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A lot of European countries have significant African populations (incl. Spain, Italy and France). It does not seem to lead to any economic Wunder. If I meet a b

A lot of European countries have significant African populations (incl. Spain, Italy and France). It does not seem to lead to any economic Wunder. If I meet a black guy there, they are usually trying to sell me or my wife a fake handbag. Gone are the times when what was needed was raw work force = muscles. One of the reasons why we have fewer kids is that schooling and training for modern job now takes so long that it envelopes a lot of the most fertile years. And one of the reasons why Africa has as many kids as Europeans used to have in the 19th century is because a lot of African youth does not have access to higher education. But that means that they won't be having good jobs in modern society.

mcntsh 5y ago
> But that means that they won't be having good jobs in modern society. You said it yourself, the western worker goes into school to work non physical jobs, that means there's a big gap in the physical job part of the labor force that can be filled by immigrants.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  That gap is much smaller than it used to be. At the peak of the muscle era, steelworks in my city of birth employed 100 000 people. Now they are down to fewer than 10 000, even though their production has actually grown. Automation took those jobs away. It is not dissimilar to the collapse of the rural areas: once, almost everybody was a subsistence farmer. Now, 1 % of the population can feed the rest.
  - mcntsh 5y ago
    Automation is certainly a big thing, but we still need people to care for the elderly, drive buses, clean public spaces, paint buildings, work on roads, take garbage, deliver goods, and so on. Some societies, such as Japan, are banking on automation filling these gaps but the affects of low birth rates will be felt long before it can take over completely.
iostream24 5y ago
Your comments speak to the feudal markets in most of Europe more than the capabilities of human beings. Here in Portugal businesses are typically depressingly from the same five categories or so, and manufacturing is limited to low tech with much raw material exported. When this failure mindset isn’t present you see all sorts of innovations from the Portuguese market (some Fraunhofer-like startups linked to the universities etc.) The lack of imagination that comes from forcing everyone to eat pop culture for breakfast in this Eurovision mentality also limits innovation. Small minded belief in the boxes and categories and a refusal to consider new possibilities is a real limitation in much of Europe that money cannot help us get over. We’ve become a weak inbred continent incapable of competing on the world class level that our grandparents did in so many fields. Europe thirsts for new blood, even if some of its less clever locals think otherwise
- Bancakes 5y ago
  European job markets and societies are simply at a higher level than anything in Africa. Whatever problems you can find, Africa has them five fold.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "We’ve become a weak inbred continent" ... "Europe thirsts for new blood" That sounds really weird, like a rehashed mix of old style eugenics. By the way, the worst problems with inbreeding are either in royal families, or in countries that condone cousin marriages. As you can see from this map, it is not Europe that takes the top spots in consanguinity. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-prevalence-consanguinity-C-A-M-Bittles-2009-Reproduced-by-permission_fig1_281376949 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-prevalence-consan...
- Nesco 5y ago
  > We’ve become a weak inbred continent Europe is one of the continent with the lowest actual inbreeding rate contrarily to Africa, the ‘new blood’ you seem to cherish. Could you, who is so clever compared to the stupid xenophobes, explain something to me? I am very curious about me how the crack dealing migrants from Mali and Niger that regularly vandalise my street will rejuvenate our economy? Also it seems that in your indisputable intellectual superiority you seemed to forgot something rather… basic: that a country may not just be an economy?
thefz 5y ago
> A lot of European countries have significant African populations (incl. Spain, Italy and France). It does not seem to lead to any economic Wunder. If I meet a black guy there, they are usually trying to sell me or my wife a fake handbag. Nah. Here in Italy, and in France too, there's a well integrated amount of north Africans since two or three generations. And we're glad they are here.
- Nesco 5y ago
  Then explain why Le Pen + Zemmour were over 30% in the last election, knowing that there is now a sensible amount of votes from people of African descent? Your personal experience seems to contrast a bit with mine on that point
  - thefz 5y ago
    Explain why blacks and mexicans voted for Trump, and voilà.
    - Nesco 5y ago
      69% of Muslims, which comprise a large part of African immigrants in France, voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They are not responsible for the high score of Le Pen and Zemmour
      - the_omegist 5y ago
        1) Ethnics statistics aren't allowed in France 2) care to show the source for this ? 3) what does it even mean ? "69% of Muslims" : who went to vote ? Who are french citizens? Who are over 18? who are on the voting lists? Throwing "information" like this is misleading.
        Nesco 5y ago
        Come on it’s literally the third google result for “premier tour religion”. https://www.ifop.com/publication/le-vote-des-electorats-confessionnels-au-1er-tour-de-lelection-presidentielle-2/ https://www.ifop.com/publication/le-vote-des-electorats-conf...
popularonion 5y ago
Also see the stagnation of Central American and Caribbean countries despite their large populations of migrants in the USA. Remittances are not some kind of economic cheat code or the basis of a national development policy, they’re basically a painkiller that might help prevent a complete collapse of the country.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Same with Moldova or Kosovo.
- jl6 5y ago
  It’s hard to disentangle cause and effect here. Those regions could be in even worse shape were it not for remittances. Or they could be in even better shape if the migrants had stayed at home and worked on improving their own countries instead of brain draining to the USA.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>Gone are the times when what was needed was raw work force = muscles. Not at all. Modern economies require huge amounts of people to do service jobs, and many b of these do not require advanced degrees. Here in Melbourne (not Europe, but we have a fairly sizeable African refugee population) you see plenty of black people working in aged/disability care, security and driving jobs.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Of those jobs you named, aged/disability care is the only sector that is going to grow, because of the demographic development. Unless medicine makes great strides in treating aging, more nurses and caretakers will be needed. Growth in security jobs is possible, though it spells a bad omen: if more security is needed per capita, there is something going wrong with law enforcement policies. Human driving jobs will disappear one day, much like horse drivers did. Even though autonomous driving is proving to be a harder nut to crack than people expected, by 2050 it will be solved. In the meantime, Africa will add about a billion people. They must be educated, there simply isn't enough muscle jobs for them in the developed world.
  - burntoutfire 5y ago
    > Even though autonomous driving is proving to be a harder nut to crack than people expected, by 2050 it will be solved. In 1960s, top researchers believed that scene understanding (one of the hardest computer vision problems) will be solved by an undergrad during summer internship. I feel that this prediction that we'll for sure autonomous driving in a couple decades is an example of similar hubris.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      There is steady improvement in the field and roads can be adapted over time, too (special beacons etc.) I feel that the main hurdle to clear will eventually be human psyche. We have grown accustomed to the non-zero chance of a fellow human crashing into us, but being flattened by a robot gone wild is deeply repulsive, even if the actual rate of accidents sinks way under the current norm.

mcntsh 5y ago

> But that means that they won't be having good jobs in modern society. You said it yourself, the western worker goes into school to work non physical jobs, that means there's a big gap in the physical job part of the labor force that can be filled by immigrants.

inglor_cz 5y ago
That gap is much smaller than it used to be. At the peak of the muscle era, steelworks in my city of birth employed 100 000 people. Now they are down to fewer than 10 000, even though their production has actually grown. Automation took those jobs away. It is not dissimilar to the collapse of the rural areas: once, almost everybody was a subsistence farmer. Now, 1 % of the population can feed the rest.
- mcntsh 5y ago
  Automation is certainly a big thing, but we still need people to care for the elderly, drive buses, clean public spaces, paint buildings, work on roads, take garbage, deliver goods, and so on. Some societies, such as Japan, are banking on automation filling these gaps but the affects of low birth rates will be felt long before it can take over completely.

iostream24 5y ago

Your comments speak to the feudal markets in most of Europe more than the capabilities of human beings. Here in Portugal businesses are typically depressingly from the same five categories or so, and manufacturing is limited to low tech with much raw material exported. When this failure mindset isn’t present you see all sorts of innovations from the Portuguese market (some Fraunhofer-like startups linked to the universities etc.) The lack of imagination that comes from forcing everyone to eat pop culture for breakfast in this Eurovision mentality also limits innovation. Small minded belief in the boxes and categories and a refusal to consider new possibilities is a real limitation in much of Europe that money cannot help us get over. We’ve become a weak inbred continent incapable of competing on the world class level that our grandparents did in so many fields. Europe thirsts for new blood, even if some of its less clever locals think otherwise

Bancakes 5y ago
European job markets and societies are simply at a higher level than anything in Africa. Whatever problems you can find, Africa has them five fold.
inglor_cz 5y ago
"We’ve become a weak inbred continent" ... "Europe thirsts for new blood" That sounds really weird, like a rehashed mix of old style eugenics. By the way, the worst problems with inbreeding are either in royal families, or in countries that condone cousin marriages. As you can see from this map, it is not Europe that takes the top spots in consanguinity. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-prevalence-consanguinity-C-A-M-Bittles-2009-Reproduced-by-permission_fig1_281376949 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-prevalence-consan...
Nesco 5y ago
> We’ve become a weak inbred continent Europe is one of the continent with the lowest actual inbreeding rate contrarily to Africa, the ‘new blood’ you seem to cherish. Could you, who is so clever compared to the stupid xenophobes, explain something to me? I am very curious about me how the crack dealing migrants from Mali and Niger that regularly vandalise my street will rejuvenate our economy? Also it seems that in your indisputable intellectual superiority you seemed to forgot something rather… basic: that a country may not just be an economy?

thefz 5y ago

> A lot of European countries have significant African populations (incl. Spain, Italy and France). It does not seem to lead to any economic Wunder. If I meet a black guy there, they are usually trying to sell me or my wife a fake handbag. Nah. Here in Italy, and in France too, there's a well integrated amount of north Africans since two or three generations. And we're glad they are here.

Nesco 5y ago
Then explain why Le Pen + Zemmour were over 30% in the last election, knowing that there is now a sensible amount of votes from people of African descent? Your personal experience seems to contrast a bit with mine on that point
- thefz 5y ago
  Explain why blacks and mexicans voted for Trump, and voilà.
  - Nesco 5y ago
    69% of Muslims, which comprise a large part of African immigrants in France, voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They are not responsible for the high score of Le Pen and Zemmour
    - the_omegist 5y ago
      1) Ethnics statistics aren't allowed in France 2) care to show the source for this ? 3) what does it even mean ? "69% of Muslims" : who went to vote ? Who are french citizens? Who are over 18? who are on the voting lists? Throwing "information" like this is misleading.
      - Nesco 5y ago
        Come on it’s literally the third google result for “premier tour religion”. https://www.ifop.com/publication/le-vote-des-electorats-confessionnels-au-1er-tour-de-lelection-presidentielle-2/ https://www.ifop.com/publication/le-vote-des-electorats-conf...

popularonion 5y ago

Also see the stagnation of Central American and Caribbean countries despite their large populations of migrants in the USA. Remittances are not some kind of economic cheat code or the basis of a national development policy, they’re basically a painkiller that might help prevent a complete collapse of the country.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Same with Moldova or Kosovo.
jl6 5y ago
It’s hard to disentangle cause and effect here. Those regions could be in even worse shape were it not for remittances. Or they could be in even better shape if the migrants had stayed at home and worked on improving their own countries instead of brain draining to the USA.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>Gone are the times when what was needed was raw work force = muscles. Not at all. Modern economies require huge amounts of people to do service jobs, and many b of these do not require advanced degrees. Here in Melbourne (not Europe, but we have a fairly sizeable African refugee population) you see plenty of black people working in aged/disability care, security and driving jobs.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Of those jobs you named, aged/disability care is the only sector that is going to grow, because of the demographic development. Unless medicine makes great strides in treating aging, more nurses and caretakers will be needed. Growth in security jobs is possible, though it spells a bad omen: if more security is needed per capita, there is something going wrong with law enforcement policies. Human driving jobs will disappear one day, much like horse drivers did. Even though autonomous driving is proving to be a harder nut to crack than people expected, by 2050 it will be solved. In the meantime, Africa will add about a billion people. They must be educated, there simply isn't enough muscle jobs for them in the developed world.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > Even though autonomous driving is proving to be a harder nut to crack than people expected, by 2050 it will be solved. In 1960s, top researchers believed that scene understanding (one of the hardest computer vision problems) will be solved by an undergrad during summer internship. I feel that this prediction that we'll for sure autonomous driving in a couple decades is an example of similar hubris.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    There is steady improvement in the field and roads can be adapted over time, too (special beacons etc.) I feel that the main hurdle to clear will eventually be human psyche. We have grown accustomed to the non-zero chance of a fellow human crashing into us, but being flattened by a robot gone wild is deeply repulsive, even if the actual rate of accidents sinks way under the current norm.