Martin Feldstein thinks not so much:
The ageing of the population presents a major fiscal challenge for the
countries of Europe. The combination of increased longevity and a
reduced birth rate will directly reduce the growth rates of the
European economies by slowing the growth of the capital stock and by
weakening the productivity of the labor force. This slower growth of
GDP means a smaller tax base and less tax revenue. In addition, the
current tax-financed systems of social pensions and health care will
require substantial increases in the already high tax rates. The
analysis in this paper shows that the common prescription of increased
immigration would do little to reduce the future fiscal burden. The
increased revenue from a large rise in immigration would finance only a
small part of the coming rise in the cost of pension and health
benefits. The only alternative to significantly higher tax rates or
substantially lower retirement income is to shift from a pure
tax-financed system to a mixed system that supplements the tax financed
benefits with benefits based on increased saving financial investment.
Here is the paper. I can’t find a non-gated version, which might be because Feldstein runs the NBER…
Immigration won’t solve any of Europe’s problems, because the kind of immigrants we lure into Europe are not high-skilled workers, but people who are interested in the idea of social welfare.
Germany is experiencing now the first backlash of its terrible immigration policy. It is incredible whacky to look at the results of its immigration policy, turning away high-skilled workers and academics, but instead having enough grey spots for people who don’t want to work.
It’s one of the reasons, why I argue that welfare states can never have an open border policy, because welfare systems tend to motivate the wrong kind of characteristica in probable immigrants.
It’s just the incentive which is plain wrong and leads to a level of immigration that is to the disadvantage of europe.
As far as the UK’s concerned, Steve’s right – but even although the Bangladeshis manage to achieve even worse progress than the Pakistanis, it sometimes seems that the Somalis, a people from somewhere almost all of whom seem to be going nowhere, were created by God for no purpose other than to point out the benefits of immigration restriction.
In Italy,politicians are attracting huge numbers of immigrants,at the same time trying to sell to the Italian public the idea that they will eventually finance the costly old-age pension system of Italy.
Nothing could be further from the truth: these masses of unskilled workers are on one side preventing Italian managers from finally dismissing obsolete and non-competitive sectors of the economy as they should have already done long ago; on the other hand thay are destroying the country’s welfare system day after day,by taking much more from it then what they contribute to.
The politicians are aware of this,but their main concern is to grant immigrants the right to vote,thus securing -in their personal plan- political power for left wing coalitions for the near future,with the utmost disregard for the future of this country and of its future generations….
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