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A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

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Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integration is a two-way street. I've known many people born in England, France, Germany who feel excluded from education opportunities, workplace opportunities, healthcare and general civil society because of their family origin, cultural background and pure skin colour. Probably also how they speak in the UK. This issue is much less in new world countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Let people into societ…

Integration of randomly arrived (as opposed to selectively chosen and well-educated) Muslims has proved nigh impossible everywhere in the world of "unbelievers". As far as the UK goes, Hindus and Sikhs, who look every bit as exotic and dark-skinned as Pakistanis, are on average richer than white Britons and also societally very successful. If there is some kind of "pure skin colour"-based racism at work, it somehow d…

The problem of this conversation is that "immigration" is treated as one single, amorphous thing.

What kind of immigrants are we talking about? What was their income, their skills, their ability to speak the local language, what jobs could they get once they arrived in the country? Answer all those questions, and depending on your answers we may find a completely integrated, successful migrant or someone who lives generally excluded from society. Skin color and religion may play a role sometimes, but they are typically far from being determinant.

For that matter, I am a dark skinned immigrant in the country I live in. I also speak the language fluently, am highly educated, and make around 3x the median local income. Of course, I never experienced racism. Change some of those social attributes, and I bet the outcome would be different.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#82
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Section: "In comments".

The entire section? That’s not very helpful.

I can see that you've modified your comment. I will redact mine in turn.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#83
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly? I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole. 1. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o...

I think that may be because Texas gets Hispanic immigrants, whereas Europe gets immigrants from Islamic regions that have been disrupted by either the U.S. or Russia (mostly the U.S. though). There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants."

> There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants."

"We need the natural resources, not the people" /s

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#84
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at income inequality, not wealth inequality. While Sweden has relatively low income inequality, it has extremely high wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...

> While Sweden has relatively low income inequality, it has extremely high wealth inequality. The wealth is old industrial and aristocratic money. Salaried people don't accumulate wealth.

Indeed. The low income inequality is in many ways a contributing factor to the high wealth inequality, since it is virtually impossible to become wealthy in Sweden just by working hard and earning a salary.

Virtually no 'normal' jobs have a salary much above $200k. Whereas in the US that salary is quite achievable for a lot of people by just working your way up in a normal corporation. Even CEO salaries in the biggest Swedish companies rarely break $1m and if you break $2m you have among the very highest salaries in Sweden.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#85
post #5

"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence" If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.

If I'm not mistaken, the decades of economic liberalism and dismantling of social support systems has made a lot of people very worried about their future, and as usual the rich and powerful blame immigrants (or some other weak minority group) as a slight-of-hand to distract from the actual issues.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#86

So, as in america, again, you're guilty until you prove you're innocent, by either wasting a lot of money on legal costs, or alternatively, letting them steal whatever they took from you... sad.

TBH both US and Sweden have comparable high wealth inequality, and very high ratio of mean/median wealth. Their rich want their poor to remain poor.

Sweden has much higher wealth inequality than the US. Its higher than Russia even

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#87
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the opposite effect of being afraid to acknowledge crime by immigrants is also present. It looks like the government is unwilling to publish data that would resolve that question but here are some clues from Wikipedia [1]: "58% of men convicted of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were immigrants born outside of the European Union" "of 100 suspects of murder and attempted murder using fi…

If you take men from the dark ages and drop them into a deeply secular and free society you are asking for problems. It took Europe a century to leave Christianity behind.

> It took Europe a century to leave Christianity behind

Maybe you should make a visit. Or do you mean, behind the corner ? (see Notre Dame for the most recent example)

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integration is a two-way street. I've known many people born in England, France, Germany who feel excluded from education opportunities, workplace opportunities, healthcare and general civil society because of their family origin, cultural background and pure skin colour. Probably also how they speak in the UK. This issue is much less in new world countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Let people into societ…

So it's Sweden's own people's fault for not wanting to do "integration"? Do you believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration in the first place?

I'm not apportioning blame just saying that what's happening now is feeding a future of separate societies that probably everyone would rather avoid.

I don't believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration but there were immigration policies in place that were put in place by Sweden's leaders on behalf of its people that weren't questioned until later. You are where you are now - you can't unring a bell. You have to deal with the issues of the future now not the issues of the past

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#89
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but one shouldn’t take high impact statements about what the “consensus” is on any issue from random comments on the internet without any justification.

The second sentence is justification. I don't mind if people don't just accept my conclusion based on the comment, it's just a comment, a small piece of the puzzle in someones mind.

It’s not a justification though. That’s what I’m saying.

Just because the left doesn’t mention an issue, doesn’t mean that a consensus is reached.

No political party really talks much about school shootings in the US nowadays, but that doesn’t mean the consensus is young white men are naturally school shooters.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's Sweden's own people's fault for not wanting to do "integration"? Do you believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration in the first place?

I'm not apportioning blame just saying that what's happening now is feeding a future of separate societies that probably everyone would rather avoid. I don't believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration but there were immigration policies in place that were put in place by Sweden's leaders on behalf of its people that weren't questioned until later. You are where you are now - you can't unring a bell. You have t…

The bell indeed can't be unrung.

But, if one understands that what the Swedish leaders did was not on behalf of it's people, you begin to understand what the future should look like.

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