> But in the main they had reasonable shares of motivation, family orientation, and work ethic.
People are motivated, family-oriented, and hard working everywhere. The farmers in my dad's village in Bangladesh certainly are all those things. But they labor within a society that taxes the productive and honest and periodically destroys any accumulated capital with chaos. An American applying that same labor produces a thousand times as much. The difference isn't the laborer, it's the machine against which he is laboring. That American system is the bequest of America's British and Dutch founders: Anglo law, social and political norms, and civic culture, and Anglo/Dutch views towards markets and commerce. The operating system of the country was largely in place by the early 19th century and it remains the thing most responsible for our present prosperity.
I don't say that to diminish immigrants. Because isn't even really a point about immigration. It's about correctly understanding the source of our own prosperity.
People are motivated, family-oriented, and hard working everywhere. The farmers in my dad's village in Bangladesh certainly are all those things. But they labor within a society that taxes the productive and honest and periodically destroys any accumulated capital with chaos. An American applying that same labor produces a thousand times as much. The difference isn't the laborer, it's the machine against which he is laboring. That American system is the bequest of America's British and Dutch founders: Anglo law, social and political norms, and civic culture, and Anglo/Dutch views towards markets and commerce. The operating system of the country was largely in place by the early 19th century and it remains the thing most responsible for our present prosperity.
I don't say that to diminish immigrants. Because isn't even really a point about immigration. It's about correctly understanding the source of our own prosperity.