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So Georgia Meloni, the supposed far-right firebrand of Italy, is now planning to radically open up visa access for non-EU migrants. PiS in Poland are planning similar measures, even as they've let in record number of workers from moslem-majority countries since they've took power. Of course, the rhetoric from both the Italian and the Poles are all about asylum seekers and illegal migration. Sort of reminds me of GOP rhetoric about stopping people at the border even as they get jawboned by business lobbies to liberalise legal avenues for work visas.
It's the same thing here and it deserves to be pointed out that these fake populists in Europe are ultimately in thrall to the same power system as the old parties are. What's driving large-scale migration isn't some evil plot. It's not Soros or even the Kalergi plan. It's just capitalism. Both of those individuals may be colorful but ultimately the driving force is structural.
Of course, my explanation is boring, perhaps even banal, which is why it will never take off. Not enough drama. As for these developments, I think Europe should be a bit "pragmatically racist" in selecting groups from countries that have a track record of integrating well, e.g. I'd give preference for South-East Asia, but it appears that such a moderate policy is too racist even for the "far-right".
Incidentally, when reading about Max Weber's life in recent days, I found out that he was quite nationalistic as a young man and even campaigned against cheap foreign labour (principally from Eastern Europe). Quite ironic for someone who later became a liberal intellectual, but also amusing in that it shows that this thing has been going on for a lot longer than people realise and it likely won't end soon either.
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Yeah, I think a huge issue is that elites making these policies don't have skin in the game and have to deal with some of the downstream consequences of their decisions. They don't need to live next door to the non-integrating immigrants and their descendants. If things eventually hit Brazilianisation, they can retreat to gated communities or the Martha's Vineyards of the world.
My other thought is that a solution would be to hold out until robotics and AI can decouple the economy from population. But to a degree you would still need a lot of workers in services like healthcare and aged care even if the economy wasn't a problem.
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There are so few examples of countries that have had sustained declines in population that this claim seems to lack sufficient evidence. I can think of one counterexample though, Ireland saw a continuous drop in population alongside an overall increase in wealth from the 1840s until 1961.
Theoretically it shouldn't be true either, as long as innovation is happening there will be some source of growth. An aging population might be a bigger problem then a shrinking one here.
The latter sounds too complicated for me but there seems to be a common sense way in which prosperity could increase with a declining population: With lots of old people dying off GDP per capita increases and people in the prime of their life find that property has gotten a lot more affordable.
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I still don't see the appeal. Bringing in lots of low-wage laborers doesn't result in genuine economic growth. If anything, it leads to economic stagnation, because the real driver of economic growth is increases in productivity - of the kind that immigration stymies, because why invest in productivity when the flow of labor is so generous?
I don't know the answer to this, but suspect that it's something horribly short-termist, like goosing projected GDP numbers to placate the analysts & keep interest rates low until the next election.
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