Europe’s boomtowns warn that far-right anti-immigration policies will stunt growth

With immigration hawks on the rise, the bloc’s tech champions sound the alarm when it comes to recruiting expat workers.

The far right’s recent gains in Europe could be industry’s loss when it comes to recruiting skilled foreign workers.

Leading companies in industrial strongholds such as Germany and the Netherlands — active in areas such as microchip manufacturing — are increasingly worried that anti-immigration policies could make it harder for them to hire the expat workers they need to fill their many boom-driven vacancies.

The companies’ message: Don’t block our ability to tap foreign workers, or it will hamper growth.

Microchip manufacturing, essential for producing everything from cars to smartphones, is poised for rapid expansion in the next few years, especially in already established hubs in Europe, like the greater Eindhoven region in the Netherlands or Dresden in eastern Germany.

Companies in the sector claim that Europe’s demographics and young people’s study preferences mean they can’t rely solely on homegrown talent to meet their employment needs.

sujpr,

Immigration is a good thing.

givesomefucks,

Capitalism only works when there’s a steady stream of new people for the bottom of the pyramid.

When you don’t elevate people and don’t replace them with a new layer, the pyramid scheme falls apart.

It needs constant growth to work, if it doesn’t, well we’re seeing that now.

agressivelyPassive,

Ehm, no.

Germany especially is aging rapidly. We need 400k immigrants per year just to maintain the workforce. No growth, just stability.

Also, we currently need everything. Shelf stockers, plumbers, nurses, developers.

givesomefucks,

It needs constant growth to work,

Is that what you said “no” to?

I was talking about the labor force needing to grow, you said “no” and then explained how the labor force needs to grow…

Which doesn’t make much sense, but I can’t figure out what else you may have meant.

agressivelyPassive,

Are you misreading me on purpose? The 400k people are needed to maintain the current workforce. Admittedly, my English is far from perfect, but as far as I know, “maintain” implies keeping something at a certain level.

givesomefucks,

From what I can tell, we’re saying the same thing

I just don’t know why you started with “no” if that’s the case…

The new bottom layer of the pyramid can come from natives having kids or immigrants.

But for capitalism to work, we need to keep adding a new bottom layer.

agressivelyPassive,

Again, no. It’s not about a bottom layer, it’s everything. It’s rather a side of a pyramid, if you want to stay in the picture.

antidote101,

Fear of deflation shouldn’t be more powerful than having a rational decline. After all Japan had deflation for 30 years thanks to negative interest rates and still managed to keep a western quality of life, so it’s not impossible…

… it’s just Capitalists hate anything that isn’t an infinite growth, infinite demand model.

The only way to liberate everyone is to work less, and hence have some decline in growth. We shouldn’t preach fear around that.

Because between declining birth rates and increasing automation a decline is coming whether we’re ready to accept the role of managing it rationally or not.

agressivelyPassive,

Deflation has nothing to do with it. We’re literally running out of people to wipe old people’s asses.

You need a certain amount of work to keep a society working, and Germany currently does not have that amount of work. Simple as that.

That has nothing to do with growth, just not crumbling away.

antidote101,

So if inflation and deflation aren’t important, just pay elder care workers an amount that makes the job more attractive than most others.

agressivelyPassive,

And what happens then? A few carpenters or electricians retrain to become nurses, and then we have even fewer carpenters than before.

You’d just shift the scarcity around.

antidote101,

Immigration… See the Japanese housing market, which has an abundance.

But also your argument can be made about literally anything but the exact status quo in this current moment.

What’s that someone just quit there fast food - less meals available, scarcity all around!

It’s not a realistic understanding of the world.

xmunk,

You really shouldn’t use Japan as an example for anything economic, they’re overworked, unable to support elder care, and deeply in debt. The reason for the negative interest rates was to avoid defaulting on their bonds.

antidote101,

A country can’t default on bonds to its self. It doesn’t make sense, and out of all the countries in the world the US owes Japan more money than anyone else.

No country on earth has ever gone into hyper inflation due to owing it’s self, there has always been an external force draining it of money… This was not the case with Japan, and so the situation continued for three decades and is called a miracle.

xmunk,

So Japan is deeply in debt but theoretically stable… They’re in a hole and don’t appear to be sinking deeper but it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll ever dig themselves out of the whole - with modest inflation they can keep themselves stable but high inflation will cause their government into an untenable position. Their debt (as of March 2023) was 263% of GDP - that’s an insane amount of debt.

antidote101,

Roughly the same as Argentina but accumulated over a much larger time period.

Of course as a nominal figure I suspect American debt is larger (eg. in name or denomination value, not as a percentage of GDP).

However this will only be a problem for Argentina, as America and Japan are sovereign currencies, mostly in debt to themselves. The main risk of their position is lending downgrades, and buying power downgrades, but they probably won’t matter all that much in any defacto sense.

xmunk,

I agree there are countries in far worse positions but the Japanese debt is rough unless MMT is assumed fully correct and Japan is considered under the cloak of US power projection. Even with those assumptions Japan is in a terrible place for issuing new debt.

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