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Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

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Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#191

Post by brainwad »

Thraway198 wrote: post #172
phendrenad2 wrote: post #58

I don't get why they would want to do this, when runaway depopulation is the biggest issue facing the world. We're at a point where (I think, controversially) we need to sanction (or more) nations that aren't increasing their population annually. This is an existential threat facing the human race.

What???? Why would we have to do that? Runaway depopulation is the biggest issue facing the world? We have billions of people on the planet. GPD not going up is NOT an existential threat.

The complexity of society has got to be somewhat proportional to its population. If we halve the population, we won't just half the GWP. It will be lower still due to less specialisation.

Also, unless you throw the elderly to the wolves, having very low birth rates leads to a huge drag from having too many retirees to support with your shrinking working age population.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#192

Post by lovich »

dyauspitr wrote: post #152
Saline9515 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My g…

You’re not really accounting for where the money for those “naturally rising wages” come from. A restaurant in the US is making the same (or frankly less) than it used to 10 years ago accounting for inflation. They can’t really afford to pay people more because of the higher consumer index. So the only real option is shutting down. Or in the US for farming. They already run on razor thin margins with a lot of variabi…

Pedantry, because the crackdown on labor certainly didn’t help, but the Florida orange orchards shutting down is mostly due to the citrus greening disease that’s wiping out the farms similar to how the gros Michael banana was wiped out last century[1]

[1] https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-03-23/florida-oranges-cit...

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#193

Post by kgwgk »

hintymad wrote: post #139

Just curious, how can a state cap the country's population (I assume not like the Chinese government)? This appears that they assume their birth rate will be so low that they will need to absorb immigrates?

I don't know about "need" but the 1% population growth of Switzerland is already coming mostly from immigration. (It's also the case in the US, and in the EU it's even worse: without immigration population is declining.)

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#194

Post by kgwgk »

Arodex wrote: post #187
kgwgk wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Immigrants can't vote on federal votations, dumbass. […] And naturalized immigrants can!

When do they stop being immigrants? If you think people who waited more than a decade and paid a hefty sum to affirm their will to be citizens are second-class (or maybe even traitors!) compared to people who became citizen by making no effort and were just born that way...

> When do they stop being immigrants?

Never?

> If you think people who waited more than a decade and paid a hefty sum to affirm their will to be citizens are second-class (or maybe even traitors!)

I don't think so. Do you?

(Edit: I don't object to using 'immigrant' in a different way. But when someone said that in the places with more immigration there will also be more immigrant voters it was pretty clear in what sense the word was being used. Dumbass.)

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#195

Post by Larrikin »

mrtksn wrote: post #143
optimalsolver wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe the kids of the Swiss elite would be cleaning sewers if not for the low pay.

No no, they would have totally done it if the immigrants didn’t suppress the wages and the pay was %15 higher. Now they need to do some office jobs for 5 times the pay since the unemployment rate is %3. There are no Swiss sitting around and not cleaning the sewers because the pay was too low, it will have to fetch workers from other industries.

Immigrants do not suppress wages, business owners do.

The solution there is the same solution as the US. If the US introduced a (for example) 4x median salary fine for every year an employer employed someone not legally eligible to work the problem would fix itself. If they did not keep records assume 5 years or whenever the person's visa expired, since that is the most common case of illegal immigration.

But the businesses WANT a class of people they can underpay who can't gain access easily to legal services when the employer screws them over.

If the people are employed legally and are being paid the minimum wage, then your complaint is with the government and you should elect people that will raise the minimum wage.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#196

Post by cindyllm »

Saline9515 wrote: post #174
project2501a wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. apologies, but those of us in the Left agree more with the second part of your sentence than the Left. Are you mixing Leftists and Liberals, perchance?

Yet leftists will always agree to import migrants to undercut locals, in harmony with the capitalist bourgeois class. Besides, I have heard this argument said to me irl a countless times by people with leftist ideas.

[dead]

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#197

Post by s1artibartfast »

lovich wrote: post #189
Saline9515 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My g…

I’m somewhat sympathetic with that critique on mass immigration in regards to dropping wages at the low end, but as I never see the anti immigration folk push for regulating or attacking the companies hiring said immigrants, I am comfortable just assuming it’s racism. Everytime I get into the weeds with anti immigration people I feel like I run through the IQ meme with “it’s just racism” on the low and high ends and…

You think it is better to have people complaining about companies hiring completely legal migrants than seeking to reform the system in the first place?

Governmental policy is the appropriate place to focus attention - not Twitter outrage campaigns about random companies following the laws that were democratically put in place

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#198

Post by lovich »

inigyou wrote: post #28
stephbook wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this Berlin that decides anything and rolls it out contintent-wide with us in the room right now?

Berlin is basically forcing the EU's hand regarding the Gaza war, so, yes?

Was wondering how long this thread could go before someone made it about the omnicause.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#199

Post by Teever »

leejo wrote: post #136
blockmarker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27% of Swiss residents were born outside the country. Can there ever be a limit to immigration, or will it always mean you are literally Hitler and want to exterminate millions?

> 27% of Swiss residents were born outside the country. Swiss nationality is not linked to your birth country, it is linked to lineage. There are second, third, (fourth, fifth, sixth?) generation immigrants in Switzerland that are not Swiss. Conversly, there are Swiss nationals that have never set foot in Switzerland.

What events occurred that made the original Swiss people into Swiss people?

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#200

Post by s1artibartfast »

mrtksn wrote: post #138
Saline9515 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My g…

Why don’t you let people decide who works with who in a free market and if you are worried about low wages introduce higher minimum wages. Or, what I actually prefer is face who you are and say I don’t want those people who are a generation or two behind in wealth? Why the gymnastics? As if there are people pf your kind who would have done these jobs but they are just sitting around or doing rocket science because th…

Weird to see free market and minimum wage in the same sentence. The people that I know who voted yes on this don't want the people at all, no matter if the wage. They don't want the population density and they don't want the dilution of their culture
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