Some rambly thoughts on this:
I agree that many people oppose immigration for irrational reasons (they will talk about overpopulation, and the need for a higher birth rate simultaneously). But the same is true for immigration proponents. They will deny immigration
lowers wages and increases housing prices and then say we need immigrants to stop "wage inflation" and pump up the housing market when it crashes. I think one's views immigration are based on how cosmopolitan they are and what they think the cause of group disparities is...
and they come up with ad hoc explanations from there.
Richard is wrong to dismiss littering as trivial because it is a test of whether or not you will do the right thing with little coercion, and many culture fail this test:
Richard cites a bunch of polls showing Americans support more spending, but if you ask people to consider trade-offs only a minority support more spending.
Public opinion is heavily based on how the question is asked and many times the results of ballot measures on things like guns, abortion and AA are different than what certain public opinion polls show, so its good to get a more holistic approach to gauge what the people think.
Perhaps America isn't a socialist country because that isn't what the people want, and the views of the people matter more than he thinks.
He shows that the US is and outlier in GDP when looking at IQ and claims this is because of economic freedom, caused by white backlash to racial diversity.
However, looking at his site, many countries have high economic freedom, and Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, and NZ all have higher economic freedom than the US. fraserinstitute.org/studies/econom…
There are tons of possible explanations for the US being and outlier like the US being a superpower, having lots of land and natural resources, access to two oceans etc. He doesn't convincingly prove his.
And not that this proves much but fwiw, the US share of the global economy was higher when there were less immigrants.
He claims that ethnic diversity reduces support for welfare, and there is evidence that is the case, but less white states actually spend more: web.archive.org/web/2011100715…
He claims that Hispanics don't have higher crime rate when controlling for age, but if @fentasyl data is correct, this isn't the case. datahazard.substack.com/p/american-mur…
He says that immigrants don't vote Republican because Republicans are mean to them. This is old but only a minority of Hispanics counted immigration as an extremely important issue personally:
As @Sean__Last points out the majority of Hispanics who support reducing immigration still vote democrat. ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/are…
The majority of non-whites don't think that it is racist for whites to oppose immigration for racial reasons.
He talks about prop 187, but I doubt that why CA Hispanics vote Dem 3 decades later. And if they are more loyal to people here illegally than the will of CA voters, good riddance.
I agree that the current composition and levels of immigration will not lead to societal collapse. But tons of people want to come here, does Richard think this is a good idea? news.gallup.com/poll/245255/75…
There have been tons of cases where immigration has turned out to be bad:
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