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I've previously posted on the Motte about the Swedish state-funded Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility and suggest solutions to the problem. Another report has dropped, this time analyzing the broader effect the declining fertility will have on the Swedish state budget – and reaching some surprising conclusions! As before, here's a link in case you know Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/nyhet/utredningens-nya-skrift-lanceras-farre-barn-och-fler-aldre-vad-hander-med-sveriges-offentliga-finanser/
After a few poor showings the reports have really returned to form, and this is another excellent and informative review. The main insight – which is obvious after you've thought about it, but significantly less obvious before it's been shown to you – is that declining fertility and aging population is indeed very bad for both the government budget and the broader economy long-term, but in the short-term it actually benefits the government fiscally. This is because another little baby child that's born in the ghetto is an immediate drain on the state or municipal budget, while the long-term drawbacks of, y'know, having an entire population which can't fucking work only become apparent 20 years down the line when those baby children were supposed to be grown-ups doing grown-up-things (i.e. paying for the two or three generations who are now retired and demanding pensions).
In a way this is good, because it means many states will soon be facing a slight cost-relief, potentially providing an opening to solve the situation through increased spending. In another and probably more important way though it's very bad – mainly because it makes the negative effects of low fertility a lot more insidious and difficult-to-show than if the economic consequences were immediate. It's also bad in that the government and municipalities have major incentives to cut costs on schools and kindergartens in the short term, which in turn is liable to exacerbate the situation long-term. I actually reckon that this is a big part of what's happend and is happening in South Korea and Japan – perversely, their unsustainable fertility rates are economically sustained by the momentum of declining fertility itself, sort of like when Wile. E. Coyote runs off a cliff but refuses to fall because he won't look down.
Between the lines, the report more than it did previously hints that immigration could be one way to compensate for the decline in fertility. This is an argument I expect all Europeans will soon be hearing a lot more often again – I reckon the Spaniards used it to justify their completely insane amnesty for illegals. Sweden will soon hold an election and the current right-wing government seems prone to lose to the Social Democrats, and for that very reason I am displeased with this new direction the report seems to be taking. There's a small but non-zero risk that the left-wing parties, if they seize power, will again open the floodgates of mass immigration, once and for all drowning Sweden in third-world dysfunction beyond hope of repair. This would be very sad, and I sincerely hope it does not come to be; and for that same reason I hope the Committe doesn't sway from its goal (solving the fertility crisis) if and when the current government does get ousted.
It doesn't though? We have the stats from the Netherlands, non-Western, non-East Asian migrants are usually net losses in tax, they comprise the bulk of the migrant pool. Mass immigration is expensive!
The US will hoover up the high-quality immigrants with their high wages, why would anyone highly skilled want to go to cold, dark, high-tax Sweden? The most compelling reasons are attractive Swedish women and welfare - neither of which are good for Sweden.
Furthermore, adding more labour disincentivizes mechanization and robotization, lowers wages and productivity.
The economic arguments for mass immigration don't make sense. Increasing the total size of the economy doesn't benefit natives, only raising productivity can do that. Sweden is already a very high productivity area with higher STEM Nobels per capita than the United States! Swedes make jet fighters, machine tools, video games like Minecraft: very capable people.
High-quality immigrants are rare and hard to distinguish from cheats. Low-quality migrants can do food delivery, meat processing and Uber, prime targets for automation. And all immigration imposes further pressure on public services and infrastructure, which is invariably expensive to build out in modern Western country.
Mass migration proponents, besides some libertarians, are not motivated primarily by economics at heart IMO. It's a transformational/aspirational/teleological project, it's about getting rid of racism by abolishing distinction. I had one come up to me and tell me this at one point impromptu about how he hoped everyone would interbreed and then we'd all be brown.
There are so many wrong things here that I don't even know where to start.
The climate is milder than much of the north of the US, but Boston and the PNW are not exactly unpopular.
Lower tax than most other places in Western Europe, surprisingly.
...also comparing unfavourably to much of the rest of Europe. The medical system is every bit as much of a wreck as the British NHS, and unemployment insurance is anemic and opt-in.
Consensus among foreigners (spent several years working there) was that Swedish women are very mediocre, and it's actually the men who tend to be much more attractive than those elsewhere. That meshes well with the preexisting native culture warring about Swedish men taking Thai wives.
This seems to be based on the human intellectual arrogance based view that got thoroughly demolished in the last few years. The best estimate to make now is that research/writing/office work/management/anything white-collar are the prime targets for automation, and food delivery, meat processing and Uber are going to be the last human holdouts because meat has a competitive advantage at navigating the mess that is the 3D world. We got AI solving big open problems in maths before we got self-driving cars that can cope with a Swedish city (as opposed to a handful of American easy-mode desert town street grids).
Yes, pains me to say this but in 2 years time a qualified plumber may well be worth more to countries for immigration purposes than a senior staff level engineer at Google.
Honestly meat processing needs to be paid much much more than it is at the moment. It's a very "dirty" job that still requires a decent amount of knowledge and skill (do you know your beef cuts? I don't know my beef cuts...) and the people doing it and suffering aren't any less human than middle manager Becky in HR with her mediorce degree and unmemorable experience managing a team of 4 people.
If this means Becky from HR gets to eat steak at a restaurant less often then so be it.
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