Looking after one's own: isn't than another way of saying something else?
- Thread starter nino_savatte
- Start date
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
tbaldwin said:
Stick to your day job.
Are there any EU countries other than the UK whose welfare provision is made available to resident non-nationals?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
tbaldwin said:
That'd make you Albert Steptoe, wouldn't it?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Demosthenes said:
RoI and Spain (partial) off the top of my head.
Do you know what they actually provide?
Am I right in thinking that France and Germany and Benelux only provide for their own nationals?
Am I right in thinking that France and Germany and Benelux only provide for their own nationals?
Demosthenes said:
Until very recently Belgium was on the top list of immigrants because besides social security they had the right to housing and a minimum income provided for by the State (and organised on municipal level).
More recently the minimum income (the same as what every Belgian citizen can apply for if conditions are met) was replaced with merely "material assistance" (hence no money handed out anymore) for those who apply for immigration and it is more difficult for illegals to profit form other social services, like free medical care. (For that they can still turn to the local Doctors Withouth Borders and other such organisations.)
I suspect about the same system applies to the Netherlands. I'm not informed on Luxembourg, France or Germany.
salaam.
durruti02 said:
Depends on who they are.
Do you think it is - or ever was - a RIGHT for the West to plunder and secure the foreign resources needed to develop and afterwords maintain its economy and hence its "way of life"?
It isn't. Yet that is exactly what is done since centuries and is still going on, costing nundreds of thousands of lives and destabilising and shaking non Western societies on every level. The inequality you speak of largely is the result thereof (be it the short- or longterm.)
So if you want change, you first have to change the self-centered Western way of reasoning.
By the way: Although the extreme right in the West tries to portray it as such, migration isn't a unique hphenomenon of the current times, nor is it to the Wester societies as a whole. I suppose knowledge of human history isn't their strongest virtue.
salaam.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Demosthenes said:
IIRC RoI give the same as to nationals, Spain gives basic dole, but access to social services etc is thinner.
Germany actually paid benefits at the rate of the country of origin of the claimant last time I checked.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
tbaldwin said:
Meanwhile, there are 500 people leaving this country per day. You say that "its wrong that the west continues to plunder poorer countries" but do nothing to address this situation. You prefer, instead, to attack immigration as the culprit.
Funny how I haven't seen you on the "500 Briton leave per day" thread.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Knotted said:
That without immigration we'd have a large net annual population deficit?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
ViolentPanda said:
Is he still chipping in with irrelevant asides?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Our annual net population gains (excluding immigration) don't offset our net population loss, even excluding emigration (p34 "Social Trends ed 33" e-version. 2003)Knotted said:
ViolentPanda said:
Yes, I imagine it doesn't, death rates exceeding birth rates and all that. I don't think absolute numbers of people living in the country are particularly interesting. Its the dynamic that's important, and although there is a dynamic in the birth rates and death rates the conclusions you can draw from this are not obvious (at least to me).
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Knotted said:
One of the concliusions that can be drawn is that without immigration (that's legal and supposedly permanent immigration rather than EU "guestworkers spending a few years here) our population decline would already (at least according to the treasury) be causing a squeeze as the volume of the workforce lessens in relation to those calling on state resources, and hence harming "our own". One might draw a tentative conclusion that immigration in some ways actually assists "us" in "looking after our own".
Is that clear enough, or would you like a course of trepanning?
ViolentPanda said:
Well that's the analysis from a bourgeois nationalist point of view. I think you are mainly talking about the 'pensions crisis' and the ageing population (correct me if I'm wrong). I think this question deserves a thorough analysis, but it strikes me as difficult.
ViolentPanda said:Is that clear enough, or would you like a course of trepanning?
No, you've lost me again.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
If you're a spud, perhaps thats the case.Knotted said:
You are. You're making assumptions outwith my post.
I'm not referring to a "pensions crisis" (most of which putative causes are avoidable or remediable very easily), I'm talking about an increased demand on overall state resources (as I said in my previous post) due to a couple of mutually-reinforcing factors: Improved healthcare=longer lifespan=increased demand on health and social care provision=improved healthcare (via greater profits and increased R & D to serve the increasing customer base).
Of course it is difficult, any socio-economic research that attempts to address a "grand theme" usually fails. The best we can usually manage are "snapshots" that may or may not indicate or confirm trends.
If only that were true.
ViolentPanda said:
Some disconnected thoughts:
OK, the issues relate to longer lifespans and an ageing population. Immigrants are on average younger and earn slightly more than the general populace, thus easing pressures on the treasury.
........
I'm not afraid of the grand themes, in a way they should be easier than snapshots. A snapshot has alsorts of external influences where it is difficult to gauge the relative importances. A grand theme asks 'in total what is happening?' Answering that is more a process of stripping out complexities rather than adding them in.
.......
Really when it comes down to it we are talking about two things here.
Firstly we are talking about the relative sizes of the working population to the population and if we stick to the snapshot we are implicitly talking about the treasury making money through taxes. However this has just complicated the issue unnecessarily. The tax issue is just refracted through the issue of a larger, more exploitable population.
Secondly we are talking about the necessity for greater treasury spending, principally on the NHS. Its the dynamics here that I'm least clear on. However it does occur to me that the sending countries will increase their proportion of the populace needing healthcare just as the receiving countries decrease theirs (to be pedantic, the increase and the decrease won't be in proportion with each other).
........
However in general, I think the real question is, "will crises be avoided by prudent economic policy or will they merely be delayed?"
.......
Mind you all this is pretty obscure.
500 white middleclas people per day leave x amount of white middleclass europeans take there place ie french italains etc as seen on these boards still i supose they have to do somthing while they wait for there parents to die to sell the house
and as for woof more baaaaaa
and as for woof more baaaaaa
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
brasicattack said:500 white middleclas people per day leave x amount of white middleclass europeans take there place ie french italains etc as seen on these boards still i supose they have to do somthing while they wait for there parents to die to sell the house
and as for woof more baaaaaa
How do you know they're "middle class"?
Does your class radar tell you?
If so, it's as faulty as the rest of your cognitive functions, i.e. fucked.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
And giving them the hope of picking up a premium from the "first generation immigrants have larger families" phenomenon 20 years down the line (short-termists that they are).Knotted said:
The alternative to a larger base of people liable to taxation is one that no neo -liberally minded govt will take, which is progressive taxation of income and more strictly-policed taxation of business.
This is why Jessiedog's posting on the policy of the Philippines to deliberately "produce" mre nurses than their own healthcare system could use is so interesting. It recognises not only that labour is mobile, but that mobile labour needn't mean a net deficit to the "mother country".
I'm not saying that this model is one I'd be in favour of, necessarily, just that it's interesting from the point of view of political pragmatism.
I'd say the best that prudent economic policy can do is allow us to avoid crises, but that I suspect that "in the real world" the best that'll happen will be that it might ameliorate the effects of crises.
brasicattack said:500 white middleclas people per day leave x amount of white middleclass europeans take there place ie french italains etc as seen on these boards still i supose they have to do somthing while they wait for there parents to die to sell the house
and as for woof more baaaaaa
A really interesting bit on how legal migrants are exploited on the BBC News just now.
People from Lithuania exploited by gangmasters and people traffikers.
It is a world away from the open borders that as you say a few middle class people benefit from.
ViolentPanda said:
This is the key or at least one of the keys. Migration is progressive in this repect. The old world order was by no means rational, just as the new world order is by no means rational. There is no good a priori reason why training should be for a particular country's industries/services.
I've been looking at Mexico and South America more than the Philippines and in Mexico emmigration has had a devastating effect. I think in the Philippines and India its been properly planned for. However, part of the question is whether this is good for the Philippines in the long run.
You have to grant balders the fact that he is partially right, though. Plus he's been plugging away on this issue in a way nobody else has - with the emphasis on the brain drain and zealous internationalism - and its turned out to be pretty insightful. I think that's more important than being 100% accurate.
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