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Comment by volfied | Hacker News Reader

They don’t have enough workers they can exploit

They don’t have enough workers period. In 1960, most European countries had about 5 working age people per retiree. By 2050, there will be less than 2 workers per retiree in France, and just over 1 in Spain.

So we need to eradicate more retirees then?

Seriously though, workers on what? I find it quite odd to base the value on workers as being a percentage of retirees, that's entirely detached from demand, productivity and opportunity.

"We need more workers to fund the old ones that stopped!" I get the basic logic, but it's stupid.

How else would pensions get paid?

Pension funds earn from investing.

Investments in businesses with no employees, which sell their wares to unemployed people?

> Seriously though, workers on what?

This is the unexamined premise that keeps on going unexamined. Europe makes less and less each day, growing more and more dependent on China for production (as on the US for security, although Europe seems a little less dependent on Russia for energy now). Automation fills the tedious, low-skill jobs that remain onshore, and the promise of industrialization, digitalization, and now AI is that fewer human workers are needed to sustain equal productivity. Why does the sane world that frets about offshoring and AI gutting employment also need unskilled immigrants to be "moar workers?"

Because things aren't fully automated or offshored, and because governments need a tax base, which won't exist if that money is going to Alphabet-AI-division, or India.

Plus there are still gaps, things which cannot be automated or offshored, and many which will only do so after great effort. Lotta money to be lost there without bodies.

Because all those developments that result in increased productivity get turned into increased profits for individual companies, not in higher wages or reduced hours for workers.

By 2050, we may all be retirees.

Without immigration France does not have a healthy demography. As much as I am against exploitative forms of immigration, France has strong Unions and Strikes are their national past time. Not an expert in French economy, but a first hand look is their major corporations are luxury brands but the rest of the economy is a meh! Airbus is a collab with other EU countries and perhaps Dassault and a strong defense sector. I would be surprised if French economic pie is not dominated by government and its private sector is rather limited.

> Without immigration France does not have a healthy demography

Having a large and rapidly growing underclass also sounds like an unhealthy demography. Immigration won't solve the problems facing France, it'll make them worse.

The demographic trend (age curve) is a real problem, difficult to solve without immigration.

It’s impossible to solve with immigration. Even with an immigrant population that was completely willing and able to assimilate (unlike those in question), that process takes generations and requires a lack of ethnic ghettos and a high proportion of native and nativized people relative to immigrants. No honest person would say that we could solve Japan’s falling birthrate by rapidly and continually pumping it full of Europeans and expect it to remain recognizably Japanese.

But anyway population fluctuates. These things tend to work themselves out normally when your main goal is the good of the nation and not just inflating the GDP as quickly and recklessly as possible.

Right. And in fact, immigration doesn't solve the issue for a very basic reason.

A system that says "The number of working-age people must be at least 5x the number of retirees" is literally demanding unending (super)exponential growth. It's fundamentally impossible on a finite world. It's going to break down at some point. The only question is whether that happens before or after filling the developed world up with immigrants from the undeveloped world.

Immigration seen that way to me is similar to considering human as cattle. If moral matters in the question.

If not. difficult to solve?

I have no strong opinion to the question of contraception but it would be sensical to promote and educate people (both men and women) that parenting is good (arguing with nature is hard) especially when the nation needs more births.

I feel obligated to apologies, but won't. I do accept to having to point out I'm in no way stating contraception should be illgal or anything of that sort.

I concede that for solutioning the short term issue of shortage of workers, there are no other scheme to employ, I'm out of idea. No wait! There are officially almost 3 million unemployed residents in France. I won't try to demonstrate it's in fact double this number, nor bring up the argument a few million don't really work given they do just as little as they get paid.

We are taken for fools. And a number of idiots found no alternative than setting stuff on fire. It's not just immigrants rioting.

The only real solution is family planning. You don't want a pointless exponential population growth Ponzi scheme where each person has to have three children with their partner. What is necessary are people that join the workforce exactly at the same rate as people exit the workforce. That is the only way you can avoid the Ponzi scheme.

This means when someone is in their mid fourties and will retire in 20 years, someone needs to give birth to a child so that it will grow up and start working just in time for the retiree. If children get born too early, then you run into the problem of them needing their own caretakers. These children don't compensate for someone else leaving, so they add to the population and their future caretakers will also add to the population leading to an exponential Ponzi scheme.

BINGO

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