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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

#161

Post by okanat »

blockmarker wrote: post #116
Biganon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. It was an initiative to limit immigration, by a xenophobic party. They don't give a damn if you have 13 children, they don't want brown people in Switzerland.

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?

> you are literally Hitler and want to exterminate millions?

That's the part they currently don't say out loud. They are getting bolder and bolder though.

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

#162

Post by newtonianrules »

poisonborz wrote: post #66

Misleading to call this "cap population", no one can cap population. The vote was about capping immigrant benefits, mostly aiming germans (reaching 9.5m) and then Swiss EU isolation/"Swexit" (at 10m). Basically the right wing SVP's long term goals packaged in a format that was more palatable to the masses.

[dead]

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

#163

Post by FireBeyond »

mrtksn wrote: post #96
brightbeige wrote: post #68

Recent, related New Yorker article that goes into the background leading up to the vote https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerl... Despite the prosperity, many Swiss had mixed emotions about the guest workers, who came largely from Southern Europe. As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch observed, “We wanted workers, but we got people.”

Yes, that’s the dilemma of the rich countries. They want their life be taken care by the people they don’t want around and if they have to have them around they want them be the kids from people from their kind but not theirs. It’s a special kind of NIMBY, not necessarily xenophobia. More like a class thing, they want other rich people’s kids do the shitty jobs so they don’t have to have these poor people doing the j…

> Yes, that’s the dilemma of the rich countries. They want their life be taken care by the people they don’t want around and if they have to have them around they want them be the kids from people from their kind but not theirs.

> It’s a special kind of NIMBY, not necessarily xenophobia. More like a class thing, they want other rich people’s kids do the shitty jobs so they don’t have to have these poor people doing the jobs and hanging around.

And it can happen implicitly or explicitly. Witness Jackson Hole. None of the workers can afford to live there and the nearest towns are not close. So the residents arranged a coach service to bus the workers in. And at the end of the day, and out. Yes, to their homes, but best believe there is a very limited window of return coaches which leads to a feeling of almost a sundown town.

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

#164

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

pif wrote: post #155
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…

That's as stupid as it is old. Locals would do it for a proper salary. But the same locals do not want to pay the proper salary! Turn the brain on from time to time!

Looks you forgot yours at home. Lowering expenses (so wages) in a competitive free market works exactly like doping in cyclism: you'll be forced to if you want to stay alive.

But even without considering that, the business-owning "bourgeois" class not caring about their nation has no reason to be left unchecked by those whose job is to run a country.

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

#165

Post by FabCH »

kuerbel wrote: post #133
aranelsurion wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s incredibly hard to naturalize in Switzerland. Less so in Germany Is it? Asking out of curiosity, from a cursory look both countries require self-sufficiency, language (in fact Switzerland looks a little easier on this), no criminal background, an integration test to be taken (and both seem easy) and time in the country. Only major difference seems to me is Germany takes 5 years in paper (more like 6-7 in reali…

In Switzerland they are voting on naturalisation... which means you are at the whim of people living in the same place. If you don't fit in you'll have a hard time, if they don't like you for whatever reason etc, wrong hair colour, you name it. In Germany it's an administrative act with clear demands.

Citizens voting on naturalization was abolished by federal court decision since 2008.

You can still be voted on by the city council though, but they are required to provide a reason and „wrong hair color“ will not pass legal challenge.

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

#166

Post by Saline9515 »

kuerbel wrote: post #146
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…

Locals are not going to clean sewers and you know it. Society in general made it very clear over the last decades that jobs like that are shit, only losers are doing them, and that you need a degree to be worth something. If you want to blame something for this, blame neoliberalism. It helped create a culture in which educational credentials, professional careers, and market prestige became dominant measures of succe…

In France, locals clean sewers. I know several sewer workers, who enjoy very early retirement (54 years old, only 12 years of sewer work). https://www.brut.media/fr/videos/france/societe/les-metiers-...

You just have contempt for your fellow citizens, people are happy to do hard jobs if they are getting rewarded for it. This is also why you often find locals in equivalent jobs that can't be done by migrants (such as historical monuments restauration), but are equally hard (and better paid).

And I'm ok with restaurants being much more expensive. Anyway in France it's mostly pensioners that go there anymore.

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

#167

Post by Thraway198 »

epolanski wrote: post #106
geremiiah wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK about Argentina, but the US, Australia and Canada went through the whole cycle post WWII. At first they opened up their borders because they were in need of workers. However, at some point, due to various factors, including rising anti-immigration sentiments, they retightened their immigration policies again. This all happened pre-1990s. And all of those are immigration countries, unlike countries in Europe.

Mate, none of those governments were led by natives but immigrants and their descendants. Unless you live under a rock it's not Crazy Horse or Geronimo sitting in the white house, but a descendant of immigrants.

Crazy Horse and Geronimo's ancestors also came from elsewhere. No one just springs up from the ground.

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

#168

Post by kgwgk »

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.

That’s unrelated to the fact you reply to.

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

#169

Post by Saline9515 »

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…

It's ok to have less restaurants? I prefer to have less restaurants and staff that isn't treated like slaves?

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

#170

Post by jnwatson »

vladms wrote: post #120
geremiiah wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like EU countries are independently embarking on the Canada-policy of importing a whole bunch of South East Asians and Latin Americans. From Hungary to Ireland, you see the same trend. Part of it is by economic necessity. For example finding nursing staff is very challenging and you have to compete with the US and Australia and other rich countries. But part of it doesn't make much sense. We really don…

> We really don't need to import any kind of engineers from outside I was involved in a startup in the Netherlands. We tried to recruit Dutch people, all wanted safe 9-5 jobs where they would know what they would do in 1-2 years. A startup can not guarantee that. We ended up with most engineers foreigners, many (but not all) that have studied there. So I would say that it is also risk and opportunity related. Someone…

The solution is obviously the American one. Make everyone so afraid of their job prospects that working for a startup isn't materially different in terms of job security.
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