In America on the other hand, land was forcibly taken from the natives by colonists centuries ago. Now, if you’re looking to move to the US, you can expect to work in poverty for a few generations as a second class citizen because that’s just how the “completely fair” capitalist system is set up. Forgetting for a moment that most capital is held by a single ethnicity, and they’re definitely not going to give it away for free.
This is why I think welfare states in Europe are on the wrong path toward trying to integrate foreign populations, not because it takes resources away from native Europeans (the demand side) but because it chokes off the supply side of what immigrants should expect to need to add and contribute to the society.
Why do you think people move to America? It’s partly because it’s the ~only country where it’s reliably possible to move up if you work hard enough.
America is totally a place where a hardworking, intelligent immigrant can become fairly wealthy (assuming no catastrophic bad luck, ie. getting shot because the second amendment says that everyone should have a full-auto assault rifle), but it does not have a monopoly on that :)
Germany is not a land of opportunity, it is a land of relative comfort, with laws and regulations in place to protect the lives of German boomers. Immigrants will never go far in Germany, but they will be relatively comfortable.
The quick answer is "very little".
In this index, the Nordic countries are up top, and the US down at number 27.
A lot of people move to the US because it’s a large and very rich country, with very effective propaganda.
There’s a reason people do their startups in the US, there’s a reason the smart Nords move to the US rather than the other way around. There’s a reason Y Combinator is American.
I encourage you to try innovating in Europe (or just the Nordic countries). Please prove me wrong, for the sake of Europe.
To be fair, it’s certainly not _impossible_ to move up, but it’s relatively much harder, which is the point.
I don't think it is controversial at all to say that the US has much higher economic mobility than Europe.
Uh. I want to hope that this is just a oversimplification intended to get a reaction.
Yes, US does have real issues that it needs to address those in order to make social mobility reasonably attainable. Arguably, it is a lot harder to "make it" now.
I am just an anecdote here, but, I am a first generation immigrant. I have a house, a dog and a partner. Also next week, I am taking my vacation and buying a vette ( well, I scheduled a test drive -- didn't mentally commit to buying yet ). I do not consider myself a second class citizen. I am not rich, but I can't say I am poor either. My kid is starting school ( private, public one is not great here -- ok, but not great ).
I honestly do not think I would have been able to do the same in the old country.
I absolutely accept that I might not be the norm and the current version of capitalism needs to be reined in, but, honestly, if you do want to drive that point, I think you need a better argument.
disagree with this as a French person.
That "ethnic nationalist core" is the French equivalent of Trump supporters who say "America is a white (anglo) Christian nation".
the country currently known as France was originally Celtic Gaul, which was then conquered by Romans, then by various Germanic tribes, most notably the Franks who gave the country it's current name, and didn't really unify until fairly late. Even to this day, you'll find people in Brittany identify more as 'Breton' then French sometimes, despite the efforts of the French state to kill that local identity in the late 19th century. We're a nation of bastards, and always have been.
You'll have sad, sorry people on the far right who conjure up some imaginary ideal of a "true, ethnic French character", but it's like the KKK members in America talking about being 'true Americans'. It's a fallacy.
The people with high levels of melanin with parents that arrived in the country less than 50 years ago playing for our national soccer team are, at least to my mind, just as French as my father whose family lived around Saint-Etienne for the past 300+ years, even if some of them act like the equivalent of "that girl from Jersey shore saying she's Italian because her last name is Spaghetti despite not actually speaking a word of Italian and having never been there" sometimes. :)
>> if you don't accept a countries values, you should not be allowed to move there
But in the positive version, I think in America it is much easier to integrate if you do accept American values than it is in some European countries. And this is because, as you alluded, the only thing that makes America a unified country is a social agreement to certain shared values like rule of law, property rights, freedom to conduct business, freedom of religion, and more recently civil rights. Whereas those ideals are only recently tacked on to (most) European nations, and are not core to their identity; one can accept all those values and still never become German, for instance. Even France where many of those values originated has an ethnic nationalist core which denies integration to those who are not ethnically French. So what I mean is, accepting values in Europe is a start, but it is not enough.
And what we see in ghettoized cultures around the world, from African Americans to Algerians in France, is that the ghetto creates its own logic of rejecting the norms of the society which has rejected it. Welfare is not a substitute for a path toward individual success and acceptance in society; this is perhaps Europe's greatest mistake. On welfare, in the suburbs, who will believe and not mock the supposed values of equality and fraternity? It becomes a generational problem.