Mikojan posted:

Not if they continue getting everything for free.

Venom Snake posted:

This thread reads like It's full of first year economic students lecturing their friends at the student union about how we have to close the borders right now because it will destroy our economy.

Western Europe and the United States are both service economies that improve as more people buy things; acting like refugee's or god forbid ECONOMIC MIGRANTS will destroy the economy by not having jobs completely and utterly ignores that they will buy things stimulating all sorts of industry.

There's also that whole thing were in this current refugee crisis that if you just turn a shitload of people away and they radicalize it will have a much larger negative impact on the economy once poo poo starts exploding.

EDIT: Also wondering why migrants and refugee's hold regressive social views isn't hard when you consider many come from places that are essentially still in the 18th century education wise. There is also that whole thing with those dudes in the giant golden building in the center of Rome; they regularly profess regressive views but I don't see any posters doing that stupid "OH WHAT NOW LIEBRALLS? ROLLS EYES" thing vis a vis the Catholic Church.

Geriatric Pirate posted:

Phew, thank goodness we finally have a real economist here to set the issue straight: large groups of people consuming something while producing nothing are actually good for the economy.

steinrokkan posted:

It's not Keynesian, it's the broken window school of economics.

PaleIrishGuy posted:

It was simplistic. I will admit that. It was so because the tune of 'cause they're brown' was being played in D&D again, and if one group of brown people has integrated or is more accepted than another, then it's probably a greater matter than just 'brown people' again.

If you want to argue that the difference may be due to dominant regional faiths between the two regions, then that is fine. That is a fantastic argument to advance and may well be a part of it. That said, if you're going to advance that faith is the discriminatory factor here, then drop the 'racism' line, unless you are also prepared to argue that being Islamic is now a race.

So again we are back to why is one group of people being accepted in Finland when another group from a neighboring nation isn't a racist matter?

Liberal_L33t posted:

As a longtime lurker in this thread I feel that the term "brown people" is highly toxic to discourse in D&D and is used as a silencing tactic almost without exception. I'm not talking about discussion of race and racism in general, or even the act of accusing other posters of harboring race prejudice; just the specific terms "brown people" and "browns". I know you're using it mainly to criticize that mindset, but I think that even using the term ironically plays into the hands of pissants who use these terms to poison the well whenever discussion of non-western cultures pops up.

steinrokkan posted:

It's not Keynesian, it's the broken window school of economics.

PaleIrishGuy posted:

Entirely agreed. I've seen it used to ridicule or silence opposition in D&D for nearly a decade at least. It utterly ruins discourse by attempting to drag too many issues down to simple othering or to ad hom and dismiss another poster by trying to re-frame their arguments in the most simplistic form of racism. Racism surely exists, both systemic and simplistic, and posters certainly do post racist or discriminatory things, but that term, as it is used, is utterly poisonous to any conversation here.

-Troika- posted:

It's used specifically because it poisons discussion. The people using it are not actually interested in debate and discussion, they're interested in cheap gotchas.

Effectronica posted:

I don't know how you can say this without a gigantic clothesiron with a picture of Alanis Morrissette on the side falling from heaven and burying you beneath it. Could it be true that Yaldabaoth the cruel demiurge rules this fallen material world?

Liberal_L33t posted:

Now, see, there's the kind of top quality trolling which could be used by Effectronica and co. instead of resorting to cheap shots and race-baiting catchphrases. Thank you for proving my point.

Venom Snake posted:

This thread reads like It's full of first year economic students lecturing their friends at the student union about how we have to close the borders right now because it will destroy our economy.

-Troika- posted:

It's used specifically because it poisons discussion. The people using it are not actually interested in debate and discussion, they're interested in cheap gotchas.

Effectronica posted:

Can you skip to the final part of your breakdown and rampage, please? Or just publish a manifesto about how stuffing hummus up their asses was too good for Gitmo detainees.

Arglebargle III posted:

Tesseraction posted:

But then I could point to:

quote:

Dead Reckoning posted:

The notion that refugees will be a net benefit to society and a national economy by massively overloading the welfare system and spending government money in stores does not deserve much else. I know in D&D effort is supposed to be met with effort, but when the wall of text someone types up is so obviously retarded on its face, I think we can make an exception.

murphyslaw posted:

Rather than speaking of them as an immediate net benefit, I read that post as talking about the refugees as an investment opportunity. Perhaps discourse in this thread would be improved if you didn't accuse posters of being mentally deficient because you read their posts uncharitably?

mobby_6kl posted:

If they're supposed to be an investment, then it's going to be a relatively lovely one as there are enough people in the country already with language and other relevant skills and education who'd require way less investment to become productive.

I'm not necessarily arguing against hosting refugees, but c'mon. If you start with the conclusion that letting everyone in must be great for the host country, it's possible to come up with rather silly arguments.

Geriatric Pirate posted:

There are millions of people who would love to live and work in the EU legally who are going to benefit the economy much more than refugees, especially as these people can help the economy right away instead of after many years like refugees. Most economic arguments to let refugees in are quite bad. I guess you could argue that refugees could still be a long-term positive economically in aging economies, assuming that after 5-10 years their employment rates are not that far below the general population (which is the case in some countries, but not in others). But in the short run? No way.

namesake posted:

No because the refugees are people who exist no matter what the governments of Europe do. The choice faced by the EU is to spend lots of money to heavily militarise their borders to stop people crossing by shooting them, increase internal spying and surveillance to catch and deport these refugees or to create a real system for integrating them into Europe.

There are no cheap options here, it's just a question of how many human rights and ethics you want to violate.

Tesseraction posted:

Well, you say that, but it actually could be if you're in one of the net takers from the EU funding pot - Germany and Austria have threatened economic sanctions to countries that don't step up to the quota obligations, so it could end up actually being more economically viable to accept the refugees than to have your EU subsidies halted.

murphyslaw posted:

Meanwhile in Finland:

http://i.imgur.com/UMFB2ix.jpg
Pictured: the cultural delegation from Helsinki welcomes the country's new arrivals amidst cheers of "perkele!" and "eii saa peittaa!"

Freezer posted:

Finland was barely on my radar before this thread. Now I have them categorized as backwards xenophobes with delusions of grandeur. Good job keeping the immigrants out of the barren jobless frozen tundra I guess.

Freezer posted:

Finland was barely on my radar before this thread. Now I have them categorized as backwards xenophobes with delusions of grandeur. Good job keeping the immigrants out of the barren jobless frozen tundra I guess.

Tesseraction posted:

I'd say Lebanon is an example of an 'undeveloped' (or perhaps 'underdeveloped' is the better term) economy that's coping with its astounding number of refugees, albeit at a lowering of national quality of life. I'd hope that our supposed 'developed' economies could manage a large fraction of those people, let alone the much smaller numbers currently being accepted, without seeing a drop in quality of life.

Tesseraction posted:

The money you'd need to spend on refugees in the short term is unlikely to outweigh the financial assistance from the EU - going by the Grauniad's data (Google Spreadsheets) for example the Czech Republic received €1455.2million in 2011 (and the value probably isn't wildly different this year, I'd assume). While obviously not all of that money could be sanctioned or held back by Brussels, certainly a significant dent can be made should Germany prove to be vindictive.

Tesseraction posted:

There is not inherently an economic argument to letting in refugees, no, but a combination of a moralistic/ethical argument

Hogge Wild posted:

imo the refugees should be shipped to usa

Griffen posted:

So to sum up, accepting effectively unlimited (as that seems to be the moral argument I'm hearing here) refugees would be a short and long-term drain on host nations' resources and economies (because if spending millions training unemployed workers was a net boon to the economy, nations would have done it to their own unemployed without the need for language lessons), create social and cultural tensions, and ultimately not solve the problem. Instead, it slaps a bandage and a shot of morphine on the problem to make us feel good about ourselves. What do we do 5 years from now, when Syria is still a mess, Yemen has gone belly-up, Lebanon is at the breaking point, and Turkey and the Kurds are at each other's throats. All those people are going to look at this precedent and go to Europe, knowing that they will accept them "because they have to." Where does it end? Where is the incentive to actually have a functioning state and to fight for your home? People say the West shouldn't be the world police; fine, if that's the case, why should we be the world's babysitter?