Comment by philipallstar
6 days ago
> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy
European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.
Where are the full ones?
Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only really major cities that suffer under development, and even among them it's just some, not the majority.
And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is essentially largely subsidized by immigrants.
In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.
Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime.
What you hear little about are the insane dangers of organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag to the economy in most of Europe.
> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.
Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of movement especially for women. Also increased cost and decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even street cleaning…
Extra-EU immigrants are not uniform group. E.g. in Denmark non-western migrants at some point are (weakly) positive net contributors to public finances, but MENAPT immigrants are on avg. net negative their entire life. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...
> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.
All the data I find shows them contributing less than natives, and even MORE less if corrected for age. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/232517
https://euromod-web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/research/publications/d...
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This is wild. Who are they and what kind of work are they doing? I would like to learn more about this phenom.
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Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat.
If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable.
People do need to eat, but over 80% of the Dutch agricultural produce is being exported.
Also, good portion of it isn't even meant for human consumption. Think flowers or cattle feed.
This is not about feeding the population or about sustainability. It's simply about profit.
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Economically it would make more sense to import food from France, Spain etc. it would reduce the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of people with limited negative economic impact.
And even without agriculture, a country should be considered "full" long before each acre has been turned into a concrete hellhole.
well duh let's just import food from elsewhere (and completely ignore that foreign politic squabbles might crash this system)
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The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the countries people are coming from, and the land is allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave their much more land-rich origins to come anyway?
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Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation?
In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going.
From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know.
Swiss here, living in a small town quite close to farmers. I would expect if it was the case here, I would have heard about it, given my proximity. I'm aware of this "arrangement" in the US, never heard of it happening anywhere in the EU - I haven't done a comprehensive study though, maybe someone with more knowledge can say more.
Considering EU farmers tend to riot with their tractors in the capitals of countries which try to control them I doubt it.
AFAIK Norwegian farmers fear of things like this was what kept Norway out of EU even with two referendums (or at least one of the distinguishing factors).
most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.
I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals
Germany and Switzerland have taken dramatically different responses to the migrant crisis.
These things aren't mutually-exclusive, though.
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They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water.
And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.
France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.
>France is mostly empty
Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
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Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".
As with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not:
https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra...
More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.
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citation needed
That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi
Makes me wonder about what's happening in those large, empty, countries and how cheap land would be there...
> mass migrations
> pretty full ones
C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that. Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh demographics, please everybody make more babies!
Xenophobia is on the rise across the board with the rising unequality and an alliance between extreme-right elements of the society and the wealthy class that wants to use them to destroy democratic institutions and take over the power. Rationally with the ageing population we actually need managed mass migration but instead get managed mass hate and unmanaged migration.
Replacing your own people with foreigners is never rational.
Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.
Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism.
> Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.
What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory.
We should not fulfill our imagined moral responsibility to the third world if it has real cost to the people already here
The second paragraph is a reasonable political position, but the first is blatantly ahistorical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#Antecedents.
There was no global freedom of movement. Ever.