Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

This is not true. Very many things in this country are owned by entities that are not citizens -- foreign corporations and/or foreign individuals.

> and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.

Sure, some people (some of whom are citizens) own things for which local demand and prices would increase with an influx of new people. Lots of citizens don't own much, and would be competing to purchase those things, and would suffer rather than benefit from the higher prices.

The benefit here is pretty much directly in proportion to current ownership of capital (just like the benefit from greater supply, and therefore lower prices, from labor.)

Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

Aggregate growth doesn't mean everyone gets more; we have a system in which the major holders of capital are very good at capturing output growth.

Policies favoring aggregate growth aren't good for most people without policy reform that alters the way gains from such growth end up being distributed.

All this current immigration system leads to is more Islam and more 3rd world in Europe.

`Hard' as in `cheaper' ?

I don't think anyone wants salaries to go into free-fall but that's not a necessary result of easing immigration.

Take waste collectors, for example:

Very few people want to do it, very few people actually do it. And it is necessary. By our sound logic, their salaries should be soaring, but they're not.

On the other hand, take lawyers in the U.S. A huge number of people want to do it. A huge number of people ends up doing it (I think the number of lawyers tripled in 30 years, for a 40% increase in population), and compared to waste collection, it is not that necessary a profession. But the salaries don't follow. They have probably dropped compared to what a lawyer used to make in the 60's (I'm not sure), but those who end up doing it still make good money.

So it doesn't seem to be a law of nature that is enforced automatically.

What do you think?

As a side note, speaking of governement.. as a teenager, one of the books that were laying around was "The American Challenge" (Le Défi Américain) by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. It was a parallel between European countries and the U.S.A. It also addressed the Japanese and Swedish models, the technology gap (he warned that if Europe let the U.S. get ahead, there will be a time where the gap is simply too big to cross).

It is a very interesting book.

I wish we could figure out a way of "garboing" council road crews. With them you see 5 people standing around watching the one poor apprentice do the work.

If they can land a good job or a partnership. Many struggle[0].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/dealbook/burdened...

Think about it this way, if two countries were to merge, would everyone be worse off because of the increased competition on the job market? No, people would be better off due to the increased amount of trade.

It balances out usually in the positive.

The unpleasant fact is that proper integration costs money - they need to be taught the biggest official language and English, they need to be taught a profitable trade and they need to get up to speed on the domestic culture, which requires history classes etc. The alternative is to create an underclass visibly different to the majority - that doesn't end well.

It feels unfair to pay for outsiders' education, but in the case of Germany (and other low-reproducing countries) it's the only way to make sure there's someone left to pay for tomorrow's pensions

For those selecting to immigrate why not put the onus on them to integrate too? Why should the onus be on the established population to adapt? [That's obviously not appropriate for some classes of migrant like refugees, but I'm sure that's clear.]

>The alternative is to create an underclass visibly different to the majority - that doesn't end well. //

Muslims in the UK often choose to be visibly different to set themselves apart from kafirs; they're not an underclass though. You don't have to wear a shalwar kameez and a big beard or wear a hijab to follow the Koran. [Non-abrogated verses do demand violent oppression of others though]. It's basically cultural AFAICT, predominantly British Islam appears to be about importing Middle-Eastern culture and traditions, like forced marriage, that had previously been forced out of the local culture at great length. Muslims in my city in the UK go "back home" to Pakistan or support the Indian cricket team or whatever, they're not interested in adopting the established UK culture but instead creating a different culture here. Islam is not just a religion it proscribes a legal system which by tradition Muslims are obliged to instigate where ever they are.

Cultures that demand other cultures to be subservient can't integrate in to a multicultural society, it doesn't work. In order to integrate they must change; for Islam that means it must become not-Islam, it needs to deny some of its central tenets to make it compatible with other cultures.

Thankfully most Muslims I meet seem to be not at all like the Mohammed [depicted in the Koran and Hadith] they suppose to try and emulate.

>the only way to make sure there's someone left to pay for tomorrow's pensions //

Pensions are basically a massive pyramid scheme; it's going to fail eventually. The only way it can continue is if there is no limit on availability of natural resources for the manufacture of new stuff on which Western Capitalism appears to depend.

Pensions don't require that. Unlimited aggregate output growth requires that (and, therefore, unlimited per capita consumption growth without proportional decreases in population requires that.)

What's the point of assigning blame? The established population can either close the borders completely, or help immigrants immigrate at their own expense - becuase THEY are the ones who stand to lose or gain the most. Purely as a matter of pragmatism, it's the established residents who will have to pay, as they're the only ones who can. They can also choose to close the borders completely, but I don't think there is any other alternative. To assign blame may make one feel self righteous but it is hardly a solution.

This is a common misconception. You should do some research on what is known as "productivity growth" and then come back for a rational discussion.

"Productivity growth" is my admittedly lazy shorthand for "You cannot ignore the effects that improved productivity has on pensions, especially when by necessity we're talking decade-or-century long timeframes. Even historically modest productivity growth means that if a worker is supporting 1 retiree this year, then next year he can support 1.015 retirees and in 60 years the average worker can support 2.4 retirees. Without mentioning why you (the parent commenter) think that productivity won't continue to grow at at least a very low level over the next several decades, then we can't really have a good discussion about pensions being pyramid schemes."

And that's before we even touch on other topics like the retiree population shrinking as baby boomers start dying over the next 30 years, the double-standard of treating purchases of U.S. Treasury bills by current workers (for U.S. Social Security) as different than, say, a hedge fund buying them, etc.

Bottom line is that pensions are complicated and can't be treated simply as if they were just a regular investment fund or savings account, and it's a waste of time to argue with somebody who just wants to handwave away the differences.

Oh right of course, new areas of industry develop so now all 100 people are still employed and they're producing enough stuff for 10,000 people. But that means they have to also be consuming 100 times what they did. Where is the energy coming from, where are the resources coming from to make this stuff?

Isn't it really the case that improved productivity gets to benefit the wealthy disproportionately - suppose in 60 years a worker can produce 2.4 times more output and thus support 2.4 times more retirees. That's not how it works financially, the worker gets paid maybe enough to support 1.5 times more [through taxation] and the other output increase goes to benefit the wealthy capitalist. Regardless population has tripled in the last 60 years [Wikipedia figures].

In practice state pensions in my country [UK] are reduced year on year and recently pension ages have been increased.

It sounds like you're banking on a sudden reversal of global population growth (the best case scenario of UN statistics shows continued growth for at least a couple more decades; their "best guess" is continued growth until at least 2100).