Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a much smaller economy and Switzerland, unlike the UK, is landlocked and surrounded by EU countries. More than half of its exports go to the EU. Switzerland needs the EU more than the EU needs Switzerland.
European countries have traded with each other long before EU free movement. In fact, most countries today, EU or not, manage to trade just fine despite strict borders.
Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
841–850 of 891 posts
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#842Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places you can visit. It's also one of the worst developed nation economies and has a massive old, shrinking population problem and is well associated with people having no kids, having no prospects for a bett…
To be clear, the economic performance of Japan is pretty similar to Italy. They have incredibly low population growth (or shrinking), but their GDP per capita continues to increase year-over-year. Surprisingly, quality of life is pretty good in Japan and Italy (the second will be a bit controversial here). As long as you have a middle class job, your life will be pretty good.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250410/p2a/00m/0na/01...
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#843Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of those things, Japan has extremely high suicide rates, extremely low rates of coupling, extremely low rates of family formation, extremely high rates of loneliness, etc. It's a place with no economic growth prospects, where you have to work far longer than people in other developed nations, and where your chance of companionship and having your own family is the lowest it can possibly be in the world. But a…
> extremely high suicide rates This is no longer true. Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... Sort by "All" and you will see Japan is #30, far below many other highly developed nations.
They're also very unhappy on average: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250410/p2a/00m/0na/01...
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#844Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you take everything, direct EU money plus other money from governments, foreign investments by companies, remittances from Romanians working in the EU, other aid money that flows in large amounts, not to mention market access and so on. Anybody who rationally without nationalistic blinders evaluates that will come to the same conclusion. The idea that a Romania independent of Europe, with its shitty Post-Communist…
Please don't go on lengthy off-topic rants just to put words in my mouth to disprove things I never claimed. I never claimed Romania would have been better under Russian than the EU. I just asked you to show me that your claimed "help" they gave to Romania came from a selfless position without any financial strings attached in return for said help, because it wasn't. Corporations in US, Germany, Austria, France, prof…
Here is something you did not bring up: nobody is forcing Romanians to buy EU goods. Romanians also buy a lot of Chinese and Korean goods. EU companies who make money off Romanian consumers compete with Chinese companies.
The fact that there are very few things made in Romania is not due to EU neo-colonialism- is it due to Romanians. There are one or two bright spots in Romania (Dacia, UIPath) but when the best educated young Romanians still cannot wait to leave the country you will not see local champions. And this is 37 years after the fall of Communism.
maybe you are a Romanian living in Romania. Maybe you will be able to convince Romanians to separate from EU and NATO. If that happens, I can’t wait to see the sequel.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#845Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level? And since these agreements basically force countries (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make, I don't blame them in the least.
These agreements do not force countries to share that burden. Freedom of movement for EU citizens . Migrants and asylum seekers don’t have the right to live and work in Switzerland because of our EU agreements. A migrant or asylum seeker living in Germany has 0 right to move to CH. We do have some asylum obligations from the Dublin accords and from global human rights laws, but those we can regulate ourselves separat…
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#846Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do you pull this kind of nonsense from? This didn't work out for much bigger UK and UK isn't sorrounded by EU.
How did it not work out? A lot of things the EU claimed were red lines ended up being crossed. Look at the Horizon programme. Supposedly an inviolable "privilege" tied to FoM, the UK called the EU's bluff, left, and UK is now back in Horizon anyway.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#847Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrants not worth their economic value are the problem. That's not blaming "immigrants" but "immigration policy", which like housing policy - failure of politicians. But ultimately immigrants, who are not citizens are the going to be the scape goat. And reducing/denying/removing immigrants is short term more feasible than solving political sclerosis that require longer timelines, if can be fixed by system at all.
The overwhelming majority of immigrants are worth it and long term they all are because they have more kids. Every immigrant who comes grown up with minimal education is a huge benefit. Also its acceptable to have some immigrants who are not 'worth it', because it is something that is literally good to do, you are improving peoples lives. > who are not citizens are the going to be the scape goat Mostly because of far…
Unlikely with Canadian exploding diploma mill immigration patterns post covid i.e. the 100k increase in Indians. That's not some, i.e. a few 1000 refugee/asylum charity to make feel good headlines. That's structurally unsustainable. Hence new cap reduction and strict field of study rules. Reality is Canada was importing fuckload of low skill hoping to juice economy short term with international tuition injections, but having students fill service and gig jobs driving up rent / suppressing wages / straining infra / services is bad short term politics and bad long term ROI. These generally aren't turnkey high skilled immigrants that boost economy long term. These aren't even wealthy economic immigrants dump $$$ into economy, these are bluntly marginal immigrants from poor households that goes into debt/leverage and have to take low end jobs with high remittance culture to payback - the give/take ratio is not great. They are no where nearly as "worth it" as a rich PRC international students dropping $$$ into economy and trying to capital flight $$$ into Canadian economy. And removing them is easy... a few signatures to cap study permits, change crs and pgwp requirements, already down ~70% from peak, much easier to building. Of course building is great for everybody, but Canada ain't building.
The right solution is move back to sustainable high-value immigration patterns. 60k to 160k Indians is unprecedented. Like 2nd/3rd largest cohort is PRC and PH at ~40k. 160k per year from any country is stupid policy, only justifiable if the plan is basically to steal their tuition and kick them out of the country after making PR/citizenship harder, i.e. Canada bait-switch (scammed) a bunch of Indian villagers pooling their limited resources together, and it's looking likely that's how this saga will end. Again, it's not Indian immigrants fault, but they don't vote so they're the one's whose going to get screwed because bad policy screwed Canadians who vote.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#848Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's all nonsense. The market for anything isn't infinite. When S/D shifts the market price changes to reflect that. The price reflects the relative supply and demand. You seem to be operating under the delusion that prices must be fixed at where you desire them and that no market existing there is a failure. In fact the availability of goods and services in a market is a function of your willingness to pay a marke…
You very clearly did not understand what I wrote, so let's simplify this further. There is one guy alone on an island. There are two lighthouses on the island. Each lighthouse needs an operator to function. The guy operates one of the lighthouses. How much do wages need to rise to get both lighthouses operating at the same time?
If you make up ridiculous hypotheticals you get ridiculous answers.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#849Earlier quoted context omitted.
> consuner spending is increasingly debt Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world precisely to try and avoid the "working poor". Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme and totally absent in many countries.
> Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world I was surprised when I read this, but I Googled, and it looks true. Minimum wage in Geneva is 24.59 CHF per hour. Wow! With 1.5 working parents, you can definitely live on 1.5 * 2000 * 24.59 CHF = 73,770 CHF (92.5K USD) per year in Geneva. (To be clear: I am not writing this sarcastically. I think 74K CHF per year will definitely not be "working poor" in Geneva.)