The old folks had a good time. Younger generation can’t afford sht.
Yeah… That’s not where the money went. Some of it, sure. But some very few people have hoarded a lot more than it seems people realise.
Why not both?
“Some of it, sure”
Fair enough.
If you look at the weath distribution numbers it’s quite a big “some” (not per person compared with those few people that hoarded lots of weath, but because it’s still quite a difference between generations and there are A LOT of old people, so it adds up), mainly because it’s old people who outright own the houses were they live which are worth a lot of money per current day house prices.
Because it was those very same (now old) people who voted for the very house inflation that’s shafting the young and made them relativelly much wealthier than the young generations, they deserve a lot (so, a very large “some”) of the blame.
Nothing that any other generation would have done different. This is not about age, it’s about the system. Younger people will complain about you too
Scary though they will be making the rules for a long time to come yet
That was my first thought: They can and do vote, and now they’re a populational majority as well as a statistical one at the ballot box. That can no longer be combatted by encouraging younger generations to vote.
And everyone is afraid of immigration. It’s bizarre.
We are afraid of immigration because there is so few housing that bringing people will just add to the pressure and make rents even more ridiculously expensive . Also, in my country (Portugal), these workers accept working for less and live in miserable conditions (overcrowded homes, tents outside of Lisbon, etc), making it worse for everyone else, causing an exodus of qualified people and a flood of “tourism workers” because salaries just not increase when there are people accepting to work for less.
Meanwhile our public services are collapsing left and right because qualified people just leave and there are so many new people trying to access public healthcare etc.
This is not the black and white immigration is good/bad you are making it out to be .
I’m from Portugal also and it’s not immigration that is driving high rent prices. That’s a disingenuous position. Golden visas and Airbnb have contributed MUCH more to this as well as the liberalization of rents coupled with low new housing projects.
The workers that accept low salaries are mostly seasonal workers and they don’t compete with locals for decent housing and if you were honest you would mention that most of the time you have plenty of them living in the same space. Again, not occupying a lot of the housing destined for locals. I don’t see locals eager to go live in Odemira in the houses occupied by seasonal workers or in Martim Moniz in degraded housing.
Same here and totally agree with you.
I’ve actually worked in Finance and spent 20 years abroad before coming back to Portugal and it was obvious already when I arrived 4 years ago, that government measures were rigging the housing market to be ever higher: Golden Visa in exchange for €500k “realestate investment”, tax discounts for retirees from the rest of Europe to come live in Portugal, Digital Nomad visas, such a bullshit regulatory regime for AirBnB businesses that (eventually, after 10 years) the highest court finally ruled that unlike what the “regulation” said, you can’t just convert appartments to AirBnB businesses as you feel like and have to follow the same rules as ALL OTHER BUSINESSES, and, last but not least, a complete total refusal to regulate speculative investment in Portuguese realestate by foreign investors (something as simple as a minimum 6-month residence in Portugal requirement similar to many other countries would’ve made a huge difference and still be compatible wth EU rules as it doesn’t discriminate between portuguese and other EU citizens).
And this was just their Demand side manipulation.
On the Supply side, housing construction was down to 1/3 of what it was in the 80s and there is pretty much no public housing construction in the country of Europe with the lowest percentage of public housing.
Meanwhile we get loud “we’ve created 100 student accomodation rooms in this old government building we didn’t use” announcements as if they’re so amazing when the local unis take in 50 thousand students per year for what are typically 3 year courses so 100 new rooms once every 10 years or so is doesn’t even touch the problem of student accomodation (itself a subset of the wider housing problem).
(Note that most top level politicians from the 2 parties that alternate in Government have declared income as “real-estate investor”).
Portugal is were it is in housing because the Portuguese are mainly dumb and greedy votting for greedy, incompetent snake-oil salesmen.
That said, the “immigration problem” in Portugal has to do with how the country mainly takes in people with far less average levels of Education than the locals, and hence not capable of working in the kind of higher value added jobs as the locals (especially the young). This is why almost everybody working as Uber and food delivery drivers are from Brasil or the Indian Subcontinent - unlike most other countries in Europe, Portugal has very little in the way of selectivity in who can come (especially from Brasil, whose citizens are the largest immigrant community in Portugal) plus it can’t really attract the more well educated as richer countries can, so you mainly get a whole different kind of brasilians in Portugal than you get in, for example, Britain were I also lived.
You can’t really get your Economy to climb up the value added ladder (and hence pay higher salaries) if you’re pushing the locals to have fewer children or, even worse, to leave the country as soon as they finish their degrees, by pumping up house prices to increase your personal rewards from the side-business that you have as “realestate investor” alongside your politician day-job, whilst “making up for it” by importing people with a way lower level of education than those children would end up having and those degree-holding young adults leaving because houses are too expensive already have.
Also from Portugal and did you really just say that the problem with immigration is that they get exploited and then everyone ELSE suffers?
I mean i think you see what’s wrong with that.
Also without immigrants Portugal would be completely fucked because all the young people are leaving the country for better jobs in Europe. Someone needs to pick up the slack otherwise it’s just old people and a couple of children.
Also Portugal has a ton of houses. We are above average in houses per capita iirc. We have a problem with salaries and an over dependence on tourism.
Portugal has massive house price inflation problems in the places were the jobs are: all it takes is to look at the house price to incomes ratio in Portugal now and compare it with the historical average (last I checked it was 5x its historical average).
Sure, there are actually empty villages in the deep inland countryside were the only work is “subsistence farming” or “forrestry”, for the simple reason that even being a cashier at a supermarket pays better so nobody is going to move there to do that work.
Looking at housing as “all houses everywhere have the same utility value” to be able to come up with that “there is no housing problem in Portugal” bollocks is beyond ridiculous.
That said, blaming immigrants is pure, unadulterated far-right nutter fantasism: the idea that the people with the least power in the country (who can’t even vote) are to blame for this is logic-defying, to say the least.
He’s just someone trying to provide a false narrative to justify his racism.
I’m not against immigration but it’s no solution. You’re in Europe. You’re trying to replace a workforce that has free education, in a place with high quality education infrastructure, therefore most of them have bachelors and probably at least one or more masters degrees, with essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
I’ve literally had migrant refugees from Lebanon, Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco and such as flatmates in Brussels. Some of them are my close friends. They are not remotely prepared to take over 90% of European jobs. You either need social skills, labor skills, language skills or technical skills which they simply do not have. If i was in their shoes, it would take me decades to catch up to how Europeans work.
The migrants come here for what ? Uber eats ? How are they supposed to support themselves ? With government integration money we don’t have available ? But say we figure it out and they live and then they will have kids one day. Those kids will behave exactly like the local population. They will go to University, they will be highly qualified, they will be socially adapted to the place, culture and language and, they will also not have kids, just like the locals. So which problem did these migrants solve then ?
So the issue here isn’t that we lack people in Europe. It’s that our economic doctrine is deficient. We need to change the doctrine, not the people. Immigration will not solve this problem, it will perpetuate it. Young people not having kids is an economic issue that will still happen whether you have a European young person there or a Iraqi young person there. You can’t simply transplant a young couple from a country with very high birth rates in a totally different part of the world, subjected to an entirely different set of circumstances and expect them to be the same in Europe. That’s not how this works.
with essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
You’re talking shit. Immigrants make up 20% of the NHS in the UK, and loads also work in the care sector, those are vital jobs and you have to be literate. Most immigrants I’ve met speak better English than the local toe rags.
Those kids will behave exactly like the local population. They will go to University, they will be highly qualified, they will be socially adapted to the place, culture and language and, they will also not have kids, just like the local. So which problem did these migrants solve then ?
The lack of young workers?
You are deliberately talking over them. They’re clearly not claiming that all migrants are illiterate or uneducated or ill-prepared for work in Europe. They’re arguing that many are, and those migrants exacerbate our problems. They certainly don’t solve them.
Define many. What percentage are illiterate?
It depends on the nation. The UN collects data. Afghanistan is 62.7% illiterate, for example. Further, Almost all refugees to Denmark have zero Danish language reading and writing skills. They must learn all of these. Slightly more (but shockingly few) have any English reading and writing skills.
Surely it isn’t surprising to you that refugees have limited European language skills?
Refugees != immigrants
Refugees are indeed immigrants.
immigrant: a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence
most of them have bachelors
Only 30% of people in Europe have bachelors degrees, about the same as the u.s. Thats higher than in developing countries, say India at 8%, but a majority of people in both countries don’t have degrees.
It’s a common misconception by those with tertiary education in the first world that everyone else has tertiary education because they only talk to people in their social class with tertiary education.
You’re showing me an average with the entire population of Turkey and the Balcans. Look better at your data, please. Now consider where the majority of migrants are going and are being expected. It is not a genuine source of comparison. It’s closer to 40%. Besides, like i also mentioned, it’s not just higher education.
The original post was about Europe, that’s the European average. Even the E.U. average is 30% and that doesn’t include turkey and some of the Balkans. Also the point still stands even for the best example of Luxembourg at 46%, it’s still less than half. Most people in Europe do not have a bachelors.
Those kids will behave exactly like the local population.
Guess you haven’t been to the UK
Putting the side the whole moral aspect of it, the only way to make importing less well educated people function in most European countries would be a huge investment in Adult Dducation, and we’re in the late-neoliberal political period were governments (some more, some less) have been busy cutting taxes and hence public expenses, and typically Adult Education is one of the first to have been cut.
The very people who have set up open door immigration policies claiming that we need them because of the aging of the population refuse to invest in those who they made our guests to become fully productive and integrated citizens and instead are happy to for them to live in or near poverty working low-value and highly insecure jobs such as food delivery driver for some exploitative “Startup” that doesn’t even pay taxes.
This shit isn’t at all being done for the reasons we are told it’s being done.
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If you look into the issues caused by (mass) immigration or related to that then it makes much more sense imo.
If only society was designed around looking after people instead of infinite competition, maybe this wouldn’t be so much of a problem
We have the technology
And abundant resources. But our approach to things like this will not change as long as money is king.
2023 is the hottest year ever in record. Everything suggests that it won’t hold that record for long. Why would I bring children to this world to suffer the hell that 2050 will be?
If your in a developed nation with a decent military then you will be among the last to feel the pain of environmental collapse. Most of the world is what we would consider hellish right now, yet people still find a way to laugh and love. Watch these poor souls recycling electronics in Africa. Watch bald and bankrupt in bengladesh. Most people alive today live like this and it doesn’t stop them from living life. We all adapt to our conditions, its all relative to our individual experience and what we consider “normal” in our lives. Your condition potentially getting worse shouldn’t stop you from having kids, as your condition probably has a long way to go to get down to where most of the population is at currently. Whether you enjoy the ride, fight the collapse, or hail the apocalypse, someones gotta be around to keep this party going. If their born into late stage environmental collapse with nations fighting over the last scraps of arable land and drinkable water, well then that becomes their “normal” and theyll still find something to laugh about and someone to love. But at the end of the day it is your choice and you should do as you see best.
Most of the world is what we would consider hellish right now, yet people still find a way to laugh and love. Watch these poor souls recycling electronics in Africa. Watch bald and bankrupt in bengladesh. Most people alive today live like this and it doesn’t stop them from living life.
You really threw bald people in there as the miserable, wretched of the earth.
Lol
because otherwise who will fix this mess?
You do it. You’re not gonna fuck a solution out. Why is it always “let the kids fix it”?
because it will take multiple generations to fix?
Humans are what are causing the mess, and you want to add more of them?
only if their parents care enough to make sure they are educated and smart. we don’t need more stupid people.
The “problem” being that the more educated people are, the fewer children they have and that’s a correlation that actually holds pretty well.
The whole “people should have more children and make sure they are educated and smart” is self-contradictory: it’s either more kids lower-education or fewer kids higher-education.
It’s magical thinking to expect that the people capable of “making sure they’re educated and smart” will have many children.
Good point. I guess the problem is that with humans it’s always quantity over quality.
And it’s this exact problem that will get solved with the immigration from climate change. Europe is going to get more African migrants fleeing climate change.
It’s a problem that can solve itself with time, no need for population replacement because muh economy.
And that’s why conservatives get elected. And since more and more young vote for right-wing parties we’re in for a real shitshow.
Geez, feels like just this year that over 64 year olds outnumbered under 14 year olds.
We’re so utterly fucked…
Just a reminder that unsustainable world population growth is bad. Fewer people is good for everyone and our planet.
And this is why the retirement ages have to be raised in many countries.
People live longer and fewer young to take care of the old (and the economy in general)
Yea and by the time I get to retirement age it will be pushed so far back that only a handful of people will live long enough to retire anyway. Just work until you die /s
I doubt that will happen.
But raising the retirement age is needed in an ageing population where people just live healthier and longer than ever.
Otherwise an ever increasing amount of people will be retired and the amount of people that can contribute to the economy and well everything really will decrease.
The same problem would arise if the amount of children suddenly started increasing rapidly, fortunately that would likely solve it self after a while since they would eventually work too. We need a balance of workers and non workers otherwise society would collapse.
The only way I can see that being sustainable is if we could automate to the degree that the amount of human workers could be less every year. But that’s not possible yet (if ever).
And no I obviously don’t want the retirement age to increase, I hope to also retire some day. But I see no choice.
Europe has proven we can’t fix this by importing millions of unskilled people with radically different values. The social unrest is proving catastrophic. Rightwing parties are gaining traction in almost every European country. The EU is on track to accept more than a million applications this year alone, and most of them have large families which will be granted reunification. Data shows most of them will never work a day in their lives. Our social systems will collapse within a decade at this rate. We’ll be lucky if the EU itself survives this.
Instead, we really need to alleviate the issues resulting in young people not having kids. The usual argument is, “it’s too expensive.” While true, data shows that income isn’t a barrier to fertility. In fact, higher income results in lower fertility, with some exceptions at the very top end of the income spectrum.
