- cross-posted to:
- economics
- cross-posted to:
- economics
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6837465
Even though right-wing politicians decry immigration (because it’s a populist viewpoint), they secretly or openly want more. Countries without low immigration will lag economically compared to countries with high immigration such as the US.
Original link: https://www.ft.com/content/de913edd-71d1-4a36-b897-091125596952
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“we need more people that we dont respect to do the jobs that we dont want to. At the same time we have to make it really hard for immigrants to live here”
Also, we are going to complain that asylum seekers don’t work while explicitly prohibiting work for asylum seekers.
It’s one of the most blatant self-made problems around migration that populists very disingenuously employ to paint their favourite picture of the “welfare queen” which has been a bold, racist lie since it was first used.
But I’m also a bit sceptical of how you can do this in a country without mandatory collective agreements in all sectors. Germany at least has a minimum wage, but that just means wage dumping can only go as low as 12 Euro per hour. Back in Cyprus, where the same question is constantly in the news, the most notorious anti-worker industry, the tourism sector, is begging for asylum seekers to be allowed in the jobs that they have most trouble filling with citizens, EU-residents, and work-permit holders. But they want to do so outside a collective agreement (one used to exist, but for various reasons is now dead-letter) and essentially without even the protection of a minimum wage (which Cyprus didn’t have until this year, and now it has an idiotic version of it which defines a monthly minimum wage without a limit to hours worked).
I think that the introduction of asylum seekers in the workforce should happen, but it should happen in tandem with a massive pro-union legislation change that will make collective agreements mandatory across the board (similar to the Swedish and Finnish models, as far as I understand those). That might require re-aligning the way unionism is understood in Germany from per-workplace to be per-industry.
Can’t speak for Finland, although I think it’s the same, but collective agreements are certainly not mandatory in Sweden. Most companies over a certain size have them, but they don’t have to. Many, if not most, small businesses don’t.
I personally wouldn’t work for a company that didn’t have one.
unionism
Not sure this is quite the right term here. At least in the UK this is about being for the Union of the countries making up the UK, not about worker’s unions and in Northern Ireland it is usually synonymous with one side of the conflict.
Given that the article is not about the UK, I don’t see a good reason to reach for a UK-specific definition.
Bollocks. Even in the UK unionism has dual meanings, one about organised labour and one about the country. And the country meaning of unionist only gets mindshare in NI & Scotland. If you mention anything about unions/unionism in England people will assume organised labour.
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The US doesn’t have a problem with finding good Immigrants. Even though the politics are horrible and misogynistic and you have to leave everything behind, smart people are moving to the US in droves. The greencard is still something desirable.
Meanwhile in Germany you earn noticably less, spend noticably more the people are noticably less nice and you have to do as much work for your ID here as you do in the US.
Don’t know about Germany, but here in France there are lots of IT workers from the Maghreb.
And you need lots of IT? Youre not missing anything else?
Yeah we need (needed?) IT workers because until a few years ago, salaries for tech positions were really low in France compared to the rest of Europe and the US, so lots of French developers and techs emigrated to these countries.
Not sure about other industries, I work in IT so that’s what I know from personal experience.
I worked with someone who moved to Germany/Austria/Switzerland (I can’t remember) from France to do IT work and pay a bit less taxes from this IT salary.
I do believe French when they say they need IT workers.
As someone who is a highly skilled immigrant, I have been looking for a job for 3 months, my friends (all of them) have been looking for jobs for the last 6 months. Germany needs to fix this issue first before asking for more immigrants. More people won’t fix anything if finding a job is so difficult.
aren’t you supposed to take all of our jobs?! /s
i hope you succeed soon. a friend of mine is also looking for a new job for nearly a year now 😐
highly skilled immigrant
That means you want to be paid well, right? We don’t do that here.
Right now i just want a livable job, like i got 1k eur as a student for working 20h/week so right now anything above or equal should do. My only requirement is that it is related to software cuz thats my field.
Man it is so crazy, i have masters from a uni which is 5th for computer science in germany. My gpa is 1.7 and i have 1.5 years of full time software dev experience and 3 years of part time (20h/week) software/ML engineering experience. And i have sent 70-80 applications and yet no interview. Like people if my creds are not enough to get me even 1 interview where i can show that i have skills that i claim to have then what will??
“Immigrants bad!”
economy needs more workers
“Immigrants good!”
jk, this won’t change opinions a bit.
I mean it’s not like the Right Wing politicians are the ones touting the work load immigration assists in carrying
I think a better solution would be to fund pensions out of a sovereign wealth fund that’s not necessarily tied to youth productivity.
Stops youngins from feeling like they’re living in a geroncleptocracy, while also not tossing grandma out to live in the underpass
What if we created one pension fund each year? Every person born that year contributes into that fund during their working years and withdraw from it in retirement. It seems like a solution that is fair to everybody, avoiding inter-generational wealth transfers.
Well then it’s basically losing money against inflation
I don’t think that funds are kept in money. IIRC They are mostly kept in other means, so that they are at least somewhat sustainable against inflation. But that doesn’t mean that the above idea is good, or doesn’t have other flaws.
But that doesn’t mean that the above idea is good, or doesn’t have other flaws.
If you have more thoughts on this, could you spell them out?
I mean, you generally don’t want to tie up a lot of money, each year by year, meaning that you would have a lot of frozen capital. And capitalism (which also has some flaws, but right now we are using this system) depends on the flow of money/capital. Also managing these funds would make a lot of work / administration, because someone would have to manage what goes in and out and also in what form the funds to store in. And at the point of storing money from younger people, that is not being spent, whilst using money from older people, why not just have less money stored and use the money from the younger generation for the older ones. And you go full circle to the idea that we wanted to solve. Each system has its benefits and flaws, some of which are greater, which outweigh other, smaller ones. Sometimes the solution can be something completely different.
Why would you assume that the fund would be kept in cash? That’s not how pension funds work.
Because otherwise you run into the problem of having to get additional revenue from somewhere else.
The current problem is that there aren’t enough young people working well paying enough jobs to fund pensions, because if they aren’t funding them it’s just an account you throw money into and then draw out of later.
You can either provide an alternative source of additional funds or tell grandma it’s not your fault she put her money into a box instead of an investment vehicle to fund her retirement.
I have described a system that would have prevented the problem in the first place while still providing the actuarial benefits of pooling resources.
I am not offering a solution for how to transition from the current system where the young pay for the old.
What I don’t like is the hyper-neoliberal approach where each person lives in an island and resources aren’t pooled at all, because it benefits the rich at the cost of the poor.
It’s still losing money though, unless each cohort is able to operate it as an investment vehicle it’s no different than a generational shoebox in terms of what the money is doing while you’re waiting to pull out of it.
The point of a pension fund is for the ongoing contributions of currently working folks to bring in enough new capital that people withdrawing don’t feel the effects of their contributions from 40 years ago having lost value against inflation.
The point of a pension fund is for the ongoing contributions of currently working folks to bring in enough new capital that people withdrawing don’t feel the effects of their contributions from 40 years ago having lost value against inflation.
No, that is not how long term investments work. Try reading about the subject and improve your own finances along the way. Investments typically grow faster than inflation, so the longer the original investment was made, the more money you have today.
ThEy’Re sTEaLinG ouR JoBs!!!
“Exploit the immigrants to fix their economy, just like Canada”
FTFY
If Germany had an influx of highly qualified workers and professionals I guarantee you there wouldn’t be as much discussion. Immigration comes in different types.
Germany needs workers on all levels of qualification.
Might be but letting people incompatible with our shared values in has always been a bad idea, especially when you let them stay indefinitely.
letting people incompatible with our shared values in has always been a bad idea,
Agreed, we shouldn’t have let Poland and Hungary join.
Haven’t seen them burn flags and smash public property in my town though, lately.
Haven’t seen them burn flags
Who cares what a bunch of clowns did a couple of years ago in their own country? Not my problem.
But very telling that you had to dig deep.
I care about what happens in and around my home.
you had to dig deep
A ten second internet search. Yes I’m super invested in this.
I care about what happens in and around my home.
Well by that criterion, nobody has ever burned a flag or smashed public property near my home, so everything is peachy.
I also haven’t seen refugees do that in mine.
Poland and Hungary though, they just burn EU subsidies by funneling them into the pockets of the Prime Minister’s family and friends and smash any attempt at civilizational progress or a fair treatment and distribution of refugees across the Union.
Germany needs workers, not people who are illiterate and unlikely to ever work. Germany has accepted a LOT of people of the latter, and it is causing a lot of social unrest. If the current ruling parties don’t get a handle on things soon, the far right AfD will take power. There are only a few years left to turn this around.
The integration of the 2015 wave of refugees into our labor market is progressing better than that of the 90s wave of refugees that came from former Yugoslavia did at the same time after immigration. They ARE working if we give them the opportunity. Expecting immediate 100% integration is not realistic.
Conversely, 45 percent of those who fled to Germany in 2015 have not yet entered the labor market.
I am not sure why you think this refutes my argument. It supports it. The employment rate is even worse for those who arrived after 2015, and is incredibly low for refugees of certain countries like Syria and Afghanistan.
For posterity, I am not claiming all refugees don’t work. I am claiming many do not work, and immigrants who do not work are making Germany’s social problems even worse.
I am not sure why you think this refutes my argument. It supports it.
No it doesn’t. They integrate FASTER than others who came before them who were supposedly far closer to our “shared values and culture” (i.e. “not muslims”), and society didn’t collapse when THOSE came. And the fact of the matter is this is while we’re actively preventing them from working by straight up forbidding it and not processing their requests for work permits.
Did you know: Syria ranks first among countries of origin of foreign doctors in Germany.
They integrate FASTER than others who came before them who were supposedly far closer to our “shared values and culture” (i.e. “not muslims”), and society didn’t collapse when THOSE came.
You are attacking straw men. I neither claimed the problem is “Muslims” nor that making Germany poorer will collapse society. Please re-read my comments. To repeat myself, this is what I wrote, and your source confirmed that:
Germany needs workers, not people who are illiterate and unlikely to ever work. Germany has accepted a LOT of people of the latter, and it is causing a lot of social unrest.
Did you know that in most European countries, Syrians have some of the lowest rates of employment out of any country of origin? Unfortunately I can’t find Germany’s demographic stats (I would appreciate a source for yours). Here are the stats for Denmark.
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According to an analysis, more than half of the refugees who came to Germany in 2015 were employed in 2021.
Did you read it? This is horrific. Six years later, and barely more than half are working.
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This is what I wrote:
Germany needs workers, not people who are illiterate and unlikely to ever work. Germany has accepted a LOT of people of the latter
I didn’t say “all”. I said “a lot.” According to your link, there are a lot of people who are not working.
Also, It’s a huge pain in the ass to get your degrees and titles recognised in Germany. Even Doctors returning from Switzerland have to wait several months up to a year to get their certificates recognised
This is a meme. Clearly most refugees are not doctors and engineers. I challenge you to provide a source.
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Germany needs workers, not people who are illiterate and unlikely to ever work.
Germany wants highly-skilled workers, but pays them like interns. That won’t work. Either you let everyone in and train those people to be useful in your workforce or you only let the highly-skilled people in - but then you have to pay them what they’re worth.
You won’t get the best of both worlds, but it seems like a lot of our politicians have the mindset that we’re such an awesome country that everybody wants to come here.
The far-right politics of AfD/CDU/CSU are hindering our progress immensely. The population gets older and many people leave the workforce, but they still pretend like this can go on forever, without letting any migrants in. Good luck with that.
I mean, Germany is getting those too, but there are only going to be so many of those on the market. You aren’t gonna go to, I dunno, Sudan and find a town fully populated by people with doctorates hell-bent on leaving.
