Germany's immigration surge

accompanied by an outflow of Germans. Could one say Germany is importing poverty?

How Has Germany’s Economy Been Affected by the Recent Surge in Immigration?

Hating and Mating

Interesting paper on refugees, sex ratios and mating competition in Germany.

Hating and Mating: 
Fears over Mate Competition and Violent Hate Crime against Refugees

Abstract

... Employing a comprehensive dataset on the incidence of hate crime across Germany, we first demonstrate that hate crime rises where men face disadvantages in local mating markets. Next, we deploy an original four-wave panel survey to confirm that support for hate crime increases when men fear that the inflow of refugees makes it more difficult to find female partners. Mate competition concerns remain a robust predictor even when controlling for anti-refugee views, perceived job competition, general frustration, and aggressiveness. We conclude that a more complete understanding of hate crime must incorporate mating markets and mate competition.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this paper we have turned the spotlight on an overlooked topic in the study of anti- migrant behavior: mate competition. We have shown that municipalities where native men find themselves disadvantaged in mating markets are more likely to be the sites of violent, anti-refugee crime. In particular, an excess number of males is a strong predictor of hate crime, and this relationship holds controlling for variety of economic, social, and political variables that could correlate with skewed sex ratios and hate crime.

...

Returning to our substantive findings, our survey allows us to test the micro-foundations underlying our ecological results. We demonstrate that perceived refugee-native mate com- petition is significantly higher among men who live in municipalities characterized by a mat- ing squeeze, and we further show that this perception is linked to support for hate crimes. This relationship between perceived mate competition and support for hate crimes remains even while controlling for leading alternative explanations related to economic competition, xenophobia, frustration, and aggressiveness.

...

Strategies to improve immigrant integration have in turn focused on the importance of creating inter-cultural dialogue alongside addressing economic opportunities for both migrants and natives. Though surely valuable, our study shows that these initiatives should be cognizant of another dimension of conflict, especially if migrants are disproportionately young men and are placed in areas with excess males where native men are already primed to conceive of male outsiders as competitors on the mating market. Competition over mates is neither specifically a cultural nor an economic phenomenon. Nor is the search for partners fleeting: it represents an enduring aspect of the human condition. As such, approaches that emphasize cultural and economic routes might be incomplete and divert our attention from other inherent structural predicaments.

...

And they conclude:

Risk assessment strategies should be in place that identify areas deemed more prone to violence based on structural features. Our evidence makes clear that local sex ratios must be part of such assessments.

The Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants and the Native-Born: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

We use administrative Swedish data to show that, conditional on parent income, immigrant children have similar incomes and higher educational attainment in adulthood than native-born Swedes. This result, however, masks the fact that immigrant children born into poor families are more likely than similar natives to both reach the top of the income distribution and to stay at the bottom. Immigrant children from high-income families are also more likely than natives to regress to the economic bottom. Notably, however, children from predominantly-refugee sending countries like Bosnia, Syria, and Iran have higher intergenerational mobility than the average immigrant child in Sweden.

Conclusion

We use administrative Swedish data to document that, conditional on parent income, immigrant children have similar incomes to their native-born counterparts. Digging deeper into the conditional expectation, we reveal that immigrant children born into poor families are slightly more likely than native children born into poor families to reach the very top of the income distribution. They are also considerably more likely to obtain a college degree. At the same time, immigrant children are also more likely than native children to stay at the very bottom of the income distribution or to regress from middle and high family incomes to the very bottom.

We show, additionally, that substantial heterogeneities in later-life child outcomes exist depending on the country of origin. Children from predominantly-refugee sending countries like Bosnia, Syria, and Iran have higher incomes and higher intergenerational mobility than the average child immigrant to Sweden. Further research is needed to understand what helps the average immigrant child born into the bottom of the income distribution do as well as native children, why immigrant children who arrive at middle and high family incomes are more likely than native children to fall back to the economic bottom, and why some refugee children integrate better into Swedish society than other immigrant children.

Alleviating Global Poverty through Labor Mobility

Lant Pritchett starts off boldly: "I am going to start with a simple but striking claim, defend that claim, and then circle back to the broader questions the title raises. My simple claim is that as any citizen of the West contemplates the question “What could we do to alleviate global poverty?” the right answer is: “The least you can do is better than the best you can do.”

Alleviating Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth

Turns out giving cash is not that economical.

Abstract

Decades of programmatic experimentation by development NGOs combined with the latest empirical techniques for estimating program impact have shown that a well-designed, well- implemented, multi-faceted intervention can in fact have an apparently sustained impact on the incomes of the poor (Banerjee et al 2015). The magnitude of the income gains of the “best you can do” via direct interventions to raise the income of the poor in situ is about 40 times smaller than the income gain from allowing people from those same poor countries to work in a high productivity country like the USA. Simply allowing more labor mobility holds vastly more promise for reducing poverty than anything else on the development agenda. That said, the magnitude of the gains from large growth accelerations (and losses from large decelerations) are also many-fold larger than the potential gains from directed individual interventions and the poverty reduction gains from large, extended periods of rapid growth are larger than from targeted interventions and also hold promise (and have delivered) for reducing global poverty.

Compare that to the EU's position on migration:

Angela Merkel in Nigeria: Migration in focus at end of Africa trip

"The leaders of Europe and Africa's largest economies have met for talks in Abuja. Promoting economic measures to stem migration has been a priority during the German chancellor's trip to western African countries."

That was a face-saving trip for her. The EU's measures do not sound wise and make little sense economically.

"So think of two ways to help the global poor. One is for rich people (in a global sense) to give a dollar and get roughly a dollar’s worth of benefits for the poor. The other people is for rich people to allow people who would like to work at the prevailing wage of their country to do so and not deploy active coercion to prevent this—which reflects the person’s contribution to product and hence is (or can be made to be) zero net cost to the host country. Of course, a dollar for a poor person could produce vastly more human well-being than had the richer person spent the money as the marginal utility was much, much higher for the poor person, but this redistribution effect is the same for both options. This means, at least in current conditions, the least you can do—just increasing the freedom of people who want to work and people who want those people to work to carry out that mutually beneficially transaction across national borders—is better than the best you can do of trying to directly help people in poverty but without allowing them to move to opportunity."

Here is what drives people and how they gained.

"Empirically, their own initiative is how most people report escaping poverty. As part of a massive exercise of participatory assessment of how people’s well being had changed over a 10 year period we held village meetings in 14 countries and three states of India (Narayan, Pritchett, Kapor 2009). In a ranking exercise people ranked the level of living of households today and their level 10 years ago. This identified almost 4000 people who, by their village neighbor’s assessments, had moved out of poverty. We then interviewed them and asked them what they thought the primary reason for their move out of poverty was. This is of course subject to all the subjectivity biases about how people narrate the story of their lives but 87.7 percent of them reported their own initiative (60.1 percent an initiative outside of agriculture, 17.4 percent in agriculture, 4.7 percent accumulation of assets, and 5.5 percent hard work). Only .3 percent (12 people of 3,991) who moved out of poverty named NGO assistance as the cause."

Conclusion

A large part of the explanation of differences in labor productivity across countries is differences in “A”—total factor productivity. Transmitting A from country to country has proven difficult. This implies that labor with the exact same intrinsic productivity will have much higher productivity (and hence justify a higher wage) in a high A than in a low A country. But, by and large, rich countries have passed extraordinarily strict regulations on the movement of unskilled labor. A relaxation of these restrictions could produce the largest single gains in global poverty of any available policy, program or project action. And since these gains to movers are (mostly) due to higher A which (at the margin) is a “public good” (it is non-rival and non-excludable) in the host country these gains are essentially free to the host country (or could be free to the host country under some technical design conditions).

One thought for addressing the injustice of condition of birth based discrimination that keeps people in low productivity places is to imagine that rich country citizens will carry out philanthropic activities that raise the incomes of the global poor in situ. But the fact they are in low productivity places means it will be costly to raise their income in those places. Extrapolating from the fact that a “best in class” anti-poverty program produced, on average across 5 countries, $344 in annual gains in income for the poor with $4,545 in costs, to produce the annual gains of allowing a low skill worker to work in the USA of $17,115 would require an investment of $226,000 per person—versus producing those same gains essentially for free by relaxing barriers to mobility. The “best you can do” in situ is much less effective than the “least you can do” of letting people work and get paid a wage that reflects the value of their work.

That said, sustained rapid economic growth in developing countries—that is sustained by improvements in A—can also produce cumulatively enormous gains. And avoiding growth collapses/stagnation can prevent enormous losses. So, even though traditional measures of the country to country transfers of resources via “foreign aid” do not, in and of themselves, appear to be responsible for producing most of the observed differences in economic growth, investments that could bring that about more sustained growth (both more sustained accelerations and fewer sharp and extended decelerations) could also have astronomical returns. And, to be clear, no reason why more labor mobility and sustained economic growth cannot go hand in hand in improving well-being.

Wise thoughts, however, implemented in Germany it would make the AfD the strongest political party in a very short time.

The Effect of Communism on People’s Attitudes Toward Immigration

This is a paper about the impact of socio-economic conditions in East Germany on the  perception of immigration.

ABSTRACT

Does living in a communist regime make a person more concerned about immigration? This paper argues conceptually and demonstrates empirically that people’s attitudes toward immigration are affected by their country’s politico-economic legacy. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment arising from the historic division of Germany into East and West, I show that former East Germans, because of their exposure to communism, are notably more likely to be very concerned about immigration than former West Germans. Opposite of what existing literature finds, higher educational attainment in East Germany actually increases concerns. Further, I find that the effect of living in East Germany is driven by former East Germans who were born during, and not before, the communist rule and that differences in attitudes persist even after Germany’s reunification. People’s trust in strangers and contact with foreigners represent two salient channels through which communism affects people’s preferences toward immigration.

Conclusion 

This paper presents the first analysis on the effect of a country’s politico-economic legacy on people’s attitudes toward immigration. Using the quasi-natural experiment of the postwar division of Germany into two countries with vastly different politico-economic institutions, I identify the causal effect of communism on attitudes toward immigration. The results show that communism’s effect on people’s immigration attitudes is noteworthy in magnitude and robust to an array of economic and non-economic individual-level determinants of attitudes toward immigration.

The main results provide empirical evidence that having lived in a communist regime increases the probability that a person is very concerned about immigration by 0.044. Critically, I find that high educational attainment in a communist regime actually increases people’s concerns about immigration, a result that is opposite of what has been shown in the attitudes toward immigration literature. Further, the results indicate that attitudes among former East and West Germans have not converged since reunification, a finding consistent with evidence in development psychology and the socialization theory that preferences developed early in life will persist. Also in line with this conceptual framework, I find that the effect of communism is most pronounced among individuals who were born in the regime, while former East Germans who were born before communist rule express considerably less concern about immigration than the generations that followed. Finally, I find that two conceptually and empirically salient channels for the observed effect of communism on attitudes toward immigration are people’s level of trust in strangers and contact with foreigners.

A limitation of this study, given the available data, is that I am unable to differentiate between German attitudes toward specific subgroups of immigration—for example, how Germans feel about a particular ethnic or religious immigrant group—or toward immigrants more generally. Given that the large-scale migration wave facing the world today is composed primarily of Muslim immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, future research should investigate whether attitudes toward immigration are sensitive to the faces and cultures constituting the immigration phenomenon. Such studies are of great contemporary interest and relevance considering Germany’s long-standing history of Turkish immigration and its recent political decision to welcome over one million refugees. Nonetheless, this paper offers novel empirical insights and contributes to ongoing discourse about immigration policy and the enduring effects of communism on people’s preferences.

"The European Union has always been sold, to its citizens, on a practical basis: Cheaper products. Easier travel. Prosperity and security."

"But its founding leaders had something larger in mind. They conceived it as a radical experiment to transcend the nation-state, whose core ideas of race-based identity and zero-sum competition had brought disaster twice in the space of a generation."

The NYT has an article

Why Europe Could Melt Down Over a Simple Question of Borders

"France’s foreign minister, announcing the bloc’s precursor in 1949, called it “a great experiment” that would put “an end to war” and guarantee “an eternal peace.”
...
“The keen feeling of national identity must be considered a real barrier to European integration,” Mr. Lange wrote in an essay that became a foundational European Union text.

But instead of overcoming that barrier, European leaders pretended it didn’t exist. More damning, they entirely avoided mentioning what Europeans would need to give up: a degree of their deeply felt national identities and hard-won national sovereignty.
...
“The keen feeling of national identity must be considered a real barrier to European integration,” Norway’s foreign minister, Halvard M. Lange, once wrote."


Top-rated comments

"It's one thing to merge with other countries in Europe.
It's another to feel like one is merging with the Middle East or Africa. the EU was not supposed to be about that."

and

"It is one thing for a nation like Germany to share a common market and porous border with Luxembourg or Belgium. It is quite another to share one de facto with Syria and Chad."

The Federal Rep. of Germany is seeking: Transit Resort Human Resources Managers cum SSupervisor

Job Offer

The Government of the Federal Rep. of Germany is seeking:

Transit Resort Human Resources Managers cum SSupervisor

Expected skills:

• Strong people skills,
• Advanced concentration capabilities, also to be applied on human resources lounging in concentrated environ,
• Excellent visual acuity particularly trained on tourists dressed in pleasing vertically-striped suits,
• Physically and emotionally demanding working environment with often strong-willed tourists,
• You are action-packed and short-fuse decisioned,
• Immunity to sexually attractive tourists and/or advances by them,
• Kick-ass approach on all occasions,
• You show convincing tactile proficiency,
• Basic interlocutory capabilities, less is more,
• Highly developed olfactory tolerance level and cultural indifference,
• Diploma in German Leitkultur a definite plus.

Transit Resorts are located in the province of Bavaria populated by rather sullen indigenous people speaking a strange dialect. Applicants need to be prepared to face impromptu exchanges with former colony to the South.

Tazer training provided plus pabulum and generously stocked bar with indigenous spirits. You've been warned.

Please note: ONLY the BEST need to apply!

If you feel you have got what it takes, please contact VBFL (Völkisches Büro für Flüchtlingslösung) next to Chancellory in Berlin. STILLGESTANDEN!

Trump understands this, Merkel certainly does not

Immigration and Redistribution

by Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva

First the expected biases and overestimates.

We find strikingly large biases in natives' perceptions of the number and characteristics of immigrants: in all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and are economically weaker – less educated, more unemployed, poorer, and more reliant on government transfers – than is the case.

Prevalence is where?

While all respondents have misperceptions, those with the largest ones are systematically the right-wing, the non-college educated, and the low-skilled working in immigration-intensive sectors.

It's not the numbers, it's who they are.

Support for redistribution is strongly correlated with the perceived composition of immigrants – their origin and economic contribution – rather than with the perceived share of immigrants per se. 

But then again just thinking about them ...

Given the very negative baseline views that respondents have of immigrants, simply making them think about immigration in a randomized manner makes them support less redistribution, including actual donations to charities. 

Even favorable traits get discounted quickly.

We also experimentally show respondents information about the true i) number, ii) origin, and iii) “hard work” of immigrants in their country. On its own, information on the “hard work” of immigrants generates more support for redistribution. However, if people are also prompted to think in detail about immigrants' characteristics, then none of these favorable information treatments manages to counteract their negative priors that generate lower support for redistribution.

Which will show up in election results and compound the political landscape

via MR

Nassim Taleb Slams "These Virtue-Signaling Open-Borders Imbeciles" In 3 Short Tweets

via ZeroHedge

What intellectuals don't get about MIGRATION is the ethical notion of SYMMETRY:

OPEN BORDERS work if and only if the number of pple who want to go from EU/US to Africa/LatinAmer equals Africans/Latin Amer who want to move to EU/US

Silver Rule in #SkinInTheGame

Gabish?

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 30, 2018

3) As a Christian Lebanese, saw the nightmare of uncontrolled immigration of Palestinians which caused the the civil war.
& as a part-time resident of N. Lebanon, I am seeing the effect of Syrian migration on the place.

So I despise these virtue-signaling open-borders imbeciles.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) July 1, 2018

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK on the THE LEFT'S STRATEGY

"When today’s Left bombards the capitalist system with demands that it obviously cannot fulfill (Full employment! Retain the welfare state! Full rights for immigrants!), it is basically playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand which will be impossible for him to meet, and will thus expose his impotence. The problem with this strategy, however, is not only that the system cannot meet these demands, but that, in addition, those who voice them do not really want them to be realized.

For example, when ‘radical’ academics demand full rights for immigrants and opening of the borders, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent working-class racist backlash which would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics? Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met – in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position

[…]

The gesture is that of calling the other’s bluff, counting on the fact that what the other really fears is that one will fully comply with his or her demand. And would not the same gesture also throw our radical academics into a panic? Here the old ‘68 motto ‘Soyons réalistes demandons l’impossible!’ acquires a new cynical and sinister meaning which, perhaps, reveals its truth:

‘Let’s be realists: we, the academic Left, want to appear critical, while fully enjoying the privileges the system offers us. So let’s bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that these demands won’t be met, so we can be sure that nothing will actually change, and we’ll maintain our privileged status!’"

— Slavoj Žižek, “Happiness after September 11″, from Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 75-77.

via Never yet melted

While I do not agree with his first paragraph - a country with a sovereign currency can finance anything using its own currency and staying within available resources - the rest is spot on.

US study about the political impact of immigration on elections should raise concerns in Germany

Here is a study from the US about the political impact of immigration on elections and what political parties people tend to vote for when "confronted" with low-skilled versus high-skilled immigrants.

With integration of immigrants in the US certainly better than in Germany, those findings should raise grave concerns in Germany and in particular its impact on the political landscape. Secondly, unemployment, in particular youth unemployment, in the Eurozone is markedly higher than in America. Further increases will lead to a shift to right-wing parties.


THE POLITICAL IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES

Anna Maria Mayda Giovanni Peri Walter Steingress

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138

ABSTRACT

In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants. We find that an increase in the first type of immigrants decreases the share of the Republican vote, while an inflow of the second type increases it. These effects are mainly due to the local impact of immigrants on votes of U.S. citizens and they seem independent of the country of origin of immigrants. We also find that the pro-Republican impact of low-skilled immigrants is stronger in low-skilled and non-urban counties. This is consistent with citizens' political preferences shifting towards the Republican Party in places where low-skilled immigrants are more likely to be perceived as competition in the labor market and for public resources.

Conclusion

In this paper we have analyzed the connection between the change in the immigrant population and the vote to the Republican Party, exploiting the variation across U.S. counties between 1990 and 2010. We hypothesize that such a connection can be different in response to high- or low-skilled immigrants.

The first group certainly brings fiscal benefits to natives, possibly increases job creation and growth, and is believed to be easily integrated. The second may have a fiscal cost, may compete in the labor market with less-educated voters, and may have a harder time to integrate. We take no stand on whether these assessments of facts are correct, and in general economists agree that the labor market effects of less-educated immigrants are small (e.g. Ottaviano and Peri (2012)), but we think that they may correspond to the perceptions of U.S. voters.

We also account for the fact that the perception and response of voters (and hence of counties, in that their median voter differs) may be different depending on their characteristics. Less-skilled citizens may perceive the labor market and fiscal competition of less-skilled immigrants, while high-skilled citizens may value their skills and their contributions to the local economy.

We find that an increase in low-skilled immigrants affects the vote of U.S. counties in different ways, but in general tends to push voters towards the Republican Party. Non-urban, low-skill counties with high local public spending strongly increased their Republican vote share in response to low-skilled immigration. To the contrary, voting patterns in urban, high-skilled counties with low local public spending did not respond much to low-skilled immigration, but did respond to high-skilled immigration by moving towards the Democratic Party.

The differential response to the inflow of more- and less-educated immigrants is consistent with an explanation in which natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, and their response to less-educated immigrants is negative and stronger the less educated the local population. Interestingly, this differential response to immigration is another contributor to the polarization and political divide in the United States. While the most highly educated immigrants (as well as less-educated, though not as many) moved into urban, skill-intensive areas and contributed to moving those already left-leaning areas further towards the Democratic Party, low-skilled immigration (and not much highskilled immigration) in non-urban and low-skilled areas has contributed to push those areas towards the Republican Party. Our model can explain 22% of the growth in the Republican Party vote share over the 1990-2010 period across U.S. counties, and it shows how the opinion response to immigration is consistent with the local perception of economic costs and benefits from it.

The German Bakery Fear Syndrome

'When people standing in line in a bakery are unable to tell whether that person ordering a roll in broken German is a highly skilled developer or an illegal immigrant. This can trigger fears in society.'

(Christian Linder, German shitlib politician)


I can deal with one or two Germans in my vicinity. At three I begin to feel decidedly uneasy. I just can not stand these moral preeners and xenophobes.

Perhaps Merkel's immigration policy will pay off. At least concerning height

"We can do this" is also Merkel's basic attitude in life. There is some, ehem, scientific indication that Mutti's stubbornness will pay off over time, because "a new study has shown that migrant populations moving to more affluent countries grow physically taller over relatively short periods of time."

Anthropologists show how migrant communities physically grow taller when they leave hardship behind

A new study has shown that migrant populations moving to more affluent countries grow physically taller over relatively short periods of time.
Professor of Biological Anthropology at Loughborough University Barry Bogin found that the children of a Maya community, from Guatemala, who were known for their short stature, grew an average of 11cm in one generation after migrating to Florida and California in the 1990s.

The Maya's relatives back home, who did not migrate, showed no signs of the same rapid growth which suggested the physical development was influenced by the change of environment.

Prof Bogin said the phenomenon, known as strategic height adjustment, is found among groups of people who escape poor living conditions, oppression or conflict, and settle in more prosperous environments.
His research, published in Anthropologischer Anzeiger: Journal of Biological and Clinical Anthropology, considered numerous other examples of migration and height change over the past 140 years, including rural Bangladeshis who came to London in the 1970s.
In each instance, migrant youngsters' growth accelerated until their average height matched that of their new native peers.

"This is usually thought to be due to better food and health care in the new country," said Prof Bogin.

"But also, because the emotional stress that limited growth in the old country has been lifted -- and there is emotional stimulus for bigger body size in the new country."

Professor Bogin's study, carried out in collaboration with Dr Christiane Scheffler, at the University of Potsdam, and Professor Michael Hermanussen, from the University of Kiel, also explored a second phenomenon called competitive growth -- where the ruling social classes adjust their height to exceed the subordinate population.

Prof Bogin said: "This is when the mean height of colonial or military migrants, who become the socially dominant group in the conquered country, surpasses the average height of the both the conquered people and the origin population."

In one example, the researchers found that the height of Dutch colonial masters in Indonesia in the 19th and early 20th centuries was greater than the Indonesians they ruled, and also greater than social upper classes back in the Netherlands.

"This was also the case for English colonial masters in North America," said Prof Bogin.

"We find that it is the superior social status of the conquerors that promotes their greater height."

Moar here

W. Streeck's Germany "In search of the additional population". Some nuggets of wisdom

From 'Die Zeit', Sept. 21, 2017, so before the elections. Download Pdf here (article is in German). Streeck's blog is here.

In search of the additional population

The whole article is worthwhile to read. I have picked out the best nuggets, in my opinion. That Schäuble remark was new to me.

Schäuble im Juni 2016, dass Abschottung »uns in Inzucht degenerieren lassen« würde: »Schauen Sie sich doch mal die dritte Generation der Türken an, gerade auch die Frauen! Das ist doch ein enormes innovatorisches Potenzial!«

Schäuble in June 2016, that walling-off "would degenerate us into inbred": "Look at the third generation of the Turks, especially the women! This is an enormous innovative potential! «

Mitte September 2015 versprach sich der Daimler-Chef Dieter Zetsche von den Flüchtlingen »das nächste deutsche Wirtschaftswunder«; ein Jahr später waren dann Flüchtlinge bei genau drei der dreißig Dax-Konzerne regulär beschäftigt, und zwar 50 bei der Deutschen Post (als Zusteller) und vier bei den beiden anderen. Wie schlecht Humanität und Humankapitalbeschaffung zusammenpassen, zeigte sich auch, als sich die Bundesregierung auf diplomatischem Wege darüber beschwerte, dass die Türkei in Ausführung der Merkel-Erdoğan-Vereinbarung nur gering qualifizierte und aus anderen, auch gesundheitlichen Gründen schwer integrierbare Syrer nach Europa, sprich Deutschland, schicke. Flüchtlinge mit Universitätsausbildung würden zurückbehalten. Die türkische Regierung erklärte, dass sie bewusst diejenigen Antragsteller nach Deutschland sende, die eine Umsiedlung aus humanitären Gründen am nötigsten hätten.

In the middle of September 2015, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche promised "the next German economic miracle" from the refugees; a year later, refugees were regularly employed by precisely three of the thirty Dax corporations, 50 at the Deutsche Post (as delivery staff) and four at the other two. How poor humanity and human capital accumulation matched was also shown when the German government criticized diplomatically that Turkey, in execution of the Merkel-Erdoğan agreement, had only poorly qualified Syrians who were difficult to integrate into Europe, ie Germany, for other reasons that were difficult to integrate , send Refugees with university education would be retained. The Turkish government stated that it would deliberately send those applicants to Germany, which would need a resettlement for humanitarian reasons.

Auf dem Höhepunkt der Willkommenswelle wurde bisweilen öffentlich darüber spekuliert, dass insbesondere die Anreise der Migranten über die Balkanroute als eine Art Assessment-Center für die physische und psychische Belastbarkeit und das Unternehmertum der Flüchtlinge fungieren könne – eine sozialdarwinistische Survival of the fittest-Theorie der Personalauswahl, wie sie bei Arbeitgebern heute mehr denn je im Schwange ist. So erklärte der Soziologe Stephan Lessenich »den Flüchtling« zum »sozialen  Ideal des aktiven, unternehmerischen Subjekts« – ähnlich wie Zetsche einen Monat davor, dem zufolge »hoch motiviert« sei, wer »sein komplettes Leben zurücklässt«, und »genau solche Menschen suchen wir bei Mercedes und überall in unserem Land«.

At the peak of the welcome wave, it was sometimes publicly speculated that migrants' arrival across the Balkan route could act as a sort of assessment center for the physical and psychological resilience and entrepreneurship of the refugees - a social Darwinian Survival of the Fittest Theory of Personnel Selection , which is now more than ever present for employers. Thus the sociologist Stephan Lessenich explained "the refugee" as the "social ideal of the active, entrepreneurial subject" - similar to Zetsche one month before, according to which someone is "highly motivated" who "leaves his complete life behind" we at Mercedes and everywhere in our country are in search of such people. "

It turned out, that citizens were looking for some different people in parliament on Sept. 24.

Quomodo sedet sola civitas.

Die Lügenpresse und der Lauschangriff im Mutterland (Repost)

This is a repost from UNZ. Pretty good spot-on assessment from that German guy.

The Western media shame Germans, stay silent on endless attacks against Muslim countries and insist on massive immigration into mostly white nations.

Meanwhile, false flags are staged that are blamed on Muslims, with the aim of flaming hatred between pale, nominal Christians and darker Muslims, for this animosity distracts from the systematic economic and war crimes committed by our common, mostly hidden rulers.

Until Israel is voided, Muslim societies will continue to be destroyed, thus flooding Europe with Muslim refugees.

For two years, I’ve received reports on Germany from a friend in Frankfurt. Yesterday, Christian sent me his latest, and I responded with six emails, only three of which reached his mailbox. Never before has this happened.

It’s ironic that Christian’s report is mostly about two new laws that allow the German state to monitor its citizens’ electronic communication and to criminalize online statements.

One is popularly dubbed Lauschangriff [Bugging Operation], while the second is called Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz [Network Enforcement Law].

Since my emails to Christian suddenly couldn’t get through, I started to wonder if it was Lauschangriff at work? Whatever. We found another way to communicate. Grimly, Christian relates:

First, some happy news: Bild Zeitung, the German tabloid with the power to make or break politicians, is 65-years-old. Hurrah! Ein Tusch! Due to the joyous event, every household found a Bild in its mailbox. What did we find in there? Half the pages were advertisements and the rest were German politicians, businessmen or other contemporary idols telling us how wonderful our country is, and that we should constantly accept refugees, who will contribute to a better future, etc.

Our chancellor, Mrs. Merkel, tells our happy citizens that Germany stands, above all, for two things: eternal responsibility for the Holocaust and the integration of immigrants. Maybe one needs not wonder why the circulation of Bild-Zeitung has dropped 50% in the last 15 years. Of course, we are told that this was the fault of the bad, bad internet, which makes people more stupid, hateful and misinformed.

While Bild Zeitung was just doing its job of keeping people REALLY dumb and misinformed, our Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas, was also busy. Last Thursday, Maas’ wet dream was achieved when the Bundestag decided on a new law for more surveillance of online and messenger services. Germans are now calling it the Lauschangriff [Bugging Operation].

Ah, die Wunder der deutschen Sprache! My beloved mother tongue is full of clear and precise words, and there is also this wonderful German ability to call things by its real names. Just as with the Lügenpresse [lying press], we now have the Lauschangriff. A liberal or leftist who cares more for foreigners than his own people is dubbed a Gutmensch [good man]. Thanks to academics and media pundits, however, we now learn that only bad, hateful people use such terms.

Back to topic: The new law allows the state to secretly hack into computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones and messenger services, etc., to look into all electronic communication, in short, on the pretext of identifying terrorists, a most nebulous term, for any critic of the state may now be labeled a “terrorist.”

Our police and secret services now have legal access to the private data of all citizens.

What a wonderful new world! When a similar law was introduced a decade ago, it was met by fierce resistance from the media and public. Not this time!

Yes, there is the possibility that our highest court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, might yet decide that the new law is unconstitutional, and some in the press are complaining, but there are no street demonstrations or a serious debate about this manifestation of Big Brother. Zero, zilch, nix, nein. People are just too tired, wasted, kaput. They just want to have a good time. Let’s go clubbing or have a barbecue…

And it doesn’t end there, of course: the Bundestag also passed the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz [Network Enforcement Law], which can criminalize online statements as illegal hate postings.

Great! The social media will be forced to delete hate speech immediately, but who defines hate speech? It’s a question for philosophers, not lawyers. In dubio pro hate speech. From now on, haters, baiters and Schlechtmenschen will have a hard time… Our Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere, actually declared, “It cannot be that there are areas where the state has no influence.” He really said that!

The very foundations of our civil rights are openly destroyed, but no one sees it. It’s almost comical.

Instead, media focus is on the danger coming from the RIGHT! Ja, we should fear the RIGHT for all time! The AfD, a party resembling the American Republican, are portrayed by the Lügenpresse as dangerous Nazis.

Twisting reality, they are shown as the great danger, while it is THEIR men and women who are persecuted and attacked. Several cars of AfD-MPs have been burned, several AfD-members have been beaten by Antifa-thugs, windows of restaurants where AfD-members frequent have been smashed and employees dare not admit they voted for the AfD, etc.

Meanwhile, foreigners are still flooding in. Official sources say we should expect 500,000 migrants and refugees for 2017. Who knows what the real figure will be? Yes, let them all come. Our cities change before our eyes.

And yet, the danger lurks from the RIGHT, we’re told. A soldier in the German Bundeswehr was found with Nazi memorabilia. Foaming, our minister of defense rightfully said that we should ban all signs of the Wehrmacht in German barracks. Yes, let’s scrub away the dirty past!

On the other hand, we are constantly erecting Holocaust memorials in each city. In Frankfurt, where I live, three more have been built in recent weeks. Ja, ja, we should always be reminded of how bad and vicious Germans can be.

An expert told us recently that wearing a pigtail might indicate a Nazi mindset. Another maven warned of Nazi teachers in German kindergartens! The same warning went out to schools, universities and companies, for Nazis are everywhere! Though invisible, they are literally everywhere!

Meanwhile, practically every week there are news of Muslim terrorists being arrested. An independent journalist found out that in the first three months of 2017, some 27 Muslims in Germany were seized by the police for planning a terror attack. As for the evil Nazis??? In one case, two Nazis with explosives were arrested.

True, there are false flags, but there are now enough radical Islamists in Germany to destabilize our country. Muslim countries are bombed and demolished, so they flee to societies many of them won’t understand, where they’re even encouraged to NOT integrate. Therefore, the rift between Muslim immigrants and Christian natives will only widen.

Then you have the horrible job statistics of the refugees. Though a catastrophe in the making, it is depicted as an economic stimulus. What?! Most refugees will remain on social assistance and only contribute to the German workforce in about 10 years, and only if integration really works. Most of their skills and knowledge are not usable in the German job market.

Ach, no worries! Wir schaffen das! We make it! So goes the slogan of our beloved Führer, I mean chancellor. Merkel says that it’s our duty to feed, clothe and work for people who, in their majority, will never work for us.

Do you believe in positive outcomes? Ja, we do! Let’s forget about the pension crisis with its obligations of about seven trillion euros, of which there are no funds. Let’s forget about the ever rising debts of nations, companies, households. Let’s forget about all these banks on the brink of bankruptcy. Let’s do what we have always done: work hard! As one of our great poets, Gottfried Benn, said so beautifully, “Dumm sein und Arbeit haben—das ist Glück” [“Being stupid and having work—that’s happiness”].

Back to topic: the country slowly resembles a Blade Runner scenario. In this society where most are poor and desperate, violence will reign so we will ask for protection, and it will be given to us! The Lauschangriff will protect us from the evil ones! As long as we consume, work hard, think less and have a good time, everything will be OK.

We must never forget our past sins and, to atone for them, must always accept immigrants. We also need them. Amen.

Years ago, I read two great books: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Warlam Schalamow’s The Kolyma Tales. While the former portrays a society that, in the name of compassion and charity, strangles all initiatives and entrepreneurship by taxing and regulating them to death, the latter shows the logical next step: a prison system where everything is regulated by never-to-be-seen statisticians. The amount of work you have to do, the food you will receive for it, your clothing, how much money you may receive or spend, how many postcards you may write, your living space, etc., everything is regulated to the smallest details.

To me, these two depictions describe where we’re heading. Before our very eyes, society turns into a completely and utterly regulated and surveilled “thing,” where debts will rise constantly and liberties eroded, and as cost pressure for companies increases relentlessly, people will earn less and less.

The end of the road is the super state, where we are told by officialdom what to do, what to think, how to behave, how to work and where to live, etc. It will resemble Ayn Rand’s vision of a bureaucratic hell and also Schalamow’s depiction of a brutal terror regime.