FWIW the "international" folks I work with hardly spend any money in the US. Most of it is saved and spent or invested during 2-month annual visits to homeland.
Your logic is incorrect, you are thinking that a "international" folk buying a TV is what they mean. But that's not correct. Paying income taxes, paying tax on cars, paying tax on gas, paying rent, these matter a lot more to the government then you buying an iphone from the apple store in the mall versus one in "international country".
That's probably just your company. In Silicon Valley, "international" folks spend a lot of money on buying houses (multiple of them sometimes), cars, home improvement, going out to restaurants, etc.
Absolutely anecdotal, but in the Silicon Valley I know, I rarely see coworkers participating in skiing/surfing/hiking/US travel. Hell, even dining out outside of free-food campus is a tough sell.
As for buying multiple houses, I'm sure the wider population is happy with foreigners buying rental properties.
Me buying food from restaurant would make the owner richer, but would also employ more people at the restaurant.
The scarcity issue is valid when the resource is limited. In case of US, I was not aware of food scarcity. Even housing is more due to policies than actual land scarcity.
Economic activity does have positive feeback. Yes, some people get unfairly rich - but the solution is not to stop the activity, instead try to get the rich pay their fair share of contribution to the country.
Why are we relegating locals to menial restaurant jobs? Why not have programs to get them trained and into higher earning jobs?
A local working a restaurant will often need to take advantage of welfare. If instead we funneled the locals to higher paying jobs, we would be better off. We're supposed to look after our own citizens, afterall --that's the whole point of electing a government.
