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Comment by just_asking_ | Hacker News Reader

Is the US unique in its _need_ for imported labor? Is economic crisis the only alternative to mass immigration, as Roubini claims? It seems like another option is for jobs currently filled with imported labor to start paying more to attract more domestic applicants. What do other countries do to fill these important jobs that we fill with imported labor? It seems impossible for everyone to rely on mass immigration, unless we held a big round robin population swap.

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I guess the best comparisons would be Hungary and Japan for very different reasons. Japan is automating as much as it can; while Hungary is suffering from a lack of workers, and trying some very surprising (and I think unpopular) strategies to grow its workforce without accepting immigrants.

In general, highly developed nations seem to be dependent on immigration, because the local population doesn’t want to grow fast enough and may even be shrinking. (Hungary may be unrelated; I get the impression they’re shrinking for the same reason that East Germany was shrinking, not because they are “highly developed”; certainly Andrássy Avenue looked like it hadn’t been repaired since the fall of the USSR when I visited).

Hungary is shrinking because of a one-two punch of (1) birth rates falling in the 1990s during the economic transition and staying there, despite generous incentives in recent Orban governments to encourage its rise, and (2) people of prime working age moving to Western and Southwestern Europe to for better economic opportunities. This is despite the fact that in 2010 the Orban government instituted a countrywide public works scheme that greatly reduced unemployment and made life in rural areas slightly more bearable, if more reliant on the populist regime.

Hungary is in need of skilled employment in areas like construction, hospitality, trades, IT, and administration, but cannot attract or train enough workers and retain them domestically with the levels of pay employers are willing and able to pay. Such skilled workers can simply relocate elsewhere in Europe and increase their take-home pay.

Hungary is the closest point to cross into the land-contiguous portion of the Schengen area from the southeastern migration route into the EU, so you can easily catch a train to an attractive destination like Germany. Despite the narrative of the Orban government, few of these incoming migrants want to stay in Hungary. The government could incentivize them to stay, if it wanted, but for racial and religious reasons, it doesn't.

This leaves the state in a difficult situation. In the early years of foreign investment, it was attractive because its highly educated workforce and labor costs lower than Western Europe. But now it's subject to skill drain and brain drain and its value proposition has been reduced.

Japan's use of automation is an interesting point. On a site like Hacker News where articles about automation replacing human labor with machines can be found daily, as well as articles about the effects of overpopulation on the Earth, it's surprising to hear anyone argue that a high quality of life can only be sustained by exponential population growth. The existence of counterexamples like Japan calls that assumption into question.

Unfortunately, our current economic system seems to require exponential economic (though not necessarily population) growth in order to maintain an equilibrium of workers and consumers (I may be oversimplifying, I’m not sure). As this is definitely not sustainable, I certainly hope that an alternative system can be produced, and quickly. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Not everyone needs mass immigration. Countries with high living standards and low birth rates do.

> Not everyone needs mass immigration. Countries with high living standards and low birth rates do.

An obvious alternative would be adopting policies to raise the domestic birthrate to the population replacement rate, e.g. increasing the child tax credit, and various policies to disconnect housing costs from school quality so that prospective parents don't change course when they see how much more it costs to buy a house in a good school district.

I have trouble squaring this logic with the common wisdom that millions of jobs are at risk due to automation.

Both situations can be true.

Automation hits some industries harder than others. It's barely affected restaurant workers, for example, but has decimated mining labor.

Another recent example is processing meat. The US has a shortage of labor, but robots can't do the work and Americans refuse to.

Further reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_HB_56#Impact

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan fit this description but don't rely on mass immigration.

Taiwan is trying to promote more immigration and their economy has been in the doldrums for the past decade, at least when it comes to pay.

https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2018/11/taiwan-embraces-southea...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2018/03/19/taiwan...

"As the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act enacted last December took effect in April, the government set in motion a newly created visa status designed to admit foreign workers with certain skills or knowledge to make up for a serious domestic workforce shortage."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/06/26/commentary/j...

Japan at least is in the midst of an ever-worsening demographic crisis.

No one needs mass immigration. Especially those with high living standards and "low" birth rates. The position you're taking is an outright lie and I can't fathom why it's constantly being perpetuated.

Do you have any reasons or facts you can give for this?

If birth rates are low, how does your economy function with many older workers who can't/won't do labor like construction?

Why is Japan opening itself up for immigration specifically to fill jobs? What other solution should they have chosen?

You obviously downscale the economy with a population that doesn't sustain or require growth.

Not sure I understand what downscale means. How can a capitalist economy convert itself (even a small part of it) to one that doesn't require growth?

Do you have a concrete policy proposal for a country like today's Japan?

if you don't understand what it means to downscale production I can't help you. Capitalism doesn't depend on infinite growth.

I was worried that by "downscale" you meant to let people die, so I had to clarify.

As far as the claim that capitalism doesn't require infinite growth: that doesn't seem mathematically possible, ans it's certainly an unorthodox claim. I'd say that puts the burden on you to provide evidence (or, at the very least, explain).

It's disturbing that the first thing you admitted to thinking of when I said "downsizing" was letting people die. What the heck?

the basics of econ, growth isn't even mentioned when it comes to capitalism.

Here: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/

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