Immigration Crisis or an Economic Opportunity?

As noted above, Social Security in the US - despite not being means tested, or restricted to the old age pension originally envisioned - is quite cheap: a little over 4% of GDP, rising to about 6% as the baby boomers retire.

In this respect it resembles other socialized old age welfare setups in other First World countries, differing primarily in being supported so far by heavily taxing the incomes of the working class, and specifically exempting the incomes of the rich.

What is currently destroying the economy of the US, besides major military ventures financed by credit and the failure to regulate the financial industry's machinations (thereby starving the economy of productive investment and ballooning the public debt), is the huge and rapidly growing cost of medical care insurance - which is not socialized, and is protected by law from being curbed by socialization in either the care or the insurance aspects.

So in wingnut world young men control the starting of families, and commonly base their decisions not to have children on the expectation of receiving Social Security when they are 65.

 

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Let me see if I have this correct: Germany is a wonderful example of Progressive Socialism. And Socialism has a huge (supposed positive) impact on society at all levels (which is why we should be Socialists, just ask Bernie). Oh, but then it suddenly and magically is no way having any impact at all on the vast number of Germans choosing not to start a family? Even though Socialism has a huge impact on society, it somehow has absolutely no impact on probably the most important decision any person will make in life: to create another life and start a family with someone. It's not like you'd ever take the entire social structure / progressive socialism into account for the most important decision of your life.

Yup, right....

LOL

 

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No chance. Do I have to read it?

Nope. It's ordinary, and flawed, and largely capitalist.

That's not why, according to Sanders.

It seems to encourage them by making it easier to start a family, although not enough to overcome other factors such as increased wealth for those who delay.

About here let's recall your actual claim: that the prospect of Social Security payments in old age - not "socialism" - was influencing young men - not "persons" - to forego even planning to start families of their own.

Try to remember at least what you yourself posted, ok?

On that topic, btw, do you recall a few weeks ago on this forum a thread made when some stats came out on the influence of the fall of the Socialist government of East Germany - socialism collapsed, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the East Germans became capitalists like the West Germans were and are?

Do you recall what the effect was on the birth rate? It fell. It fell not because of anything young men thought or did. It fell because young women - who are in charge of this decision, pretty much, in decent civilizations such as socialist East Germany's - lost the security of the poor but predictable socialist State. And the interesting side effect was that this lack of security affected some women more than others; in particular, prudent and responsible young women postponed getting pregnant, while the irresponsible and imprudent did not. And it turns out that irresponsibility and imprudence - described by the study authors as "risk-taking behavior", involving as it did drugs and promiscuity and irregular work histories and so forth - is heritable to a degree. So there was for a while a crime wave in East Germany, and poor educational diligence among teenagers, and drug problems in the schools, and so forth, which is just now fading a bit. But it followed from a drop in the willingness of young women to start families.

So there you had an example of the influence of the loss of a form of socialism on this very important decision, right in front of you in the very country you chose for example. What conclusion would you draw?

 

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Link the article and I will read it.

I do agree that much of our behavior has a heritable component, possibly 50 - 80%, but this can be modified epigentically, and this is not well understood. Even our gut flora may have an affect on gene expression during early development.

Yes, it seems reasonable that responsible women would delay having children until they felt psychologically, that their future was secure. What social securities were afforded to women in E. Germany (which was poor) that are not afforded to women in W. Germany or Sweden (which were rich) for that matter?

 

I'd agree there does have to be a limit, but that's another topic of conversation.
The only thing I'll say about it is that yes, there does seem to be evidence that as economic security increases, populations go down, the resulting economic issues being of the things we spoke about earlier.
But given that the population is only decreasing among those nations which already have economic security, one does have to wonder how much cultural erosion will occur in those nations before it truly takes effect globally.
It's one thing to say global populations will go down eventually so there isn't anything to be worried about in terms of overpopulation, but it is another to contemplate which cultural influences will have majority representation by then.

I think this is one of the reasons for disillusionment with left-leaning European governments, at present, and also for the rise extreme right-wing parties - and extreme right-wing dissent becoming more evident.
The theory is that representative democracy is supposed to be... well, representative, of the majority at least. The issues really begin when that government is perceived as being not really representative of a clear majority any longer.

Political parties come into power often on the back of many policies, not just one. It is quite possible to vote for a party on the strength of supporting one policy while disagreeing with another, by way of example.

There is a sizeable chunk of the population in Europe (alone) who no longer feel represented. Merkel's party was re-elected after the introduction of that policy, but it becomes clear that it was not on the back of her open border policies. There was a significant upsurge in support for the Greens, the AFD, and the Free Democratics.
From that, one might determine something of importance - that there was a considerable backlash against the CDU's free border policy is not really in dispute.

The dispute, rather, came about more as a result of the voting public not being united as to how that discontent should be demonstrated, with a specific reference to right-wing anti-immigration parties not being seen as the right way to go, in spite of at least some sympathy in that direction.

Effectively, in splitting support for anti-immigration among several parties as a result of varying degrees of distaste and a clear unwillingness to risk voting for the extreme opposite, Merkel was re-elected.
I might even go a step further and say that intelligent voters are being under-represented, in that the system, as it stands, actually worked against them - with regard to that one policy.
At the very least, one might assume the German government would pay attention to that. But they do not appear to be doing so.
As you said: The attitude seems to be one of "Too bad". It is creating some anger, isn't it?

Yet the left will continue to hold it up as an example of support for Merkel and the CDU.
The result? Open borders continues as a policy. This isn't what the voting public desired, necessarily, but it now serves as confirmation to those who implemented it and those who support them in it, and eliminates any notion of erring on the side of caution with regard to immigration... for another few years at least.

Concern over what is "going to happen during the next few years" is a reason for much anger, resentment and resignation.

I should have paid this more attention a few days ago as well.
I do agree with you that there are many ostensibly supporting the left who buy into the whole "white man's burden" argument without really being aware of it, or without paying too much attention to any potential consequences.

But this is where you're going to lose them. Scare tactics do work, but you need to understand your audience.
They're more a reinforcement for an already-existing opinion, than a counter-argument.

Starts to look a bit like McCarthyism in the fifties, when you resort to that.

 

I got all that from a thread on this forum, that I believe you posted in. But anyway: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp436.pdf

The effect carries over into economic crash areas in general, apparently - such as the inner city slums of the American midwest, crashed again in 2008.

Michael was doing his targeted incomprehension, posts mean what he wants them to mean so he can inveigh against them straight from the can, thing, and there's no reason for anyone else to buy into that. Billy was not posting from a white man's burden perspective.
Neither is Billy a supporter of "the left", however, so if you want to go sailing off on that route you won't hit the dock immediately.

 

I didn't say anything about Billy T, I was addressing Michael. I don't have any real idea where Billy's sympathies lie, I haven't seen enough of him to judge.
I do know that he did indeed exhibit some aspects of the White Man's burden argument, though, in that post of his Michael quoted.

Michael is concerned with the cultural damage caused by immigration, Billy T told him we need some patience, Michael doesn't think we have the time to be patient because the damage is occurring now.
Michael's is a viewpoint with which I do have some sympathy, even if I'm a little dubious of his focus on occasion. I've said as such more than once.

I'm well aware of who Michael is, so if this continual throwing yourself in front of my face is some bid for me to pay attention to his failings, you're wasting your time.

With regard to that sailing boat reference, though, I have a preference for those will actually sail, as opposed to those who are too afraid to even step into the boat.

 

He didn't. Read the post without Michael's editing or commentary.

That wasn't Michael's (Or Billy's, exactly) point. He's not arguing for slowing the current approach, or speeding up the handling of bad stuff by government. He's arguing for blaming bad immigration stuff on Government, and abandoning the entire form of government involved based on his notion that it leads to this immigration foolishness.

Because this is not an opportunity/crisis alternative, as per the OP, in that view. It is a moment in a continuing disaster created by the existence of national governments.

 

What, this bit?

 

Among others. Mainly due to the Government's monopoly over money, now Fiat currency. This is power enough to influence almost every single major decision made by almost every citizen within it's domain.

For example, the Government makes 'payments' to single mothers who have no idea who their child's father is. Government pays them more for having more children. And even more when the father is in prison. Millions of women and men have altered their behaviors to seek economic advantage, in this case, single mother farms. Oh course, not having a father at home, is the single best predictor of a male child ending up in prison. Welfare Ghettos are made for and sustained by Progressive Socialists, who benefit greatly by their votes maintaining their position in Government.

In a free society, one without income tax, a combination of charity and *GASP* social ostracism would have limited such irresponsible behaviors to a minimum. Instead, we have a Government that rewards the most degenerate of behaviors. And when it attempts to play the role of moral guidance via our morality Laws, we end up with the Prison Industrial Complex. We have Police and Prison Guards Unions BOTH paying for ads to perpetuate the drug laws.

That's how sick our society has become thanks to a century of Progressive Socialism. Beginning with their Progressive Central Bank and Progressive Income Tax.


Another example (in Germany), from BreitBart: Child Bride Legally Married Under Sharia Law, German Judge Rules

See, in the Progressive's mind, social standards are trumped by 'cultural diversity' - even when it violates the most basic of human decencies. In this case, a child being married to her pedophile cousin. Oh, you'll not find any Feminists fighting for this girls' rights. No no no, they're too busy running the true evils of the world into the ground: The evil white German and Swedish males.

Bye Bye Germany, social standards are about to go off a cliff. The 1000s of years Europeans spent killing one another to establish said social values, is about to go up in a puff of Progressive Socialism. Destroyed in a single generation. And for what? A pathetic promise made to your grandparents about their pensions 30 years ago. How sad.

 

As never happened before, in all the centuries before income taxes.

Because the rich are human beings, you see. Just as under national enforced communism, the poor turn out to be human beings - do you remember that observation?

Nonsense. You just won't find "feminists" universal occupants of the German judicial establishment.

Any more than you will find feminists rampant among the citizenry of societies without income tax, reliant on charity and social ostracism to enforce their customary child marriages.

Of course a decent and reasonable nation is going to have a lot of trouble if it imports too many people from one of your "free" cultures.

 

Firstly, argument from History is weak. Worse than that though, is you're wrong. It did, and a lot better.

Not that it matters, we have your cherished Progressive Income Tax and Progressive Central Bank and have lived through over a century of the Progressive agenda; the never ending and ever expanding progressive regulations, police State, Wars on everything and everyone. The erosion of our so-called money along with our civil liberties. Our Government Schools barf out graduates of such low quality that parents are resorting to paying for them - while homeschooling. So, if you like our Government-run society, then that's just great. Because we're getting more Statism.
Not less, more.
Much more.

So, good for you guys.

As for the OP: Let's see how Progressive Socialism works out for Sweden and Germany across the next 25 years. As their welfare states go bankrupt. Let's see what they do with their welfare ghettos and no-go zones. Oh, that's right, the Progressive Swedish are already privatizing their public pools to keep out the undesirables. Meanwhile, Progressives in Germany are marrying pedophiles to children. A recipe for success I am sure.

 

Not against somebody who wants to return to the methods and economies of the past.

No, it didn't.

No, we don't, and haven't, actually. Not since Reagan. We've been seeing them rolled back - the US tax system is currently almost flat nationally, and regressive locally. The Central Bank has been in the hands of private bankers, led for decades by Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan, recently by others who likewise act contrary to ordinary Keynesian economic principles. My economic and structural agenda has not only not been furthered, it has been repeatedly blocked, discarded, rolled back, revoked, and otherwise rejected and damaged and reversed, for my entire adult life.

Why don't you know this basic stuff?

Whatever they have been doing has already proven itself, for 150+ and 60+ years respectively. No mistakes they make with immigration now can erase that record, and no folly of careless immigration denigrates their various economic and political structures, or their governing ideologies, in the slightest.

 

Would that be the one where the Central Bank destroyed Germany's economy leading to WWI? Or our Central Bank expanding the money supply to return the British Pound to the equivalent value prior to WWI culminating in the greatest depression in human history. Or would it be modern day Venezuela? How about Zimbabwe? Or how about our Central Bank causing the housing bubble and then bailing out the richest criminal bankers in history?

Speaking of Central Banking, it's the reason why there is migrant crisis. Without Central Banks, Germans and Swedes would have had to make rational decisions about their future beloved pensions and acted accordingly. And we would not be able to fund a trillion dollar war machine destabilizing the middle east without sever consequences. Without the ability to sell debt on future generations, and then use the Police State to collect, life in the USA would be much fairer. Instead, a century of Progressivism has given us the largest disparity between rich and poor, functional illiteracy rates worse now, then in 1013, and the largest prison population in human history. Single motherhood has all but become the norm. Drug dependency is worse now than when the so called War on Drugs / Rx Regulatory Capture began. These are facts. This is what 'Democratic' Socialism has brought us. And, it's doing a fantastic job of destroying Europe. So much so, the English will probably leave the EU.

But, you needn't worry, we have Central Banks, have lived with Progressive Socialism for about 100 years - which was significantly ramped up in the late 60s early 70s; giving us our "modern" Centrally Planned economy, DoED and generational welfare ghettos - along with the PIC, Drug War, MIC and never ending Oil Wars.

Yay for you Progressives. Generations of illiterate Americans have you to thank.

We had plenty of charity and the world's most prosperous economy before we had a Central Bank. As a matter of fact, we became the richest nation in history BEFORE we had a Progressive Central Bank and Income/Labor Tax. We invented everything from airplanes to electricity, movies to the assembly line, all without a Central Bank or Income Tax.

But, that's not my argument. Unlike you (and Slave owners) I'm not making an argument from History. Which is weak. I'm making a moral argument. Income Tax is immoral, and it is.

LOL

We can watch as the beloved Progressive Socialistic Paradises Germany and Sweden, poster Children for Progressive "Democratic" Socialism - play out. And thank the Gods too. They'll make excellent examples to model future decisions on.

 

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LOL

 

Please. A prosperity based on immigration of "diverse" (desperate and degraded and religiously fanatic) cultures, slavery and abusive "share-cropping", and unexploited disease-conquered land given away for free (along with a mule and sundries, on occasion);

and even then, in the best possible circumstances, charity was not enough to keep old people from commonly dying of malnutrition and hypothermia, the many children of unwed mothers from orphanages with very high child mortality rates (survival rates equivalent in some cases to the survival rates at one of the milder WWII German concentration camps for Jews), the poorhouse from being feared as a fate, a large population of the homeless and insane from existing in the lower class parts of town, and the frontier from accumulating tens of thousands of the short-lived "socially ostracized" who would otherwise have been doing what outlaws do in the settled regions.

That's good, because the many paragraphs you devote to historical claims - a large part of your posting - are primarily bizarre repetitions of multiply debunked wingnut fantasy, in which - say - things like slavery, huge and bloody wars, banking crashes and impoverishment, illiteracy and starvation and misery and disease and the like, are simply overlooked, and events that never took place and situations that never existed substituted for them. You can't make an argument from "history" like that, and it's good you don't try.

But neither have you made a moral argument. Assertion is not argument, after all. We in the audience have long been aware of your obsession with income taxation, as your feedstock of corporate capitalist "intellectual" efforts directs your attention in these political times, but so far no actual argument has appeared. You appear to find it "immoral", because the receivers of income in the American economy are "innocent", but nothing in that repeated rant makes any sense as yet. In what way is the employer of a machine, or a building, or an economic and legal system, provided by others, not obligated to pay for the use of it and profiting by it?

Because that is your denigrating observation of the great unwashed and unwhite horde whose degradation of Germany and Sweden you await with satisfaction, so far: that they will not keep their end of the bargain with the society they have entered, they will take advantage and not pay their way. Are they, too, innocent? Would it be immoral of Germany to deport them, or jail them if they insist on attempting to mooch and leech?

Say they collapse. Many generations of burgeoning prosperity from very difficult starting points, only brought down to US levels at the last by a couple of foolish immigration decisions.

There are dozens and dozens of countries in this world in envy of that, whose people would give quite a bit to achieve half of that. Is that what you meant?

 

LOL
You could just as well as be referring to the Greek Golden Age or the Roman Empire.

Income Tax and Central Banks destroyed the German economy, ushering in WWI and followed that up with the Great Depression and WWII, culminating in the nuclear bombing of cities filled with civilians in Japan.


You know, there's an argument that's been made, that the primary reason why the people of the Roman Empire never invented the steam engines that led to the first industrial revolution, is because of the abundance of Slaves. There was no need to deal with the social problems that arise, so long as there was a plentiful supply of Slaves. Thus, there was no market for machines (although there were a few steam machines and batteries that were invented) so long as human Slavery was there to supply the needed labor. So no one invented them.

Reliance on Centralized violence (Government) in the form of fiat currency (Central Banks/Income Tax/Bonds) not only eliminates the need to invent new better and fairer currencies, it undermines any attempts to deal with our social problems morally - even turning Charity into tax scams. Few people will want to invent a new pedagogy when they have to complete with "FREE" Government Schools that control the markets through Certification and Regulatory Capture that favors Rent-Seekers. And guess what? Rich Rent-Seekers want ANYTHING BUT a fairer level playing field. People aren't going to compete in a market where they can't make enough to eat. The only reason many do so for schooling, is (generally), because they happen to be parents. Thus, they're willing to make the personal sacrifice.