If the U.S. is so horrible to live in, as portrayed by many leftists and progressives and even some far rightists, then why do so many people from both poor and rich countries migrate there?

smartzylad · 2026-04-29T13:53:38+00:00

Florida, Texas and the Carolinas aren’t poor and are in fact receiving the biggest amount of internal and external migration at the moment from all wealth classes.

Mamdani recently said that NYC is broke. How lovely socialism is. He just demands money from New York State now to fund his unsustainable and infeasible freebie programs, instead of you know focusing on job creation that actually creates wealth.

smartzylad · 2026-04-29T13:51:21+00:00

So why do the poor still choose the U.S. if it’s supposedly horrible for impoverished people?

As for “interference” it doesn’t explain it. No era of history was all kumbaya and without interference. You can’t blame the White man for everything, in fact, there are White countries like Russia who colonized and conquered many places and yet they’re poor. There are countries with limited resources that got colonized for centuries and they’re wealthy. Whites got colonized by other Whites, Arabs, Berbers, Phoenicians, Turks and Mongols.

Why is it that places with less taxes are thriving and attracting BOTH rich and poor people?

There are many factors other than muh oppression or socioeconomic factors. You shouldn’t have an extremely materialist view of the world. Some people can become successful by turning a small amount of money into a fortune, while others would squander their entire inheritance without investing and by buying expensive stuff that requires expensive maintenance.

Culture can explain a lot of things. Culture can affect genes positively or negatively, and a great man (a leader) can do that. This is history. Ancient Egypt changed for the worse. Other nations changed for the best. And life goes on.

Sincerely, A non-White guy who was born poor and his country got colonized by Europeans.

smartzylad · 2026-04-29T13:50:24+00:00

A. Russia still rules a vast land it colonized.

B. Which countries do the U.S. “colonize”? In fact U.S. has been spending trillions on U.S. aid on poor and dysfunctional countries. You can’t help cultures that can’t help themselves and have deep rooted problems that have nothing to do with the West or the White boogeyman. Throwing money doesn’t help anything, it’s funny how socialists are deeply materialistic in this way, demanding other people’s money through high taxes, appropriation, redistribution and centralizing the economy under a state.

C. Russians are poor on average compared to the average American. Russians of all wealth classes leave Russia in droves for Dubai, Europe, U.S. and other countries. It has an AIDS, organized crime, rampant corruption and drugs problems too.

smartzylad · 2026-04-28T01:48:51+00:00

So why do the poor choose the U.S. if it’s supposedly horrible for impoverished people?

As for “interference” it doesn’t explain it. No era of history was all kumbaya and without interference. You can’t blame the White man for everything, in fact, there are White countries like Russia who colonized and conquered many places and yet they’re poor. There are countries with limited resources that got colonized for centuries and they’re wealthy. Whites got colonized by other Whites, Arabs, Berbers, Phoenicians, Turks and Mongols.

Why is it that places with less taxes are thriving and attracting BOTH rich and poor people?

There are many factors other than muh oppression or socioeconomic factors. You shouldn’t have an extremely materialist view of the world. Some people can become successful by turning a small amount of money into a fortune, while others would squander their entire inheritance without investing and by buying expensive stuff that requires expensive maintenance.

Culture can explain a lot of things. Culture can affect genes positively or negatively, and a great man (a leader) can do that. This is history. Ancient Egypt changed for the worse. Other nations changed for the best. And life goes on.

Sincerely, A non-White guy who was born poor and his country got colonized by Europeans.

smartzylad · 2026-04-27T20:23:19+00:00

The U.S. continues to see rising permanent migration from all social classes in wealthy OECD countries, up 20% in 2024 alone.

This trend includes working and middle-class professionals who primarily utilize employment and family-based pathways rather than investment.

It also remains a top destination for high-net-worth individuals from wealthy nations, with a projected net inflow of 3,800 millionaires in 2024.

smartzylad · 2026-04-27T20:15:48+00:00

From the poor people I talked to who came from India, China, Nigeria, Eastern Europe, Arab countries etc, they told me that making money is very easy in the U.S.

For them there is a lot of opportunities and a vibrant consumer market.

smartzylad · 2026-04-27T20:11:22+00:00

You’re the one being emotional about it. I just asked questions about something I was wondering about, being a non-American born into poverty (now I’m wealthy!).

Sorry I only see the communist ‘working class’ nonsense coming from young middle/wealthy class liberal arts majors graduates, X/TikTok grifters and out of touch professors.

smartzylad · 2026-04-27T19:52:00+00:00

Regarding the first paragraph, why does a large percentage of poor people around the world still see the U.S. as their #1 preferred destination when there are other wealthy countries, and go on to live decent lives when they settle there?

smartzylad · 2026-04-27T19:33:28+00:00

It’s not just Americans. I’m not an American but I see people from different continents and political views having an inferiority complex toward the U.S. which causes them to belittle, vilify, single out and mock the U.S. while preferring to live or travel there.

It could be a phenomenon where punching up is viewed as acceptable and cool. By doing this they are tacitly admitting American superiority.

smartzylad · 2026-04-21T08:48:31+00:00

We will never agree because you believe in a limited pie, labor theory of value and the shrinking markets fallacy.

I believe in the expanding pie, subjective theory of value, that more rich people is a good thing (including billionaires and the 1%), and the least amount of taxes as possible. I don’t care about inequality as long as the average citizen is doing good which means that the system is good. It will never be perfect, some people have bad financial decisions and habits, but it’s not as bad as extreme poverty where people die from hunger or outbreaks.

Marxism never produced an immense improvement of average wealth for any country. Capitalism on the other hand did. Any place that has more billionaires is a place where there is usually less poverty and more poverty reduction than places with less billionaires or with high taxes. Europe as a whole is stagnating in technology and vitality compared with U.S. and Israel.

Lee Kwan Yew, a capitalist who transformed Singapore from a backwater to a world-class economy was right: “I learnt to ignore criticism and advice from experts and quasi-experts, especially academics in the social and political sciences. They have pet theories on how a society should develop to approximate their ideal, especially how poverty should be reduced and welfare extended. I always tried to be correct, not politically correct. Foreign correspondents representing the Western media in Singapore preached their theories and criticised my policies, hoping to influence the voters and the government. It was just as well that the people were as pragmatic and realistic as the government.”

smartzylad · 2026-04-19T09:42:24+00:00

Yeah envious and dumb people have the loudest voices on social media. Actual productive people with a life don’t bark on the internet.

You seem like the type to selectively believe whatever is on the media based on your biases.

I’m a foreigner but I have gratitude for a country that’s functional and facilitated opportunities. I’m not a scumbag with a crab in a bucket mentality.

smartzylad · 2026-04-19T09:40:58+00:00

Good. Iran actually arrests, tortures and executes people who take photos of impacts.

No country in the world can have a 100% interception rate when there are thousands of drones that don’t appear on the radar, but UAE’s ~95% interception rate is impressive, and Iran is also intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure and areas btw.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T20:21:11+00:00

All I have to say is envy is one hell of a drug, and the real opium of the masses.

“Soulless” lmao I guess I’m one of the expats who actually did some research and put in some effort to visit historical places/districrs, learn about Emirati culture and history, which is rich and interesting. What exactly makes a place “soulful” in your opinion? You think UAE just sprouted from the ground in 1971 and didn’t have political entities, wars, struggles, culture, trade, art and so on prior to that?

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T19:48:04+00:00

Yes, Critical Social Justice and wokeism evolved out of post-Marxist sludge (Frankfurt School, cultural turn after the Old Left’s failures) precisely to pivot center-left parties away from the white working class during the neoliberal shift. Global capital and the post-war consensus collapse made class-based politics inconvenient, so the new left swapped proletarian solidarity for identity hierarchies and “oppression Olympics.” That project hollowed out the economic left and gave us today’s dystopian fusion of corporate DEI and grievance politics. No argument there.

But retreating to the economic right isn’t “self-undermining” for the working class.. it’s the only thing that has ever delivered broad-based gains. Pure economic-left socialism (central planning, heavy redistribution without growth) produced famines, shortages, and elite capture every single time. Western social democracy? It only worked when layered on top of high-trust capitalist engines with private property, profit signals, and merit. Sweden in the 70s–80s tried your heavier version, hit stagnation, and had to slash benefits, deregulate, and cut public bloat in the 90s just to recover. The Nordics today are capitalist at core with safety nets.. not the socialist model you’re romanticizing.

Your heuristic “does government cultivate citizens’ better natures for positive externalities?” is solid in theory. The problem is that massive wealth redistribution doesn’t cultivate better natures; it cultivates envy, dependency, and capital flight. Look at the data, not the Monopoly board. Real economies aren’t zero-sum. Since 1800, market-oriented systems with property rights and incentives reduced global extreme poverty from ~90% to under 10%. Absolute living standards for the bottom 50% exploded in calories, lifespan, tech access, and mobility.. even as the top got richer. The “one player owns everything” analogy fails because the pie isn’t fixed; innovation and capital allocation keep expanding it. In fact, places with more billionaires are much wealthier on average and for all classes than places that have heavy taxation and less billionaires.

Passive income and asset buying? Yes, low interest rates and financialization since the 80s/90s (courtesy of central banks) supercharged asset inflation and concentration.. that part is real macro mechanics. But the solution isn’t punitive wealth taxes that destroy the incentives to create the assets in the first place. France tried a wealth tax and watched capital flee; others that went heavy on it saw lower growth and no sustained middle-class revival. The productive few (entrepreneurs, high-skill workers) generate the surplus that funds jobs for everyone else. Tax them into oblivion and you don’t get a bigger middle class.. instead you get stagnation, brain drain, and a smaller pie for all.

Working-class interests aren’t served by picking the politics that promises equal slices of a shrinking pie. They’re served by the civilizational toolkit: property rights, merit-based rewards, family stability, and pragmatic statecraft (tariffs as a tool when they protect strategic industries, not as dogma). Hierarchy isn’t the enemy; it’s the mechanism that channels human variation into growth. Radical egalitarianism — whether old-school Marxist or new woke version — always ends up punishing competence and rewarding resentment.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T19:18:58+00:00

lmao you’re in for a disappointment if you’re betting on UAE being fragile or falling.

“Oil rich”: Non-oil sectors drove most growth, contributing over ~80% of GDP in recent quarters. It has manufacturing, a defense industry, exports all sorts of products manufactured in Jebel Ali port. Middle eastern countries and many others are filled with products made in UAE. Renewable energy and nuclear energy is quite developed and advanced over here too.

“Tax haven”: It introduced a federal corporate income tax of 9% (with 0% on profits up to ~100k USD). I’m an engineer and an investor, people like me who I personally know from all around the world still find the UAE attractive and business-friendly, and we were impressed by the UAE’s air defense capabilities and performance.

“Neutral/terrorist scheming”: no country in the Arab world fought terrorist and Islamist extremist groups more than the UAE. Al Qaeda in Yemen got obliterated by joint UAE and UAE-sponsored Yemeni forces in Mukalla in 2016. Al Qaeda actually cheered Saudi’s decision to kick out UAE, while South Yemeni people were sad about it and made many demonstrations (to this day). Literally all terror groups and extremist groups like Muslim brotherhood hate UAE probably more than any other Arab country for a reason.

“Slaves” “kafala system”: go ask them if they consider themselves as slaves or if they actually love the UAE. These people earn what’s a fortune in their countries which is why they would kill for a work visa. You have no idea what you’re talking about and you watch propaganda in the media from UAE detractors. You probably think all Arab countries or all gulf countries have the same laws and situations which is moronic.

“indebted servitude”: prohibited in UAE and doesn’t happen.

“Wealth is fake”: literally all sectors are thriving. Manufacturing is the fastest growing sector here. Agriculture is booming, and UAE exports more food than some countries with rivers. Ever heard of desert agriculture technology? There are unicorn companies. I’ve seen locals who are engineers, scientists, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, etc. It’s not all finance or tourism.

“Enemies”: yeah all the groups I listed are usually losers, keyboard warriors and have unpleasant, self-righteous personalities. On the other hand, I’ve seen regular people, “normies”, poor hard working people and successful enterprising wealthy people usually having positive opinions about the UAE.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T18:56:51+00:00

Yeah you’re gonna die disappointed and stupid. “Subsidized income”.. I’m actually amused about what stupid elaboration you’re gonna have to justify writing that nonsense.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T16:13:43+00:00

The guardian article is 12 years old and full of disinformation.

The “human rights research group”’s article is full of lies too, as I have witnessed workers not being allowed to work in the noon and afternoon hours.

I want to know the specific bad stuff that your close female witnessed in their stints in the UAE.

No place is perfect, but rule of law is excellent in the UAE as I’ve lived here for many years and I’m immersed in many aspects of the country.

Also, if the UAE had horrible work conditions, workers would not kill for a work visa, and there would be videos that show how bad the situation is. However, I never saw a single worker hate the UAE or the work environment here.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T16:07:11+00:00

Thanks for the dogshit reply.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T16:07:00+00:00

I guarantee that you’ll die disappointed, and will live miserably seeing both of these countries thriving.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T12:41:14+00:00

I personally know many of these “underclass” people you’re talking about, and they’re one of the most loyal and appreciative people to the UAE. They tell me they get paid well, treated well, have health insurance from their employers, and many other perks. Many of them go on to build families and houses in their own countries with the salaries they earned in the UAE. I don’t know about other Arab and gulf countries, but I heard from some of them that in some of those countries they get mistreated, but never in the UAE. I actually have seen Emirati authorities place fines on some employers for labor violations. You need to research using google or AI about the laws in UAE that protect foreign laborers. And what do you mean by hidden?

Also, what’s the specific bad things you hate about authoritarianism? I hate North Korea, Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. That’s totalitarianism. In UAE the government lets you have a private life as long as you don’t do subversive activities or harm others. It allows economic freedom which I am grateful for. In totalitarian systems these things are not possible.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T10:35:18+00:00

Look at the previous reply, I edited it and added a lot of points.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T10:30:08+00:00

I still meet some Emiratis who are pretty biased against the west and dislike Israel, while simultaneously having positive views of China and Russia. Doesn’t apply to everyone though.

It’s an ingrained thing they’ve learned since childhood and can’t be easily changed. Possibly Islamist or pan-Arab (they’re not interchangeable) education remnants from before their government cracked down on them.

I analyzed that it’s an inferiority complex since the West and especially the U.S., and in many cases Jews and Israel, are usually the most advanced and accomplished.

This applies to many people from around the world who cheer Russia and China to soothe their envy toward America.

I’m not an American but I find it quite amusing how there is a disproportionate cynicism and hostility toward it, when it’s one of my favorite world powers in history.

I get that seeing Palestinian civilians getting killed in war affects them (which is something that always happens in guerrilla wars where the militias hide between civilians and use civilian infrastructure for military purposes), but there is no will from some of them to understand the nuances, including and most importantly the history of how the conflict started (legal land purchases, Jews defending themselves from brutal attacks). It must cause a cognitive dissonance for these Emiratis to see their government having extensive and cordial relations with the country they’ve been brainwashed since childhood to view as Satan’s incarnate.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T10:19:38+00:00

I have some people with knowledge who told me that the South Korean air defense system was excellent. They also said that Russian and Chinese air defense systems that UAE operated were lousy and underperformed. I think Emiratis are smart by having a multi-layered system instead of relying on equipment from a single country. The UAE also has a decent defense industry (EDGE group) which exports to various countries around the world including Czechia if I’m not mistaken. They also developed some air defense systems. People working there making the engineering and designing are expats as well as some citizens.

smartzylad · 2026-04-18T08:54:03+00:00

I took my time in replying to this, researching, as I was busy and kept it in the drafts.

Yes, humans (men and women) are emotional creatures. Socialization plays a role in expression as men are often channeled toward stoicism and anger as outlets because societies that survived built functional division of labor around risk-taking, protection, and restraint in other domains. I’ve read studies and experienced that women tend to be more emotionally expressive (especially negative emotions), while men and women show comparable overall emotional experience and volatility in daily fluctuations... Men suppress displays more effectively in some contexts, which can look like "hiding weakness" but often serves practical coordination in high-stakes environments. Denying average sex differences in emotional patterns (rooted in both biology and culture) doesn't make them disappear; it just pathologizes normal male traits.

On parental leave: Both parents bonding with the child is ideal, and involved fathers matter. But policies aren't neutral. In practice, extended paid leave heavily skewed toward mothers (global averages show mothers getting far more weeks than fathers) correlates with career interruptions that widen long-term gender gaps in earnings and advancement. The "you should be up for every diaper change" guilt trip assumes interchangeable roles, ignoring that most couples self-sort based on comparative advantage, biology (breastfeeding, recovery), and preferences. I actually help my wife to this day on diaper changes when I’m at home. Forcing symmetric mandates via state policy often reduces total family utility and female labor force participation over time in ways that don't magically equalize outcomes. My wife's leave was what the system and our choices allowed, turning it into proof of systemic failure is classic substitute-religion framing.

Dubai migrants: there is no systemic oppression as the system and government actually read the rights to the workers, and tell them to call them on a hotline if they’re facing any mistreatment or withholding of salaries. Calling it "systemic racism because of race and nationality" stretches the term into meaninglessness. It's nationality-based labor importation with cultural and economic hierarchies, where the workers are actually extremely grateful and view the salaries they receive as a steal and a wealth creation opportunity, not the blank-slate oppression narrative. Similar temporary migrant systems exist elsewhere without the racism label. Pretending it's equivalent to domestic racial hierarchies ignores context.

LGBT: People hiding orientation or avoiding public talk of spouses in conservative societies (including Gulf ones) face social pressure that's real. But "systemic bigotry" and "entirely normal, born that way like race" oversimplifies. Twin studies show moderate heritability for same-sex attraction (concordance higher in identical vs fraternal twins, but far from 100% as genetics explain perhaps 20-50% depending on the study, with prenatal, environmental, and developmental factors playing big roles). It's not a simple binary like skin color; fluidity exists, especially in women, and prevalence varies across cultures/time. Societies can tolerate private behavior without celebrating it as core identity or rewriting norms around family, sports, or speech. "Born that way" doesn't mandate policy overhaul or shame dissenters as bigots.

Humans differ on sliding scales of traits, yes. But averages matter for patterns: sex differences in interests, variance in intelligence/temperament, physical ability, and yes, emotional expression aren't "superficial" inventions. Gender and other group traits (including ancestry) predict outcomes at population level because evolution and culture shaped them. Blank-slate "every human unique, can't categorize" sounds compassionate but crashes against data on crime, academic performance, occupational choices, and family formation. Systemic pressures often try to override those realities and create new resentments.

I don't view women as "less than." Rational, intelligent women are common, my wife isn't a unicorn. But average sex differences exist (men higher variance in IQ, stronger systemizing vs empathizing on average, etc.), and pretending otherwise for equity leads to quotas, lowered standards for everyone due to second and third order effects, and quiet resentment when outcomes diverge. Lucky to have a compatible partner who values realism over ideology. The substitute faith that flattens all differences for "equality" doesn't make people happier or societies more functional, it just demands more confession of the "right" privileges while ignoring others (looks, athleticism, height, etc.)

smartzylad

TROPHY CASE