increasing population density.
More so then old USSR, it did have car dealerships to begin with. Just get on virtual queue to receive your Eco-friendly 60 horse power wonder in 10 years, and start accumulate rubles because the wonder costs 4 annual salaries gross.