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Your rant isn't off-topic: Oftentimes the distrust for govt is reworded by socialist persons as "Remove those highly paid CEOs". But sometimes the distrust isn'

• jacquesm 10y ago
  > lefties Ah, one of those comments. Most of the EU countries where immigration is currently an issue have had 'right wing' parties leading them for a very long time. Immigration is just the easiest populist button to press to get a large number of people to vote against their own interests. One of the problems underlying all this is not immigration per-se, but the rapid and unbounded expansion of the EU to include countries with a huge range of incomes and costs-of-life. Add to that the ability and willingness of people to leave behind their old lives and/or families in order to go abroad to make some money and you have an instantaneous problem. But the powers that be have it right: in the longer term the only way the EU can work is by giving everybody the right to relocate to wherever they want. That way at some point it all levels out again. Try to imagine a USA where someone from Texas would not be able to move to LA or NYC or the other way around. Border controls against movement on every state-border. If you find that hard to imagine try to come up with a really good argument why it should be any different within the EU. Finally, there are people that wish to migrate to the EU from regions outside of it. The EU made a strategic mistake here, which is that they have been partially (together with the US) responsible for the destabilization of the region just outside of it. That this could lead to a huge influx of refugees was a risk they took knowingly, and that I feel it is only responsible to deal with. It would be nice if the countries that are not walking distance from those regions or that are protected by a body of water that is not easily navigable would take their responsibilities in this as well.
  • yxhuvud 10y ago
    Another mistake regarding extraEU immigration is that they put all the responsibility on the Schengen border countries instead of creating a common solution for that.
    • newjersey 10y ago
      > a common solution I'm sorry for my naivety but what does that mean? I've heard this so many times. Do they want German troops on their borders? Do they want to sit back and relax while Germany feeds, clothes, and shelters their troops and law enforcement? Now, a common solution for the refugee crisis is not possible because the problem is not the refugee crisis. The problem is that the EU is TOO WEAK. Perhaps a naive first step towards a solution could be that all member states cede the right to tax income to the European Union. We could follow up in a few years by ceding VAT to the EU as well. Follow the money. Member states shouldn't "contribute" towards funding the EU. The EU should have the right to collect taxes. I'm sure there are a lot of subtleties involved here but this is what I see from outside. I'd appreciate any insight as to why the naive approach is valid or invalid.
      • pjc50 10y ago
        The EU should have the right to collect taxes. I'm sure there are a lot of subtleties involved here but this is what I see from outside. I'd appreciate any insight as to why the naive approach is valid or invalid. a) Would require a constitutional change in many EU states, especially Germany where some of the changes to the financial ESM were challenged: http://europeanlawblog.eu/?p=1057 http://europeanlawblog.eu/?p=1057 b) Collecting taxes implies full budgetary control over EU states. This leads to ... c) It would be very, very unpopular, especially in the current environment. It was bad enough when Greece effectively had to hand a budget veto to its creditors. Trying to make taxation EU-wide is basically a red flag to populist Eurosceptic movements everywhere. Remember, the US only regards Federal sovereignty as superior to State sovereignty as a result of a brutal civil war the outcome of which is still not fully accepted. In the EU the member states are still sovereign.
      • 10y ago
• pjc50 10y ago
  One of the points made recently was that it's not necessarily possible to prevent "foreigners taking your job" in a globalised world. Prevent immigration? The industry goes overseas anyway. Prevent imports? Doesn't result in locally-made artisan iPhones. You can see that in e.g. Brazil where there's a high import tax on electronics. It doesn't result in import substitution but just handicaps people trying to build businesses that use tech. There is no option for "make the foreigners cease to exist" or "make them stop wanting to compete their way up to our standard of living". "Distrust" in general in the UK and the US is probably fed mostly by the spectacular rise of media management and post-truth politics. Trust is a valuable public resource: a high-trust society can get a lot more done because people don't have to spend all their time securing themselves and their business deals, but can trust that genuine infractions will be dealt with and normal non-harmful activities left alone. It's always possible for anyone to do well in the short term by breaching trust, but if too many people do this it's like overfishing (another EU issue). Once lying becomes routine we end up stuck in the wrong side of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
  • sievebrain 10y ago
    Many of the people most affected by immigration are service workers whose jobs cannot easily be outsourced.