Here's a problem that I always have with analyses of this type. Western countries have all sorts of labor needs that simply won't get done unless (a) they start paying significantly better or (b) labor from poorer countries is imported to do it. Now, (a) is always an option, but that translates into higher taxes or higher prices for the host population, which is why it's resisted. So, you get (b). And suddenly, the Moldovan girl changing grandma's diapers is a "fiscal sink." But in reality, *grandma* is the fiscal sink. Without the Moldovan girl, grandma would get to fester in you-know-what. So, you get the Moldovan girl to change grandma's diapers for shit pay (no pun intended), and then you explain to her at every turn that it would be so much better if she weren't there.
Of course, it may be that in the long run, it would be cheaper to just pay for grandma's diaper change more so that some of those PhDs whose skills the labor market has little use for would consider a career change and retrain in diaper changing (rather than becoming DEI coordinators for instance, which pays a lot better at the moment, though it's unclear to what use). Maybe. In the long run (when the Moldovan girl is no longer a girl, but a woman with kids who need to live somewhere and be educated somewhere). However, in the short run, the Moldovan girl is cheaper. Plus, the PhDs get to feel superior for her.
That's a more than fair point that you raise w/respect to the caregivers for 'our' elderly.
And, yes, calling people a 'fiscal sink' isn't exactly my first choice, but what these four authors did is quite--remarkable: they obtained an insane amount of data and cross-referenced the inputs.
Is there analysis scale-able? I do think so, that is, for welfare states that are roughly comparable, i.e., highly neoliberal, service/consumption-oriented, with high taxes and high earning opportunities: the other countries in that laundry list.
I thought, honestly, that the IQ/educational attainment issue would tick off more people, but I highly recommend that podcast I linked to.
The Western world (and it's not just the Western world) badly misallocates resources and status. It's no use telling people not to chase after resources and status: you might as well lecture cats on the evils of mice chasing. But the fact that so many of the jobs that actually need getting done are shit jobs (i.e. badly paid with poor work conditions), while so many of the bullshit jobs (i.e. those that don't need to be done at all) pay reasonably or even very well and confer status - well, that's cultural maladaptation, isn't it? Now, sure, many of the jobs that "need to get done" are never going to be very pleasant. But does cutting into someone's brain sound pleasant to you? No. But when you pay enough and give people status for doing it, there turn out to be quite a lot of people who want to do it.
Speaking of educational attainment: a lot of it is just runaway selection, much like a peacock's tail. (I didn't come up with that. Saw it Twitter recently, but it immediately struck me as true.) Education is good when it results in valuable skills. When you have a credentials arms race because you can't get resources and status unless you get this that and the other piece of paper, regardless of what skills you actually acquired in the process, then something's gone wrong.
And basically, my point is that looking at how much money someone earns and pays in taxes is a highly imperfect way of measuring someone's contribution. Someone who does a job that pays poorly but actually needs getting done contributes far more than someone doing a bullshit job for a large paycheck. "Let's just look at how much these people earn and pay in taxes" is precisely the sort of reductive thinking that got the morons-in-charge to dismiss Russia because its GDP is comparable to that of Spain. (And now they're trying to fix the mess that they created by supposedly preparing for WW3. Morons.) The tangible benefits that your work produces (or fails to produce) cannot be reduced to the amount of money that you earn. Just as the economic or military significance of a country cannot be reduced to its GDP, no matter what economists tell you.
Sure, it's imperfect, but at the same time, it's their research question.
Also, just because I post stuff about this or that issue doesn't mean I share these views.
As regards the tangible benefits, well, here's a maladaptation, if there's ever been one: what about the Dutch farmers' protests last year? They are among the most productive, innovative, and hard-working people on this planet, yet the gov't wishes to do them in. Makes no sense, unless one looks elsewhere…
I think that your first sentence is quite correct, even if it's extremely general. That said, why would the 'West' misallocate resources, then? I suppose because we've largely abandoned meritocratic and market-based assessments of competence and relative values.
As to the educational attainment issue, well, some people are more willing to work than others, while the price for said labour is massively distorted. To return to the example you cited earlier, why is even the most incompetent law or business graduate better paid than, say, the average nurse or caregiver? (Hint: because monopolies are enforced by gov'ts, over-regulation, and captive audiences--just talk to anyone in 'healthcare', but then again, I recall you knowing a bit about this example from the Covid mania). What you refer to, then, has more to do with increasingly perverse incentives, not with educational attainment per se; also, I tend to agree with the societal-cultural maladaptation hypothesis.
"That said, why would the 'West' misallocate resources, then? I suppose because we've largely abandoned meritocratic and market-based assessments of competence and relative values."
That's a very good question, and I don't pretend to have any sort of definitive answer to it. I think it was Samo Burja who said that most intelligence is wasted because people mostly use it to extract rent a bit more successfully. I think there's something to it. Smart people manage to game the system in order to extract wealth and status for themselves and people like them (including their not-necessarily-brilliant children). So, you get seemingly pointless jobs that pay well and confer status. But in fact, those jobs do have a point, and the point is precisely to provide income and status to a certain kind of person, and that kind of person has the ability to make the system behave that way.
My (admittedly much more simple, if not simplistic) take is this: once people get (too) comfortable, they take things for granted, thereby cultivating certain traits (incentives) that aren't helpful, e.g., spoiling children, as you mention. While these pointless activities may make 'sense' to them, they are, as you rightly state, pointless once the bigger picture is concerned.
I'm a bit more unsure about the 'systemic' implications, for the more complex societies grow, the harder it becomes for any individual to affect 'the system'.
Oh, it's not so much that any given individual affects "the system" very much. A big part of the problem is that the system is so complex that no-one really understands how it works. But, why do you need to know how it works? You just need to find some way to fit into it in a way that benefits you and that you can convince yourself doesn't harm anyone who doesn't deserve to be harmed. In practice? You end up finding all sorts of loopholes to exploit for your own benefit. (*) And it's not like your little self can make da system collapse. (Please. Show some humility.) Except that you're not the only person gaming the system in this way, and before you know it, you have a whole class of people doing it, with all sorts of negative externalities and reductions in resilience in the system as a whole.
(*) Some of this is entirely accidental from the point of view of the individual. So, you go to college because everyone said you should, and besides, your grades weren't too bad. You are math-phobic, though, and so you figure you'll major in something like classics, now that they got rid of the language requirement (*cough* Princeton *cough*). And your professors teach all about Aristotle's racism and Virgil's transphobia. (Your professors are extremely smart people, with PhDs and stuff. And they even know Greek and Latin! But you don't need to know that stuff, because you already know you are not going to get a PhD.) And then you graduate and need a job. Who is going to hire a dead languages major? (Never mind that you never actually learned the dead languages in question. It's not like anyone cares anyway.) Hmm. A DEI department...? But it's not that you actually set out to work for DEI. You just wanted to go to college because they said you should, and it's not like an engineering degree was ever in the cards, and those Roman ruins looked nifty enough, and well, one thing led to another... Besides, all of your coworkers have so much empathy (except for the people who don't deserve it).
Would that permit us now to call out those revolutionaries who claim 'the West' is inherently racist etc. as…simply wrong? I mean, if you do something that's apparently not paying off very well (I'm trying to be nice here) for obviously moral reasons or the like, how would that be called?
That's basically the point made by the lead author in the podcast; few countries have such high-quality data (apart from the Netherlands, 'the Nordic countries' are cited explicitly), and fewer still will share them.
Moreover, the report has been done in collaboration with the main gov't advisory board (the CBD, the Dutch Council for Business Development, or the like, if memory serves), hence this isn't 'fringe' or anything like it.
The main problem I see here, which is also why I pointed to it, perhaps not strongly enough, isn't that these facts aren't known; the main problem is that, despite all the technocracy mumbo-jumbo, politicians do things that are quite detached from reality as-is.
If we'd had 'technocracy', I suppose that stringent cost-benefit analyses like this one would form the basis of decisions; in our real world, though, as mentioned by the lead author in the podcast, it's tricky to obtain funding as the research question alone isn't (politically) 'correct'; the next problem arises with data input, collaboration, and the like (again, listen to the podcast); and, once published, the problems don't go away--even though they have, I think dispelled the issues of sticking the 'far right-wing extremism' label to them.
So, no matter if it's the notionally centre-left of centre-right in power, neither of these factions is carrying out policies grounded on facts. And, sorry to say, but from the fiscal/state point of view, esp. if one runs a welfare state that should be funded, this detachment from reality is…highly problematic, socially corrosive, and, of course, once the changes become inevitable--as they surely will--it'll hit people like an ambush at-night.
The irony of the left is that they are pro-mass immigration, and also pro-welfare state. It simply does not compute (which is your point i guess). Though a nuance from the perspektivmelding 2021 is actually quite interesting, and puts the validity of the methodology at least somewhat to the test, and reiforces commenter Irenas point: ALL citizens are a net loss for the state (on average) and women are much more expensive than men. But wait a minute - that does not compute either. Obviously we need women. So there is something not being measured correctly here, by these metrics. Here are some ideas:
1. the value creation of the person is only partially reflected in income and taxes paid. Where the employer extracts a large benefit for low wages, that’s not reflected here but in the P&L of the business (many cheap labor migrants could be very profitable for a country this way).
2. “Social” value created is not equal to salaries and taxes paid. Take a kindergarten employee. They are poorly paid, but they obviously generate a lot of value for society, as each employee allows something like 8 kids parents (so 16 adults) to go to work. That’s very valuable for society, and a value creation multiplier that’s not measured anywhere.
I agree with both you and Irena that the metrics used are quite imperfect (again, if you have the time, listen to the podcast with the lead author, because he also speaks about this issue), and they are extremely poor if it comes to societal 'value-added' (apologies for the econ-lingo-jumbo).
The main issue, as you correctly point out, isn't whether or not this or that group or individual costs more, for 'the state' is way more than the sum-total of all individuals, and, the study isn't so much about these 'monetary issues' either: it's about the current set-up, which emerged after WW2 and has been running amok ever since: more regulations are added each year, more exceptions, too, and more stuff is acted out--just look at, e.g., pre-WW1 USA, where Congress sat on a few occasions and adjourned soon.
I'm finding this a difficult argument-and racist and generalized tone, though I don't have experience of Dutch immigration.As I live in Canada, and only have experience of immigrants from India,Mexico, China and Syria- and know they are hard working- hold multiple jobs- that many non immigrants don't want.Maybe the problem is the flooding of many immigrants,refugees into an area rather than a manageable,planned amount of people.
As an immigrant myself, I would also consider many immigrants the way you do; as to the study, well, Canada is way more selective which individuals are admitted, the Netherlands aren't (which is one major point of the study).
As to the area issue, well, the Netherlands are quite small (think: New Jersey, but with 17m inhabitants), and there's very high population density everywhere.
No easy solutions, anywhere, but Canada and Australia are cited as good examples of selective immigration systems, with the problem being, in the Dutch (European) case the 'outsourcing' of admission criteria.
No worries, none of this is 'news'. If anything, it has been suppressed by all western governments for decades.
Do read the introd./preface material, for it reveals that the translation of the report itself was made possible due to crowd-funding. It, too, goes a long way showing where many people are vs. where the gov'ts are.
Here's a problem that I always have with analyses of this type. Western countries have all sorts of labor needs that simply won't get done unless (a) they start paying significantly better or (b) labor from poorer countries is imported to do it. Now, (a) is always an option, but that translates into higher taxes or higher prices for the host population, which is why it's resisted. So, you get (b). And suddenly, the Moldovan girl changing grandma's diapers is a "fiscal sink." But in reality, *grandma* is the fiscal sink. Without the Moldovan girl, grandma would get to fester in you-know-what. So, you get the Moldovan girl to change grandma's diapers for shit pay (no pun intended), and then you explain to her at every turn that it would be so much better if she weren't there.
Of course, it may be that in the long run, it would be cheaper to just pay for grandma's diaper change more so that some of those PhDs whose skills the labor market has little use for would consider a career change and retrain in diaper changing (rather than becoming DEI coordinators for instance, which pays a lot better at the moment, though it's unclear to what use). Maybe. In the long run (when the Moldovan girl is no longer a girl, but a woman with kids who need to live somewhere and be educated somewhere). However, in the short run, the Moldovan girl is cheaper. Plus, the PhDs get to feel superior for her.
That's a more than fair point that you raise w/respect to the caregivers for 'our' elderly.
And, yes, calling people a 'fiscal sink' isn't exactly my first choice, but what these four authors did is quite--remarkable: they obtained an insane amount of data and cross-referenced the inputs.
Is there analysis scale-able? I do think so, that is, for welfare states that are roughly comparable, i.e., highly neoliberal, service/consumption-oriented, with high taxes and high earning opportunities: the other countries in that laundry list.
I thought, honestly, that the IQ/educational attainment issue would tick off more people, but I highly recommend that podcast I linked to.
As to the DEI issue: hihi, so true.
The Western world (and it's not just the Western world) badly misallocates resources and status. It's no use telling people not to chase after resources and status: you might as well lecture cats on the evils of mice chasing. But the fact that so many of the jobs that actually need getting done are shit jobs (i.e. badly paid with poor work conditions), while so many of the bullshit jobs (i.e. those that don't need to be done at all) pay reasonably or even very well and confer status - well, that's cultural maladaptation, isn't it? Now, sure, many of the jobs that "need to get done" are never going to be very pleasant. But does cutting into someone's brain sound pleasant to you? No. But when you pay enough and give people status for doing it, there turn out to be quite a lot of people who want to do it.
Speaking of educational attainment: a lot of it is just runaway selection, much like a peacock's tail. (I didn't come up with that. Saw it Twitter recently, but it immediately struck me as true.) Education is good when it results in valuable skills. When you have a credentials arms race because you can't get resources and status unless you get this that and the other piece of paper, regardless of what skills you actually acquired in the process, then something's gone wrong.
And basically, my point is that looking at how much money someone earns and pays in taxes is a highly imperfect way of measuring someone's contribution. Someone who does a job that pays poorly but actually needs getting done contributes far more than someone doing a bullshit job for a large paycheck. "Let's just look at how much these people earn and pay in taxes" is precisely the sort of reductive thinking that got the morons-in-charge to dismiss Russia because its GDP is comparable to that of Spain. (And now they're trying to fix the mess that they created by supposedly preparing for WW3. Morons.) The tangible benefits that your work produces (or fails to produce) cannot be reduced to the amount of money that you earn. Just as the economic or military significance of a country cannot be reduced to its GDP, no matter what economists tell you.
Sure, it's imperfect, but at the same time, it's their research question.
Also, just because I post stuff about this or that issue doesn't mean I share these views.
As regards the tangible benefits, well, here's a maladaptation, if there's ever been one: what about the Dutch farmers' protests last year? They are among the most productive, innovative, and hard-working people on this planet, yet the gov't wishes to do them in. Makes no sense, unless one looks elsewhere…
I think that your first sentence is quite correct, even if it's extremely general. That said, why would the 'West' misallocate resources, then? I suppose because we've largely abandoned meritocratic and market-based assessments of competence and relative values.
As to the educational attainment issue, well, some people are more willing to work than others, while the price for said labour is massively distorted. To return to the example you cited earlier, why is even the most incompetent law or business graduate better paid than, say, the average nurse or caregiver? (Hint: because monopolies are enforced by gov'ts, over-regulation, and captive audiences--just talk to anyone in 'healthcare', but then again, I recall you knowing a bit about this example from the Covid mania). What you refer to, then, has more to do with increasingly perverse incentives, not with educational attainment per se; also, I tend to agree with the societal-cultural maladaptation hypothesis.
"That said, why would the 'West' misallocate resources, then? I suppose because we've largely abandoned meritocratic and market-based assessments of competence and relative values."
That's a very good question, and I don't pretend to have any sort of definitive answer to it. I think it was Samo Burja who said that most intelligence is wasted because people mostly use it to extract rent a bit more successfully. I think there's something to it. Smart people manage to game the system in order to extract wealth and status for themselves and people like them (including their not-necessarily-brilliant children). So, you get seemingly pointless jobs that pay well and confer status. But in fact, those jobs do have a point, and the point is precisely to provide income and status to a certain kind of person, and that kind of person has the ability to make the system behave that way.
Good points.
My (admittedly much more simple, if not simplistic) take is this: once people get (too) comfortable, they take things for granted, thereby cultivating certain traits (incentives) that aren't helpful, e.g., spoiling children, as you mention. While these pointless activities may make 'sense' to them, they are, as you rightly state, pointless once the bigger picture is concerned.
I'm a bit more unsure about the 'systemic' implications, for the more complex societies grow, the harder it becomes for any individual to affect 'the system'.
Oh, it's not so much that any given individual affects "the system" very much. A big part of the problem is that the system is so complex that no-one really understands how it works. But, why do you need to know how it works? You just need to find some way to fit into it in a way that benefits you and that you can convince yourself doesn't harm anyone who doesn't deserve to be harmed. In practice? You end up finding all sorts of loopholes to exploit for your own benefit. (*) And it's not like your little self can make da system collapse. (Please. Show some humility.) Except that you're not the only person gaming the system in this way, and before you know it, you have a whole class of people doing it, with all sorts of negative externalities and reductions in resilience in the system as a whole.
(*) Some of this is entirely accidental from the point of view of the individual. So, you go to college because everyone said you should, and besides, your grades weren't too bad. You are math-phobic, though, and so you figure you'll major in something like classics, now that they got rid of the language requirement (*cough* Princeton *cough*). And your professors teach all about Aristotle's racism and Virgil's transphobia. (Your professors are extremely smart people, with PhDs and stuff. And they even know Greek and Latin! But you don't need to know that stuff, because you already know you are not going to get a PhD.) And then you graduate and need a job. Who is going to hire a dead languages major? (Never mind that you never actually learned the dead languages in question. It's not like anyone cares anyway.) Hmm. A DEI department...? But it's not that you actually set out to work for DEI. You just wanted to go to college because they said you should, and it's not like an engineering degree was ever in the cards, and those Roman ruins looked nifty enough, and well, one thing led to another... Besides, all of your coworkers have so much empathy (except for the people who don't deserve it).
Data from Denmark show exactly the same results. https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/10/2/29
Call me surprised (not).
Would that permit us now to call out those revolutionaries who claim 'the West' is inherently racist etc. as…simply wrong? I mean, if you do something that's apparently not paying off very well (I'm trying to be nice here) for obviously moral reasons or the like, how would that be called?
The data from NORWAY also shows the same, look at the «perspektivmelding» from a few years ago. Here is an online newspaper source:
https://www.finansavisen.no/nyheter/politikk/2017/03/saa-mye-koster-en-innvandrer
That's basically the point made by the lead author in the podcast; few countries have such high-quality data (apart from the Netherlands, 'the Nordic countries' are cited explicitly), and fewer still will share them.
Moreover, the report has been done in collaboration with the main gov't advisory board (the CBD, the Dutch Council for Business Development, or the like, if memory serves), hence this isn't 'fringe' or anything like it.
The main problem I see here, which is also why I pointed to it, perhaps not strongly enough, isn't that these facts aren't known; the main problem is that, despite all the technocracy mumbo-jumbo, politicians do things that are quite detached from reality as-is.
If we'd had 'technocracy', I suppose that stringent cost-benefit analyses like this one would form the basis of decisions; in our real world, though, as mentioned by the lead author in the podcast, it's tricky to obtain funding as the research question alone isn't (politically) 'correct'; the next problem arises with data input, collaboration, and the like (again, listen to the podcast); and, once published, the problems don't go away--even though they have, I think dispelled the issues of sticking the 'far right-wing extremism' label to them.
So, no matter if it's the notionally centre-left of centre-right in power, neither of these factions is carrying out policies grounded on facts. And, sorry to say, but from the fiscal/state point of view, esp. if one runs a welfare state that should be funded, this detachment from reality is…highly problematic, socially corrosive, and, of course, once the changes become inevitable--as they surely will--it'll hit people like an ambush at-night.
The irony of the left is that they are pro-mass immigration, and also pro-welfare state. It simply does not compute (which is your point i guess). Though a nuance from the perspektivmelding 2021 is actually quite interesting, and puts the validity of the methodology at least somewhat to the test, and reiforces commenter Irenas point: ALL citizens are a net loss for the state (on average) and women are much more expensive than men. But wait a minute - that does not compute either. Obviously we need women. So there is something not being measured correctly here, by these metrics. Here are some ideas:
1. the value creation of the person is only partially reflected in income and taxes paid. Where the employer extracts a large benefit for low wages, that’s not reflected here but in the P&L of the business (many cheap labor migrants could be very profitable for a country this way).
2. “Social” value created is not equal to salaries and taxes paid. Take a kindergarten employee. They are poorly paid, but they obviously generate a lot of value for society, as each employee allows something like 8 kids parents (so 16 adults) to go to work. That’s very valuable for society, and a value creation multiplier that’s not measured anywhere.
Article linked here is interesting:
https://www.nettavisen.no/nyheter/hver-kvinne-koster-15-6-millioner-ingen-grunn-til-at-det-skal-tolkes-stigmatiserende-for-kvinner/s/12-95-3424089287
Thanks for the link and esp. the comment.
I agree with both you and Irena that the metrics used are quite imperfect (again, if you have the time, listen to the podcast with the lead author, because he also speaks about this issue), and they are extremely poor if it comes to societal 'value-added' (apologies for the econ-lingo-jumbo).
The main issue, as you correctly point out, isn't whether or not this or that group or individual costs more, for 'the state' is way more than the sum-total of all individuals, and, the study isn't so much about these 'monetary issues' either: it's about the current set-up, which emerged after WW2 and has been running amok ever since: more regulations are added each year, more exceptions, too, and more stuff is acted out--just look at, e.g., pre-WW1 USA, where Congress sat on a few occasions and adjourned soon.
Secondary issues incl. big gov't, red tape, etc.
I'm finding this a difficult argument-and racist and generalized tone, though I don't have experience of Dutch immigration.As I live in Canada, and only have experience of immigrants from India,Mexico, China and Syria- and know they are hard working- hold multiple jobs- that many non immigrants don't want.Maybe the problem is the flooding of many immigrants,refugees into an area rather than a manageable,planned amount of people.
As an immigrant myself, I would also consider many immigrants the way you do; as to the study, well, Canada is way more selective which individuals are admitted, the Netherlands aren't (which is one major point of the study).
As to the area issue, well, the Netherlands are quite small (think: New Jersey, but with 17m inhabitants), and there's very high population density everywhere.
No easy solutions, anywhere, but Canada and Australia are cited as good examples of selective immigration systems, with the problem being, in the Dutch (European) case the 'outsourcing' of admission criteria.
In response to your spoiler alert,
Gee, what a surprise/sarc. Too bad that it required researchers to prove what is obvious to anyone who’s paying attention.
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Now back to the article.....)
No worries, none of this is 'news'. If anything, it has been suppressed by all western governments for decades.
Do read the introd./preface material, for it reveals that the translation of the report itself was made possible due to crowd-funding. It, too, goes a long way showing where many people are vs. where the gov'ts are.