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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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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