41–50 of 57 posts
FWIW my take would be the EU should not just prevent ASML from leaving, but also prohibit non-EU ownership for regional strategic reasons.
Last I check the Dutch have good protection for human rights.
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Where would they go? Germany? They don't give any tax breaks for migrant workers there. Actually nobody else in the EU does, it's only a Netherlands feature. Switzerland? It's even more difficult to get work visas there. US? Same and you need to pay even higher wages. Belgium? UK? Luxemburg?
Spain does it, Portugal does it. Sweden does it.
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They said that about Canada too. As a result we had a surge in immigration that led to huge jumps in youth unemployment. If companies are so desperate for workers why are wages stagnant and why are so many people getting ghosted during job interviews and why does it take so many applications to find a job. This doesn't add up. We have record numbers of women in the workforce basically doubling the number of workers c…
Overall, as the OP says, the key issue is demographic. That doesn't mean that the issues you note don't exist. The pressure on housing is very real, but much of it is due to an ageing population. Certainly in many places there is a lack of a suitable housing mix that enables empty nests to downsize once the kids have left home, but still remain in the same community. So they rattle round in oversized houses, leading…
Here's a weird thought: Maybe the EU could figure out what issues the locals are having preventing them from wanting kids, and fix them, instead of importing more migrants from impoverished nations, and calling it a day.
We are not talking here about low-wage workers either (can you imagine the level of knowledge and skills required to work for ASML), why attack that group of people specifically?
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Canada, our government's happy to have companies bring in underpaid foreign labour instead of hiring locals. Sad that hasn't really gotten is anywhere in terms of attracting business investment. I think maybe we should see through the corporate nonsense and stop pandering to these companies and their demands. There's more to being investment friendly than just offering low taxes and a surplus of cheap foreign labour.
canada still mostly pays higher than eu
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They said that about Canada too. As a result we had a surge in immigration that led to huge jumps in youth unemployment. If companies are so desperate for workers why are wages stagnant and why are so many people getting ghosted during job interviews and why does it take so many applications to find a job. This doesn't add up. We have record numbers of women in the workforce basically doubling the number of workers c…
Prices are dictated by a global purchasing market. This means that salaries cannot grow because otherwise companies wouldn’t make profit, as they have to compete with products built by Chinese companies with much lower salaries.
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Wouldn't they be better off filling most positions locally even if quantity dips because long term those skills transfer rathering then hoping a migrant becomes a local? 40% is a high number required.
The realities of the world never work on "wouldn't it be better if...". Yes it would be better if there was no war in Ukraine, no war in Gaza, no COVID, no economic downturn with inflation, etc. but the world doesn't function on our wishes, and companies operate on quarterly profits and can't wait for the world to become as they wish.
The war piece is more complex. Ukraine war is about NATO expanding into Russian influence zones. Without that war we would be looking at a war in a different place, maybe even a nuclear war fighting over the same thing. The Gaza war is a proxy for a Iran/Israel war. COVID become a proxy war for a power grab by health officials. They still want countries to handover power over citizen to the who by the end of this month.
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Prices are dictated by a global purchasing market. This means that salaries cannot grow because otherwise companies wouldn’t make profit, as they have to compete with products built by Chinese companies with much lower salaries.
This sounds like a race to the bottom where we keep demanding workers accept less and less to compete with poorer and poorer nations - while simultaneously ignoring that economic powerhouses like the US who pay workers relatively well
The biggest problem with free markets is that it’s not really a sustainable system in the sense that with a certain income you can’t afford the things you need provided by people enjoying similar incomes. Hence we need to mass import product from lower income countries, and even local labor needs to be imported from lower income countries. Cleaners from low income countries, construction workers from low income countries.
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This sounds like a race to the bottom where we keep demanding workers accept less and less to compete with poorer and poorer nations - while simultaneously ignoring that economic powerhouses like the US who pay workers relatively well
Globalization is exactly that, until there’s global equality of salaries. We’re seeing it at the moment where Chinese cars are taking over the market because they’re better priced than European or American alternatives. To compete they have to move production to Chinese, see for example the large production of teslas in china, or they replace humans by robots… The biggest problem with free markets is that it’s not re…
Countries with very low wages are also countries with very low productivity (throwing cheap labour instead of technology and expertise at problems)