The comments rebuking you appear to forget that by definition GDP and wealth are derived from the population. Wealth for social programs is not a finite resource as the general consensus is that over one's lifetime more wealth is created by one's work effort than is needed to sustain the individual. Capitalism by definition extracts this extra wealth for the private interests of a few. But there's no particular reason that this extra wealth can't be used to assist those that may not even meet the necessity of output of sustaining themselves.
This is a difficult concept for people to understand because they look at their paychecks and go "I'm not deriving so much wealth!" well yeah. A huge, large chunk of your wealth is being extracted for capitalism. And in manners that will be very difficult for you to understand.
I'll try to explain it, though, for the audience that peruses these forums. You're a software developer.
You work for a public B2B software company. Your wealth is being extracted to: Pay for those company pizza parties, pay for the office you work in, pay in to the healthcare system that "your company is paying for" that isn't directly part of the premium you see on open enrollment, paying for the company holiday parties, paying into everyone's various insurance plans to reduce the out-of-pocket costs for everyone in those insurance plans (outside of your company, of course), paying for the CEO's multi-million dollar paycheck, paying for the bonuses of all of the management, paying for shareholder value and dividends, paying for the taxes your company pays, paying for the taxes you pay.
If your existence at your job didn't pay for those things, most companies will tend to lay you off.
And this goes for pretty much the vast majority of workers in the vast majority of jobs.
So saying that more immigrants somehow puts a strain on the system is just by definition incorrect, even if a percentage of those immigrants don't generate the same level of value you do as an individual. Do you think every person in your organization generates the same relative value? Of course not. In most businesses in America, does the janitor generate the same wealth as the CEO?
To be fair, there is a snarky comment to be made there about CEOs--but the objective reality is probably not. But the janitor is still generating some wealth by ensuring a safe, healthy, and comfortable workplace for the employees. Does that mean the janitor is not entitled to income? to healthcare? to benefits? to company holiday parties? to company pizza parties?
Just convert this into a much larger scale of the entirety of a country's population--and well, the answer is that most populations have enough free money floating around somewhere to provide essential services to everyone: education, food, safety and security, health, and likely even housing, electricity, and pretty much any other public service we could provide.
To build on this: One might ask, why don't countries with larger populations directly derive more wealth (particular by measurement of GDP) than smaller populations naturally?
There are a lot of reasons for this, but the short answer is that health, education, and enough individual wealth to explore figuring out ways to generate new revenue streams is important. Authoritarian countries are by nature not able to do this due to limits of their authoritarian nature, not necessarily limits of their population numbers.
This is a difficult concept for people to understand because they look at their paychecks and go "I'm not deriving so much wealth!" well yeah. A huge, large chunk of your wealth is being extracted for capitalism. And in manners that will be very difficult for you to understand.
I'll try to explain it, though, for the audience that peruses these forums. You're a software developer.
You work for a public B2B software company. Your wealth is being extracted to: Pay for those company pizza parties, pay for the office you work in, pay in to the healthcare system that "your company is paying for" that isn't directly part of the premium you see on open enrollment, paying for the company holiday parties, paying into everyone's various insurance plans to reduce the out-of-pocket costs for everyone in those insurance plans (outside of your company, of course), paying for the CEO's multi-million dollar paycheck, paying for the bonuses of all of the management, paying for shareholder value and dividends, paying for the taxes your company pays, paying for the taxes you pay.
If your existence at your job didn't pay for those things, most companies will tend to lay you off.
And this goes for pretty much the vast majority of workers in the vast majority of jobs.
So saying that more immigrants somehow puts a strain on the system is just by definition incorrect, even if a percentage of those immigrants don't generate the same level of value you do as an individual. Do you think every person in your organization generates the same relative value? Of course not. In most businesses in America, does the janitor generate the same wealth as the CEO?
To be fair, there is a snarky comment to be made there about CEOs--but the objective reality is probably not. But the janitor is still generating some wealth by ensuring a safe, healthy, and comfortable workplace for the employees. Does that mean the janitor is not entitled to income? to healthcare? to benefits? to company holiday parties? to company pizza parties?
Just convert this into a much larger scale of the entirety of a country's population--and well, the answer is that most populations have enough free money floating around somewhere to provide essential services to everyone: education, food, safety and security, health, and likely even housing, electricity, and pretty much any other public service we could provide.
And this scales as a population grows.