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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On September 12 2016 22:51 SK.Testie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2016 22:00 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Classic case of open google, type favoured agenda, copy paste link, with no regard for context or date. Sigh.
At least it is more related than that time this one guy copy pasted a link of a black youth gang throwing acid as confirmation of Arab rapists in London... Head in the sand much? That sounds familiar. Reminds me of when this happened because a bunch of weak cowards who didn't want to rock the boat chose to put their head in the sand rather than do the right thing. Was funny when China Air told the truth and people said, "omg China Air... don't say that." + Show Spoiler +"7% of your population is 33% of your child rapists." Guess what % of the following gangs are Pakistani rape gangs. (All of them). ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cWhA7kO.png) Here's a documentary to get you started. I've got a lot more. + Show Spoiler + What?
You are taking this curiously personally. Plus I have no idea what you are insinuating. Please make more sense. I probably don't inhabit the same areas of the internet you do.
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On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else.
That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other.
If it is exactly as you say, it introduces a non-humanitarian motive to bring in immigrants. Additional unskilled labor could drive down wages and earn more profit for the capitalist class. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean.
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On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else.
Do you have any theoretical basis to support your view that the welfare state is built on labour shortages? I'm having a hard time thinking how that would work. Anyway since I am against the welfare state as it is that doesn't really counter my point. It's also very liberal of me. Here are blogs from the iEA and Adam Smith institute on immigration and Friedman as well. The iEA and Adam Smith institute are liberal think tanks and Friedman is obviously a liberal.
https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-economic-case-for-migration
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/immigration-is-no-reason-to-leave-the-eu
http://openborders.info/friedman-immigration-welfare-state/
And here's another study on the effect of immigrants on natives for anyone interested
Using longitudinal data on the universe of workers in Denmark during the period 1991-2008 we track the labor market outcomes of low skilled natives in response to an exogenous inflow of low skilled immigrants. We innovate on previous identification strategies by considering immigrants distributed across municipalities by a refugee dispersal policy in place between 1986 and 1998. We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_07_15.pdf
Edit: not to mention that immigrants have a small net positive effect on the national budget so on average they add to the welfare state they do not detract from it.
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On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean.
If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well
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On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well
One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ?
If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today.
In France, in 1980, the communist party was saying "stop migration : you're putting low-wage workers in competition and stealing the south living force". Today, Nyxisto explain us that they were not communist enough.
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On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today.
Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas:
+ Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution.
If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left.
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On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
You didn't respond to a single thing I said, all the while expecting me to critique a list of papers that you slapped onto the end of your post because you can't formulate an argument for yourself.
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On September 13 2016 16:06 bardtown wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
You didn't respond to a single thing I said, all the while expecting me to critique a list of papers that you slapped onto the end of your post because you can't formulate an argument for yourself.
Fair enough. I was a little irritated yesterday.
More or less. I stayed in Rinkeby when I was in Stockholm, because it was cheap. Interesting place. Not a single blonde in sight. In fact, I'm not sure if I saw any white people apart from the other travelers staying at the same place as me. Recently saw a video where the police wouldn't accompany media inside because they, apparently, thought it would encourage hostility towards the media folks. As it happens they got assaulted regardless.
It's meaningless to just look at the amount that the welfare state pays to immigrants vs. the amount that immigrants put into the economy. This surface level comparison which people use to claim that 'immigration provides a net benefit' ignores so many critical factors. It ignores the well documented impact that unskilled immigration has on the wages of the least fortunate natives. It ignores the way in which unskilled immigration removes any incentive for employers to improve their working conditions. It ignores the native population who take out of the welfare state because the jobs they are capable of doing are being taken by immigrants willing to accept worse working conditions and less pay. And, most importantly in the case of the migrant crisis, it ignores the cultural and emotional baggage that these people bring with them. When you bring people in in such numbers they do not integrate. It's just not a realistic hope. They stay together, so what you essentially achieve is a wholesale importation of Syrian culture (to say nothing of the other nationalities, many of which are worse), with all its backwardness and incompatibility with Western culture. So, clearly bad for the host nation.
It’s not meaningless since there are 2 main components of the anti-immigrant argument. One is the economic argument and the other is the cultural argument. It’s not a surface level comparison either.
On the labour market:
There is no obvious relationship between the stock of immigrants and the level of unemployment (Figure 2). The results of detailed empirical studies also show that it is impossible to establish a systematic relationship between immigration and unemployment (Table 2). Nevertheless immigrants tend to have somewhat higher unemployment rates than natives (Figure 3).
It’s important to note though that there are pretty big differences between countries. Imo that’s due to the flexibility of labour markets. It’s why the US, UK and Denmark deal better with immigrants unemployment wise than France. At least short term.
The results indicated that foreigners have a greater probability of being nonactive or looking for work. However, educational attainment has a large positive and significant impact on the probability to be employed in all the countries reviewed (OECD, 2001c).
Long term it’s important to invest in education but that’s a given anyway I’d say.
Immigrants also tend to have lower wages than natives. As time passes, there appears to be convergence on both counts, though in some countries there is still a difference between the experience of third-generation 13 immigrants (i.e., the grandchildren of immigrants) and natives, though less than there was for their grandparents, in others there appears to be no difference.
The recent literature mostly concludes that immigrant-native wage gaps diminish over the duration of stay but that permanent gaps nonetheless persist (e.g., LaLonde and Topel 1992; Schoeni et al. 1996). Similar to the US, recent immigrant cohorts in most European countries are not expected to achieve full convergence to native wage levels.
Long term there’s convergence in incomes though a gaps usually persists.
Impacts can again be different across native groups. DeNew and Zimmermann (1994b) found that unskilled wages in Germany declined as a result of immigration in the 1980s, whereas skilled wages increased. D.Amuri et al. (2010) found that the wage and employment displacement effects from 1990s immigration to Germany were concentrated among the immigrants themselves, with little impact for natives. In a strong recent paper, Brücker and Jahn (2010) built a general equilibrium model that allowed wage setting. They concluded that a 1% increase in the German labor force through immigration reduced wages by 0.1%, an elasticity comparable to the area-based studies in the US. Their long-run analysis suggested signicant capital adjustment as well, so that average wages did not permanently decline.
The small wage elasticities also appear to hold for other European countries. One reason for small wage effects in Europe may be that immigrants do not usually and work immediately.
Labour market clearing models imply that immigration will increase aggregate income in the host country by more than the income of the immigrants themselves as the existing population will gain a “migration surplus.” This is because with diminishing returns immigration will cause wages to fall so that workers (with similar skills) are paid only according to the marginal product of the “last” immigrant; their average product will be higher than that and the difference accrues to capital, which will in general be owned by existing residents. See Borjas (1999) for an exposition of this. If the labour market does not clear, and immigration increases unemployment among existing residents, it is less obvious that there is automatically a gain in aggregate income of residents. However, the relatively small size of empirical estimates of the impact of immigration on unemployment among existing residents suggests that there probably is an aggregate gain even in the short run. In the longer run, more complicated mechanisms may operate as adjustments in the capital stock may reverse or partially reverse the initial movement in wages and the aggregate income gain could be larger.
Short term it can have negative effects on wages but that’s due to immigrants not being able to work immediately. Long term it can have positive effects on employment/wages.
From my previous post here’s a study using data from Denmark on the general effects on native workers.
We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.
So no it does not ignore the native population taking on welfare payments because immigrants take their jobs since that does not happen.
Do you have any source for the removal of incentives to improve working conditions?
Nobody really ignores the negative effect it has on some natives either. Of course there are some losers but every public policy has losers. There are other ways to help those natives by for example educational programmes to help them or if you’re against inequality it’s possible to make the tax system more progressive for example.
On the fiscal effects:
Immigrants used social benefits much more than natives in Denmark, but relative usage levels were more similar in other countries. Most importantly, this study found that controlling for immigrant characteristics did not dramatically change this European heterogeneity. The higher benefit usage thus results more from policy and institutional differences across countries than the characteristics of migrants. Barrett and McCarthy (2008) further described the ambiguity in experiences regarding welfare usage by immigrants.
Immigrants do take more welfare than natives but that’s more due to policy than due to immigrants.
Rowthorn (2008) reviewed these differences and concluded that in the great majority of countries the net fiscal impact was, positive or negative, less than 1% of GDP.
Lots of studies which give both negative and positive fiscal effects. In the end fiscal effects are small though and mostly reliant on how fast immigrants can get to work. That is probably the most important thing anyway: getting immigrants to work as soon as possible.
The cultural effects are of course a big issue as well. You’re assuming they’re automatically negative though which I do not agree with. They also bring positive things. For one they’re more entrepreneurial than natives. They can also enrich our lives in ways that’s not reflected in GDP like for example when they bring local foods over to your country which gain popularity (A bit of a silly example but it’s more to get the point across). There are obvious problems with the clustering of poor minorities in Europe at the moment but policies can be adjusted to prevent this.
The irony is that it's also terrible for the humanitarian effort, because all your funds are being diverted into entirely the wrong place. The people that make it to Europe are those healthy enough to make the journey and wealthy enough to pay the extortionate fees that the criminal networks charge them. So, for the most part, they're the people who could comfortably make their way in neighbouring countries. The sick and infirm are left behind, as are those too poor to make the journey. In other words, all the people who we should really be spending our money on helping get left in Syria with nothing while Germany pours potentially hundreds of millions of euros into dentistry for its new migrant population.
Merkel's open door policy was the culmination of the lame virtue signalling that people so love to engage in. In order to look good and feel good about itself, Germany has effectively funded the growth of an enormous criminal network, leading to the deaths of thousands, all the while diverting essential resources away from those who need it most in Syria. Not to mention screwing over half of Europe in the process. Germany might be able to afford this mess for the time being, but Greece can't.
This isn’t an argument against immigration, it’s an argument against Merkel’s open door policy in particular which is indeed a failure for some of the reasons you gave. What I’d do in the case of Syrian refugees is help and fund the camps that are there. Then out of the refugees that are in the camps you take an X amount (let’s say 500.000) yearly. Since you’ve already decided before they come to Europe that they’re allowed to stay you can allow them to work instantly when they arrive which will help them integrate and make them pay taxes. Added to that they’d have to be spreak out over the country so they don’t cluster in little communities. Preferably language lessons etc. will be offered as well.
If you want to close the borders for economic migrants (which I don’t think we should but that is besides the point) just do it like they do now with the EU-Turkey agreement where they’re sent back and put them in the back of the queue. This apparently helps.
Sources:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=385725
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16736
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_07_15.pdf
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On September 13 2016 08:15 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today. Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas: + Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution. If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left.
You're just doing everything you can not to see the obvious : that this xenophobia is the result of the competition / conflict that arose after people like you decided to increase immigration in order to sustain growth and demographics.
Bakunin is making a mistake here. It's true that there is a moral component to Marx's judgement on the lumpenproletariat, but it is also an objective statement : it is not the lumpen that has the collective strength to fight for a new and fairer economic system, but the workers.
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Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has called for Hungary to be suspended or even expelled from the European Union because of its "massive violation" of EU fundamental values.
(...)
He cited the Budapest government's treatment of refugees, independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press.
"Hungary is not far away from issuing orders to open fire on refugees," he suggested.
Hungary said Mr Asselborn "could not be taken seriously".
EU leaders meet in Slovakia on Friday to discuss the union's future.
(...)
The EU could not tolerate "such inappropriate behaviour", he said, and any state that violated such basic values "should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU''. It was "the only possibility to protect the cohesion and values of the European Union,'' he said.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hit back, saying that his Luxembourg counterpart had "long left the ranks of politicians who could be taken seriously". Mr Asselborn was a "frivolous character", he said, adding that he was "patronising, arrogant and frustrated".
(...)
Hungary joined the EU in 2004 and while the European Union can reject or delay a candidate from joining, it is not thought to have the power to expel an existing member state.
When the far-right Freedom Party joined Austria's government in 2000, EU member states responded by freezing bilateral diplomatic relations with Austria. Later that year the EU ended Austria's diplomatic isolation.
A referendum takes place on 2 October when Hungarians will be asked to decide on an EU quota to take in refugees. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has strongly criticised the EU's plans to relocate 160,000 refugees across the bloc and his government has campaigned vigorously for a No vote.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37347352
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On September 13 2016 18:53 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 16:06 bardtown wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
You didn't respond to a single thing I said, all the while expecting me to critique a list of papers that you slapped onto the end of your post because you can't formulate an argument for yourself. Fair enough. I was a little irritated yesterday. Show nested quote +More or less. I stayed in Rinkeby when I was in Stockholm, because it was cheap. Interesting place. Not a single blonde in sight. In fact, I'm not sure if I saw any white people apart from the other travelers staying at the same place as me. Recently saw a video where the police wouldn't accompany media inside because they, apparently, thought it would encourage hostility towards the media folks. As it happens they got assaulted regardless.
It's meaningless to just look at the amount that the welfare state pays to immigrants vs. the amount that immigrants put into the economy. This surface level comparison which people use to claim that 'immigration provides a net benefit' ignores so many critical factors. It ignores the well documented impact that unskilled immigration has on the wages of the least fortunate natives. It ignores the way in which unskilled immigration removes any incentive for employers to improve their working conditions. It ignores the native population who take out of the welfare state because the jobs they are capable of doing are being taken by immigrants willing to accept worse working conditions and less pay. And, most importantly in the case of the migrant crisis, it ignores the cultural and emotional baggage that these people bring with them. When you bring people in in such numbers they do not integrate. It's just not a realistic hope. They stay together, so what you essentially achieve is a wholesale importation of Syrian culture (to say nothing of the other nationalities, many of which are worse), with all its backwardness and incompatibility with Western culture. So, clearly bad for the host nation. It’s not meaningless since there are 2 main components of the anti-immigrant argument. One is the economic argument and the other is the cultural argument. It’s not a surface level comparison either. On the labour market: Show nested quote +There is no obvious relationship between the stock of immigrants and the level of unemployment (Figure 2). The results of detailed empirical studies also show that it is impossible to establish a systematic relationship between immigration and unemployment (Table 2). Nevertheless immigrants tend to have somewhat higher unemployment rates than natives (Figure 3). It’s important to note though that there are pretty big differences between countries. Imo that’s due to the flexibility of labour markets. It’s why the US, UK and Denmark deal better with immigrants unemployment wise than France. At least short term.
A couple of points here. Firstly, that I was focusing on the migrant crisis. There is a difference between the steady trickling in of people making educated guesses about their chance of finding employment and sustaining themselves (or people who have already found employment), and the importation of a million people en masse. I do not believe that there are no benefits to immigration, so if that's how it came across then that's just me writing clumsily. For example, I know firsthand how important it is to charities and care homes to get care/nursing staff from abroad because there are no Brits willing to do it and they can't afford to pay more. Even with that said, importing Syrian/Afghan/Algerian/Libyan migrants will have a negative impact on the importing country if only because whatever roles they can fill could be more effectively filled by migrants already trained in those areas (and the language and culture of the host nation).
Show nested quote +Immigrants also tend to have lower wages than natives. As time passes, there appears to be convergence on both counts, though in some countries there is still a difference between the experience of third-generation 13 immigrants (i.e., the grandchildren of immigrants) and natives, though less than there was for their grandparents, in others there appears to be no difference.
Not entirely clear on what is being said here, but convergence on both counts seems to imply wage depreciation as a result of immigration?
Show nested quote +Impacts can again be different across native groups. DeNew and Zimmermann (1994b) found that unskilled wages in Germany declined as a result of immigration in the 1980s, whereas skilled wages increased. D.Amuri et al. (2010) found that the wage and employment displacement effects from 1990s immigration to Germany were concentrated among the immigrants themselves, with little impact for natives. In a strong recent paper, Brücker and Jahn (2010) built a general equilibrium model that allowed wage setting. They concluded that a 1% increase in the German labor force through immigration reduced wages by 0.1%, an elasticity comparable to the area-based studies in the US. Their long-run analysis suggested signicant capital adjustment as well, so that average wages did not permanently decline.
The small wage elasticities also appear to hold for other European countries. One reason for small wage effects in Europe may be that immigrants do not usually and work immediately. Show nested quote +Labour market clearing models imply that immigration will increase aggregate income in the host country by more than the income of the immigrants themselves as the existing population will gain a “migration surplus.” This is because with diminishing returns immigration will cause wages to fall so that workers (with similar skills) are paid only according to the marginal product of the “last” immigrant; their average product will be higher than that and the difference accrues to capital, which will in general be owned by existing residents. See Borjas (1999) for an exposition of this. If the labour market does not clear, and immigration increases unemployment among existing residents, it is less obvious that there is automatically a gain in aggregate income of residents. However, the relatively small size of empirical estimates of the impact of immigration on unemployment among existing residents suggests that there probably is an aggregate gain even in the short run. In the longer run, more complicated mechanisms may operate as adjustments in the capital stock may reverse or partially reverse the initial movement in wages and the aggregate income gain could be larger. Short term it can have negative effects on wages but that’s due to immigrants not being able to work immediately. Long term it can have positive effects on employment/wages. From my previous post here’s a study using data from Denmark on the general effects on native workers. Show nested quote + We find that an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility. So no it does not ignore the native population taking on welfare payments because immigrants take their jobs since that does not happen. Do you have any source for the removal of incentives to improve working conditions? Nobody really ignores the negative effect it has on some natives either. Of course there are some losers but every public policy has losers. There are other ways to help those natives by for example educational programmes to help them or if you’re against inequality it’s possible to make the tax system more progressive for example.
Okay, these are some interesting ideas. One thing I would say is that this is why democracy is so important, and why it is the working class who are so opposed to open door immigration. The real problem here is that the inevitable 'losers' are going to be the worst off in society. Getting immigrant workers who will accept worse conditions than native workers will increase the profits of major companies, providing a boost to the economy, but in an area like Teesside, where I used to live, there are no other jobs for the natives to go to, so they don't move on to higher skilled work. They have two choices: accept the same terrible conditions that the Bulgarian staff do, or remain unemployed. I have a lot of personal experience with this. It's not coincidental that all the restaurants in the area fill their kitchens with immigrants, or that I've never met a single British taxi/delivery driver in the area.
That is the point about having no incentive to improve working conditions. They don't because they can always find an eastern European who would have to endure even worse conditions if they stayed in their home country. Where I live now, in Cambridge, I can see that immigration poses no threat to the natives. They can, like in that Danish study, take a little longer with their jobsearch, do some training, and find a better job. So across the board, perhaps it's a positive effect, but in the areas where it really matters, it's the opposite. We know that the real wages of the poorest in the UK are in freefall, for example.
On the fiscal effects: Show nested quote +Immigrants used social benefits much more than natives in Denmark, but relative usage levels were more similar in other countries. Most importantly, this study found that controlling for immigrant characteristics did not dramatically change this European heterogeneity. The higher benefit usage thus results more from policy and institutional differences across countries than the characteristics of migrants. Barrett and McCarthy (2008) further described the ambiguity in experiences regarding welfare usage by immigrants. Immigrants do take more welfare than natives but that’s more due to policy than due to immigrants. Show nested quote +Rowthorn (2008) reviewed these differences and concluded that in the great majority of countries the net fiscal impact was, positive or negative, less than 1% of GDP. Lots of studies which give both negative and positive fiscal effects. In the end fiscal effects are small though and mostly reliant on how fast immigrants can get to work. That is probably the most important thing anyway: getting immigrants to work as soon as possible. The cultural effects are of course a big issue as well. You’re assuming they’re automatically negative though which I do not agree with. They also bring positive things. For one they’re more entrepreneurial than natives. They can also enrich our lives in ways that’s not reflected in GDP like for example when they bring local foods over to your country which gain popularity (A bit of a silly example but it’s more to get the point across). There are obvious problems with the clustering of poor minorities in Europe at the moment but policies can be adjusted to prevent this. Show nested quote +The irony is that it's also terrible for the humanitarian effort, because all your funds are being diverted into entirely the wrong place. The people that make it to Europe are those healthy enough to make the journey and wealthy enough to pay the extortionate fees that the criminal networks charge them. So, for the most part, they're the people who could comfortably make their way in neighbouring countries. The sick and infirm are left behind, as are those too poor to make the journey. In other words, all the people who we should really be spending our money on helping get left in Syria with nothing while Germany pours potentially hundreds of millions of euros into dentistry for its new migrant population.
Merkel's open door policy was the culmination of the lame virtue signalling that people so love to engage in. In order to look good and feel good about itself, Germany has effectively funded the growth of an enormous criminal network, leading to the deaths of thousands, all the while diverting essential resources away from those who need it most in Syria. Not to mention screwing over half of Europe in the process. Germany might be able to afford this mess for the time being, but Greece can't. This isn’t an argument against immigration, it’s an argument against Merkel’s open door policy in particular which is indeed a failure for some of the reasons you gave. What I’d do in the case of Syrian refugees is help and fund the camps that are there. Then out of the refugees that are in the camps you take an X amount (let’s say 500.000) yearly. Since you’ve already decided before they come to Europe that they’re allowed to stay you can allow them to work instantly when they arrive which will help them integrate and make them pay taxes. Added to that they’d have to be spreak out over the country so they don’t cluster in little communities. Preferably language lessons etc. will be offered as well. If you want to close the borders for economic migrants (which I don’t think we should but that is besides the point) just do it like they do now with the EU-Turkey agreement where they’re sent back and put them in the back of the queue. This apparently helps. Sources: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=385725http://www.nber.org/papers/w16736http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_07_15.pdf
Not going to respond to everything here because I need to go out and I agree with most of it anyway. I never intended to suggest that immigration was bad in and of itself. Your plan would work better than what happened, but I think almost any plan would have. What is absolutely clear is that rescuing the migrants and bringing them to Europe is insane. It even removes the incentive for smugglers to get them safely to Europe. They just need to put them in the sea, in a seaworthy boat or not - it doesn't matter, and let the Europeans do the rest.
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On September 13 2016 19:10 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 08:15 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today. Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas: + Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution. If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left. You're just doing everything you can not to see the obvious : that this xenophobia is the result of the competition / conflict that arose after people like you decided to increase immigration in order to sustain growth and demographics. Bakunin is making a mistake here. It's true that there is a moral component to Marx's judgement on the lumpenproletariat, but it is also an objective statement : it is not the lumpen that has the collective strength to fight for a new and fairer economic system, but the workers.
But isn't it always true that the proletariat is made up of different interest groups, with different goals that may contradict each other? And shouldn't we at least grant them enough agency to demand that they work over these differences and align by class rather than race or religion or whatever? So even if it's true that the Ford worker or person on social security might feel threatened by refugees, shouldn't we hold them responsible to get over that difference rather than aligning with the company owner, state or some racist group? Isn't the fact that someone is not class conscious and cannot put class interests over other interests what makes them part of the 'lumpenproletariat'?
And concerning effectiveness, the refugees seem to be a lot better at shaking existing power structures up than the 'bourgeois worker'.
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On September 14 2016 02:58 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 19:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 08:15 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today. Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas: + Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution. If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left. You're just doing everything you can not to see the obvious : that this xenophobia is the result of the competition / conflict that arose after people like you decided to increase immigration in order to sustain growth and demographics. Bakunin is making a mistake here. It's true that there is a moral component to Marx's judgement on the lumpenproletariat, but it is also an objective statement : it is not the lumpen that has the collective strength to fight for a new and fairer economic system, but the workers. But isn't it always true that the proletariat is made up of different interest groups, with different goals that may contradict each other? And shouldn't we at least grant them enough agency to demand that they work over these differences and align by class rather than race or religion or whatever? So even if it's true that the Ford worker or person on social security might feel threatened by refugees, shouldn't we hold them responsible to get over that difference rather than aligning with the company owner, state or some racist group? Isn't the fact that someone is not class conscious and cannot put class interests over other interests what makes them part of the 'lumpenproletariat'? And concerning effectiveness, the refugees seem to be a lot better at shaking existing power structures up than the 'bourgeois worker'.
Such contempt for the worker class wow ... And such idealization for the refugees, who don't even contribute to the society from a political standpoint : they are not citizens and barely speak the language, and thus are objects more than subjects (which is why the neoliberal elite likes them).
I don't even understand your point about different interest groups. How do workers have conflicting interests ? I don't understand ? Because they are in competition ? Then they have a common interest to change the system and not be in competition ...
So even if it's true that the Ford worker or person on social security might feel threatened by refugees
It's not about feelings tho. RvB, much like the neoclassical economy that govern us, do everything it can to make us believe immigration have no effect whatsoever on the economy. In reality, the economy cannot do anything to explain us the effect of immigration on the economy (because contexts are differents, simply arguing that the german reunification or the mariel boatlift had no effects is unsufficient to explain the effect of every migration wave on the economy). And according to modern economy (see George Borjas in 2015) immigration seems to have effect on lower wage, and, considering the social and economical context, it can have major impact on the daily life.
It's not a feeling : the basic worker is effectively leaving urban area for periurban (fleeing delinquency and communautarism ?) and it is effectively losing income.
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On September 14 2016 02:58 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2016 19:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 08:15 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today. Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas: + Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution. If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left. You're just doing everything you can not to see the obvious : that this xenophobia is the result of the competition / conflict that arose after people like you decided to increase immigration in order to sustain growth and demographics. Bakunin is making a mistake here. It's true that there is a moral component to Marx's judgement on the lumpenproletariat, but it is also an objective statement : it is not the lumpen that has the collective strength to fight for a new and fairer economic system, but the workers. But isn't it always true that the proletariat is made up of different interest groups, with different goals that may contradict each other? And shouldn't we at least grant them enough agency to demand that they work over these differences and align by class rather than race or religion or whatever? So even if it's true that the Ford worker or person on social security might feel threatened by refugees, shouldn't we hold them responsible to get over that difference rather than aligning with the company owner, state or some racist group? Isn't the fact that someone is not class conscious and cannot put class interests over other interests what makes them part of the 'lumpenproletariat'? And concerning effectiveness, the refugees seem to be a lot better at shaking existing power structures up than the 'bourgeois worker'.
The "shaking existing power structures" has seemed primarily to be with regards to increasing support for fascistic extremists (frankly a bit of a frightening development, although it doesn't seem to be anywhere near a tipping point), not bringing about global proletariat revolution.
And isn't labor competition a known capitalist tactic? From hiring scabs to shipping industry overseas, it does seem like attempts to open up the labor pool is beneficial to the capitalist class, not the worker class. When you take into account that language and cultural barriers are simply difficult to get through, it gets more difficult to expect workers to accept the perceived scabs with open arms. I'm not defending the actions of any individuals, or even the group, but some of these reactions were predictable. Massive social change never comes without turmoil, after all, and considering that it's not the natives but the immigrants who are going to suffer if it gets out of hand, it starts to feel a little like it's either an attempt to break existing labor/social laws, to increase surveillance/police authority, or maybe just to use the immigrants as a way of looking "good" and "humane" on an international level without real care for them... I mean, isn't it kind of awful to bring a ton of people in even though you know you can't give them work, the most underrated human need?
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On September 14 2016 05:41 WhiteDog wrote:
Such contempt for the worker class wow ... And such idealization for the refugees, who don't even contribute to the society from a political standpoint : they are not citizens and barely speak the language, and thus are objects more than subjects (which is why the neoliberal elite likes them).
I don't even understand your point about different interest groups. How do workers have conflicting interests ? I don't understand ? Because they are in competition ? Then they have a common interest to change the system and not be in competition ...
Because workers aren't just a homogeneous group of people. A unionised worker with a good public pension will have a different attitude towards the business and the state he is working in than a marginalised part time worker who lives off social benefits and has horrible working conditions. The working class isn't just voting for one party, that's why labour parties all over the place are crashing down, it's questionable whether the idea of the 'working class' even makes sense any more.
So when all these different workers come into conflict what they're supposed to do from a left-wing point of view I assume is to cooperate rather than alienate each other. The native working class shouldn't be flocking to far-right demagogues just because they think that they're getting the better short term deal out of it.
On September 14 2016 05:56 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2016 02:58 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 19:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 08:15 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 07:50 WhiteDog wrote:On September 13 2016 04:22 Nyxisto wrote:On September 13 2016 04:03 Acritter wrote:On September 13 2016 03:20 Madkipz wrote:On September 13 2016 02:13 RvB wrote:
Lol dude you've clearly only read one of the sources which is a blog post while not reading the academic pieces. I put in quite a bit of time in reading it and to look for ones which are freely available and you're not even taking the effort in reading the conclusions.
It's also hilarious that you're calling me left. I'm an actual liberal (though of course not all my opinions perfectly align) who is a big believer in freedom and the freedom of movement is one of the most overlooked and important of them all.
How very Progressive of you. If people had unrestricted freedom of movement europe would be filled with economic migrants from africa, the middle-east and the rest of asia. They'd be flooding into central europe and ruining everything our ancestors built. Most of them have fortunately been stopped in turkey. A large amount of available labour is what ruins the welfare state which has been built on the labour shortages of old. It is only in a labour shortage that the worker have the power to organize and protest their working conditions because otherwise their employer simply hires someone else. That's an interesting take. So what you're saying is that a welfare state, that is, a governmental/social organization which favors the lower class, can only come into being when the lower class is numerically very small? On the very surface of it, it seems plausible, in that supply-and-demand notions show that when there aren't a lot of laborers, the laborers have more power. Historically, it has additional support in the theory that the Black Death massively aided workers' rights in Europe and helped to kickstart the Renaissance on account of there being so few peasants around. But more recently (a century or so ago), the American labor movements weren't founded on any sudden loss of life, which would seem to show that quantity of laborers available is less important than a firm and unified ideology. Overall, I'm not sure what to think one way or the other. So, if this is something that really is going on, there could be a rational left-wing and even Marxist basis for objecting... although without excellent evidence, it's all speculation in any case. I really don't know enough to judge, and am just looking on from across the ocean. If you're afraid of the international proletariat you should probably stop calling yourself a Marxist. We've had 'socialism in one country' before. Didn't turn out too well One could easily argue that the you are talking about are not part of the proletariat, but of the lumpen proletariat - after all, are they not fleeing their countries for economic reasons, which goes very well with the idea that they have completly accepted the value of the bourgeoisie (competition, individualization, etc.) ? And do you know what Marx thought of the lumpen ? If only people actually knew what Marx meant when he wrote the worker class, I'm pretty sure the left would not be where it is today. Well you can easily argue this from the somewhat snobby 'Marx-Marxist' definition of what the proletariat is. Bakunin had different ideas: + Show Spoiler +By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates, whom Messrs. Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a strong government – naturally for the people’s own salvation! All governments are supposedly established only to look after the welfare of the masses! By flower of the proletariat, I mean precisely that eternal “meat” (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, “dregs of society”) ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels in the picturesque and contemptuous phrase Lumpenproletariat. I have in mind the “riff-raff,” that “rabble” almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization, which carries in its inner being and in its aspirations, in all the necessities and miseries of its collective life, all the seeds of the socialism of the future, and which alone is powerful enough today to inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution. If we're going to search for the Lumpenproletariat we can look right here, among all the xenophobes who direct their hostility at even poorer immigrants or among bored college students. The refugees are at least running for a better life and an opportunity to build something for themselves. I'd say they're the only proletariat that's left. You're just doing everything you can not to see the obvious : that this xenophobia is the result of the competition / conflict that arose after people like you decided to increase immigration in order to sustain growth and demographics. Bakunin is making a mistake here. It's true that there is a moral component to Marx's judgement on the lumpenproletariat, but it is also an objective statement : it is not the lumpen that has the collective strength to fight for a new and fairer economic system, but the workers. But isn't it always true that the proletariat is made up of different interest groups, with different goals that may contradict each other? And shouldn't we at least grant them enough agency to demand that they work over these differences and align by class rather than race or religion or whatever? So even if it's true that the Ford worker or person on social security might feel threatened by refugees, shouldn't we hold them responsible to get over that difference rather than aligning with the company owner, state or some racist group? Isn't the fact that someone is not class conscious and cannot put class interests over other interests what makes them part of the 'lumpenproletariat'? And concerning effectiveness, the refugees seem to be a lot better at shaking existing power structures up than the 'bourgeois worker'. The "shaking existing power structures" has seemed primarily to be with regards to increasing support for fascistic extremists (frankly a bit of a frightening development, although it doesn't seem to be anywhere near a tipping point), not bringing about global proletariat revolution. And isn't labor competition a known capitalist tactic? From hiring scabs to shipping industry overseas, it does seem like attempts to open up the labor pool is beneficial to the capitalist class, not the worker class. When you take into account that language and cultural barriers are simply difficult to get through, it gets more difficult to expect workers to accept the perceived scabs with open arms.
I wouldn't call labour competition a capitalist tactic if the logical conclusion being drawn is that closed borders are the solution. Sure capitalists have cashed in the dividends of the tearing down of borders over the last few decades, but we've also seen the biggest decrease in absolute poverty among the international working class that's ever happened. A few decades ago 80% of Asians lived in absolute poverty, below 2$ a day. That's down to I think 15% or 10% now. So we've just lifted a billion people or something out of absolute poverty, which seems like a pretty good deal.
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On September 14 2016 06:00 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 14 2016 05:41 WhiteDog wrote:
Such contempt for the worker class wow ... And such idealization for the refugees, who don't even contribute to the society from a political standpoint : they are not citizens and barely speak the language, and thus are objects more than subjects (which is why the neoliberal elite likes them).
I don't even understand your point about different interest groups. How do workers have conflicting interests ? I don't understand ? Because they are in competition ? Then they have a common interest to change the system and not be in competition ...
Because workers aren't just a homogeneous group of people. A unionised worker with a good public pension will have a different attitude towards the business and the state he is working in than a marginalised part time worker who lives off social benefits and has horrible working conditions. The working class isn't just voting for one party, that's why labour parties all over the place are crashing down, it's questionable whether the idea of the 'working class' even makes sense any more. So when all these different workers come into conflict what they're supposed to do from a left-wing point of view I assume is to cooperate rather than alienate each other. The native working class shouldn't be flocking to far-right demagogues just because they think that they're getting the better short term deal out of it.
No group of people is homogeneous. None, whatsoever. The point is, workers have common interests. That they are unaware of it, or that their unions or their representatives don't understand that (or wish not to publicize it) is another subject.
"Left wing" is not about being reactive to what is happening : it's not about helping each other and feeling warm and fuzzy inside. It's about building a fairer world. And this cannot be achieved when the tension and the felt heterogeneity of the population is that high.
I wouldn't call labour competition a capitalist tactic if the logical conclusion being drawn is that closed borders are the solution. Sure capitalists have cashed in the dividends of the tearing down of borders over the last few decades, but we've also seen the biggest decrease in absolute poverty among the international working class that's ever happened. A few decades ago 80% of Asians lived in absolute poverty, below 2$ a day. That's down to I think 15% or 10% now. So we've just lifted a billion people or something out of absolute poverty, which seems like a pretty good deal.
Here you are, defending capitalism (with old ass arguments at that). How left wing of you.
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I could as well say "here are you hating on immigrants, how left wing of you", isn't the whole point of left wing politics to better the material condition of the poor and working class instead of trying to philosophise or pass ideological purity tests? "Change history instead of interpreting it" and all of that? If we can help poor Syrians by taking them in and giving them a shot at a better life that's a good thing to do, there's no point to discuss whether they're 'instruments of capitalist ideology' or subjects or objects.
So instead of treating this as an intellectual hobby where the only form of left-wing politics is acceptable is one that pleases privileged Europeans why not simply use any means that drastically reduces poverty no matter where? And even Picketty pointed out that the world has never been more egalitarian than it is today, despite living in a capitalist system.
So are we just supposed to roll that all back so Jeremy Corbyn feels better about his political ideas that haven't changed in 50 years?
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isn't the whole point of left wing politics to better the material condition of the poor and working class instead of trying to philosophise or pass ideological purity tests
And in which scenario does the increase in migration is a good way to increase the condition of the poor ? The west is stealing the south's living force, while dividing the working class to prevent any kind of structured opposition to the capitalist elites.
Some number on that : in their book Mexico's Economic Dilemma (2010), James M. Cyper & Raùl Delgado Wise evaluate that the immigration from Mexico to the US, from 1994 to 2008, is similar to a "subvention" to the US from Mexico that amont to 340 billion dollars : from the poor to the rich just how you expect from a good capitalist adventure ! In the same period, real wage in Mexico dropped by 24 % and 77 % of their basic goods is imported (in 2007). Migration is great.
So instead of treating this as an intellectual hobby where the only form of left-wing politics is acceptable is one that pleases privileged Europeans why not simply use any means that drastically reduces poverty no matter where? And even Picketty pointed out that the world has never been more egalitarian than it is today, despite living in a capitalist system.
I need to look at that Piketty quote, because from where I stand he is saying the exact opposite. Inequalities today are higher than ever, in fact that world in the middle age was way more egalitarian that it is today.
If you were actually trying to achieve a fairer world for non europeans, you would question international trade and the exploitation of the south by the north rather than promoting migration.
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I'll have to look through the book for the actual quotes(the thing is enormous) but this is one graph of the book basically shows his central r > g thesis over historical periods:
+ Show Spoiler +
And I think it's pretty clear that the birth of the modern economy, at least until very recently, had a huge liberating effect and that inheritance and wealth inequality, although of course being stark, have today less of a role than they had during historical periods.
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On September 14 2016 08:27 Nyxisto wrote:I'll have to look through the book for the actual quotes(the thing is enormous) but this is one graph of the book basically shows his central r > g thesis over historical periods: + Show Spoiler +And I think it's pretty clear that the birth of the modern economy, at least until very recently, had a huge liberating effect and that inheritance and wealth inequality, although of course being stark, have today less of a role than they had during historical periods.
I think you totally misunderstood Piketty's book. The r > g thesis is a case against unregulated capitalism : there is no natural mecanism that permit g (growth) to be superior to r (the return of interest on capital) but when r > g, inequality rise. Fact is, inequalities in capital assets today are similar to the pre WWII era (and what permitted g > r after WWII is not the "modern economy" but the destruction of capital during WWII). And inequality of income are pretty high :
![[image loading]](http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Thomas-Piketty-Inequality.jpg)
Any kind of comparaison with pre capitalist society is kinda useless. The overall wealth produced was so low that inequalities were not that high until the start of the industrial revolution (except for some specific historical counter exemple). The distribution of wealth was following various customs and laws, and most workers were autonomous (producing their own food and all) for a big part of history.
Tjhe 320 billion figure is evaluated through : the cost of the education of the migrants (83 billion dollars paid by Mexico) and the cost of the social reproduction of the future workers (the cost for the food of the future workers) compared to the sum send by the mexican workers in the US to Mexico during the period.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/krugman_3-050814.png)
