Believe it or not, the lack of babies in the west is not some fancy fashion choice started by the Millennials, but a consequence of the broken housing market formed by government economic and banking policies of the last couple of decades that turned real estate into an investment vehicle for the haves in the detriment of the have-nots who also suffered wage stagnation, effectively pricing out young couples out of decent homes, so instead of hanging a heavy bank loan around their necks for a shoebox for the next 30 years, they choose not to bother with kids or stay debt free and single.
So how about we solve the housing market first, instead of throwing more gasoline on the fire via uncontrolled immigration in an already broken housing and jobs market?
but a consequence of the broken housing market
You sure about that? Birth rate is inversely correlated with income. Why are people who can't afford houses still having more children?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
That's a useless metric on its own if the rise in housing costs, education and childcare far exceed the rise in wages.
Also, more immigration means more demand for housing that's already expensive and scarce for the local population. How does adding more immigration help with the housing crisis?
Not saying we shouldn't have immigration, I'm saying it should be regulated to highly skilled professions that suffer demonstrated shortages (doctors, nurses, engineers, etc).
We have enough food delivery bicycle couriers and wage slaves that juggle between the unemployment office and seasonal gigs that pay piss poor and are open to exploitation by crappy business owners who thrive on exploiting desperate immigrants who can't defend themselves and bring down the wages for everyone because we keep pushing for more uncontrolled immigration.
Well, more people to build the houses, for a start. The housing crisis has nothing to do with population. It's an entirely self-inflicted problem because it's impossible for a natural market to be both too expensive to purchase and not profitable enough to supply at the same time. Find the brakes and take them off. Rent control for new construction, pointless urban parking requirements, and NIMBYs are the culprits, not fresh immigrants.
How so? Do you only let builders, contractors and handy-men immigrate in the country?
>The housing crisis has nothing to do with population.
How so? Housing prices are a function of supply vs demand, and more population equals more demand, unless you expect the immigrant population to be homeless.
Most of the countries that act as sources of immigrants are beginning their own population decline. Very soon there’ll be a slim number of countries with enough population to maintain their numbers while having enough to send abroad. Within about 50 years or so, that number will be approximately zero. When immigrants come to a country and adapt, their birth rates drop off pretty quickly as well. It’s a one, maybe two generation patch that slightly sustains numbers and that’s it.
Figuring out how to get people currently living in your country wanting to have kids is the real solution. At that point you can recruit skilled immigrants and not just play a numbers game to try to stay afloat. You also don’t need to think you’re entitled to the population of other countries to solve your own demographic crisis, like so many western countries do.
> "There were water riots when it was learned how many people the Duke was adding to the population," she said. "They stopped only when the people learned we were installing new windtraps and condensers to take care of the load."
> "There is only so much water to support human life here," he said. "The people know if more come to drink a limited amount of water, the price goes up and the very poor die. But the Duke has solved this. It doesn’t follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him."
Dune is not a model, toy or otherwise, it is a narrative with no independent variables.
The illusion that there is a model involved is art, just as the illusion of (say) spaceships in the film version.
There is difference between fiction and reality. Dune is fiction.
The passage I posted is basically just, "X is limited, adding more people will lead to X shortages, let's find a way to use X more efficiently", with X replied with water. The implication of me saying this is that you can also replace X with land.
Obviously, I could have just said "let's just build more housing, then immigration won't lead to housing shortages", but I think that's a less interesting comment. By instead using the passage, I've done 2 things: pointed out that other people have thought about this issue (in another domain), and encouraged a few people to look up Dune, and maybe read it.
Would your criticism apply if my comment instead said "let's just build more housing, then immigration won't lead to housing shortages"? Because I think that form has equivalent content (in terms of the underlying message), so if it doesn't apply that form, I don't think it applies to the current form either.
Culture changes constantly with or without immigration. Do you really think everything we have now is good enough that it should be encased in amber for the next 100+ years? Personally I'm more interested in what evolves out of it.
There are better cultures and worse ones (such as, prison culture or Khmer Rouge), and we're talking about degradation here.
With educated immigrants, the story may be different. But it's not the kind that most people worry about.
But what? But it isn't worth it? If that's what you mean, are you planning to move back or did you decide it's worth it after all?