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Immigrants mainly just don't exist in Europe to the same degree. They are culturally more shat on there, but materially better off as they get more safety net,
by Ericson2314 5y ago
Immigrants mainly just don't exist in Europe to the same degree. They are culturally more shat on there, but materially better off as they get more safety net, and aren't the backbone of the shitty service industry like here.
Letting in immigrants while you are trying to reduce working hours is a good idea because a) moral b) you are trying to show off you have the best society, let people vote with their feat c) you still need to make investments so being able to have total working hours go up while per-capita working hours goes down is good. Especially if there is a tech/productivity lag where you don't get fully automated dank shit for a few years after you make labor scarce
Letting in immigrants as beneath-the-table workers while trying to lower working hours means you get apartheid not utopia, so yeah, it's bad. The thing that makes America less bad is at least the elite likes to overwork itself for cultural reasons so the rat race is just as stupid but less unfair than it would otherwise be.
- whimsicalism 5y agoWell, is it better to be let in and provided with services (what the US does) or kept out and in an impoverished country?
- Ericson2314 5y agoI don't know! :) The best-of-both-worlds is what I want. The first decently country to let in immigrants while reducing working hours is going to crush everyone else with a strong, more technologically- and culturally-advanced society. I am excited to see it happen. (incidentally a very vague materialist take on why the soviet union sucked is it began too underdeveloped, and in the rush to do more work they ended up too military-industrial. A lot of people say "not enough consumption" but you ought to connect it being able to let demand "pull" investment rather than centrally "push" investment. More consumer goods or less working hours are somewhat equivalent once you are (post-)industrialized.)
- Jensson 5y agoGermany alone has taken in more refugees than the entirety of USA. USA is not immigration friendly at all for those who really need it. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ Edit: Btw, I think the poster above meant the millions of undocumented immigrants living in USA without full rights.
- whimsicalism 5y agoRefugee is not synonymous with immigrant. The US has admitted more than 1.2 million refugees (I believe the number is closer to 3 million), this chart only counts refugees under UNHCR mandate.
- Ericson2314 5y agoYes good thing Merkel did that. But they also are crazy austrians and crazy anti-nuclears. "Syrians good, Greeks bad, let's breed Neo-Nazis with austerity so Syrians bad soon too. Oh and more coal." Is that really net good?!