Depending on how the pension system is setup, it could become an indefinite pyramid scheme. You end with countries like Canada (and many in places like Europe) constantly importing immigrant labor just to prop up the older generations' retirement. It kicks the ball down the road.
Yes, but that's the biggest EU countries and they take a lot of migrants. Wikipedia says 18% of Germany population are first-generation immigrants. In comparison, in US it's only 14%. For the whole EU the number is around 11%.
> generally Europe is very anti-immigrant.
From what I know about "how to legally immigrate to US" vs "how to legally immigrate to Europe", the latter is much easier. The public sentiment might be there, but the laws say the other way.
Remember that EU has a free flow of work force, so I expect lots of those 18% will come from Netherlands or France.
In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
What's the point for the native citizen of Netherlands or France in moving to Germany? The quality of life and salaries are similar, but the culture context is just so different between these countries. Completely different languages, different customs, etc. The numbers surely confirm that - the France is in the bottom of the list, and Netherlands are not even included. [1]
Anyway, out of ~14 million foreigners in Germany only 5 million are from other EU states, and most of them (~3 million) are from Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary).
> In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
There are less cultural differences between Sweden, Finland and Norway. At least they have more or less similar languages (ok, Finnish is different, but Sweden is also an official language in Finland).
1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...
Ukraine (oustide EU sofar) is number two on the list afger Turkey and also Russia is pretty far up.
But if you take the broader, official definition then you get something like 30% apparently:
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situ...
Then, why is it misleading to compare Polish and Romanian immigrants to Germany with Mexican immigrants to US?
1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...
I don't know what your experience is, but immigrating legally to the EU is not easy unless you're from a rich country like the US.
If you are thinking like my Portuguese friend complaining about how "hard" it was because it took six months to immigrate to the US, you have no idea how hard it is for other people to come to the US legally.
I'm not talking about filing paperwork taking a long time.
I agree it's harder if you're not from a developed country, but it's hard for a lot of people across the board.
Legally immigrating to the US (getting a residence permit) is either a matter of luck (lotteries), extraordinary skills, very long waiting lists, or a combination of these.
On the contrary, immigrating to the EU is "just" finding a job on the local market and applying for some paperwork. And the EU does not discriminate you on the basis of the country where you've been born.
Anyhow, revisiting the thread I can see that the post I answered to could be meant differently. I thank you for that and would like to advance my apologies to the OP in that case.
...was a response to this quote from original OP:
> generally Europe is very anti-immigrant
and there is "might be there" not "is there" in my post. I just don't really know the public sentiment in Europe enough to argue with original OP, so referred to the laws instead, to show that Europe is not anti-immigrant.
> Combined with a description that seemed to lament the apparent lack of stricter controls led me to question why it would be important where you are born if you obey the law.
It's not! To the contrary, my description was meant to show how harsh US immigration system is compared to the EU's.
> would like to advance my apologies to the OP in that case.
Please, nevermind. Your question was okayish in the context of the thread, plus I'm not the kind of person that can be offended by an Internet discussion.
Are they counting EU citizens living in Germany?
IDK if the book of journalist Robin Alexander "Die Getriebenen" (the driven ones, AKA top German politicians driven by events) was ever translated into English, but that guy had daily access to the Chancellory and describes the situation to a T.
Merkel built her career on media appeasement and an illusion that Germany is in such good hands that nothing untoward can happen to it. It sort-of worked until 2015, when the outside world could not be kept at bay anymore.
The reason why governments promote immigration is because they want to increase the workforce (and in the case of Portugal, replace all the emigrants from Portugal). As the population is aging, if you want to keep cheap labor you need new arms to work, no matter who pays for the pensions.
But the supply of workers needed to provide the basic goods your aging population needs (including healthcare) shrinks and if you don't accept immigrants you end up with labor shortage (Or you raise the salaries for these jobs, but then the rest of your economy disappears because there's no one working there anymore).
The alternative is having the worldview that money is something that shows up on your bank account on the first days of the month.
I think that is how normal people (is the term "unsophisticated investors" or does that mean something importantly different?) view sock market investments — sure, it says your investment may go down as well as up, but how many normal people doing investments act like that's true?
Even one step up from that, my dad's advice to me was: "Invest in Lloyds bank, if they go under we have bigger problems". We had bigger problems.
(To riff off what some ancient dead Greek philosopher said, the only reason I can meaningfully regard myself as better informed than most, is that I am aware of how little I know).
Similar thing happened e.g. after fall of USSR -- elderly people simply became poorer with way less buying power they expected.
Two problems with this:
First, it will get small enough that you won't have a retirement and will work till you die.
Second, reducing pensions tends to be quite unpopular, and when chasing profits for the current quarter, CFO's don't care about the unsustainability of pensions decades down the road. By the time they have to deal with it, it's too late.
Oregon still has a defined benefits pension for its workers, and the problem is here and now. Small towns cannot afford to hire more firefighters, police, etc as their population grows because more and more of the money they have is going into paying out the defined pensions. They keep getting around this problem by taking out more loans to sustain those pensions. Despite the problem being now, they cannot politically reduce benefits for new hires.
You are describing an implosion - something getting smaller.
For the longest time Chinese made Toyotas were of much lower quality than Japanese ones, simply due to precision robots being used in Japan for work that was being done manually in Chinese factories. Now that China made is also hitting a demographic cliff, one thinks that maybe again automation will take hold…or maybe Africa and India will develop next.
One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. When the stock market is something you hear about in the news, most people don't really care about it. But when you see it in your retirement account balance, it becomes relevant. If outsourcing to China is good for the stock market, you vote politicians who make it easier.