Having grown up in the post-World War II era, I can recall the national pleasure that America seemed to take in the “Brain Drain” in which so many of the best minds of the UK came to America to do their thing. We had also just gone through a period in which the American scene was greatly enriched by refugees from Fascist Europe, from Albert Einstein working from Princeton to great film directors making movies in Hollywood.
This nation had always prided itself on being a magnet for the best — in their willingness to uproot themselves and go to the land of opportunity — that the outside world had to offer.
People with that kind of gumption and talent helped make us the world’s most dynamic society.
So now we read about the “civil war” in Trump World, where his billionaire oligarchs want access to the best available talent and Trump’s base is furious at the idea that immigrants will be invited in instead of kicked out.
The argument of Musk and Rama… concerns highly skilled labor, not the immigrants who pick our fruit and our lettuce. So what the MAGA crowd is saying is that they don’t want to compete with outsiders for highly desirable jobs. (Not the jobs that Americans aren’t willing to do.)
Their legitimate beef would be that beefing up the supply of labor drives down its price: in other words, whoever gets the job will earn less because of the supply-and-demand curves.
Less legitimate, by American standards, would be any unwillingness to lose such a competition to someone who’d do a better job.
(Wholly illegitimate, in terms of decent values, is any mere bigotry against “foreigners,” who are different from our native population.)
My guess is that the overall evidence would show that the nation as a whole benefits from what the best and the brightest from the rest of the world bring into this country: as they seek their fortune, they also enrich the nation economically, and culturally as the American future unfolds.
Those who would benefit from keeping those talented people out are probably relatively few.
As much as I find Musk repellent in almost every way, in this particular conflict in Trump world, I think Musk has the better case.
I also must admit that Ramaswamy’s “infamous” email said a lot that rang true to me. His overall point is that American culture these days breeds more mediocrity and less excellence. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that.
Back in the 50s and 60s, there was a psychological theory (David McClelland) about “the need for achievement” in a society, finding that it correlated with rates of economic growth. I myself am ambivalent about “economic growth” as the measure of social value. But I also place a high value on people having the ambition to make something of themselves, rather than slothfully just cruising along. So I resonated some to what Ramaswamy wrote.
As presented in Yahoo:
Mr Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur-turned-politician urged for “more tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin’. More extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall”.
“Best engineers” doesn’t capture the Good for me as much as it seems to for Ramaswamy, but it does seem that after these generations of post-war affluence, American culture has become less motivated, less achieving, more mediocre. And while the capitalist drive is not my favorite engine, I share Ramaswamy’s desire for people to strive more and coast along hedonistically less.
I would not be delighted if my adult children exemplified the America Ramaswamy is challenging.