Charlemagne: Banking on it Excerpt: So, all is well and good in EuropaLand? Bring out the Champagne! No? Methinks not. Not ALL is well. But shouldn't Europe get over the tsunami of refugees from the Middle-east and Africa? After all, they did not rape our women in hordes as was expected - and in fact many are going back. It has just dawned upon them that they have no advanced skills for which European countries are clamoring, and we have enough garbage-men for the moment ...
Europeans aren't clamoring for advanced skills. They have a deluge of the over qualified. They are clamoring for Macdonalds staff. Amazon pickers and packers. Farm hands. People willing to bust their arses for minimum wage. In this way low cost businesses can thrive on "economies of scale" and be globally competative.
Tell that to these Germans: Looks like the standard of living in Germany is going down... What's happened in Germany isn't so different from what's happened in the U.S. over the last 30 years. Industry wanted cheap semi-skilled workers to be able to better compete in international markets. When you're trying to compete with the rest of the world, you sort of need low labor costs. The problem is that to have the lower labor costs you also need the low cost population. And that can turn out to be expensive, and problematic. Germans naively thought all these migrants were going to be like the workers from Turkey Germany had brought in over the years. But two things they failed to consider: (1) the quality of population in Turkey was one notch above over other parts of the Middle East, and (2) the country had previously specifically been selecting individual applicants at least based on some basic qualifications and whether they seemed like a good candidate for working in a German factory. Which is why it's not surprising to see this: 1.2 Million migrants in Germany: just 2.8% have found a job Most refugees to be jobless for years, German minister warns
I'm sure they have all the migrants they need from the EU already. We have 3 million of them here. Plus another 2 million from the rest of the planet. Last I heard Germany had about the same. EuroBoom EuroDoom Predictions in the financials alternate from day to day.
This thread is terribly random. We start with someone pretending to be left wing while copying and pasting a story from a neoliberal rag. We then have someone actually using the Express- a well know right wing, anti-immigration rag of zero value- and pretends evidence. We then have completely random reference to economics. Economies of scale typically reflect high fixed costs. Naff all to do with minimum wage labour
So now, The Economist is a neoliberal rag, and all those news sources printing something about refugees in vast numbers not able to integrate into the economy are right wing? You know in the States that "neoliberal rag" you refer to would (at this time) be considered something from the more Left party.
Given you're prepared to use non-credible sources such as the Express, how are you to determine the value of The Economist? I remember the days when it was read by lefties for a 'stable biased outlook'. Those days are long gone!
I suppose the Financial Times isn't a credible source either? Or maybe the link is just having trouble working for some reason. Strange, the link doesn't appear to work when on this site but you can still look it up on a search engine okay.
You've gone from "just 2.8% have found a job" to "up to three quarters of Germany's refugees will still be unemployed in five years time" (with employment currently at 17%). You have no quality control over your application of 'evidence'. Sort that out, as it guarantees your position cannot be treated seriously. Do immigrants in general have problems with job market integration? Of course! Human capital isn't necessarily immediately compatible. Problems are further magnified for refugees around the world (reflecting issues ranging from the welfare system to discrimination)
there might be 2 billion people in the world who would live better on European welfare programs than they are living now so Europe will have to close its borders, and this is not mention that their would children stand to live far better after obtaining a free European education.
Yes, that's a question, who is going to pay for their children's educations. You can't bring in low cost workers without questioning who's going to pay for the children and what's going to become of them. This is not just some trivial expense. Probably talking about 11000 Euros per year per child, and that's not even including University. Most of these people are earning less than 22000 Euros a year, and that's if they are working. (don't forget, migrants are usually concentrated in urban areas where costs are higher than more rural areas)
Education typically creates positive net wealth. Its just less likely in neoliberal countries which focus too heavily on low wage profiteering
Or could this just be the fallacy of composition ? Certainly it creates positive net for the individual receiving that education, but exactly how much positive net wealth it creates for the society as a whole is a different matter. I know your natural inclination is going to be to educate all these people to push them up into a higher income bracket, but are there going to be enough higher paid jobs for all? When you stack a bunch of people at the bottom of the pyramid, that could potentially create more opportunities for those higher up, but you're still going to need people at bottom. And such a model is not going to be economically sustainable because then you'll have to keep bringing in more new people to fill the bottom of that pyramid. Obviously that can't go on forever because the levels above are going to get saturated. This sort of bankrupt neoliberal idea was tried in the U.S. over several decades and failed. (or at least in the end demonstrated severe shortcomings) The good jobs for all those educated people simply weren't there. So the real question is how much wiggle room does the economy have? How many more educated (or "skilled") workers can the job market absorb, before it begins showing signs of being oversaturated? The margin might not be all that much. If we look at a labor demand curve we can see that at some point the quantity isn't very elastic as the price goes down incrementally (i.e. it's going to take a huge reduction in wages to get the number of employed to go up slightly). And no, more consumers does not automatically translate into equally more demand; you'll just have more people earning less money.
No, its human capital theory and the likes of endogeneous growth analysis. Rather than using the Express, refer to an economic source that rejects the net gain from education. Typically yes. We have to refer to very particular examples to show otherwise: e.g. UK and its reliance on a low wage equilibria, reflecting the consequences of labour market deregulation and the structural flaws it created. Even then we still have positive externalities dominated the analysis. There's no pyramid, except in individual firms and their application of 'internal labour markets'. But that doesn't provide an attack on education. That provides an attack on the unequal availability of education (as predicted ironically by the human capital model) Neoliberalism bulldozes the focus on economic rent through underpayment of labour. It has no direct reference to education. It simply engineers rent at the expense of the population. Wrong question! Without neo-liberalism, education creates new opportunity; its akin to the value of the entrepreneur. The real question is why/how right wing twots have allowed neoliberalism to run amok
How much is that education actually capital, and how much is credentialism? (in plain English: is that education actually going to help them be more economically productive, or is it just going to help them land the job as the employer chooses to pick them over other potential candidates?) I did refer to the Financial Times.
Question Reiver: If education benefits people so much, why can't we just end mass impoverishment in other countries by educating them? Why are people so adamant about bringing them here first before educating them?? I'm sure the cost of education would be a lot cheaper in their own countries, where they already here, with wages and costs of living so much lower.
I've always referred to how demand-led economic change is key and that you can't just refer to supply-side limitation. Your stance was different, with its "who will pay for education?". In the developed world it typically pays for itself. When the gains are restricted that ironically reflects economies that have been polluted by supply side economics
I gave up on the Economist after it published stories about world rankings in democracy, I noticed that America and all it's allies ranked top. Seemed too convenient so I researched their sources. And it led me to the CIA. I never read the Economist again. Striped Horse will love that stuff. Maybe I'm just being stupid. But that's where it led me and that's why I don't listen to a word they say any more. No trust.
Unemployment rate history of Germany: Oh, yeah - the Germans are really 'n truly hurting. Come off it, you are barking up the WRONG TREE ... This was to be foreseen, given the fact that most of them do not have the qualifications that are sought by German industry. (There are enough already garbage-collectors.) The fact that most would have to return was seen from the outset - but returning them to war-zone countries was not an option. As for the rest, the best option was to give them "stay visas" but no "work visas" unless they had the proper credentials for work. What has happened therefore is that many are returning on their own - and this means particularly to mid-Africa. Lest we forget, there are two kinds of refugees - one from the war and one economic from north and middle-Africa. So cool down. The "purity" of the German race is not all that threatened. PS: I thought we had settled the question about Germanic purity with Hitler? Not the case evidently ...
