Because, there is another option: accept a lower standard of living. And depending on what your standard is, it can be a perfectly acceptable (even desired) option.

This is it. We westerners, and very especially Americans live an incredibly inflated lifestyle. Walmarts stuffed tonthe roof with useless shit, people mistaking luxuries with necessities and whinging like hell when they can't have their air conditioned 3500sqft house stocked with 3 refrigerators and 9 tvs.

We waste an absolutely disgusting amount of absolutely everything that we produce. No one values anything, and everything is replaceable.

It's sad but I feel like a really and very hard depression would likely be the absolute best thing for this planet and our species in the long term. We are so fat and so lazy and so entitled. It's hard to imagine getting to a more efficient future without a hard cultural reset.

I think in the long term there is no real solution to making the planet and humans coexist in a sustainable manner. Yes, as Covid showed, stark decrease in human activity is very good for the planet. But it is not a long term solution, a depression wouldn’t be either.

I hope I’m wrong but if not, we are on the path for shooting ourselves into oblivion in not so long. Planet will need a couple million years to recover, but I have good hope it will.

Because immigration (i.e. increasing the labor pool, increasing competition in the labor market, increasing demand for housing) actively harms the average member of the electorate? I fail to see how working _more_ hours is a consequence of fewer workers chasing the same number of jobs (unless you believe the average non-western immigrant comes here, starts a business, and employs at least one native born person.)

Don’t know where you live but where I live there is simply no one born here willing to do the hard jobs: harvesting, kitchen cook, cleaning, construction, etc. Only immigrants. There is beging this a lack of workforces at all levels, it’s scary, even hair dressers can’t find people. And additionally population is aging fast, no one left to pay the pensions, 2 worker pay the pension of one retired person – which is not possible and hence pensions is the biggest deficit of the government. Immigration is a net positive here, but it scares people, because right extremists make it look scary with lies, like the one the triggered the riots in England recently.

I live in Germany.

No one born there (and where I'm from as well) is willing to do the hard jobs at the current market rate. Every conversation about a "labor shortage" seems to disingenuously pretend that wages are a fixed part of the equation.

Wages never rise because everyone falls for the propaganda that immigration is a "net positive" (and it is only a net positive for the capital-owning class who sell out their countrymen in favor of lower employment costs.) Do non-western immigrants in Germany contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits (on average?)

Ok, valid point.

Problem 1 is, no one is willing to pay goods at the price that would result from paying the required wage to get “native” workers.

Problem 2 is, there isn’t enough workers in a lot of professions. Raising wages isn’t going to make workforce appear out of thin air.