Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
I suppose I wasn't clear on what that was supposed to mean. Apologies, and more elaborated-
If you want to look at the longer-term implications for your immigration stance and if it will change, don't look at the government's immigration stance with this coalition, look at the new government's willingness to take on debt. The initial government policy position is less important than the fiscal bounds of future government policy positions.
IF the government is willing to take on debt, THEN a significant precondition/contributing element of the continent's general migration pressure will also change, enabling migration change regardless of what the government says starting out. However, IF the government keeps the debt limit, THEN much of the dominant economic case for the migration-based economy remains, regardless of a nominal change in the government's position on migration.
One of the main economic pillars for the pro-migration arguments is that migrants are required to afford the social state within the bounds of the debt limit. For the past decade(s), really since the monstrous costs of East Germany re-incorporation this has generally been the dominant theme of German economic policy- Germany needs the labor force to maintain the export economy to afford the obligations of the state (re-integration then, social welfare for the aging population now), and the bigger that obligation grows the cheaper the labor needs to be. This is one of the reasons why neoliberalism took root in Germany- post-reunification Germany couldn't really afford to subsidize bad east german economics (budget / debt limits), but poorer east germans were a major potential labor force, and neoliberalism was a model to make a virtue out of necessity.
This paradigm is fundamentally changed if you aren't bound by the debt limit. Then you can tolerate larger costs for the same thing, because those costs are offset as debt. As long as you aren't concerned with the economic most efficient thing (the 'neoliberal' thing) in the first place, then you can afford to spend on the politically popular priority (immigration). It may not be the best economic decision, but as you say- ultimately none of that matters if you can't get a handle on immigration. But whether a German government views immigration as The Problem, or The Necessary Part of the Solution, is going to hinge on the view on debt, which for Germans has a practically religious level of significance (for various historical reasons).
Regardless of the origins, though, the government needs to change both the debt and the migration policy to actually carry forward with the migration change as opposed to walking it back on grounds of costs. If debt policy changes but migration policy doesn't, then migration policy is far more prone to compromising without the economic necessity argument.
Hence, watch for the debt policy change first. If that changes, then you know that the economic-paradigm of the German state has fundamentally shifted, and with it new things that were previously economically unjustifiable are not justifiable.
WTF I love debt now.
Seriously though, this is...kinda convincing. I suppose I to need to decide whether to be single-issue on anti-buerocracy or on anti-immigration, and the latter seems more urgent. So you convinced me, for the time being.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Ha. Want me to try to argue you to the other side?
As Remzen noted, debt has some tiny issues associated with it, particularly if done to prop up a social model...
But more seriously- my point is not advocacy here, or even on what the position will be, but more of an indicator to watch for to see how much change is potentially in the making.
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You’re a pretty knowledgeable guy, Dean. But the problem is, the more one knows, the more spurious relationships one’s brain can come up with. There’s really nothing linking german elites’ mistaken evaluation of islamic third-worlders’ productivity, to the debt ceiling, to german unification. They could easily have rejected any one of those, and keep the others. Those are all independent events.
Not really, no. Not in the academic sense of the word.
Independent events are events that, by definition, do not effect each other's odds of occurring. Coins flipping do not shape how the next coin flips.
However, the policy field is a series of events where policies in one context (the past) influence the policies in another (the present) not only because of lessons learned and drawn for, but often because it's the same or generally related groups of people implementing them. Because these variables are shaping the current events, they are- by definition- in a dependent relationship. It is not two way- the events in the past are not influenced by the events in the present- but events in the past and the present influence events in the future.
Which is easier to remember you remember that events happen, but policies are chosen. Often by the same people, who in turn raise and influence similarly minded people who go on to make decisions shaped by their formative professional experiences and professional mentors, who in turn were influenced by their formative experiences and mentors, creating chains of influence.
This is precisely why 'personnel is policy' is such a critical maxim in understanding politics. States are not entities which approach each problem in a vacuum, they are groups of people influenced by past events and people shaped by past events, and as such they are the dependent variables of the non-independent events of their policy choices.
That's bullshit, Dean. You're always long-winded even when you have little to say. They would have taken east germany and showered it with money regardless of the the retirement benefits situation. East germany was full of pensioners anyway, so there was no relative gain to be had from the cheapness of the rest of the labor force. In your theory, east germany is both a cost and a profit, depending on what your theory needs it to be.
You weave these elaborate causal chains which bear no relation to reality. People never believe stuff, they 'have to' believe it, because random cause X is the true cause.
I disagree. They believed in neoliberalism, they believed in the productivity of syrian refugees, they believed that debt is a bad thing. Their opinions, like mine and yours and even the german people's, matter. When they're right, good things tend to happen, when they're wrong, the opposite.
Do not become antagonistic just because you feel like you're losing an argument.
Is someone reporting all your comments? Your mod notes always end up in my janitor duty.
There are a few people who do that when they're feeling petty, yes.
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I am pleased to see you have abandoned the independent versus dependent event line of the argument, which was the only point of the definitional dispute you just replied to.
A definitional point, I will note, you are further validating with your emphasis on the 'they.' When there is a 'they' that can be meaningfully referred to as choosing multiple policies, those policy-events are not independent. The 'they' is the factor linking factor that makes the evaluation of islamic third-worlders’ productivity, the debt ceiling, and german unification a series of dependent rather than independent relationships.
Now, if you want to say the 'they' is a more spurious relationship a brain can come with... go ahead! But if the same group made policies, and those policies shape how the group makes other policies, those policies are in a dependent, not independent, relationship.
And this would just be a dispute on the nature of the history and a misunderstanding of the premise. East Germany was not both a cost and a profit- East Germany was an immediate cost by almost any model, and a longer-term profit opportunity by a neo-liberal model.
The neo-liberal model arguably turned out correct, neo-liberal political influences gained significant power and influence, and their neo-liberal paradigm contributed to later policy decisions... decisions informed not only by dynamics of german reunification, but the historical paradigms (such as post-WW2 immigration policies) that helped drive the reunification neo-liberal models.
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This still doesn't make sense to me, debt spending isn't an alternative for increasing the labor pool. The debt will have to be repaid or it will simply spiral and the welfare state will collapse, and Germany is even more constrained by being part of a shared currency whereas the US is not and the dollar benefits from being the world reserve currency so our money printing decisions are our own and costs can be foisted off on the rest of the world to some degree.
There's also a limit to productivity based on labor that doesn't change by throwing more money at it. If you want a bunch of infrastructure projects military or otherwise and your labor pool is limited spending more money would increase demand for foreign labor and the pull factor, not reduce it.
This is all hinging on the neoliberal assumption that more immigration is an economic boon in the first place as well. When it comes to Europe and most of their migrants being MENA or sub saharan this doesn't seem to be the case.
Being poorer as a state is not lack of alternative. It is just a question of whether what you bought in exchange for it- like say maintaining some quintessential 'German'ness- is worth it.
And that's if you accept the premise of the consequence that debt will simply spiral, as opposed to grow but in a manageable way- or that the social welfare collapse will only occur later, after the current welfare beneficiaries are dead and gone. Their descendants will inherit the debt, but they (might) still be German to do so.
But that's missing the point of what was previously raised. Rather, your counter-argument's premise is lifted from the neoliberal consensus that- using that as a premise- reasons to the economic necessity of mass migration. Which is why the economic justification of migration is, in turn, the welfare state- there's a reason such systems are often called ponzi schemes that need constantly growing worker pools to remain solvent. And in absence of native born workers...
But this isn't a counterargument to the argument that was being made. Rather, the argument you are confused on was making the point that the economic truth of the neoliberal consensus isn't what's relevant, only the government's willingness to ignore the neoliberal consensus (which, among other things, is BOTH pro-migration AND balanced budgets).
Whether they will prove true or not, if you want a government that will ignore the economic warnings of the consequences of removing the migration pillar of the economy, you will need a government that ignores such warnings from the people who make them regardless of whether the warnings are accurate or not.
Sure. But you are thinking in terms of expanding output by expanding spending. That is one use of debt, and the economist-smiled upon version. However, the political economy alternative is to spend more money on the same [thing], but the [thing] being politically preferable despite being more expensive.
Take a job category of your choice. If, say, [plumbers] could be provided by [Germans] for 15, [Poles] for 10, or [Algerians] for 5, the [German] labor option may be 3x more expensive than the [Algerian] option, but it can still be purchased. You'll just have less money leftover to act with it, and the [Germans] doing those things wouldn't be available for other things.
This is the classic union labor dilemma. This is part of why neo-liberal economicsts generally (in a vacuum) support lower labor costs... and mass migration.
But again- if you want a government who will ignore neoliberal economic reasoning, you need a labor government that will ignore economic reasoning.
Possibly. Alternatively, Europe could be in considerably better economic health today than it would have been without the post-WW2 immigration policies which led to present immigration policies, and the counterarguments against the neoliberals today involve copious amounts of cope that because the neoliberal logic leads to things not liked (immigration), they must be wrong, and if they are wrong then their warnings can be ignored.
Personally, I suspect we'd agree that the chain of logic there is lacking. Really it's just a variation of the just world fallacy. But the willingness to be wrong about the neoliberals being wrong is a policy precondition for policies that go against neoliberal judgement.
In Germany, the neoliberals were architects and advocates for the debt break, and were willing to break the last government on that issue. If you want to see if the neoliberals have lost their veto on policy in practice, watch for their influence in the field they care most amount.
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