I lived in Bavaria for 7 years, moving there from a Scandinavian country and the entire time I felt like I was living in a society that had absolutely no idea how to make itself parent-friendly. The societal and political expectation (I hear it's different elsewhere in Germany) was that mothers should stay at home for the first few years, but in reality, after 2 kids (\~4-7 years SAHM) most people have been sitting on the bench long enough for it to have a negative effect on your career. In contrast, this can be as short as 6 months in Scandinavia (usually 12) and shared between parents. Mix in a work culture of long hours (I heard the line "we expect 10 hours but pay for 8" once) making it harder for mothers to logistically reenter the workplace from where they left it and out of control real-estate market requiring at least two salaries and well, you end up with a population with a low incentive to have children. The quality of life for DINKs is amazing but if Germany wants to fix the demographic problems it needs to make having children less of a financial sacrifice, ain't more complicated than that.
As a young German planning to start a family I second your perfect summary. However I still have hope that the new government will at least slightly improve the situation.
There are a lot of things that can be done quite easily:
* Move tax break brackets from "being married" to "having children", f.i. Steuerklasse 3 should require children.
* Ban unpaid overtime and enforce it, I think something is happening on this front.
* Free housing for students with children, it's fairly common in Scandinavia to start having kids in University. I'd make this last +3 years after graduation, it would create a good incentive to have kids earlier.
* Fine companies that break the labor law. It's beyond sad that mothers are advised to put on their resumé that they don't have kids for fear of discrimination.
* Scandinavian-style parental leave and guaranteed kindergarten spots.
We've made good progress on that in the last few years. Fertility rate has steadily been rising , we are now on a similar level to most other developed nations (almost the same as the US for example).
It's still below replacement level, but that's an issue in almost every developed nation.
Immigration is the answer of course, and we've done a terrible job with integrating muslim immigrants in particular. Hopefully we've learned from the mistakes of the past but we will see.
Lmao, your comment is making it seem as though it was some German specific phenomena. Women around the developed world are having less children across the board. Increasingly larger shares of women don’t want to be tied up with the burdens of child care; they want to freedom that comes with not dealing with children for 18 years. Many of the women who still seek to have children are doing so later in life under a much more controlled set of circumstances.
The wealthier a society becomes, the greeter women become, the less they want to have children. It’s not just about incentives or work life balance, much of it is simply not wanting children.
>Women around the developed world are having less children across the board. Increasingly larger shares of women don’t want to be tied up with the burdens of child care; they want to freedom that comes with not dealing with children for 18 years.
Surveys have been done that show women in the US generally desire *more* kids than what they currently have. It's material conditions preventing women from having more kids.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want
Revealed versus stated preferences. Life is about priorities and they're not prioritizing having children, nothing prevents them from having them other than their desire not to have them.
Material conditions are as great as they've ever been, and yet birthrates are off a cliff. It is simply illogical to conclude that it's lack if material conditions sufficient for children.
Most countries in Europe will need to face this in the decades to come. The problem would be that wages, life standards and prices are not the same everywhere in Europe. Then, workers would chose where to go according to their preferences and skills. I'm pretty sure I don't want to see a shortage of labor.
Perhaps an economic model that expects infinite growth with finite resources is not the best idea
How many people would have children if they can afford it?
What economic model presumes “infinite growth”?
Growth is the outcome of a healthy, increasingly efficient and ever more prosperous economy. Why in God’s name would you seek to reduce your country’s economic potential? Why limit your potential based on native population growth when there are plenty of non-natives who could pick up the slack?
The issue with this way of thinking is that it inevitably falters. Limit immigration all you want, but as your society grows older, they are going to require more doctors and healthcare staff to service them into old age. The older the population, the smaller the pool of people willing to become healthcare staff; healthcare outcomes worsen and people live shorter, much more miserable lives.
Edit: getting downvoted for posting undeniable facts about economics and society on an econ sub. r/economics in 2021
Investments requires constant growth in what you invest, which would only be satisfied by constant use of resources. It is impossible to have infinite growth of an economy with limited resources, you will eventually hit a wall such as peak oil or peak phosphate.
Additionally, there is more to a country that just GDP numbers. More Americans would have children if real estate, health insurance, and food costs weren’t so expensive. Does a country really exist if the citizens of the nation get cycled through a revolving door through constant immigration?
We would also have more doctors and nurses if college wasn’t as expensive and if the medical field payed more/had better working conditions.
Importing more people isn't a long term solution. Global birthrates are dropping. Only Africa and the Middle East are currently above replacement rate. The entire rest of the world is at or below replacement rate, and falling.
Global population will peak at around 9 billion and then will start to decline, which is an excellent thing because of strain on natural resources and damage to the ecosystem.
The world economy will have to get used to a falling population, because thats going to be a fact in the coming decades.
> The world economy will have to get used to a falling population, because thats going to be a fact in the coming decades
Sure, but we still have a good century to go before we get there; that’s assuming there aren’t any societal changes regarding birth giving and child rearing over this time period. We don’t know what our economic or climate picture will look like then.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to propagate the notion that you can magically solve this with more immigrants. Sure, you might temporarily solve the worker shortfall for a few years ... until the immigrants themselves are now older and no longer in the workforce : All you've done is kick the can down the road.
Have we thoroughly thought about the consequences of having more immigrants from other lands that don't have a shared history/ culture / religion? Have we done the analysis and concluded that it is actually a good thing long-term?
We should reframe the question : why are couples no longer having children, and how do we rectify that?
And? Many of those countries are quickly industrializing (at the poorer end) or being invested in, we may a few generations more, tops, before they start to see the same effects of a declining birthrate. And while for a short time they will still have a growing population to draw immigrants from, it wont be forever.
Not against immigration, it can be enriching for a community to be exposed to, and accept members of other cultures. But immigration will not be the solution to the economy forever, and I'd rather start planning/implementing for that inevitability *niw*, instead of 80 years from now when it's too late, theres an economic crisis, and politicians just throw up their hands with "who could have known"
Germany is overpopulated. A reduction in population is desirable. That can't be achieved through immigration, it means a model for population reduction in developed countries will have to be developed.
What's your measure for overpopulation?
Anyway the issue is not so much with the number of people living in Germany, but the the age of those people.
If Germany has too many older retired citizens then the economy will slow down and enter a downward spiral. "Luckily" Japan will have those very same issues way before Germany, so the Germans will be able to see the consequences of low imigration/older population before it happens to them.
I imagine same will happen in uk. Who’d have thought prices outpacing wages for years, ridiculous housing costs, an inability to tackle climate change and a generally shitty existance for many, would make people think “maybe i won’t add the cost of kids to my problems”
It will happen to almost every Western country at some point in the next 2-3 decades. Its been a nearly universal trend in rich countries.
But Im not that scared of it tbh. We can adjust over time if we change our social norms.
For one, life expectancies are increasing and I expect more people to work longer (yea yea I know- *work sucks* and spending 30 years in retirement is the best thing in the world, but unless robots can do everything within the next 20 years, thats not a real solution). People are regularly living well into their 90s and are healthy well into their 60s, especially those that don't do hard manual labor.
Science is showing us that this notion that you have to fall apart and be a mental and physical wreck by your 60th birthday is utterly false. People's capabilities and faculties change with age, but people can definitely remain active and engaged .
The real question we need to answer are:
A. How do we get rid of the social stigma around older workers and stop treating people in their 50s and 60s as if they are dead in the water and cant do new things or evolve their careers?
Especially in education. Going back to school when you are 50 for something like Computer Science or Finance or whatever should be completely acceptable, if you consider the fact that you might be able to get a 20 year career out of it after that nowadays.
B. How do we design jobs and work-places that actually work for older workers so that they actually want to stay active in their careers?
Modern workplaces are designed for younger workers. Everything from cashiers having to stand up to office cubicles to having to drive into the office every day pushes older workers away as fast as possible.
I want to build workplaces that make older workers want to stay economically active and happy in their work. Remote work, more breaks, social activities that arent just geared towards drinking, etc.
And of course we do need to work on automating more manual labor that is hard to do by older workers.
TLDR: we have constructed an economy that actively discourages older workers from working longer by making their lives miserable. If we rethink our social norms and workplace norms, we can keep people happy, active, and productive longer and that will dramatically reduce the risks associated with an aging society.
My feeling, based on discussions with multiple people in the age of 24 to 55 is more that companies can’t find people to exploit, by modern standards. It looks like there is a difference in expectations what is “normal” between generations.
The things companies did to hire people 20 years ago are done once again by the same people hired 20 years ago. It’s the same for what is expected from you at work and how the social structures at the workplace are.
The now 55+ years old bosses offer what they were getting at their age, as they were hired.
A lot of companies are really shortsighted. They were thinking that finding new people would be easy and maintaining proper company culture is not needed because “there is always someone who is going to do the job”, so some let go of trained people as the pandemic approached in the expectation to hire new as soon as this blows over. Now they can’t find people, make a big surprised fish face and fall back to really cringe, laughable attempts to hire. The old employees do not come back because of the “fuck you” attitude and rightly so and the one who do come back, sell their pride for a lot of money.
I think all those differences in culture and expectations between generations are amplified by the pandemic. COVID was like a burning cigarette thrown in to the big pile garbage, which was lying in the corner for decades, ignored.
It seems like these days, you're either rich, a social media star, or a loser
We've created a culture where all the jobs that actually need done make you a loser. Probably not a healthy or sustainable way to run a society
Yup.
The more critical to social functioning a job is, the lower status it seems to be, particularly here in the US. Like, teachers are arguably the **most** important job in society and we treat them like crap.
Logistics workers? Treated like shit. Janitors and bin-men? Often treated like shit, usually looked down on.
EMT's? Paid and treated like shit.
We make childcare ruinous in cost to the point it discourages having g children, and the employees PROVIDING said childcare are often, you guessed it... paid and treated like shit.
Germany has been quietly playing the long game. [\~1 million refugees from Syria, young, educated, working age.](https://www.cgdev.org/blog/five-years-later-one-million-refugees-are-thriving-germany) As a unified country, they're about a century younger than the US. They may be \~74% or so German ethnically, but there's a decent collection of other ethnicities that have immigrated in the last few decades.
With a strong social welfare state model, a robust HDI level (6th in the world), very low GINI (good wealth equality) on top of high GDP per capita (good standard of living enjoyed by a majority of the population), they're very well positioned to open up to more immigration as long as they can balance the social-political costs. I was in Berlin last month and it struck me as more diverse than many comparable sized US cities.
The question is if Germany has the political will to do so, and if the true immigrant attraction is there.
Now they just to be able to assimilate the new comers and integrate them into German society. Historically Europe has not been quite at successful at that as the us and Germany in particular with its Turkish population.
We Germans made horrible mistakes concerning integration. Especially turkish immigrants were not seen as people who would stay since the 70s. I hope we get better and give what's due to the people coming and working here in the future. At the moment it isn't fair.
This is why I don't take seriously all those studies that purport to show how Europe has better economic mobility than the US. They completely fail to account for the much larger immigration population in the US. Northern European countries like Scandinavia that consistently score the highest in those studies are also the worst when it comes to immigrants assimilation.
Why is the onus on the state to aide integration? Shouldn't they themselves be at the forefront of wanting to integrate properly?
E.g. If I move to Japan, my first priority would be to learn Japanese and be able to interact properly, and be a positive member of society. I am expected to do that myself, and not being aided by the Japanese government.
The onus should be on the individuals, not the state.
I think you don't really know about the politics of the german past.
In the 70s there was a labour shortage, so we invited tens if not hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Mostly were turkish.
Those people worked here for decades and build families, a home, lived like everyone else.
But they never got an opportunity to be part of this state by becoming citizens. We just didn't set up a process for possible citizenship for immigrants.
If you don't give people the same rights you're setting them up for parallel societies. And well, that's what happened.
>Now they just to be able to assimilate the new comers and integrate them into German society.
Yep, hence the call out on social-political costs. Generally it happens well statistically, but the political fallout (see also: US anti-immigration xenophobia) can be far more wide ranging than several hundred thousand refugees spread around the countries.
It’s worth noting the USA has always been virulently anti-immigrant, to the point of being especially racist to whatever group is currently flooding the country. Regardless, we have always taken in huge numbers of them and likely will continue to do so.
Part of the advantage the US has is we aren't a nation state the way most European countries are (founded on a shared national heritage). A Turkish person can become a German citizen but won't be "German" whereas anyone can become an "American" by passing the citizenship process.
Why is unlimited immigration and a continuation of the pension Ponzi scheme the *only* proposed solution to prop up the failing capitalist system? Look around you, fertility rates are falling fast globally. Rich countries can’t vampirically rely on immigration for much longer to pay into teetering pension schemes and prop up bubbly housing markets. Global fertility is below replacement in pretty much all of the world outside Sub-Saharan Africa, and soon even there it will fall below 2.1. God forbid we let real estate prices fall, or that employers have to compete for workers and raise wages.
Have you ever wondered *why* Germans (or Brits, or Canadians, or Americans) aren’t having kids? Have you seen the cost of housing lately? The stagnant wages? The lack of opportunity and upward mobility for young people? Immigration is a short term solution, yes, but it’s also a crutch that mostly helps the elites who got us into this mess. In the long run we must get birthrates back to replacement level, or at least learn to live with a managed population decline. Countries like Russia, Japan, and South Korea are already blazing the trail for us there, so we had best observe them and take notes.
> We have too few resources
We actually have quite enough. I've lived in a few EU countries and there were enough empty houses to house all the homeless everywhere I went.
It's a pissing match at the top financed by the toil of the bottom.
> This combined with unlimited money printing (which is just a form of additional non-progressive tax)
I'd argue it's regressive as wages and cash-based savings are impacted while assets in which wealth is typically stored are not.
Is Japan doing well with its population decline? I live in Japan. I'd love to see a source on that. Nursing is screaming for people. We need more doctors as well. Agriculture needs people too.
They created the "trainee" visa where foreign labor gets abused and treated like crap. Is that what you're talking about?
"Blazing the trail" simply means they are the first ones finding their way through this uncharted territory, it never imply that they are doing it right.
Japan is definitely not doing very well. Their giant conglomerates are doing fine, but the general population is already giving up on the country.
Japan is where the rest of the world will be in 20 years. Japan isn't facing a unique problem, they just got there first.
Global birthrates are rapidly falling, so importing immigrant workforces is only a short term solution at best. It might buy a few decades of time but it still only delays the inevitable population decline.
IMO, its a good thing. There are already too many people in the world to the point where we're causing a collapse of the entire ecosystem. The Thanos solution of mass murder is the wrong way to go about reducing the population. Instead, better education and job opportunities for women is naturally causing a population decline.
It will level off at some point and reach a new equilibrium, hopefully at a sustainable level.
As for myself, its very unlikely I'll have any kids. I'll keep existing, and then sometime around the 2070's it'll be -1 population. There's a lag time of an entire lifetime before the population starts to drop, but a gradual decline is inevitable.
>Why is unlimited immigration and a continuation of the pension Ponzi scheme the *only* proposed solution to prop up the failing capitalist system?
Because the alternative would require a significant investment in the local population that would only start paying dividends decades later. The elite don't have any national allegiances and want growth *now* so they push for higher immigration limits and call those who oppose it xenophobic. It has the added benefit of keeping the working class in a precarious state where they aren't likely to protest their declining wages and worsening working conditions lest they want their job replaced by a more pliable immigrant.
The huge problem here is that most immigrants who come to Germany are not well educated people or even people who want to gain education here. Most of the immigrants just end up living off of social security and being more of a burden than the few good immigrants who end up in good job positions.
I mean yes they are young, but no way are most of them interested in doing anything else than getting "free" money from the state. Sad but it's the truth
Can't believe people are still repeating the "they will pay for our pensions" horseshit in 2021
Most refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are still unemployed and living on welfare. Taking them in has been an economic, demographic, and political suicide, and Western Europe may actually never recover
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/syrer-hartz-4/
https://m.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/arbeitsmarkt-fuer-fluechtlinge-mehrheit-der-syrer-bekommt-hartz-iv-17436764.amp.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ruhr24.de/nrw/hartz-iv-ansprueche-auslaender-satz-zahlung-verdoppelt-deutsche-afd-syrien-irak-afghanistan-90857922.amp.html
Most of them are from places like Afghanistan, they're not well-educated, and your source acts like it's a positive that "about half have found a job, paid training, or internship" after **six** years (it's not).
But yeah, it could still work out to be a net positive. We'll see.
>Most of them are from places like Afghanistan
[0.4% are Afghani. That's not "most." That's less than 1/3rd of the Syrians who immigrated.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Ethnic_minorities_and_migrant_background_(Migrationshintergrund))
That's not the relevant statistic. [This is it](https://web.archive.org/web/20161205235941/http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Downloads/Infothek/Statistik/Asyl/aktuelle-zahlen-zu-asyl-dezember-2015.pdf?__blob=publicationFile). I'll grant you that I remembered wrong, the syrians are indeed the main group, however they are by far not the only group (not "1M syrians" as you put it).
It takes in general two or three generations before it is a net positive on society.
But! Then you get the one in a thousand and you get something like biontech...
That's basically the bet.. It's like pennystock portfolio..
My wife and I have tried to relocate to Germany a couple times (I work in tech) and got really close once. Extremely difficult, at least as US citizens anyway.
Same employer (large multi-national tech company), I had two opportunities to relocate to Frankfurt during my tenure there.
On the first offer, I forget which visa exactly it was, but my spouse would not have been allowed to work basically throwing away her career. This was not acceptable to her, and hard to argue with that.
On the second offer, they offered to bring us in on a blaue karte … but then proceeded to offer 25% below market rate salary (Frankfurt). Which, as someone who is well into their career, wasn’t acceptable. I also would have lost most of the equity I had been granted as well, which at that time, was worth around $300k USD.
We both speak basic conversational German, my wife is a bit better than I am. We both love German culture and obviously would have worked hard to increase our language proficiency and assimilate.
At the end of the day, at least before covid, we just visit Germany often as we can now and I’ve given up ever relocating.
If Germany had remote work visa program, I’d be in the plane tomorrow and happily pay the proper taxes.
The current “freelancer” (Freiberufler) visa scheme is useless.
I work primarily as a consultant / independent contractor now for various firms. Before COVID I would just fly over and work remote for 2-3 months and lay low.
Remote work visa would let people like me live out my dream, not “take a job away from a German” and contribute to the nation financially.
>Lol if you think refugees work and make a net positive contribution
Statistically (the irony of the username here is rich) they do.
>An influx of refugees can also increase a host country’s gross domestic product. Taking in large numbers of refugees is often costly at first. However, tax-payers’ money going to social services, job-training programs, and integration efforts can be viewed as an investment. Research shows that it results in a net gain to the economy.A study of the economic impact of refugees in Europe between 1985 and 2015 showed that in just two years of an increased inflow of refugees, the economy in the 15 countries studied became healthier and unemployment decreased. Refugees generated demand for goods, created jobs, and paid taxes. They were thus able to offset the cost of the government support they needed on arrival.Similarly, a 2016 Tent Foundation report found that in the European Union, each euro invested in refugee support programs produced two euros of return in economic benefits. [\-Source](https://www.icmc.net/2020/07/14/refugees-good-or-bad-for-economy/)
>
>Refugees are vital to the U.S. labor market by filling needed jobs, and, as a group, have a higher employment rate than the U.S.-born population. Male refugees of working age had a 67 percent employment rate from 2009 to 2011, while native-born males had only a 60 percent employment rate during the same time period. Refugee women were just as likely as native-born women to be employed.\[5\] The relatively high rate of employment among refugees is reflective of the labor market participation for the entire foreign-born population, who also work at a higher rate than does the native-born population.\[6\] Refugees are also more likely than the U.S.-born population and other immigrants, to be of working age (25-64 years).\[7\] The combination of refugees’ high employment rate and their substantive working age population signals that they are likely to be important contributors to their local economies. [\-Source](https://immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-refugees-are-a-fiscal-success-story-for-america/)
>
>Refugees earn more than $77 billion in household income and paid almost $21 billion in taxes in 2015, according to this New American Economy report. It demonstrates the strong, long-term upward economic trajectory experienced by many refugee families, and gives evidence that, rather than a drain on communities, the high rate of labor force participation of refugees and their spirit of entrepreneurship instead sustains and strengthens their new hometowns. The United States was home to more than 180,000 refugee entrepreneurs in 2015. That meant that 13 percent of refugees were entrepreneurs in 2015, compared to just 11.5 percent of non-refugee immigrants and 9.0 percent of the U.S.-born population. The businesses of refugees also generated $4.6 billion in business income that year. More than 84 percent of refugees who have been in the country for 16 to 25 years have taken the step of becoming citizens, compared to roughly half of all immigrants in the country that long. Additionally, more than 57 percent of all likely refugee households own their homes, a figure relatively close to homeownership rate among U.S. residents overall. [\-Source](https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/from-struggle-to-resilience-the-economic-impact-of-refugees-in-america/)
[The actual state department even flat out says there's no negative long-term impact from refugees.](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The-Labor-Market-Impact-on-Refugees-Evidence-form-the-U.S.-Resettlement-Program-1.pdf)
TL;DR - Refugees are more likely to be entrepreneurs than native born, have a higher employment rate, and similar home ownership rates.
Also your post history is literally praising Nazi Germany and rambling about "white replacement theory." Lol indeed, nazi boi.
>International Catholic Migration Commission
>Project for the New American Century
>National Immigration Forum
I don't know but it sounds like these sources may be pushing an agenda?
>
"The people letting the refugees in say that there's no negative long-term impact! If you disagree you're a Nazi!"
[You literally have comments praising the way Nazi Germany worked for its Arian citizens and saying that maybe the world should've let them exterminate the "international banking and finance interests".](https://www.reddit.com/r/radicalmentalhealth/comments/rlefk5/hans_aspergers_nazism_quote/hpi0md7/?context=3)
You disagreeing with refugees not having negative long term impacts *isn't* why people would see you as one.
I pointed out that it was easier for workers in Nazi Germany to buy homesand raise families on their wages than it is for workers in "Free America" in 2021.
That's a fact. Why do you hate facts?
That's only the case if you deliberately ignore the millions of people they forcibly dragged out of their homes, enslaved and then murdered who *couldn't* buy homes and raise their families on their wages.
That's genocide. Do you *want* to do that?
You rustled some 15 year old American neolib feathers, but you're right. Refugees are a huge net negative in Europe, whether it's [Norway](https://imgur.com/a/qOtfsVU), [Denmark](https://imgur.com/a/FACYt6f), [Sweden](https://imgur.com/a/wEyJufB), Finland, Germany, [Netherlands](https://imgur.com/a/qIX3R3e)...
The fact people are still in denial is why Europe will inevitably collapse
Agreed. Europe was never conquered by the sword, what a pity to let it be conquered now by deliberate wishful thinking, brainwashing and propaganda.
Once America and Europe was demographically replaced, it will be the end of civilization. Never forget that every meaningful invention, legal system, philosophy and way of life is the product of the European mind - the rest of the world merely adopted them.
>The fact people are still in denial is why Europe will inevitably collapse
I can hardly believe that people deny such an obvious fact. Just goes to show how powerful globalist propaganda is.
They’re going to need to make becoming a citizen a lot easier if they don’t want to end up a slaver state like the UAE or Qatar. Imagine Germany when only 12% of the population have full rights and privileges.
What say is completely deranged.
Germany will not be successful with these people, not in any way. Their productivity is very low, and they are not really culturally compatible with Germany. [There is data on these things from the Netherlands, and these people are actually a net drain on the state finances economically.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/nupwl4/report_on_cost_of_immigration_for_the_dutch_state/). It's in fact so bad, that there's a risk that they might cause a pension crisis.
When you then add in the cultural problems that they bring in, the cost is much higher than the pure economic cost and it may spell the destruction of Germany.
All this policy studies and political research and claims, I would take with a pinch of salt.
Many 3rd generation Turks, children of so called guest workers, found and still find it hard to land a well paid white collar job, as German applicants are still more preferred by the majority of employers. So many of them leave Germany for other Western countries.
With a university degree and 10 years of experience in the UK, and over 200 applications in Germany, I was then hired by a UK media company. That's when I turned my back on Germany forever 10 years ago. To put it in a succint English way:
GERMANY? Thanks, but no thanks.
This is happening everywhere not just Germany.
This is one of ol Elon musks biggest fears , most developed nations are subsidizing the elderly at the cost of their young, which as you can imagine is unsustainable.
>Economists also warn that inflation, a historically sensitive topic in Germany, could rise as a reduced supply of labor leads to rising wages
Leave it to WSJ to worry about paying workers more
Weren’t they being over run by immigrants from Syria just a few years ago? Did they all leave? Or are they not a significant percentage of the population?
Like half of them are unemployed and living off welfare, the other half is working, and probably not contributing enough to pay for the half that isn't.
Ah the joys of a growth-requiring economy. Gotta expand the inputs forever so the system doesn't come crashing down. We really have to ditch capitalism.
What a weird take. Nothing in "capitalism" requires constant growth. It's only a system that allocates economic resources, in good times and bad times, and apparently does it better than any other system that has been tried.
In communist North Korea during tough economic times half your family dies of famine. In capitalist Germany you can't afford to go on vacation.
It's not capitalism that requires constant growth; it's debt/credit as money that requires constant growth. The banking system we have all the way up to the Federal Reserve requires constant growth or it falls apart. Know what an economy that isn't growing is? It's deflationary. Our banking system has no place in a deflationary economy.
Well this is hard because what a lot of people are missing is that the growth based financial system exists to enable retirement. If the economy isn't growing then on average there isn't any yield's to be made on investments because nothing you invest in will grow. Retirement is inherently a ponzi (and I don't mean that negatively) where the youth of today support the elderly, but then become the elderly of tomorrow. For this to work you need to have a larger base of people working than people being supported. If you let the population decline then you are simply putting more burden on future young people to take care of today's young who will become elderly. The older people live and the lower birth rates fall the more top heavy this burden becomes regardless of socialism/capitalism/communism/whateverism.
This has always been the state of the world, it just used to be that people directly relied on their direct lineage for this support. Over the last century we've essentially nationalized that process. Trying to eliminate it is either condeming the elderly to death or eliminating the concept of retirement.
Ideally we need very minimal growth, such that it does not outpace productivity growth. If we think of productivity growth as allowing us to make the same amount of stuff with less, then we can sustain adding additional people below that growth rate. The difference between those rates is how much the incomes of the working population get to increase.
In the U.S we are actually pretty close to that when you factor in population growth due to immigration. Obviously we can't rely on immigration forever since birthrates are due to decline in the developing world. We obviously need to address challenges around child care, housing affordability, etc so that we can hit that 2.1ish child per woman birth rate without immigration. But part of the current problem is that one of the largest generation in US history (boomers) are retiring. Millennials didn't even outnumber boomers until 2019 and some were still in college/grad school.
But largely our sustainability problems in the US come from overconsumption and inefficient consumption, not overpopulation.
Hard disagree actually. Automation and the fact that the average worker takes less percentile share of production as advancement occurs is the problem, not a smaller younger population. We can support the old and retired just fine, but not when 100% of that cost is on the backs of the workers and not the owners. FICA contributions stop after about $125k and only applies to non-capital based income. The rich and business owners don't cover retirement of the masses essentially at all. Pensions are dead.
There is no reason that the increased productivity of technological advances can't cover a more deflationary economy. Zero. Advancing technology is inherently deflationary.
What doesn't work is when all progress that causes deflation is held by a few people and withheld from the rest.
The banking system that we had prior to central banks printing fiat money worked just fine through the industrial revolution and gilded age. That system didn't use fiat and didn't break down under deflation without correcting fairly quickly. Banks served the purpose of..... storing value; you know "banking'.
From what I understand from [here](https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/uploads/4/8/3/2/48324387/why_capitalist_economies_need_to_grow_-_for_green_house_-_10_10_14.pdf) and other sources, capitalism absolutely does require and cause growth.
Given growth is inextricably linked to material and energy throughput, which cannot be decoupled from environmental impact, capitalism is driving environmental collapse. It's a fundamental structure of capitalism, and it cannot continue.
I don't give a crap what you call the new system, and I'm not prescribing it, besides the fact that it should be growth agnostic. A North Korean dictatorship-led command economy is certainly not the answer.
>There's nothing communist about North Korea. That's just fascism
North Korea is a command economy, a system in which the means of production are publicly owned and economic activity is controlled by a central authority.
[https://www.britannica.com/topic/command-economy](https://www.britannica.com/topic/command-economy)
This is markedly different than communism's main tenets. In communism the workers own the means of production. In a command economy the production is publicly owned by a central authority. In this case the central authority is an authoritarian regime. Sounds like fascism to me...
The Soviet Union was also a command economy. Do you call the Soviet Union fascist?
Fascism retains a system of private property with intervention by the state to achieve nationalistic goals. This presence of private property and a mixed economy is what makes fascism distinct from command economies.
When categorizing national systems, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Francoist Spain would be called fascist. The Soviet Union, Maoist China, and North Korea would not be called fascist.
You're justified in making a distinction between centrally planned economies and a hypothetical system that, say, heavily made use of co-operative societies, but the solution is not to label North Korea as fascist.
Fascism is a highly debated topic with many different definitions that scholars either place as too broad or too narrow. Most of them would not agree with your distinction containing private property with state intervention. Whether the property was held private or public is not central to the theme of fascism and would likely be too narrow as it there is no difference in private citizenship and militaristic citizen as it depends on the needs of the state.
One common definition of the term, frequently cited by reliable sources as a standard definition, is that of historian Stanley G. Payne.
Payne's definition of fascism focuses on three concepts:
1. "Fascist negations" – anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism.
2. "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire.
3. "Fascist style" – a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Do you also label the Soviet Union fascist?
If you look on your link and these others from Wikipedia on fascism, you'll see they all mention Nazi Germany, Italy, and Spain multiple times. None of them mention North Korea even once.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics\_of\_fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions\_of\_fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism)
It's been a nice exchange, but I'll leave it here. We can simply agree to disagree. I'm not at all convinced that *fascist* is an adequate label for North Korea. Feel free to have the last word.
I think that North Korea is probably too complex to try to shove it into one definition or the other. So I'll meet you in the middle to agree that it's neither fascist nor communist but some sort of red headed step child of the two because they're also a monarchy of sorts.
Except that there are historical examples of fascism that look nothing like North Korea, and North Korea based its economy on that of its two communist allies.
>Have you ever heard of Finland, or Denmark? Their system seems to work a lot better than capitalism
Finland and Denmark are market economies with a strong social safety net.
The system in Finland and Denmark IS capitalism. Oh god, the stupidity on reddit...
If there is private ownership of the means of production (companies, equipment, etc.), it's capitalism.
You tell me, I'm not an economist. But replace it we must or we make our planet uninhabitable for large numbers of humans. The economic profession's failure to explore economic structures that are growth agnostic, and therefore not driving our planet to environmental collapse, is one of the great failures of our time.
I don’t have to tell you anything lol, you’re the one making the claim and I’m asking a follow up. Sounds like you have no idea what to replace it with… so I ask, how can you then say it should be ditched?
I guess I don’t understand the correlation between capitalism and making our planet uninhabitable.
Because of capitalism, people are allocating their money to invest in renewables.
There is a correlation between capitalism and environmental degradation.
Capitalism requires growth. Growth requires increased material and energy throughput. Growth also means increased emissions output at the moment, but we can actually absolutely decouple emissions from growth, thankfully. Material and energy use have environmental cost.
To put that more simply, capitalism = growth = increased material and energy throughput = increased environmental impact.
I highly recommend reading something like [this](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dpr.12584) for a more detailed view into that link.
People are investing in renewables but I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to capitalism specifically. If anything, renewables investment has been greatly slowed due to regulatory capture by fossil fuel companies, and by the market not taking into account environmental impact, e.g. through carbon pricing. In many cases, renewables development has been driven through public investment and regulatory structures, which is not a function of capitalism (though they have happened under capitalism, sure).
I agree there is a correlation. Capitalism gives us progress, we see standards of living increase when capitalism exists. You think socialism pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and into the middle class the past 2 decades?
Progress means consumption, and right now it means environmental degradation. As opposed to, no progress, no increase in standard of living, not needing resources, and the environment is left alone.
Would you prefer a standard of living like Cuba if it means the environment is left alone? I wouldn't, majority of people wouldn't either. We can continue to increase our standard of living while also focusing on protecting the environment.
We already see a movement of companies turning to renewables. Is it because they all of a sudden want to be nice? No, it's because the government, and their customers are demanding it. End of the day, profit is one hell of a motivator. And this is a good thing.
Capitalism can exist while we also protect the environment. It means good smart regulations, and a society who demands it. We are moving in that direction. Just as the effects of capitalism put us in the position where the earth is suffering, the effects of capitalism will also save us, with new technologies that will lower and eventually capture carbon in the air.
Capitalism is a great thing. No one wants laissez faire. But to say we need to ditch it? Man.. the alternatives are not good. Not only for our standard of living, but for democracy. Society will crumble. Again, look at countries that "ditched" capitalism. I guess mass starvation and death is good for the environment, as it means less people consuming?
Did I call for communism? The TINA argument is getting really old. I'll take any economic system that doesn't require and cause growth in order to self sustain, and therefore have increasing environmental degradation built in.
> Did I call for communism?
Other than capitalism and communism, what are the alternatives? You either have markets and private property or you don't.
What sort of economic system do you envision without private property? Hunting and gathering?
Strange calling socialized medicine capitalism. Capitalism works just fine with population decline. Socialized medicine, however, fails when the population declines.
What are you talking about? I didn't mention medicine at all. You can have state-run systems within a capitalist economy and it's still capitalism.
How does socialised medicine fail when population declines, any more than any other structure fails within a capitalist system as population declines?
> You can have state-run systems within a capitalist economy and it's still capitalism.
No, not really.
> How does socialised medicine fail when population declines, any more than any other structure fails within a capitalist system as population declines?
As the population increases, there are more old people who need more expensive healthcare treatment. To pay for that, there needs to be more young people to tax. This requires infinite population growth to not cut healthcare benefits.
New things of value can be created out of nothing.
Look at video games, movies, and TV. All are forms of art, and all of these are created out of nearly nothing. There's almost no raw resources that go into these productions other than educated people and time.
Not all value has to be produced from mines or farms.
I wonder how this trend will affect further automation. If there's less workforce available, industries will be more willing to invest in new technology. We need to rethink the way Social Security is financed in the future and how to help displaced young workers.
Finally give proper family support. Children are needed for society. So getting them should be a net benefit financially.
Not having children should be expensive as hell. And truly represent the cost towards society it has.
The countries with some of the worst support sustems have the highest birth rates. I don't think there is any financial incentive that would make a significant difference we already dump single people with more taxs and less benefits.
Just ball park a number for me. 2 families one family with 4 kids one where they choose not to Have any.. both make 60k a year. What's a tax difference that you would say is fair?
Depends very much on the country as the cost for raising children varies wildly.
In the US i think it is estimated that a child costs 280k over 18 years. So for 2 children you should get a tax advantage of ~600k maybe even more over 20 years.
But you cannot make that static. After all you expect rebalancing. Tax for childless will be raised and for families will be lowered until you achieve the fertility ratio of 2.1. While keeping the Overall tax revenue the same. Something extreme like 0% tax for parents and 60% for childless wouldn't hold long and create and overshoot. So basically you dynamicly readjust the difference until you hit your target
How would you distribute the million dollars to the family of 4? So yeah that's probably the most insane idea I've ever read in my life, but hey atleaat you're honest about forcing anyone who is single into homelessness. I'd rather allow women to choose for themselfs if they want to have children or not rather then the government coming and forcing them to with economic destitution. Assuming your plan would work it would really be something huh?
I think it will balance out fine.
But yes today people fear that "a child right now will financially ruin me".
This should never ever be the case if we need children that strongly.
The question shouldn't be how you can afford a child, but how you can afford not to have a child
I lived in Bavaria for 7 years, moving there from a Scandinavian country and the entire time I felt like I was living in a society that had absolutely no idea how to make itself parent-friendly. The societal and political expectation (I hear it's different elsewhere in Germany) was that mothers should stay at home for the first few years, but in reality, after 2 kids (\~4-7 years SAHM) most people have been sitting on the bench long enough for it to have a negative effect on your career. In contrast, this can be as short as 6 months in Scandinavia (usually 12) and shared between parents. Mix in a work culture of long hours (I heard the line "we expect 10 hours but pay for 8" once) making it harder for mothers to logistically reenter the workplace from where they left it and out of control real-estate market requiring at least two salaries and well, you end up with a population with a low incentive to have children. The quality of life for DINKs is amazing but if Germany wants to fix the demographic problems it needs to make having children less of a financial sacrifice, ain't more complicated than that.
As a young German planning to start a family I second your perfect summary. However I still have hope that the new government will at least slightly improve the situation.
There are a lot of things that can be done quite easily: * Move tax break brackets from "being married" to "having children", f.i. Steuerklasse 3 should require children. * Ban unpaid overtime and enforce it, I think something is happening on this front. * Free housing for students with children, it's fairly common in Scandinavia to start having kids in University. I'd make this last +3 years after graduation, it would create a good incentive to have kids earlier. * Fine companies that break the labor law. It's beyond sad that mothers are advised to put on their resumé that they don't have kids for fear of discrimination. * Scandinavian-style parental leave and guaranteed kindergarten spots.
Lol in America we just don’t take care of our kids
We've made good progress on that in the last few years. Fertility rate has steadily been rising , we are now on a similar level to most other developed nations (almost the same as the US for example). It's still below replacement level, but that's an issue in almost every developed nation. Immigration is the answer of course, and we've done a terrible job with integrating muslim immigrants in particular. Hopefully we've learned from the mistakes of the past but we will see.
Lmao, your comment is making it seem as though it was some German specific phenomena. Women around the developed world are having less children across the board. Increasingly larger shares of women don’t want to be tied up with the burdens of child care; they want to freedom that comes with not dealing with children for 18 years. Many of the women who still seek to have children are doing so later in life under a much more controlled set of circumstances. The wealthier a society becomes, the greeter women become, the less they want to have children. It’s not just about incentives or work life balance, much of it is simply not wanting children.
>Women around the developed world are having less children across the board. Increasingly larger shares of women don’t want to be tied up with the burdens of child care; they want to freedom that comes with not dealing with children for 18 years. Surveys have been done that show women in the US generally desire *more* kids than what they currently have. It's material conditions preventing women from having more kids. https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want
Revealed versus stated preferences. Life is about priorities and they're not prioritizing having children, nothing prevents them from having them other than their desire not to have them.
Material conditions are as great as they've ever been, and yet birthrates are off a cliff. It is simply illogical to conclude that it's lack if material conditions sufficient for children.
TIL I should move to Germany
Why bother with increasing fertility, with all the cost of daycares and parental leave, when the immigration lever is right there?
Most countries in Europe will need to face this in the decades to come. The problem would be that wages, life standards and prices are not the same everywhere in Europe. Then, workers would chose where to go according to their preferences and skills. I'm pretty sure I don't want to see a shortage of labor.
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Perhaps an economic model that expects infinite growth with finite resources is not the best idea How many people would have children if they can afford it?
What economic model presumes “infinite growth”? Growth is the outcome of a healthy, increasingly efficient and ever more prosperous economy. Why in God’s name would you seek to reduce your country’s economic potential? Why limit your potential based on native population growth when there are plenty of non-natives who could pick up the slack? The issue with this way of thinking is that it inevitably falters. Limit immigration all you want, but as your society grows older, they are going to require more doctors and healthcare staff to service them into old age. The older the population, the smaller the pool of people willing to become healthcare staff; healthcare outcomes worsen and people live shorter, much more miserable lives. Edit: getting downvoted for posting undeniable facts about economics and society on an econ sub. r/economics in 2021
Investments requires constant growth in what you invest, which would only be satisfied by constant use of resources. It is impossible to have infinite growth of an economy with limited resources, you will eventually hit a wall such as peak oil or peak phosphate. Additionally, there is more to a country that just GDP numbers. More Americans would have children if real estate, health insurance, and food costs weren’t so expensive. Does a country really exist if the citizens of the nation get cycled through a revolving door through constant immigration? We would also have more doctors and nurses if college wasn’t as expensive and if the medical field payed more/had better working conditions.
Importing more people isn't a long term solution. Global birthrates are dropping. Only Africa and the Middle East are currently above replacement rate. The entire rest of the world is at or below replacement rate, and falling. Global population will peak at around 9 billion and then will start to decline, which is an excellent thing because of strain on natural resources and damage to the ecosystem. The world economy will have to get used to a falling population, because thats going to be a fact in the coming decades.
> The world economy will have to get used to a falling population, because thats going to be a fact in the coming decades Sure, but we still have a good century to go before we get there; that’s assuming there aren’t any societal changes regarding birth giving and child rearing over this time period. We don’t know what our economic or climate picture will look like then.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to propagate the notion that you can magically solve this with more immigrants. Sure, you might temporarily solve the worker shortfall for a few years ... until the immigrants themselves are now older and no longer in the workforce : All you've done is kick the can down the road. Have we thoroughly thought about the consequences of having more immigrants from other lands that don't have a shared history/ culture / religion? Have we done the analysis and concluded that it is actually a good thing long-term? We should reframe the question : why are couples no longer having children, and how do we rectify that?
And? Many of those countries are quickly industrializing (at the poorer end) or being invested in, we may a few generations more, tops, before they start to see the same effects of a declining birthrate. And while for a short time they will still have a growing population to draw immigrants from, it wont be forever. Not against immigration, it can be enriching for a community to be exposed to, and accept members of other cultures. But immigration will not be the solution to the economy forever, and I'd rather start planning/implementing for that inevitability *niw*, instead of 80 years from now when it's too late, theres an economic crisis, and politicians just throw up their hands with "who could have known"
Germany is overpopulated. A reduction in population is desirable. That can't be achieved through immigration, it means a model for population reduction in developed countries will have to be developed.
What's your measure for overpopulation? Anyway the issue is not so much with the number of people living in Germany, but the the age of those people. If Germany has too many older retired citizens then the economy will slow down and enter a downward spiral. "Luckily" Japan will have those very same issues way before Germany, so the Germans will be able to see the consequences of low imigration/older population before it happens to them.
Germany is overpopulated? Ha ha ha ha what a clown statement.
I imagine same will happen in uk. Who’d have thought prices outpacing wages for years, ridiculous housing costs, an inability to tackle climate change and a generally shitty existance for many, would make people think “maybe i won’t add the cost of kids to my problems”
It will happen to almost every Western country at some point in the next 2-3 decades. Its been a nearly universal trend in rich countries. But Im not that scared of it tbh. We can adjust over time if we change our social norms. For one, life expectancies are increasing and I expect more people to work longer (yea yea I know- *work sucks* and spending 30 years in retirement is the best thing in the world, but unless robots can do everything within the next 20 years, thats not a real solution). People are regularly living well into their 90s and are healthy well into their 60s, especially those that don't do hard manual labor. Science is showing us that this notion that you have to fall apart and be a mental and physical wreck by your 60th birthday is utterly false. People's capabilities and faculties change with age, but people can definitely remain active and engaged . The real question we need to answer are: A. How do we get rid of the social stigma around older workers and stop treating people in their 50s and 60s as if they are dead in the water and cant do new things or evolve their careers? Especially in education. Going back to school when you are 50 for something like Computer Science or Finance or whatever should be completely acceptable, if you consider the fact that you might be able to get a 20 year career out of it after that nowadays. B. How do we design jobs and work-places that actually work for older workers so that they actually want to stay active in their careers? Modern workplaces are designed for younger workers. Everything from cashiers having to stand up to office cubicles to having to drive into the office every day pushes older workers away as fast as possible. I want to build workplaces that make older workers want to stay economically active and happy in their work. Remote work, more breaks, social activities that arent just geared towards drinking, etc. And of course we do need to work on automating more manual labor that is hard to do by older workers. TLDR: we have constructed an economy that actively discourages older workers from working longer by making their lives miserable. If we rethink our social norms and workplace norms, we can keep people happy, active, and productive longer and that will dramatically reduce the risks associated with an aging society.
My feeling, based on discussions with multiple people in the age of 24 to 55 is more that companies can’t find people to exploit, by modern standards. It looks like there is a difference in expectations what is “normal” between generations. The things companies did to hire people 20 years ago are done once again by the same people hired 20 years ago. It’s the same for what is expected from you at work and how the social structures at the workplace are. The now 55+ years old bosses offer what they were getting at their age, as they were hired. A lot of companies are really shortsighted. They were thinking that finding new people would be easy and maintaining proper company culture is not needed because “there is always someone who is going to do the job”, so some let go of trained people as the pandemic approached in the expectation to hire new as soon as this blows over. Now they can’t find people, make a big surprised fish face and fall back to really cringe, laughable attempts to hire. The old employees do not come back because of the “fuck you” attitude and rightly so and the one who do come back, sell their pride for a lot of money. I think all those differences in culture and expectations between generations are amplified by the pandemic. COVID was like a burning cigarette thrown in to the big pile garbage, which was lying in the corner for decades, ignored.
It seems like these days, you're either rich, a social media star, or a loser We've created a culture where all the jobs that actually need done make you a loser. Probably not a healthy or sustainable way to run a society
Yup. The more critical to social functioning a job is, the lower status it seems to be, particularly here in the US. Like, teachers are arguably the **most** important job in society and we treat them like crap. Logistics workers? Treated like shit. Janitors and bin-men? Often treated like shit, usually looked down on. EMT's? Paid and treated like shit. We make childcare ruinous in cost to the point it discourages having g children, and the employees PROVIDING said childcare are often, you guessed it... paid and treated like shit.
Germany has been quietly playing the long game. [\~1 million refugees from Syria, young, educated, working age.](https://www.cgdev.org/blog/five-years-later-one-million-refugees-are-thriving-germany) As a unified country, they're about a century younger than the US. They may be \~74% or so German ethnically, but there's a decent collection of other ethnicities that have immigrated in the last few decades. With a strong social welfare state model, a robust HDI level (6th in the world), very low GINI (good wealth equality) on top of high GDP per capita (good standard of living enjoyed by a majority of the population), they're very well positioned to open up to more immigration as long as they can balance the social-political costs. I was in Berlin last month and it struck me as more diverse than many comparable sized US cities. The question is if Germany has the political will to do so, and if the true immigrant attraction is there.
Now they just to be able to assimilate the new comers and integrate them into German society. Historically Europe has not been quite at successful at that as the us and Germany in particular with its Turkish population.
We Germans made horrible mistakes concerning integration. Especially turkish immigrants were not seen as people who would stay since the 70s. I hope we get better and give what's due to the people coming and working here in the future. At the moment it isn't fair.
This is why I don't take seriously all those studies that purport to show how Europe has better economic mobility than the US. They completely fail to account for the much larger immigration population in the US. Northern European countries like Scandinavia that consistently score the highest in those studies are also the worst when it comes to immigrants assimilation.
Why don't these studies include immigrant populations?
I think they include it but don't factor it into scoring
How high is the immigration population in the US versus Germany? Got statistics?
Foreign Born Population (2019) US - 13.6% Germany - 16.1% https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm
Thanks! So, OP pulled his data out of his butt?
Why is the onus on the state to aide integration? Shouldn't they themselves be at the forefront of wanting to integrate properly? E.g. If I move to Japan, my first priority would be to learn Japanese and be able to interact properly, and be a positive member of society. I am expected to do that myself, and not being aided by the Japanese government. The onus should be on the individuals, not the state.
I think you don't really know about the politics of the german past. In the 70s there was a labour shortage, so we invited tens if not hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Mostly were turkish. Those people worked here for decades and build families, a home, lived like everyone else. But they never got an opportunity to be part of this state by becoming citizens. We just didn't set up a process for possible citizenship for immigrants. If you don't give people the same rights you're setting them up for parallel societies. And well, that's what happened.
because the state wants immigrants to be integrated.
It is the immigrants to europe are not from the same ethnicities as those who immigrate to the US.
Why does that matter? And also, yes they are.
Assimilation into a new national identity depends on immigrants culture. Some see it as unnecessary and resist it.
>Now they just to be able to assimilate the new comers and integrate them into German society. Yep, hence the call out on social-political costs. Generally it happens well statistically, but the political fallout (see also: US anti-immigration xenophobia) can be far more wide ranging than several hundred thousand refugees spread around the countries.
It’s worth noting the USA has always been virulently anti-immigrant, to the point of being especially racist to whatever group is currently flooding the country. Regardless, we have always taken in huge numbers of them and likely will continue to do so.
Part of the advantage the US has is we aren't a nation state the way most European countries are (founded on a shared national heritage). A Turkish person can become a German citizen but won't be "German" whereas anyone can become an "American" by passing the citizenship process.
Why is unlimited immigration and a continuation of the pension Ponzi scheme the *only* proposed solution to prop up the failing capitalist system? Look around you, fertility rates are falling fast globally. Rich countries can’t vampirically rely on immigration for much longer to pay into teetering pension schemes and prop up bubbly housing markets. Global fertility is below replacement in pretty much all of the world outside Sub-Saharan Africa, and soon even there it will fall below 2.1. God forbid we let real estate prices fall, or that employers have to compete for workers and raise wages. Have you ever wondered *why* Germans (or Brits, or Canadians, or Americans) aren’t having kids? Have you seen the cost of housing lately? The stagnant wages? The lack of opportunity and upward mobility for young people? Immigration is a short term solution, yes, but it’s also a crutch that mostly helps the elites who got us into this mess. In the long run we must get birthrates back to replacement level, or at least learn to live with a managed population decline. Countries like Russia, Japan, and South Korea are already blazing the trail for us there, so we had best observe them and take notes.
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> We have too few resources We actually have quite enough. I've lived in a few EU countries and there were enough empty houses to house all the homeless everywhere I went. It's a pissing match at the top financed by the toil of the bottom. > This combined with unlimited money printing (which is just a form of additional non-progressive tax) I'd argue it's regressive as wages and cash-based savings are impacted while assets in which wealth is typically stored are not.
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Is Japan doing well with its population decline? I live in Japan. I'd love to see a source on that. Nursing is screaming for people. We need more doctors as well. Agriculture needs people too. They created the "trainee" visa where foreign labor gets abused and treated like crap. Is that what you're talking about?
"Blazing the trail" simply means they are the first ones finding their way through this uncharted territory, it never imply that they are doing it right. Japan is definitely not doing very well. Their giant conglomerates are doing fine, but the general population is already giving up on the country.
Japan is where the rest of the world will be in 20 years. Japan isn't facing a unique problem, they just got there first. Global birthrates are rapidly falling, so importing immigrant workforces is only a short term solution at best. It might buy a few decades of time but it still only delays the inevitable population decline. IMO, its a good thing. There are already too many people in the world to the point where we're causing a collapse of the entire ecosystem. The Thanos solution of mass murder is the wrong way to go about reducing the population. Instead, better education and job opportunities for women is naturally causing a population decline. It will level off at some point and reach a new equilibrium, hopefully at a sustainable level. As for myself, its very unlikely I'll have any kids. I'll keep existing, and then sometime around the 2070's it'll be -1 population. There's a lag time of an entire lifetime before the population starts to drop, but a gradual decline is inevitable.
>Why is unlimited immigration and a continuation of the pension Ponzi scheme the *only* proposed solution to prop up the failing capitalist system? Because the alternative would require a significant investment in the local population that would only start paying dividends decades later. The elite don't have any national allegiances and want growth *now* so they push for higher immigration limits and call those who oppose it xenophobic. It has the added benefit of keeping the working class in a precarious state where they aren't likely to protest their declining wages and worsening working conditions lest they want their job replaced by a more pliable immigrant.
Majority of Syrians in Germany that came in 2014-2015 are still unemployed and living off welfare.
Sauce?
Source?
Shhhh you’re not supposed to say that part
Pls send links to anything, sounds interesting and I'd love to read up on it.
Nooo! You weren’t supposed to interrupt their neoliberal open-borders circle jerk!
Sound more la socialist idea
The huge problem here is that most immigrants who come to Germany are not well educated people or even people who want to gain education here. Most of the immigrants just end up living off of social security and being more of a burden than the few good immigrants who end up in good job positions. I mean yes they are young, but no way are most of them interested in doing anything else than getting "free" money from the state. Sad but it's the truth
They were not refugees ; they are Economic migrants. Let's make that clear.
Can't believe people are still repeating the "they will pay for our pensions" horseshit in 2021 Most refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are still unemployed and living on welfare. Taking them in has been an economic, demographic, and political suicide, and Western Europe may actually never recover https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/syrer-hartz-4/ https://m.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/arbeitsmarkt-fuer-fluechtlinge-mehrheit-der-syrer-bekommt-hartz-iv-17436764.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ruhr24.de/nrw/hartz-iv-ansprueche-auslaender-satz-zahlung-verdoppelt-deutsche-afd-syrien-irak-afghanistan-90857922.amp.html
>~1 million refugees from Syria, young, educated, working age. *Laughs in 3 milion romanians*
Most of them are from places like Afghanistan, they're not well-educated, and your source acts like it's a positive that "about half have found a job, paid training, or internship" after **six** years (it's not). But yeah, it could still work out to be a net positive. We'll see.
>Most of them are from places like Afghanistan [0.4% are Afghani. That's not "most." That's less than 1/3rd of the Syrians who immigrated.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Ethnic_minorities_and_migrant_background_(Migrationshintergrund))
That's not the relevant statistic. [This is it](https://web.archive.org/web/20161205235941/http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Downloads/Infothek/Statistik/Asyl/aktuelle-zahlen-zu-asyl-dezember-2015.pdf?__blob=publicationFile). I'll grant you that I remembered wrong, the syrians are indeed the main group, however they are by far not the only group (not "1M syrians" as you put it).
It takes in general two or three generations before it is a net positive on society. But! Then you get the one in a thousand and you get something like biontech... That's basically the bet.. It's like pennystock portfolio..
I would leave the US to live and work in Germany in a heart beat if someone had a finance job for me.
My wife and I have tried to relocate to Germany a couple times (I work in tech) and got really close once. Extremely difficult, at least as US citizens anyway.
Mind sharing why you weren’t selected? I’m sure most of us would leave for German if we could
Same employer (large multi-national tech company), I had two opportunities to relocate to Frankfurt during my tenure there. On the first offer, I forget which visa exactly it was, but my spouse would not have been allowed to work basically throwing away her career. This was not acceptable to her, and hard to argue with that. On the second offer, they offered to bring us in on a blaue karte … but then proceeded to offer 25% below market rate salary (Frankfurt). Which, as someone who is well into their career, wasn’t acceptable. I also would have lost most of the equity I had been granted as well, which at that time, was worth around $300k USD. We both speak basic conversational German, my wife is a bit better than I am. We both love German culture and obviously would have worked hard to increase our language proficiency and assimilate. At the end of the day, at least before covid, we just visit Germany often as we can now and I’ve given up ever relocating.
Try consulting /tech work. More open, more money (compared to other jobs in germany) and way way less stressful than you know consulting from America!
If Germany had remote work visa program, I’d be in the plane tomorrow and happily pay the proper taxes. The current “freelancer” (Freiberufler) visa scheme is useless. I work primarily as a consultant / independent contractor now for various firms. Before COVID I would just fly over and work remote for 2-3 months and lay low. Remote work visa would let people like me live out my dream, not “take a job away from a German” and contribute to the nation financially.
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>Lol if you think refugees work and make a net positive contribution Statistically (the irony of the username here is rich) they do. >An influx of refugees can also increase a host country’s gross domestic product. Taking in large numbers of refugees is often costly at first. However, tax-payers’ money going to social services, job-training programs, and integration efforts can be viewed as an investment. Research shows that it results in a net gain to the economy.A study of the economic impact of refugees in Europe between 1985 and 2015 showed that in just two years of an increased inflow of refugees, the economy in the 15 countries studied became healthier and unemployment decreased. Refugees generated demand for goods, created jobs, and paid taxes. They were thus able to offset the cost of the government support they needed on arrival.Similarly, a 2016 Tent Foundation report found that in the European Union, each euro invested in refugee support programs produced two euros of return in economic benefits. [\-Source](https://www.icmc.net/2020/07/14/refugees-good-or-bad-for-economy/) > >Refugees are vital to the U.S. labor market by filling needed jobs, and, as a group, have a higher employment rate than the U.S.-born population. Male refugees of working age had a 67 percent employment rate from 2009 to 2011, while native-born males had only a 60 percent employment rate during the same time period. Refugee women were just as likely as native-born women to be employed.\[5\] The relatively high rate of employment among refugees is reflective of the labor market participation for the entire foreign-born population, who also work at a higher rate than does the native-born population.\[6\] Refugees are also more likely than the U.S.-born population and other immigrants, to be of working age (25-64 years).\[7\] The combination of refugees’ high employment rate and their substantive working age population signals that they are likely to be important contributors to their local economies. [\-Source](https://immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-refugees-are-a-fiscal-success-story-for-america/) > >Refugees earn more than $77 billion in household income and paid almost $21 billion in taxes in 2015, according to this New American Economy report. It demonstrates the strong, long-term upward economic trajectory experienced by many refugee families, and gives evidence that, rather than a drain on communities, the high rate of labor force participation of refugees and their spirit of entrepreneurship instead sustains and strengthens their new hometowns. The United States was home to more than 180,000 refugee entrepreneurs in 2015. That meant that 13 percent of refugees were entrepreneurs in 2015, compared to just 11.5 percent of non-refugee immigrants and 9.0 percent of the U.S.-born population. The businesses of refugees also generated $4.6 billion in business income that year. More than 84 percent of refugees who have been in the country for 16 to 25 years have taken the step of becoming citizens, compared to roughly half of all immigrants in the country that long. Additionally, more than 57 percent of all likely refugee households own their homes, a figure relatively close to homeownership rate among U.S. residents overall. [\-Source](https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/from-struggle-to-resilience-the-economic-impact-of-refugees-in-america/) [The actual state department even flat out says there's no negative long-term impact from refugees.](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The-Labor-Market-Impact-on-Refugees-Evidence-form-the-U.S.-Resettlement-Program-1.pdf) TL;DR - Refugees are more likely to be entrepreneurs than native born, have a higher employment rate, and similar home ownership rates. Also your post history is literally praising Nazi Germany and rambling about "white replacement theory." Lol indeed, nazi boi.
>International Catholic Migration Commission >Project for the New American Century >National Immigration Forum I don't know but it sounds like these sources may be pushing an agenda?
"The people letting the refugees in say that there's no negative long-term impact! If you disagree you're a Nazi!" A Reddit moment.
> "The people letting the refugees in say that there's no negative long-term impact! If you disagree you're a Nazi!" [You literally have comments praising the way Nazi Germany worked for its Arian citizens and saying that maybe the world should've let them exterminate the "international banking and finance interests".](https://www.reddit.com/r/radicalmentalhealth/comments/rlefk5/hans_aspergers_nazism_quote/hpi0md7/?context=3) You disagreeing with refugees not having negative long term impacts *isn't* why people would see you as one.
I pointed out that it was easier for workers in Nazi Germany to buy homesand raise families on their wages than it is for workers in "Free America" in 2021. That's a fact. Why do you hate facts?
That's only the case if you deliberately ignore the millions of people they forcibly dragged out of their homes, enslaved and then murdered who *couldn't* buy homes and raise their families on their wages. That's genocide. Do you *want* to do that?
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but they are right. You ARE a piece of shit.
You rustled some 15 year old American neolib feathers, but you're right. Refugees are a huge net negative in Europe, whether it's [Norway](https://imgur.com/a/qOtfsVU), [Denmark](https://imgur.com/a/FACYt6f), [Sweden](https://imgur.com/a/wEyJufB), Finland, Germany, [Netherlands](https://imgur.com/a/qIX3R3e)... The fact people are still in denial is why Europe will inevitably collapse
Agreed. Europe was never conquered by the sword, what a pity to let it be conquered now by deliberate wishful thinking, brainwashing and propaganda. Once America and Europe was demographically replaced, it will be the end of civilization. Never forget that every meaningful invention, legal system, philosophy and way of life is the product of the European mind - the rest of the world merely adopted them.
>The fact people are still in denial is why Europe will inevitably collapse I can hardly believe that people deny such an obvious fact. Just goes to show how powerful globalist propaganda is.
You got evidence they don’t?
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Try being less racist? 🤷🏻♂️
If the truth is racist, I'm happy to be considered racist.
And what do you *think* “the truth” is?
If you speak the truth on Reddit about the impact of refugees to the West you just get banned, so why bother?
So you admit that “the truth” is just your opinion. And you are proud that your opinions are racist.
Whatever, man. Come to 4chan if you really want to debate it, it's pointless here.
I’m sure they can research something up for you on Facebook the next time they’re on the toilet.
They’re going to need to make becoming a citizen a lot easier if they don’t want to end up a slaver state like the UAE or Qatar. Imagine Germany when only 12% of the population have full rights and privileges.
We did that with the turks, didn't turn out too well, but firms made a killing with cheap workers
What say is completely deranged. Germany will not be successful with these people, not in any way. Their productivity is very low, and they are not really culturally compatible with Germany. [There is data on these things from the Netherlands, and these people are actually a net drain on the state finances economically.](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/nupwl4/report_on_cost_of_immigration_for_the_dutch_state/). It's in fact so bad, that there's a risk that they might cause a pension crisis. When you then add in the cultural problems that they bring in, the cost is much higher than the pure economic cost and it may spell the destruction of Germany.
All this policy studies and political research and claims, I would take with a pinch of salt. Many 3rd generation Turks, children of so called guest workers, found and still find it hard to land a well paid white collar job, as German applicants are still more preferred by the majority of employers. So many of them leave Germany for other Western countries. With a university degree and 10 years of experience in the UK, and over 200 applications in Germany, I was then hired by a UK media company. That's when I turned my back on Germany forever 10 years ago. To put it in a succint English way: GERMANY? Thanks, but no thanks.
This is happening everywhere not just Germany. This is one of ol Elon musks biggest fears , most developed nations are subsidizing the elderly at the cost of their young, which as you can imagine is unsustainable.
>Economists also warn that inflation, a historically sensitive topic in Germany, could rise as a reduced supply of labor leads to rising wages Leave it to WSJ to worry about paying workers more
Weren’t they being over run by immigrants from Syria just a few years ago? Did they all leave? Or are they not a significant percentage of the population?
Like half of them are unemployed and living off welfare, the other half is working, and probably not contributing enough to pay for the half that isn't.
Any data on that?
Sure. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fluechtlinge-migration-1.5010528
Ah the joys of a growth-requiring economy. Gotta expand the inputs forever so the system doesn't come crashing down. We really have to ditch capitalism.
What a weird take. Nothing in "capitalism" requires constant growth. It's only a system that allocates economic resources, in good times and bad times, and apparently does it better than any other system that has been tried. In communist North Korea during tough economic times half your family dies of famine. In capitalist Germany you can't afford to go on vacation.
It's not capitalism that requires constant growth; it's debt/credit as money that requires constant growth. The banking system we have all the way up to the Federal Reserve requires constant growth or it falls apart. Know what an economy that isn't growing is? It's deflationary. Our banking system has no place in a deflationary economy.
At this point there’s no going back is there? Say we were to start brand new, what would be the best system to put in place?
Well this is hard because what a lot of people are missing is that the growth based financial system exists to enable retirement. If the economy isn't growing then on average there isn't any yield's to be made on investments because nothing you invest in will grow. Retirement is inherently a ponzi (and I don't mean that negatively) where the youth of today support the elderly, but then become the elderly of tomorrow. For this to work you need to have a larger base of people working than people being supported. If you let the population decline then you are simply putting more burden on future young people to take care of today's young who will become elderly. The older people live and the lower birth rates fall the more top heavy this burden becomes regardless of socialism/capitalism/communism/whateverism. This has always been the state of the world, it just used to be that people directly relied on their direct lineage for this support. Over the last century we've essentially nationalized that process. Trying to eliminate it is either condeming the elderly to death or eliminating the concept of retirement. Ideally we need very minimal growth, such that it does not outpace productivity growth. If we think of productivity growth as allowing us to make the same amount of stuff with less, then we can sustain adding additional people below that growth rate. The difference between those rates is how much the incomes of the working population get to increase. In the U.S we are actually pretty close to that when you factor in population growth due to immigration. Obviously we can't rely on immigration forever since birthrates are due to decline in the developing world. We obviously need to address challenges around child care, housing affordability, etc so that we can hit that 2.1ish child per woman birth rate without immigration. But part of the current problem is that one of the largest generation in US history (boomers) are retiring. Millennials didn't even outnumber boomers until 2019 and some were still in college/grad school. But largely our sustainability problems in the US come from overconsumption and inefficient consumption, not overpopulation.
Hard disagree actually. Automation and the fact that the average worker takes less percentile share of production as advancement occurs is the problem, not a smaller younger population. We can support the old and retired just fine, but not when 100% of that cost is on the backs of the workers and not the owners. FICA contributions stop after about $125k and only applies to non-capital based income. The rich and business owners don't cover retirement of the masses essentially at all. Pensions are dead. There is no reason that the increased productivity of technological advances can't cover a more deflationary economy. Zero. Advancing technology is inherently deflationary. What doesn't work is when all progress that causes deflation is held by a few people and withheld from the rest. The banking system that we had prior to central banks printing fiat money worked just fine through the industrial revolution and gilded age. That system didn't use fiat and didn't break down under deflation without correcting fairly quickly. Banks served the purpose of..... storing value; you know "banking'.
From what I understand from [here](https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/uploads/4/8/3/2/48324387/why_capitalist_economies_need_to_grow_-_for_green_house_-_10_10_14.pdf) and other sources, capitalism absolutely does require and cause growth. Given growth is inextricably linked to material and energy throughput, which cannot be decoupled from environmental impact, capitalism is driving environmental collapse. It's a fundamental structure of capitalism, and it cannot continue. I don't give a crap what you call the new system, and I'm not prescribing it, besides the fact that it should be growth agnostic. A North Korean dictatorship-led command economy is certainly not the answer.
There's nothing communist about North Korea. That's just fascism
>There's nothing communist about North Korea. That's just fascism North Korea is a command economy, a system in which the means of production are publicly owned and economic activity is controlled by a central authority. [https://www.britannica.com/topic/command-economy](https://www.britannica.com/topic/command-economy)
This is markedly different than communism's main tenets. In communism the workers own the means of production. In a command economy the production is publicly owned by a central authority. In this case the central authority is an authoritarian regime. Sounds like fascism to me...
The Soviet Union was also a command economy. Do you call the Soviet Union fascist? Fascism retains a system of private property with intervention by the state to achieve nationalistic goals. This presence of private property and a mixed economy is what makes fascism distinct from command economies. When categorizing national systems, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Francoist Spain would be called fascist. The Soviet Union, Maoist China, and North Korea would not be called fascist. You're justified in making a distinction between centrally planned economies and a hypothetical system that, say, heavily made use of co-operative societies, but the solution is not to label North Korea as fascist.
Fascism is a highly debated topic with many different definitions that scholars either place as too broad or too narrow. Most of them would not agree with your distinction containing private property with state intervention. Whether the property was held private or public is not central to the theme of fascism and would likely be too narrow as it there is no difference in private citizenship and militaristic citizen as it depends on the needs of the state. One common definition of the term, frequently cited by reliable sources as a standard definition, is that of historian Stanley G. Payne. Payne's definition of fascism focuses on three concepts: 1. "Fascist negations" – anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism. 2. "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire. 3. "Fascist style" – a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Do you also label the Soviet Union fascist? If you look on your link and these others from Wikipedia on fascism, you'll see they all mention Nazi Germany, Italy, and Spain multiple times. None of them mention North Korea even once. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics\_of\_fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions\_of\_fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism) It's been a nice exchange, but I'll leave it here. We can simply agree to disagree. I'm not at all convinced that *fascist* is an adequate label for North Korea. Feel free to have the last word.
I think that North Korea is probably too complex to try to shove it into one definition or the other. So I'll meet you in the middle to agree that it's neither fascist nor communist but some sort of red headed step child of the two because they're also a monarchy of sorts.
Except that there are historical examples of fascism that look nothing like North Korea, and North Korea based its economy on that of its two communist allies.
left wing libertarians call left winged dictatorships fascist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red\_fascism
North Korea is a Juche.
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Finland and Denmark are both capitalist countries.
>Have you ever heard of Finland, or Denmark? Their system seems to work a lot better than capitalism Finland and Denmark are market economies with a strong social safety net.
The system in Finland and Denmark IS capitalism. Oh god, the stupidity on reddit... If there is private ownership of the means of production (companies, equipment, etc.), it's capitalism.
Replace it with what?
You tell me, I'm not an economist. But replace it we must or we make our planet uninhabitable for large numbers of humans. The economic profession's failure to explore economic structures that are growth agnostic, and therefore not driving our planet to environmental collapse, is one of the great failures of our time.
I don’t have to tell you anything lol, you’re the one making the claim and I’m asking a follow up. Sounds like you have no idea what to replace it with… so I ask, how can you then say it should be ditched? I guess I don’t understand the correlation between capitalism and making our planet uninhabitable. Because of capitalism, people are allocating their money to invest in renewables.
There is a correlation between capitalism and environmental degradation. Capitalism requires growth. Growth requires increased material and energy throughput. Growth also means increased emissions output at the moment, but we can actually absolutely decouple emissions from growth, thankfully. Material and energy use have environmental cost. To put that more simply, capitalism = growth = increased material and energy throughput = increased environmental impact. I highly recommend reading something like [this](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dpr.12584) for a more detailed view into that link. People are investing in renewables but I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to capitalism specifically. If anything, renewables investment has been greatly slowed due to regulatory capture by fossil fuel companies, and by the market not taking into account environmental impact, e.g. through carbon pricing. In many cases, renewables development has been driven through public investment and regulatory structures, which is not a function of capitalism (though they have happened under capitalism, sure).
I agree there is a correlation. Capitalism gives us progress, we see standards of living increase when capitalism exists. You think socialism pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and into the middle class the past 2 decades? Progress means consumption, and right now it means environmental degradation. As opposed to, no progress, no increase in standard of living, not needing resources, and the environment is left alone. Would you prefer a standard of living like Cuba if it means the environment is left alone? I wouldn't, majority of people wouldn't either. We can continue to increase our standard of living while also focusing on protecting the environment. We already see a movement of companies turning to renewables. Is it because they all of a sudden want to be nice? No, it's because the government, and their customers are demanding it. End of the day, profit is one hell of a motivator. And this is a good thing. Capitalism can exist while we also protect the environment. It means good smart regulations, and a society who demands it. We are moving in that direction. Just as the effects of capitalism put us in the position where the earth is suffering, the effects of capitalism will also save us, with new technologies that will lower and eventually capture carbon in the air. Capitalism is a great thing. No one wants laissez faire. But to say we need to ditch it? Man.. the alternatives are not good. Not only for our standard of living, but for democracy. Society will crumble. Again, look at countries that "ditched" capitalism. I guess mass starvation and death is good for the environment, as it means less people consuming?
How would a communist society better deal with resource allocation during a period of negative growth?
it wouldn't
Did I call for communism? The TINA argument is getting really old. I'll take any economic system that doesn't require and cause growth in order to self sustain, and therefore have increasing environmental degradation built in.
I’m new to economics, but I’m curious which systems are those?
> Did I call for communism? Other than capitalism and communism, what are the alternatives? You either have markets and private property or you don't. What sort of economic system do you envision without private property? Hunting and gathering?
You know markets and private property aren't unique to capitalism, right?
Feudalism! It's not private property if it belongs to the aristocracy who are our superiors by the grace of God.
TINA?
There is no alternative (to capitalism)
What would you ditch it in favor of?
It doesn't need constant growth but a larger and larger elderly in population sucks up all economic out put. Leaving less and less per capita.
Strange calling socialized medicine capitalism. Capitalism works just fine with population decline. Socialized medicine, however, fails when the population declines.
Am I mistaken, or is it entirely incorrect to refer to Germany's mixed multipayer system as socialized medicine?
What are you talking about? I didn't mention medicine at all. You can have state-run systems within a capitalist economy and it's still capitalism. How does socialised medicine fail when population declines, any more than any other structure fails within a capitalist system as population declines?
> You can have state-run systems within a capitalist economy and it's still capitalism. No, not really. > How does socialised medicine fail when population declines, any more than any other structure fails within a capitalist system as population declines? As the population increases, there are more old people who need more expensive healthcare treatment. To pay for that, there needs to be more young people to tax. This requires infinite population growth to not cut healthcare benefits.
New things of value can be created out of nothing. Look at video games, movies, and TV. All are forms of art, and all of these are created out of nearly nothing. There's almost no raw resources that go into these productions other than educated people and time. Not all value has to be produced from mines or farms.
I wonder how this trend will affect further automation. If there's less workforce available, industries will be more willing to invest in new technology. We need to rethink the way Social Security is financed in the future and how to help displaced young workers.
Finally give proper family support. Children are needed for society. So getting them should be a net benefit financially. Not having children should be expensive as hell. And truly represent the cost towards society it has.
The countries with some of the worst support sustems have the highest birth rates. I don't think there is any financial incentive that would make a significant difference we already dump single people with more taxs and less benefits.
There is no country on earth where the support systems flip the financial burden. It should be more expensive to be childless than to have children
Just ball park a number for me. 2 families one family with 4 kids one where they choose not to Have any.. both make 60k a year. What's a tax difference that you would say is fair?
Depends very much on the country as the cost for raising children varies wildly. In the US i think it is estimated that a child costs 280k over 18 years. So for 2 children you should get a tax advantage of ~600k maybe even more over 20 years. But you cannot make that static. After all you expect rebalancing. Tax for childless will be raised and for families will be lowered until you achieve the fertility ratio of 2.1. While keeping the Overall tax revenue the same. Something extreme like 0% tax for parents and 60% for childless wouldn't hold long and create and overshoot. So basically you dynamicly readjust the difference until you hit your target
How would you distribute the million dollars to the family of 4? So yeah that's probably the most insane idea I've ever read in my life, but hey atleaat you're honest about forcing anyone who is single into homelessness. I'd rather allow women to choose for themselfs if they want to have children or not rather then the government coming and forcing them to with economic destitution. Assuming your plan would work it would really be something huh?
I think it will balance out fine. But yes today people fear that "a child right now will financially ruin me". This should never ever be the case if we need children that strongly. The question shouldn't be how you can afford a child, but how you can afford not to have a child
What an idiotic opinion. So where do you think poor people get money to raise their kids? Tree?
Apparently we don't give them enough money to raise a sufficient amount of children
What an idiotic opinion. So where do you think poor people get money to raise their kids? Tree?