Lad, we’re not making enough kids. Society is not sustainable with an aging population and less people to work. We are absolutely dependent on immigration.
We could also just optimize efficiency and not make more people.
Less people means more wealth, as wealth is a limited resource on earth we need to share it, if we reduce the shares we all have more. There is absolutely no need for more when less gets the job done as well.
If you want to shrink a population, you have to do it slowly while adapting the system to it. In a few years, with the boomer generation slowly retiring, Europe would be fucked without immigration. Too many retired people with not enough young people to care for them and uphold the economy at the same time. You can’t fix the resulting hole in manpower by only increasing efficiency. In Germany we are talking about a lack of 400k people per year.
Nah. We waste human resources on things that could be done automatically, look at our entire Government, all the wasted resources because some old ass bastards in politics aren’t able to commit to the new world.
Which is just another reason why the aversion to immigration on display by such large parts of EU society at the moment is just so freaking dumb and counterproductive.
I agree with you, but you can’t just change the demographic makeup of any territory without some resistance from the native population. Push back is to be expected. You can tell Europeans “your people will go extinct without this”, the rational response would be to accept it, but people aren’t always rational.
Well, population decline doesn’t automatically mean extinction. Eternal growth is not possible. The system should not rely on perpetual population growth.
Population decline due to low birth rates has never happened. Population declines have always been due to disease or war or something like that, taking the adults and leaving a young population behind. It’s not about a system, an aging population with low birth rates probably amounts to population collapse, but we are in uncharted territory and can’t know for sure how it plays out.
Well, let’s wait until the Boomers go into retirement and the economy really crashes, due to the lack of manpower. Maybe some people will change their view on immigration then.
Let’s make this clear: Spanish population only grows because of immigration. We have one of the lowest birth rates in the world (see worldpopulationreview.com/…/birth-rate-by-country), but allowing immigration has somewhat contained our population decline. Without immigration, our pension and health systems would be unsustainable, unable to cater an aging population. So we have immigration to thank for what you see in that image. Countries with low birth rates and low immigration (like Japan) are actually doomed.
What happens if all countries were doing well enough for immigration to slow down? Like not having constant wars and dictatorships?
What happens if your country becomes less appealing to immigrants, or gets a short surge of anti immigration leadership like the US?
If an increase in population is necessary to support retirement and your own population can't sustain that, then you are propping up a system that requires other countries to be worse off. That cannot continue indefinitely.
Most of the world is an unfixable cesspit of corruption, authoritarianism, and misery. It’s not possible to bring corrupt dictatorships to EU living standards because the power structures in those countries will hijack any effort to do so, using the funds to further concentrate wealth and power.
The only way that someone in such countries can hope to improve their life is through immigration.
But I’m not proposing in any way immigration as a path to solve the problem of aging population. That interpretation is solely on you.
I’m only saying that immigration it’s just a phenomenon that happened (and it’s not happening at the same rate as in the past anymore), and that I’m glad it happened, because if not, we would be in real trouble really soon. I’m just thankful for the immigrants to this country, because it’s them saving our asses (in contrast to people thinking they’re a problem).
The causes of our aging population are other, and the real solution requires actions that I wish politicians tried to solve. Immigration was just a temporary fix, that we should be thankful for, but it’s not the solution to the problem at all, nor am I proposing it as the solution.
You started your comment with “That seems to suggest…” Well, no, I’m not suggesting anything more than what I said. Just that. And I don’t feel the need to explain anything further. Cheers.
I guess this is true for a lot of countries on this map where population numbers have increased in the higher two digits. At least it’s also true for Switzerland and yet one of the most popular political parties is actively promoting laws to limit further immigration. Not that this is surprising in the current political environment in Europe where it seems we are seeing a right shift in a lot of governments nowadays.
Yes, I imagine that is the case for other countries, but I just talked about Spain because that’s where I live, and I know the reality here. Immigration is a completely positive event. We should be really thankful for those immigration waves we had in the past.
Ireland is interesting here. I don’t believe they have as many people immigrating to them as other countries, which indicates this is mostly people not leaving as was widespread until the 00’s.
Since 2006 it is about migration to and from Germany is about equal. A lot of Turks moved back to Turkey as the economy grew and well with a German pension Turkey is a great place to live, especially when you speak the langauge and have family there.
Other then that the Turkey has natural population growth and Syrians and other migrants moving to Turkey.
You mean people don’t want to live in wartorn and just plain shitty countries and flee to more progressive and human right focused countries. Weird. And now those shitty countries just get shittier because those that could leave did and they are usually the healthy/smart people.
No, they got effectively halted during the time of the immigration deal between Turkey and the EU. Now, that the deal failed, it remains to be seen, if refugees continue to Europe or stay where they are.
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