Mars or a border wall?

[Petrolheadia]

Why can't we have all?

I'm pretty sure long term, immigration improves the economy. More people, more consumers, more demand, more money in the economy, more taxes, etc.

More people means lower wages, by the law of supply (of employees) vs demand (for workforce).

More taxes? Maybe, but also more spending.

[Alvecia]

I'm pretty sure long term, immigration improves the economy. More people, more consumers, more demand, more money in the economy, more taxes, etc.

That's only true for economies who have a constant supply of spare economic capacity to create new jobs. And that's only true in industrial economies like those in China and the developing world (And the western world several decades ago). In economies with a shortage of spare work places and industry the opposite is true. In those societies immigration drives down the price of labor by competing for the same, limited and insufficient supply of jobs thus driving medium income and demand down. This in turn has a negative effect long term as it drives down the incentive to expand the economy by opening new businesses.

TLDR if you are already growing than more people means faster growth. If you are NOT growing than more people means even less growth.

That doesn't sounds quite right to me. Surely with more consumers, the supply of jobs increases as well as businesses expand to meet the demands of the increased market.

[Purpelia]

There's lots of stuff out there.

None of it worth the price though.

It's quite simple really. Space travel is boring.
Space is mostly emptiness with the occasional ball of rock or gas whose only value for the average citizen is as a trivia tidbit if he ever gets to go on a game show. It's not a realm of danger, adventure and romance. It's a realm of boring distant things that you can't even reach. The job of a space scientist isn't to go out and explore new worlds and discover new civilizations. It's to look at blurry pictures of the night sky and try to figure out what's a planet and what's a speck of dust on the lens.

And that's the opposite of cool and interesting. If space was more like science fiction where the average person can just jump on a space ship and go to a distant planet to have sex with green skin girls or fight alien roaches or something than it would be cool. As it is it's just not.

Manned space travel is boring AND worthless.
The reason its worthless is that it in no way influences the lives of the average citizen of earth in any way, shape or form. Deploying satellites is boring but it has some value in that it gets me a better TV reception and makes my commute easier as I don't have to fiddle with paper maps. But sending a man to the moon did absolutely zero to make my life better. It did absolutely zero to improve anything other than give america some bragging rights and tangentially effect various sciences that would have improved anyway to support unmanned exploration.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

There's lots of stuff out there.

None of it worth the price though.

It's quite simple really. Space travel is boring.
Space is mostly emptiness with the occasional ball of rock or gas whose only value for the average citizen is as a trivia tidbit if he ever gets to go on a game show. It's not a realm of danger, adventure and romance. It's a realm of boring distant things that you can't even reach. The job of a space scientist isn't to go out and explore new worlds and discover new civilizations. It's to look at blurry pictures of the night sky and try to figure out what's a planet and what's a speck of dust on the lens.

And that's the opposite of cool and interesting. If space was more like science fiction where the average person can just jump on a space ship and go to a distant planet to have sex with green skin girls or fight alien roaches or something than it would be cool. As it is it's just not.

Manned space travel is boring AND worthless.
The reason its worthless is that it in no way influences the lives of the average citizen of earth in any way, shape or form. Deploying satellites is boring but it has some value in that it gets me a better TV reception and makes my commute easier as I don't have to fiddle with paper maps. But sending a man to the moon did absolutely zero to make my life better. It did absolutely zero to improve anything other than give america some bragging rights and tangentially effect various sciences that would have improved anyway to support unmanned exploration.

Not with that attitude!

[Alvecia]

NASA has a publication detailing all of the tangible benefits gained by those on Earth by their missions

The first four-color edition of Spinoff was published in 1976, and it has been published every year since, sharing the stories of nearly 2,000 products and services that began as, or have benefited from, NASA technology.

[VoVoDoCo]

Mars. I couldn't care less about outer space, but I'm pro immigrant so...

[Purpelia]

Not with that attitude!

Call me when physics changes its mind on FTL travel. Again though I am not saying all space travel is bad. Just the manned part. The rest is just a boring thing we do that has some value. Kind of like banking or statistics.

That doesn't sounds quite right to me. Surely with more consumers, the supply of jobs increases as well as businesses expand to meet the demands of the increased market.

That's because you are not making the distinction between people and consumers. Not every person in a country is a consumer. To be a consumer you must have a job that pays well enough to allow you to have disposable income beyond the necessities of survival and enough time and energy to have the will to spend that income. Only than can you go to restaurants, buy luxury goods, educate your children to ensure future workers are productive and generally do things that stimulate demand and provide impetus for new supply and thus new jobs to be created. And that only happens in an economy where you have a strong and ever growing middle class.

And a strong and growing middle class depends entirely on the supply of potential workers being less than the supply of jobs for those workers. The moment you have more workers than you have jobs the wage and working conditions for those workers decrease because workers are willing to accept worse in order to get those jobs. And that leaves more and more of the employed too poor, tired and generally unable to contribute productively to demand. And that's how you end up with the working poor.

[VoVoDoCo]

I'm pretty sure long term, immigration improves the economy. More people, more consumers, more demand, more money in the economy, more taxes, etc.

That's only true for economies who have a constant supply of spare economic capacity to create new jobs. And that's only true in industrial economies like those in China and the developing world (And the western world several decades ago). In economies with a shortage of spare work places and industry the opposite is true. In those societies immigration drives down the price of labor by competing for the same, limited and insufficient supply of jobs thus driving medium income and demand down. This in turn has a negative effect long term as it drives down the incentive to expand the economy by opening new businesses.

TLDR if you are already growing than more people means faster growth. If you are NOT growing than more people means even less growth.

It doesn't matter if you have a constant supply of spare economic capacity. An immigrant comes in and there isn't a place for them to work, they just become impoverished. That's like saying that people having babies is bad for the economy because there will be less spare economic capacity. More workers means a higher standard of selection by producers. That's it. Also:

• Immigrants Improve the economy.
• They make better workers.

[Purpelia]

It doesn't matter if you have a constant supply of spare economic capacity. An immigrant comes in and there isn't a place for them to work, they just become impoverished. That's like saying that people having babies is bad for the economy because there will be less spare economic capacity. More workers means a higher standard of selection by producers. That's it. Also:

• Immigrants Improve the economy.
• They make better workers.

It does not matter what the employers want. Mass migration and an oversupply of workers is fantastic if you are looking to hire because you get to pay next to nothing for someone you would have paid lots for if you were competing for his attention.

But most people in an economy are not employers. They are employees. And for them to have a productive life and productively contribute to your economy you want to always keep the number of workers in all fields slightly less than the number of jobs in order to force employers to continually compete for them by providing better working conditions, pay and other amenities which in turn translate to those workers having spare income to spend on making the economy grow.

[Singularity Multiversal Travel Empire]

That's only true for economies who have a constant supply of spare economic capacity to create new jobs. And that's only true in industrial economies like those in China and the developing world (And the western world several decades ago). In economies with a shortage of spare work places and industry the opposite is true. In those societies immigration drives down the price of labor by competing for the same, limited and insufficient supply of jobs thus driving medium income and demand down. This in turn has a negative effect long term as it drives down the incentive to expand the economy by opening new businesses.

TLDR if you are already growing than more people means faster growth. If you are NOT growing than more people means even less growth.

It doesn't matter if you have a constant supply of spare economic capacity. An immigrant comes in and there isn't a place for them to work, they just become impoverished. That's like saying that people having babies is bad for the economy because there will be less spare economic capacity. More workers means a higher standard of selection by producers. That's it. Also:

• Immigrants Improve the economy.
• They make better workers.

Who the fuck could even believe that more people in an economy decreases its' value...it's not like it's literally a piece of bread.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Not with that attitude!

Call me when physics changes its mind on FTL travel.

>FTL
Nobody mentioned FTL.

[The Goggles]

Anything but Mars. I firmly believe that we should finish exploring this planet before we go trying to explore other planets.

[Alvecia]

Anything but Mars. I firmly believe that we should finish exploring this planet before we go trying to explore other planets.

We can multitask.

[Coalition of North American States]

MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!MARS!!!---every nerd on earth

Hail, fellow nerd! Mars is the future. And after we conquer Mars, onto Alpha Centuari!

[Aigania]

Mars because is the logical option.

Invest in developing high tech that will yield good-paying jobs and open frontiers sans killing or creating new ones. Even it can lead to partnership between countries instead of useless antagonizing.

(Walls will be ineffective as long as there is a significant different in the gradient of wealth between North and South).

[The Federal District of Vice Santos]

Of the two, Mars.

[Coalition of North American States]

Yes, join the Martians!

[United States of Red Dawn]

Anything but Mars. I firmly believe that we should finish exploring this planet before we go trying to explore other planets.

A permanent colony on the moon would be nice for a start too.

[Victores]

America should build a wall. That would rain the budget and the Soviet Union can get to Mars first.

[Albrenia]

Also we can't really fuck Mars up any worse than it already is. No need to worry about pollution as much.

[Neanderthaland]

I'll dig my hole instead.

[Constitutional Technocracy of Minecraft]

Mars: Benefits the whole of humanity

Border wall: Benefits a certain Donald, a bunch of xenophobes and the meme world

I pick Mars even though I love dank memes

[Constitutional Technocracy of Minecraft]

America should build a wall. That would rain the budget and the Soviet Union can get to Mars first.

The Soviet Union hasn't existed since 1991, m8. (although Putin's trying to rebuild it )

[Imperializt Russia]

Going to Mars has the potential to benefit humanity as a whole, even though I'm personally not sure about whether it's worth the risk to send crewed missions yet rather than landers and rovers.

Building a wall does nothing except satisfy the ego of one particular manbaby.

We have to take great risks if we want to truly advance, it was the same thing when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space

They didn't send Yuri first. The knowledge that it was possible to survive such an operation was on the back of years of testing, including other launches.

And that was for a mission so "simple" as to not even leave earth orbit.

[Imperializt Russia]

Anything but Mars. I firmly believe that we should finish exploring this planet before we go trying to explore other planets.

Why do you believe this?