Election News

Pete Buttigieg slams JD Vance for not knowing that the US is a wealthy nation

Vance wants to be vice president but apparently doesn't know that the US is very wealthy.
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Pete Buttigieg, a white 42-year-old man, wears a blue blazer and tie while on the brown colored set of the TV news program.
Pete Buttigieg on The Daily Show Photo: YouTube screenshot

Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg slammed the GOP vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), for not knowing even knowing that the U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and for saying that immigration hasn’t made the U.S. wealthier.

Like many Republicans, Vance argues that the U.S. is not, in fact, a wealthy nation as a reason to vote for Donald Trump, to “make America great again.” He made such an argument on CNBC yesterday.

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“If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country- the most prosperous city in the world,” Vance said in a CNBC appearance yesterday. “America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”

“Which makes me wonder, what country does J.D. Vance think is the most prosperous country in the world, since he doesn’t think it’s America?” Buttigieg retorted on CNN later the same day. “And also, does he really think that immigration has nothing to do with American prosperity?”

He then brought up how a border bill in Congress that could have passed earlier this year was killed when Donald Trump came out against it.

Buttigieg’s point that the U.S. is the most prosperous country in the world is backed by World Bank data, which puts the U.S. as the country with the highest purchasing power-adjusted per capita income in the world, after several small oil states (like Norway and Qatar), tax havens (like Switzerland and Bermuda), and micronations (like Singapore and Macao). The U.S. is the top nation with a population of over 10 million on the list.

Moreover, economists believe that immigration has increased the U.S.’s wealth. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that GDP will be boosted by $1.3 trillion by 2034 by the recent surge in immigration and that the wages of non-immigrants will increase faster over that time period “because of higher innovation-related productivity and because the increase in the number of less-educated workers boosts the demand for more-educated people to work with them.”

Vance’s claim that Harris “let in 25 million illegal aliens” also isn’t true. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million undocumented immigrants are living in the U.S. at the moment, and it’s not clear what Vance believes Harris was doing to “let in” undocumented immigrants.

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