6 ms·

"We need immigration;" No, we don't. This is a mantra that keeps being repeated without much substance. Housing affordability, job quality, public finance sus

"We need immigration;" No, we don't. This is a mantra that keeps being repeated without much substance. Housing affordability, job quality, public finance sustainability won't get any better with immigration. Maybe salaries keep being depressed, consumer demand increases, and that's good for profits. But I can't think of much more!

tluyben2 5y ago
We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do. Or we need some other revolution that does not depend on work per hour. We already here are doing our best, not really successfully, to get the ultra rich to chime in and to get foreign companies to pay more than peanuts. Also the AI overlords are, in all practical ways, very far away (and mostly benefitting the very rich).
- wisethrowaway 5y ago
  I don't think it's a major issue to take care of the elderly. If anything we need to take care of the young! Pensions are very high in Europe, salaries stagnant, the elderly are property owners while the young are not. Enough of cheap fallacies!
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    You are talking populist millennial vs baby boomer (I am not) but I am referring to existentialist issues for people over 50 now and in the future while you are talking the happy few %. When people like you or me are elderly, this will look like a shitshow if we do not fix this, is the point.
    - wisethrowaway 5y ago
      I think the only way for Europe to become a shitshow is by continuing to add immigration. In Japan 40% of population is over 65. It's extreme case of aging. Yet they are doing perfectly fine with virtually zero immigration.
      - karpierz 5y ago
        > Yet they are doing perfectly fine with virtually zero immigration. They've been in a recession for 30 years.
        coryrc 5y ago
        And yet still one of the highest GDP
        nradov 5y ago
        Japan hasn't been in a recession for 30 years. They have been stagnant for 30 years. That's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-growth
- luckylion 5y ago
  The problem is that (the current form of) immigration doesn't solve that issue. I'm not intimately familiar with other countries, but Germany has very high unemployment among immigrants. At the same time, they need resources, and when they age, they're going to need to be taken care of as well. That increases the problem and puts more load on the systems that are strained to begin with. That would look totally different if it was a different group of immigrants, but we have to look at reality, not a theoretical ideal.
- adventured 5y ago
  > We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do [need immigration]. Amazing. That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. Inevitably stated in most every thread on immigration. Philosophically it's perfectly aligned with the big business types that also want cheap labor for exactly the same reasons: more people to take advantage of, more people to cast into cheap labor roles of servitude to the aging/dying/lazy/entitled affluent classes. But how will we prop up our collapsing entitlement systems, which were poorly managed and poorly funded and poorly thought out, if we don't import massive volumes of labor to pay taxes so the entitled classes can pretend their system isn't failing and so those immigrants themselves can get screwed later on when the entitlement systems they're brought in to prop up are bled dry.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    > That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. In my experience people making that argument are more often than not the type that think manual labor is "beneath" them. The type that would rather collect unemployment for months at a time than take a job they don't like. It says much more about them than they think it does.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  > We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly Any source for that? Is that what this is all about - cos I'm sure we can pay more for caregivers and more people will want these jobs. The problem is it doesn't pay well.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    100% this. As long as there's substantial unemployment, there's no labor shortage, but the jobs are hard, the hours are long and the pay is bad. Pay more, and people will take the job. Or don't pay them more individually, but add more people, and you'll also get more applicants, because the job will be less taxing on all fronts.
- ahefner 5y ago
  > We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves... Don't you think this is the real problem that needs to be addressed? If your society cannot sustain itself, it will be replaced.

tluyben2 5y ago

We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do. Or we need some other revolution that does not depend on work per hour. We already here are doing our best, not really successfully, to get the ultra rich to chime in and to get foreign companies to pay more than peanuts. Also the AI overlords are, in all practical ways, very far away (and mostly benefitting the very rich).

wisethrowaway 5y ago
I don't think it's a major issue to take care of the elderly. If anything we need to take care of the young! Pensions are very high in Europe, salaries stagnant, the elderly are property owners while the young are not. Enough of cheap fallacies!
- tluyben2 5y ago
  You are talking populist millennial vs baby boomer (I am not) but I am referring to existentialist issues for people over 50 now and in the future while you are talking the happy few %. When people like you or me are elderly, this will look like a shitshow if we do not fix this, is the point.
  - wisethrowaway 5y ago
    I think the only way for Europe to become a shitshow is by continuing to add immigration. In Japan 40% of population is over 65. It's extreme case of aging. Yet they are doing perfectly fine with virtually zero immigration.
    - karpierz 5y ago
      > Yet they are doing perfectly fine with virtually zero immigration. They've been in a recession for 30 years.
      - coryrc 5y ago
        And yet still one of the highest GDP
      - nradov 5y ago
        Japan hasn't been in a recession for 30 years. They have been stagnant for 30 years. That's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-growth
luckylion 5y ago
The problem is that (the current form of) immigration doesn't solve that issue. I'm not intimately familiar with other countries, but Germany has very high unemployment among immigrants. At the same time, they need resources, and when they age, they're going to need to be taken care of as well. That increases the problem and puts more load on the systems that are strained to begin with. That would look totally different if it was a different group of immigrants, but we have to look at reality, not a theoretical ideal.
adventured 5y ago
> We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do [need immigration]. Amazing. That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. Inevitably stated in most every thread on immigration. Philosophically it's perfectly aligned with the big business types that also want cheap labor for exactly the same reasons: more people to take advantage of, more people to cast into cheap labor roles of servitude to the aging/dying/lazy/entitled affluent classes. But how will we prop up our collapsing entitlement systems, which were poorly managed and poorly funded and poorly thought out, if we don't import massive volumes of labor to pay taxes so the entitled classes can pretend their system isn't failing and so those immigrants themselves can get screwed later on when the entitlement systems they're brought in to prop up are bled dry.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  > That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. In my experience people making that argument are more often than not the type that think manual labor is "beneath" them. The type that would rather collect unemployment for months at a time than take a job they don't like. It says much more about them than they think it does.
joelbluminator 5y ago
> We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly Any source for that? Is that what this is all about - cos I'm sure we can pay more for caregivers and more people will want these jobs. The problem is it doesn't pay well.
- luckylion 5y ago
  100% this. As long as there's substantial unemployment, there's no labor shortage, but the jobs are hard, the hours are long and the pay is bad. Pay more, and people will take the job. Or don't pay them more individually, but add more people, and you'll also get more applicants, because the job will be less taxing on all fronts.
ahefner 5y ago
> We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves... Don't you think this is the real problem that needs to be addressed? If your society cannot sustain itself, it will be replaced.