the problem with bringing in foreign workers to take care of the old

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by kazenatsu, Nov 9, 2017.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This topic touches on multiple issues, health, demographics, aging, immigration, and economics.

    Many countries, including the U.S. have been bringing in workers from other countries to take care of their aging populations. It's often said by policy-makers and politicians that "there's not enough workers to take care of the old", but the real issue is more about getting skilled and semi-skilled workers who don't have to be paid as much.

    Well, this makes sense on one level, doesn't it? If you have a lot of old people with limited financial means, and they need to be taken care of, why not bring in lower cost care workers from other countries? Sounds like a win-win, doesn't it? Someone needs to staff all those nursing homes.

    The thing is though, who's going to take care of all these workers when they eventually become old?

    When you step back and look at this you see it's actually a pyramid scheme, of sorts.
    You get one group of workers, don't pay them very much, and then they're going to need to be taken care of. Naturally the solution will be to bring in another round of foreign care workers. Is this really a sustainable solution long-term?

    I think a demographic crisis is looming. When the next generation moves into retirement there's going to be a big shortage of care workers to take care of all these people in their old age. It's going to put a strain on government budgets, and put a lot of old people with limited financial means into a pinch.
     
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  2. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    It's always been like this in Australia- it was Europeans after the war, but now there are Africans and Indians with a totally different life experience and cultural values. The bottom line is the decider .
     
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  3. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    The crisis in the care industry doesn't reflect a demographic crisis (which is often overblown and used by politicians to excuse uselessness). It reflects how the carer is both input and output, ensuring that wages increase more than productivity. Its a stand out industry that has been treated as if its like any other. That merely demonstrates the folly of any obsession on efficiency. It also demonstrates the stupidity of 'free market' labour economics.
     
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  4. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    Ponzi scheme
    Every extra worker you bring in, will become old themselves. Short term fix that exacerbates the core problem.
     
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  5. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    The solution is to kick the foreign workers to the curb when they get old.

    If they're illegal they won't earn Social Security so they'll have no claim to retirement. Deport them when they're too old to work.

    If they're on a workers program deport them when they get old. Again they haven't contributed to a retirement plan in their nation of origin so they'll get nothing.

    They'll get nothing, and it may seem cruel, but they made their decision to undercut the local workforce to make quick money, and that's their comeuppance.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2017
  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Looks like Germany is beginning to have problems with this now:



    All these retiring old people are going to put a strain on the state's pension system, ironically the very thing bringing in migrant workers was supposed to avoid. This is going to have implications for many other retired people in the country.
    Looks like the standard of living in Germany is going down...
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2018
  7. Guyzilla

    Guyzilla Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The solution is, not to be a SNOWFLAKE CULTURE. What kind of whimps, need to IMPORT workers, to deal with their old years? The FACT, that NORMALLY, we think it unseemly, to get DIRTY during our work, is WHY this culture is SNOWFLAKE.

    Yes, this involves also, AGREEING to pay things properly, so we don't NEED to out EVERY category of work, as they are replaced with IMPORTS.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2018
  8. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not to mention the cost of the State pensions when they qualify? And yet it all seems such a good idea when you don't think about it too much!! I mean liberals are known for not thinking things through.
     
  9. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Have any of you ever read the magazine The Economist ?
    A lot of upper middle class professionals—you know the type of people that tend to be more influential on what government policy is—subscribes to this publication.
    Guess what that magazine has continuously advocated for government policy to be, over and over again. Yes, you guessed it, bringing in migrant labor to try to counter the demographic aging crisis. This is what former U.S. President George W. Bush was trying to do (also a subscriber to the magazine).
    So you have economists actively telling people that their country needs to bring in more outside labor, so that there will be enough people to take care of the old.
    But a lot of people with commonsense could've told it wasn't going to work out like that. This is an issue of government policymakers getting defective advice.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2018
  10. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    If you are already old, bring them in.
    Let your kids pay the price for it. You won't be here to worry.
     
  11. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Japan is having problems.



    So looks like the very high cost of living in Japan, and lack of good paying jobs available in the rural areas, is leading to people not having enough babies, which is leading to a demographic crisis with an aging population in the country.

    So the dilemma is does Japan bring in foreign workers to take care of the old? Should Japan bring in immigrants from outside to counter the aging demographics in the country?
    Is such a strategy overlooking why people are not having babies in the first place?
    I mean, if people are already struggling to earn enough money to feel comfortable starting a family, what's the result of bringing more people in who are going to have even less money going to be?

    Seems like there's an underlying problem here. Maybe the country needs to explore more ways to move some of the jobs away from the big city areas to the lower cost living areas in the outlying regions. Nothing makes people stop having children like being crammed in a tiny apartment with a high cost of rent.
     
  12. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    They don't have kids because shagging involves taking time off work.

    Rents are comparatively better than they used to be.
    Prices here in Cambridge have been higher than Tokyo for a long time now.

    Probably deposits are still insanely high. A years rent as deposit, plus a years rent in advance.

    I'd like to buy an old farm, land in the countryside is cheap. But I doubt Mrs Baff will be willing to leave the city. She still wants a house with a classroom in Tokyo.
    My idea of hell!
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2018
  13. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Inaccurate comment. Immigrants typically see relatively high levels of social mobility. The overall macroeconomic cake is also larger because of them.
     
  14. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Let's not oversimplify matters.

    Bringing in foreign workers is an attribute of the American economy since its inception. Look at any American today and their elders 3/4 generations ago are likely to have been immigrants.

    Just because we had a Great Recession prompted by Wall Street banksters looking for a quick mega-buck that they did not deserve does not mean necessarily that High Unemployment is an intrinsic attribute of the American economy. Because it isn't.

    America is a large and diverse nation and its ability to absorb immigrants is great - as great as the necessity of letting them in. Without which the economy would either likely stagnate or ... garbage-handlers would be earning $75K salaries because nobody wanted to do the work.

    The problem of labor-competence is one that is being addressed by hi-cost-but-educated foreign labor that is filling the jobs of the American-born who should have been well-educated in the US - but are not!

    Ask yourself rather Why? Then go look at the tuition-costs of a 2- or 4-year postsecondary degree that will enhance one's CV to a higher level salary. Those tuition-costs are literally prohibitory and causing a large set of our youth to accept lower-paying jobs because they haven't the degree-credentials for higher-paying jobs ...

    PS: Our elders have ALWAYS been dependent upon Total Actual Income-taxation Revenues to maintain a decent retirement benefit. There is no reason that should change, since it is historical in nature. What must change is the rush upwards to disproportionately higher salaries that causes a lower percentage of the population to garner more and more of the salary benefit. Only taxation will change that economic variable.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
  15. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, that's true. The situation in Japan has been slowly getting better now after a long 25 year protracted "Recession". One wonders whether the declining population might have had something to do with that. (freeing up apartment space and putting an upward pressure on wages) Or perhaps it just took 25 years for prices to finally come down (deleveraging by not keeping pace with inflation). It might have been overinflated asset prices that were holding people back.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
  16. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Tell that to the small independent tradesmen who've been put out of business by having their rates undercut by newcomers? I assume from your smug nonchalance that you're not one of them?
     
  17. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There's a funny saying: Recessions don't start until economists are the ones getting laid off.

    Basically noting that economists tend to be insulated within their own little Ivory tower bubble and so often don't really directly see what's happening to other groups below them. If we were to start bringing in professional economists on work visas in masse from India (and eliminated tenure) I'm sure it wouldn't be 10 years till the economics community was screaming bloody murder.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
  18. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I referred to economic fact. Sounds like you're completely innocent of growth modelling.
     
  19. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well however you care to dress it up, that 'macroeconomic cake' isn't big enough for everybody is it.
     
  20. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Of course it is. Its just the elite are pigging out on it
     
  21. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You'll get no argument from me on that.
     
  22. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) announces the start and end date of recessions in the US - the procedure detailed here.

    Excerpt:
    Truly laughable ...
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
  23. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So, do you want to bring in the migrants first or grab the money from the rich? Or is the particular order of when all that happens not that important to you?
     
  24. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    THE DONALD'S GRANDPARENTS

    Let's look around us. Which American cannot turn to an immigrant ancestor more than three generations away from his/her own presently.

    Come on, this question is moot. Immigration has built America. It allows them jobs, and with the money they become Consumers in a market-economy that is the richest in today's world.

    I live in France. Same phenomenon - and it is Tunisian immigrants who pick up my garbage.(Whilst their children go to university free, gratis and for nothing.) Yours are likely to be Central Americans and many of their children can't get a university degree because their parents are earning peanuts.

    From WikiP:

    Donald Dork has forgot who is his grandparents were - originally a penniless family that immigrated in the latter part of the 19th-century from Kallstadt in Germany.


    Period ...
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2018
  25. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A look at older people in Japan:

    According to NHK, 12.4 percent of the workforce is over 65 at present, and many of these people are doing manual work, often for the first time in their lives. In Mimasaka, 40 percent of all workers are over 65.

    It’s obvious that more older people are either forgoing retirement or reentering the workforce afterward. In many cases, these elderly workers need the money because basic national pensions are not enough to get by on, but a popular media narrative is that these people are going back to work because they are bored with retired life or think that society needs them.

    In 2017, there were 8 million workers aged over 65, and for the most part all were making significantly less money than they did when they were younger, usually because they retired from their old jobs and were then hired as "new employees."
    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...ed-views-elderly-workers-plight/#.XHOxLfZFyow

     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2019

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