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kaufmae 4 hours ago

most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.

oytis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals

jubilanti an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Germany and Switzerland have taken dramatically different responses to the migrant crisis.

qingcharles 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

These things aren't mutually-exclusive, though.

servo_sausage 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every statistic regarding refugee attainment shows that it is; unless you are proposing to limit intake to only the skilled.

oytis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Technically true, but I don't think anyone tracks education levels of refugees.

philipallstar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water.

panick21_ 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.

stymaar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.

ahartmetz 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>France is mostly empty

Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.

stymaar 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's mostly a matter of when the demographic transition started: https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.png%3Fname%3D...

France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today.

The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).

More data on that piece of history, and a hypothesis to explain it, here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/

mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.

France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but Paris or other large cities.

In contrast, Germany historically consisted of thousands of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of local importance and each held authority of some sort. The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort of conflict.

throw-the-towel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".

tempay 3 hours ago | parent [-]

As with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not:

https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra...

More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.

throwaway85825 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Won't do or won't do for slave wages?

tempay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't comment outside of Geneva but it's hardly "slave wages":

* https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-labour-mi...

* (scroll to the cost breakdown) https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us

throwaway85825 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A better definition of slave wages is:

After food, shelter and necessities is there something left over? Lately consuner spending is increasingly debt indicating that its not break even.

tempay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> consuner spending is increasingly debt

Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world precisely to try and avoid the "working poor".

Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme and totally absent in many countries.

throwaway85825 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>locals largely won't do

This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.

jjk166 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

> This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.

There can be situations where the market for a particular type of labor does not exist. Populations aren't infinite, and if there are enough good paying, desirable jobs for full employment, then there may be no one available to do a job economically.

For example let's imagine a hypothetical town where only residents of the town are allowed to work in the town, though they can provide services to those outside of the town. Let's say 100 people live in this town, and they are all doctors. There is a hospital in this town that needs 100 doctors to run. There are other jobs to be done in this town - someone needs to pick up trash, someone needs to mow lawns, someone needs to sell food, etc. Now if you pay someone a doctor's salary to pick up trash, they could potentially leave the hospital to do that job instead; but then the hospital is understaffed. Something isn't going to get done; indeed in this scenario where there are a lot more jobs to be done than people to do them, a lot of stuff isn't going to get done, no matter how good the pay is, and the jobs that are done will be insanely expensive.

In this case you would simply allow people from outside the town to work in the town, or get more people to move into town. If you scale up this scenario to cities, provinces, and ultimately nations, it's clear that at some point you must choose between structural unemployment (ie number of workers greater than number of jobs to be done), bullshit jobs (people who would be structurally unemployed are hired to do unnecessary tasks), a managed economy (employment opportunities restricted to ensure necessary work gets done at any population level), or immigration/emigration of labor (labor supply varies to meet demand) regardless of wages. In practice you'll likely get a combination of the above.

dyauspitr 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi

selfmodruntime 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

citation needed