The metaphor was about whether allowing unbridled immigration is a good idea. If you want to bring taxes into it, they are not magic. For a given level of government services, you need a certain level of employment in your taxable base. Employment needs to rise with the population or at some point your level of service will become unsustainable. With just under 1/10 (average for entire EU, some member states have it way worse) already unemployed I don’t think the question of how many people can be added to the system without straining it to a breaking point is unwarranted.
Look at the different European employment legislation and look at the correlation between legislation and employment conditions / wages. There is a reason why a skilled Belgian is unlikely to work in Germany, and mostly it’s down to the bargaining power of the labour organisations in the respective countries. E.g. in Germany through Unification with the East, labour organisations have been considerably weakened. Deutsche Bahn is a great example of how to systematically lower wages and working conditions by undermining organised labour.
In the UK Unions have close to zero bargaining power and consequently employment conditions are dismal. Whatever employers can legally get away with, without incurring financial penalties, for e.g. unsafe working practices or employing illegal immigrants they will do!
Let me please clarify: My daughter was an 18 year old German apprentice, not a 56 year old Vietnamese porter, and after two months of considerable trouble of doing the job, and suffering through every minute of it–not because she is a wimp, but because it is a back breaking job, with awful conditions (e.g. she had a boiler explode above her head, because the maintenance of 5 Star establishments are so awful) --she walked out determined never to work in the hospitality industry again. Being an Apprentice with prospects, who has to do the dirty work for a few years, for the fun of associating with glamour, is fundamentally different from doing it for life, which is the lot of most immigrants.
Sorry to be a Thomas but I find it pretty impossible to believe that any German adult with basic education is working full time for €12 000/ year, doing irregular shift work.
As you like evidence I just googled a few occupations: nurse / healthcare assistant / nursery helper / sales person here http://www.gehaltsvergleich.com and the average income of all those occupations is around€2000, and of course non of them have the awful working conditions a Vietnamese porter in a luxury hotel might have.
No one is suggesting that the European Middle / Working class is not better off, than most of the rest of the worlds population, thanks to more generous social legislation, but that doesn’t negate the fact, that the income hasn’t significantly grown in the past 30 years and that conditions for employees have significantly worsened.
As to my privileged position, I just walk around with open eyes, and it really isn’t that hard to see all that subtly ostentatious wealth, that our politicians pander to, while blaming immigrants for every ill.
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Fortress Europe / Festung Europa? Really, you seriously think that we haven’t got enough to share it out?
What are you afraid to loose? The new Küchenmaschine Waschmaschine? Klamotten? The new car? A second holiday? What is the thing, that if you had to share it, your life would become unacceptable, unmanageable, awful?
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Well, you’re wrong. Sorry that you’re moving the goal posts to redefine what you think the term “1%” means. Just about a quarter of the world’s wealth is in the hands of less than a couple of hundred Europeans. That’s exactly what the term was meant to signify.
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Of course trivially there are the top 1% everywhere. And of course there are very rich Europeans. However because of of different income distributions the top 1% in Europe are very different from the top 1% in America both in absolute and in relative terms. Of course you can use it as a US-centric buzzword for people who are so rich that they occupy a position comparable to the “one percent” in America, but then you will end up with a very different demographic and the usefulness is rather questionable.
Yeah because “billionaires that influence the state and own everything” have such a different role in Europe.
Oligarchs are oligarchs.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-06/the-1-may-be-richer-than-you-think-research-shows
The measurement of assets for Europe’s super rich could be even faultier, according to Zucman. About 10 percent of their wealth is in offshore accounts compared with 4 percent in the U.S., he estimates in a May paper. Very rich people also have wealth in foundations and holding companies that make calculations difficult, he said.
It is possible that some European countries, “like the U.K. in particular,” are “almost – or even more – unequal than the U.S.,” Zucman said, a contrast with current data that show they are more wealth-equal.
European surveys do less than U.S. surveys to counter sampling bias and many miss the mark more, Vermeulen found. For example, Austria’s top 1 percent held as much as 36 percent of that country’s wealth in 2013, if adjusted with Forbes’ data. That’s 13 percentage points more than one survey estimate suggests, which would make Austria almost as unequal as the U.S.
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The point is that from a European perspective equating the top income percentile with Oligarchs is ridiculous. The literal 1% simply do not tower over the 99% to the extent that they do in America.
I see you asserting that point. I don’t see you proving it though. It is a worldwide phenomena.
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Strange how European economists don’t seem to agree (nor does Piketty for that matter).
[quote]The measurement of assets for Europe’s super rich could be even faultier, according to Zucman. About 10 percent of their wealth is in offshore accounts compared with 4 percent in the U.S., he estimates in a May paper. Very rich people also have wealth in foundations and holding companies that make calculations difficult, he said.
It is possible that some European countries, “like the U.K. in particular,” are “almost – or even more – unequal than the U.S.,” Zucman said, a contrast with current data that show they are more wealth-equal.
…
For example, Austria’s top 1 percent held as much as 36 percent of that country’s wealth in 2013, if adjusted with Forbes’ data.
[/quote]
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I think we may be talking about two different things. I am not saying that the European super rich don’t exist, are less rich or exert less influence. I am saying that “one percent” is not a reasonable description of them because most people in the literal one percent have little in common with them and are not all that different from “the ten percent”.
It isn’t a “literal” description in the US either. You’re making a contrast that doesn’t exist in reality. It is really the 0.01% in all of these circumstances, even in the US.
So, basically, you’re arguing terminology and not the actual point, which is that a handful of rich fucks control most of the wealth in the world at the expense of everyone else and Europe isn’t immune to this either.
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Well yes, that goes without saying, doesn’t it?
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You’d think that but a lot of folks argue about it.
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Shit. I posted the same thing as you. I’ll have to kill myself now.
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