Like, there's also the fact that many very successful local New Americans send a lot of their money "home". They prefer doing that to helping improve the economy of the city and state where they now live, or the country, for that matter.
Sorry to hear that's your experience in Sacramento. It hasn't been our experience at all in Alameda County, where immigrant-owned small businesses have done extremely well and contributed heavily to gentrification and improvement of a number of stagnant neighborhoods, in every city within the county. We have seen huge, and very welcome, changes in our 'neck of the woods' over the past 32 yrs since we left San Francisco for the EBay.
In fact, SF itself is a microcosm of immigrant success. SF Chinatown is a tourist relic, where only a tiny percentage of Chinese live. The "new Chinatown" first moved out to the SF Sunset, then to the more expensive Richmond, then out to the suburbs in the Peninsula. Their children and grandchildren live in the South Bay and Greater East Bay (Contra Costa and Solano counties), as can be seen by the types of businesses that have sprung up in those areas; i.e., catering to Gen Y's and Millennials. Even 15 yrs no one foresaw that Dublin, CA would become the one of the fastest growing and prosperous suburban cities in Northern CA.
Anyway, couple of points re this sub-topic:
- CA is one of the few states that taxes small business owners 'coming and going'. They get hit with double taxation, which even the Feds don't do.
- CA has the highest state income tax rates in the US.
- Immigrants have always sent money home to families. That was true of European immigrants in the 1800s as well.
But remember, in CA, if you live here, you are paying federal taxes, state income taxes, high sales taxes, an overwhelming # of various permit and user fees, high gas taxes, expensive utility rates, and if you bought a home post-1979, welcome to market-linked property taxes and state/county/city bond assessments! My in-laws could never understand how we paid $5K in property taxes for a small cottage in the EBay; while they paid $400/yr for a million dollar SFH, detached, in one of the best SF neighborhoods. But my nephew would swap our bill with his any day; they live near Berkeley and his home, not much bigger than ours but in a better school district, purchased 7 years ago, has a $10+K tax bill
in addition to his mortgage.
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To get back OT, I believe China's collapse will more accurately be Xi's collapse, and possibly the CPC with it. The Hans are a minority in China, and unfortunately without a strongman ruler it is likely China will break up into feudal-type regions again. China is the fastest-aging country in the world, and its potential for ecological disasters is vast: their super-dams are collapsing, their water is polluted, and their ability to feed themselves is irreparably damaged from Mao's Great Leap Forward and Xi's wholesale forced uprooting of rural residents into poorly-built "planned cities" (which are already falling down from inadequate construction and no maintenance).
It is questionable whether China would have enough money to fix even half its problems if it started working on them today. China is printing money hand-over-fist to prop up the banks and provincial governments. Unlike the way Western government budgets/funding works, in China, the CPC (read: Xi) makes policy, which are automatically turned into laws, but all funding for those changes is the responsibility of the provincial governments.
This was the single biggest reason for the catastrophic debacle of China's COVID policy. Without businesses operating, there was no money to do anything, but the provinces had to put into effect whatever CPC told them to do. Buildings were locked down, for example; but the CPC didn't fund food or supplies to citizens;
that was solely the responsibility of the province and city.
A descent into chaos is NEVER good for any industrialized global economy. Big corporations are global businesses, and links between countries are intricate and complex. Disturb those links, and the flow of business - and money - is interrupted. That will always have consequences, down to your and my and everyone else's, daily lives.
One thing to be sure of: the poorest will suffer most. The richest will suffer least.
