I am a mod here and this comment was reported for Nazi rhetoric.
While I’m certainly sorry to see anti-immigration sentiment I would rather show a realistic perspective of immigration. It’s easy to see that immigration is a positive for the host county and for the world, especially for refugees.
Thankfully Sweden seems to have a generally healthy perspective on welfare and immigration.
Here is an interesting meta study on research into the Swedish immigration debate.
In the most direct measurement, the immigrant populations that take the longest time make net positive tax contribution are refugees.
The low employment rate among refugees in their first years in the host country means that average incomes were low in these years. Although incomes grew steadily as the years passed, it took almost 20 years for the average refugee in Sweden to make a positive annual net contribution to public finances. The simple explanation for this is that a larger proportion of migrants have been active in sectors that are socially necessary but low paid, in service occupations such as healthcare, transport, restaurants, and so on (Frödin & Kjellberg, Citation2018).
I hope Swedish people feel pride in the refugees they are able to host. It’s impressive that despite refugees working a lot of jobs that are needed for society to function (letting other high tax payers have nice lives) but are low pay, they are still able to become net contributors to public finances in 20 years.
The paper points out how integrating immigrants into the workforce quickly is important but that can be challenging because refugees often come in influxes.
And education is a big part of finding work:
And in conclusion it says:
With this as a central point of departure, an aging population is considered by far the most important motivation for increasing immigration. From this perspective, migration can be justified both from a short-term perspective, as its net contribution to the public finances can be crucial for the financing of welfare, and from a long-term perspective, as it can have clearly positive effects on the supply of labour. This is mainly for demographic reasons as the vast majority of migrants are of young working age. Among migrant groups, two categories are clearly favourable to government finances: highly educated migrants and labour migrants. Objections are often raised to the third category – refugee immigrants – who are argued to have high introduction costs, mainly in the initial years of residence.
A one-sided focus on the average cost burden of refugee migrants that only compares their costs during the years of stay in Sweden with the costs of the native population during the same period is highly misleading. Such a comparison ignores the extensive costs to which comprehensive welfare systems are exposed. For the Swedish welfare system, with its generous benefits and welfare services, life cycle welfare expenditure includes a social safety net during childhood and adolescence. This provides a more comparable picture of migrants’ actual burden on welfare programmes in relation to citizens covered by social protection from ‘the cradle to the grave’. The significant number of refugees who migrate as adults imposes no costs at all on the public finances of the host country during these years. Thus, if their costs to the welfare system are related to their age, the average total cost burden on the welfare system will be significantly lower than that of the native population.
In sum, and as Scocco and Andersson (Citation2015) and Ruist (Citation2019) note, the effects of immigration on the economy are exaggerated in the political debate. The growing opposition to immigration can be explained by the failure of the political establishment to implement the rapid inclusion of newly arrived migrants into the labour market. The literature on the impacts of migration does not find any trends that could seriously threaten the sustainability of welfare states. Modern welfare states do not experience any dramatic economic problems due to immigration. In economic terms, immigration can affect central government finances by a few percentage points, plus or minus, depending on the success of the employment policy and whether the labour market succeeds in quickly absorbing new migrants, but can by no means be considered a threat to financial stability.
Learning isn’t a guarantee of a higher income. It might help temporarily, but when all the poor are educated they will still be on the bottom of the economic pyramid, and possibly less complacent about their situation having been educated…
You are ignoring the systemic effects: a society were everybody is highly educated is a society were everybody can worked in higher value added areas hence the entire society is actually richer.
Even those who are poor in a highly educated society relatively to others in the same society are still better off compared to people in societies which do not invest in Education - even when that society focuses more on quality of life than wealth production, they live much better because of that society’s higher productive capabilities.
The biggest difference between the US and most of Europe when it comes to Education is that the former looks at it as a way for individuals to become more competitive in the job market versus other individuals (a perspective also displayed in your posts) whilst the latter sees Education as a strategic investment to raise the productivity of the entire country, often beyond the mere “money making” and into quality of life domains.
Sweden invests in Education because it allows the country to more and better host higher return Economic areas this pulling the country up, whilst in the US beyond a certain point it has to be individuals investing themselves in their own Education purely for their own personal good.
I think Sweden has actually become more like America in that regard. Young people are not thinking about the country, they want to get rich quick, just like in America.
The culture in Sweden is also highly americanized, if thats a word for it… American tv, American social media, American attitudes.
Everyone realizes that going to work for a corporation as a salary slave is not the way to get rich. Its the same thing in the US with the gen z generation as we have here.
Sweden is like mini America but with enough socialism that companies cant do what they want, and people have access to laws to protect their jobs to a degree, as well as free healthcare, parental leaves and vacations.
Also public transport. But America is better for those super high salaries. They hardly exist here.
I’ve lived in 3 countries in Europe for long periods in the last 3 decades and at least in the last two - Britain and Portugal - also saw the “Americanization” of society.
This was especially glaring in Portugal as there I was returning from 2 decades abroad, which made more visible the changes to an American model that happened in the meanwhile, including in terms of how people’s behaviour has shifted more towards that way of thinking, very similarly to what you’re describing for Sweden.
Even the politics has shifted to American style sleaze talk and even lying - back in the day politicians would resign when caught lying, nowadays that’s just Monday morning.
Personally I find it even more shocking for Portugal since IMHO, Portugal was always culturally more backwards than Northern Europe (specifically in comparison with The Netherlands, were I also lived and hence can compare both countries from personal experience) and American ways are (also IMHO) even more regressive than Portugal in general (at least when it comes to interpersonal relations, where the American way glorifies sociopathic behaviours whilst traditionally the Portuguese way was a lot about taking in account the feelings of others, though also with a big chunk of “what will people think” that moderates acts of screwing up other people directly), though it’s a different kind of regressiveness, and the Americanization of Portugal coincides with what by most metrics (such as PP income, inequality, social mobility, quality of life, violent crime) is the country stopping it’s progress (that had been going one since Fascism was overthrown in 74) and now going back.
Again, comparing like to like with The Netherlands (which has gone down a route similar to what you describe for Sweden), I think how bad Americanization was for the various countries in Europe very much depends on how advanced they were in terms of both the wealth of their society and popularity of politicies to benefit the many as a group, hence countries like Portugal have so far suffered more than The Netherlands (and, it seems, Sweden) purelly because of having started this period already well behind those countries.
Above I provided some research into this debate. It didn’t have any information on people “obviously not educating themselves”. Would you be able to cite some research?
Removed by mod
You made negative claims about a vulnerable group of people.
People have been engaging you in good faith and you responded with sarcasm and trolling.
Let’s let things cool off a little.
I am a mod here and this comment was reported for Nazi rhetoric.
While I’m certainly sorry to see anti-immigration sentiment I would rather show a realistic perspective of immigration. It’s easy to see that immigration is a positive for the host county and for the world, especially for refugees.
Thankfully Sweden seems to have a generally healthy perspective on welfare and immigration.
Here is an interesting meta study on research into the Swedish immigration debate.
In the most direct measurement, the immigrant populations that take the longest time make net positive tax contribution are refugees.
I hope Swedish people feel pride in the refugees they are able to host. It’s impressive that despite refugees working a lot of jobs that are needed for society to function (letting other high tax payers have nice lives) but are low pay, they are still able to become net contributors to public finances in 20 years.
The paper points out how integrating immigrants into the workforce quickly is important but that can be challenging because refugees often come in influxes.
And education is a big part of finding work:
And in conclusion it says:
Removed by mod
Yes, you could (should) have stopped there
Removed by mod
Learning isn’t a guarantee of a higher income. It might help temporarily, but when all the poor are educated they will still be on the bottom of the economic pyramid, and possibly less complacent about their situation having been educated…
Removed by mod
You are ignoring the systemic effects: a society were everybody is highly educated is a society were everybody can worked in higher value added areas hence the entire society is actually richer.
Even those who are poor in a highly educated society relatively to others in the same society are still better off compared to people in societies which do not invest in Education - even when that society focuses more on quality of life than wealth production, they live much better because of that society’s higher productive capabilities.
The biggest difference between the US and most of Europe when it comes to Education is that the former looks at it as a way for individuals to become more competitive in the job market versus other individuals (a perspective also displayed in your posts) whilst the latter sees Education as a strategic investment to raise the productivity of the entire country, often beyond the mere “money making” and into quality of life domains.
Sweden invests in Education because it allows the country to more and better host higher return Economic areas this pulling the country up, whilst in the US beyond a certain point it has to be individuals investing themselves in their own Education purely for their own personal good.
I think Sweden has actually become more like America in that regard. Young people are not thinking about the country, they want to get rich quick, just like in America.
The culture in Sweden is also highly americanized, if thats a word for it… American tv, American social media, American attitudes.
Everyone realizes that going to work for a corporation as a salary slave is not the way to get rich. Its the same thing in the US with the gen z generation as we have here.
Sweden is like mini America but with enough socialism that companies cant do what they want, and people have access to laws to protect their jobs to a degree, as well as free healthcare, parental leaves and vacations.
Also public transport. But America is better for those super high salaries. They hardly exist here.
I’ve lived in 3 countries in Europe for long periods in the last 3 decades and at least in the last two - Britain and Portugal - also saw the “Americanization” of society.
This was especially glaring in Portugal as there I was returning from 2 decades abroad, which made more visible the changes to an American model that happened in the meanwhile, including in terms of how people’s behaviour has shifted more towards that way of thinking, very similarly to what you’re describing for Sweden.
Even the politics has shifted to American style sleaze talk and even lying - back in the day politicians would resign when caught lying, nowadays that’s just Monday morning.
Personally I find it even more shocking for Portugal since IMHO, Portugal was always culturally more backwards than Northern Europe (specifically in comparison with The Netherlands, were I also lived and hence can compare both countries from personal experience) and American ways are (also IMHO) even more regressive than Portugal in general (at least when it comes to interpersonal relations, where the American way glorifies sociopathic behaviours whilst traditionally the Portuguese way was a lot about taking in account the feelings of others, though also with a big chunk of “what will people think” that moderates acts of screwing up other people directly), though it’s a different kind of regressiveness, and the Americanization of Portugal coincides with what by most metrics (such as PP income, inequality, social mobility, quality of life, violent crime) is the country stopping it’s progress (that had been going one since Fascism was overthrown in 74) and now going back.
Again, comparing like to like with The Netherlands (which has gone down a route similar to what you describe for Sweden), I think how bad Americanization was for the various countries in Europe very much depends on how advanced they were in terms of both the wealth of their society and popularity of politicies to benefit the many as a group, hence countries like Portugal have so far suffered more than The Netherlands (and, it seems, Sweden) purelly because of having started this period already well behind those countries.
citation needed
Removed by mod
Above I provided some research into this debate. It didn’t have any information on people “obviously not educating themselves”. Would you be able to cite some research?