New Imigration Reform

[Jester]

Returns to somewhere else... Which is akin to immigrants funneling it out of the country.

While you claim that people saving money put it right back into the economy, there is a net loss of it in the community, due to the loss of jobs, businesses, and the inefficiency that surrounds running small stores. When the majority of the commerce was done by those stores, money does not leave the community - it circulates within it. With the international corpo-sprawl setting up a branch, that money does start leaving it, heading somewhere in the direction of the central office, and it's shareholders.

Of course there's a benefit... To other people.

This is mercantilism. You can't 'hoard' well-paying jobs in a community if you care about economic success outside that community. If every community does that, every community loses more than they gain.

You cannot, on a large scale, generate economic prosperity through restriction. The money from one community is invested in another, and from yet another back to the first.

In the end, immigrants cannot 'funnel' money out of the country in a lasting way. The money goes out, people outside buy products with it, which fuels demand, which creates production back inside your country. The whole loop may take decades or even centuries to return the prosperity, but trade brings wealth everywhere.

This is basic economic theory: people benefit through competition. If a local business can outperform Wal-Mart in the selling of whatsoever commodity, then great. Nobody would be happier than I to see that anti-union, homogenizing, dehumanizing machine kicked where it hurts.

The 'central office' and 'shareholders' of Wal-Mart or any other company are not located on Mars. They are people, and they spend and save like anyone else. This creates demand, and fuels new investment. That generates wealth.

It is perhaps possible to generate *temporary* success with such a system at a nationwide level. But, I'm neither an American nor a nationalist, so I don't see why going down that route would be a good plan.

There are adverse social effects to be considered, and, as I'm sure anyone familiar with my posting record would know, I'm very concerned about these things, and support most efforts to alleviate these problems. But, in the end, the basic principles of the free market work.

-Jester