Sure, apartments in Paris are overpriced because of immigrants buying them all. Fuck, that is so stupid. The same people parroting this anti-foreigners hate are also completely indifferent to slumlords profiteering on housing, and will support politicians who consistently side with landlords and homeowners over tenants and first buyers. Housing has never become more affordable under a right wing government.
Explain how. All the anti-immigration guys I've ever met were right-wingers. And we know the right's position on housing: never do anything that would devalue housing, never anger homeowners, always side with landlords, etc.
Immigration is a broad topic. Immigration can be a valuable tool that benefits everybody, and it can destroy communities. Development has the same dichotomy (any kind - residential or otherwise). I'm certainly "anti-immigration" by some standards (i.e. "we're doing immigration bad", not "immigration as an idea is bad"). At the same time, I'm highly liberal (American).
(In case you're suspicious of other stereotypes: I'm not wealthy and have no interest in my home as an investment, and I don't live in California)
Stance on immigration and development is not nearly as strongly correlated with left/right as other wedge issues like reproductive rights, government secularism, etc.
I don't know whether I'd call myself anti-immigration, but I'm as left as they come and I don't think that being pro-immigration is a left/right value. You can be on the left and have objections to immigration, you can be on the right and welcome immigration.
Most people think that being anti-immigration equals being racist and wanting refugees to be turned away. And given your comment, that is also what you seem to believe. However, the large majority of immigration is state-sanctioned (so work visas, etc.), is not the immigration you hear about in the news or that racists talk about, and it's neither a left nor a right issue.
Immigration does have economic benefits, but I'm certain you'll agree nothing in the world is only good or only bad. Immigration does lead to larger competition on housing (more people = more demand), and generally this happens in the cities where the housing crisis is the worst. So more immigration undoubtedly benefits landlords.
Immigration also means more competition for jobs, which leads in practice to lower wages. So it also benefits capital-owners.
So you can be leftist, campaign to increase intake of refugees, campaign against the housing crisis and wealth inequality, and be against immigration.
As an example that might change your opinion (beyond talking to a leftist who does not think immigration is nothing but good): when the Tories came to power after Brexit, they implemented policies that greatly facilitated immigration (2-4 times yearly intake to what it was before Brexit) [0]. Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
I would consider myself well on the left too, and I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions. Immigration can be a net positive for the general population, if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections, etc.
> Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
Corporations and the old right, maybe, but the new populist right is very much anti-immigration. It is their main talking point and platform in today's political landscape.
> I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions.
I think you're again fighting a right-wing anti-immigration stance. I'm talking about the opposite of that.
> Immigration can be a net positive [...] if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections
I'm certain you can see that this is a huge if. In practice, limiting immigration can indeed avoid worsening the housing crisis or decreasing wages, which can indeed help the relevant unions/charities campaign more effectively.
Reasoning by extreme: would you agree that importing 2M people per year to the UK would make the housing market and wages worse, independent of any ifs? Then you agree that there is a threshold where there is too much immigration, even with perfect conditions.
> right is very much anti-immigration
The Tories were very much anti-immigration, if you looked at their talking points. They were very much pro-working class, and Labour is very-much pro-human rights and pro-democracy. What they do is different.
Being anti-immigration is actually left-wing and pro-labor in most functional countries in the EU. It’s only in the US and the UK where being left-wing also being means pro-open borders, however odd that may be.
You're freeing this administration from any blame. No system of governance can resist a sufficiently powerful authoritarian push. If the Democratic Party is to share part of the blame, it's in the fact that it is completely bought by special interests and thus unwilling to push pack against the Republicans. But don't be mistaken, this is entirely on Republicans, both their corrupt politicians and stupid voter base who cheer on their rights being trodden upon, as long as the other side suffers more.
You are putting words in my mouth and taking away from my point. I equally blame the previous administration for leaving a privacy invasive apparatus, as stated by others here this goes back to the Patriot Act.
> I equally blame the previous administration for leaving a privacy invasive apparatus, as stated by others here this goes back to the Patriot Act.
I was talking about Bush administration. I don't know a lot about that time period since I was just a teenager during that administration and didn't care about politics back then, but I vividly remember Obama because I've always been passionate about not having the government spying on citizens, and a free and open web. Everything wrong with social media we set ourselves up for.
One step forward, two steps backwards. Anything good the Democrats may do (yes, it happens sometimes, rarely) will immediately get repelled by the death cult that are the Republicans. If for no other reasons that to "own the libs", they would destroy the whole world.
If this country is to have any future, it must get rid of the Republican party, try all its officials for treason to the American people and ideals of the US Republic and constitution, then disenfranchise their alienated voter base until they get back to living in material reality.
This article is not about who was mentioned in the files or emails, but who was sending and receiving emails. Even then, it limits itself to only the top email senders and receipients. Trump might be mentioned often in the emails, but if he is not among the top couple of hundred senders/receivers of emails, then he’s not going to be mentioned in this article.
You'd think the guy that appears >1M times in the files would at least have its existence acknowledged in any article about who was in Epstein's sphere.
Trump is mentioned about a million times, according to the (less redacted) docs searched by a congressman.
Much of that is probably the news articles and gossip Epstein was known to circulate as the walls were closing in. Still, their friendship goes back decades and they were neighbors both in NYC and Florida.
I hope, in decades to come, that whenever the old and tired "2A protects us from tyranny" argument gets made, we can point back to the Trump years and simply reply "the guns were freaking useless, man".
What you're proposing is awfully dystopian. If people don't want kids anymore, then let them not have kids. Society should adapt to the will of its members, not the other way around. And with all our technology we can live very decent lives even with declining birthrates. Maybe we'll have to do with less travel, less cheap garbage and so, but I'm fine with that.
The last times so many tech ads made their way to the Superbowl was during the crypto craze and the dot-com bubble. These are symptoms of an overly speculative economy.
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