Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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This doesn't seem to be a major problem for the EU, which has unrestricted internal migration but social programs are administered by the individual member states.

The idea that the poor will mass migrate to California and the rich will mass migrate to South Dakota is pretty unrealistic. The poor can't afford to live in California even with social assistance, and the rich don't want to live in South Dakota no matter how low the taxes are.

Because money buys stuff taxpayers want. Middle class people want good schools and functioning transit and to know they're going to have a secure retirement. The premise of having the government do these things is that they can do them at least as well as the market. If they succeed they'll have no trouble attracting people to come there and pay taxes in exchange for receiving those services. If they fail and are then out-competed by other states that do better, whether by leaving things to the market or otherwise, isn't that a good thing? It requires the underperforming states to improve or lose population.

> This doesn't seem to be a major problem for the EU, which has unrestricted internal migration but social programs are administered by the individual member states

I might be off the mark here, but from my understanding wasn't unrestricted migration one of the big drivers behind Brexit? Or at least the idea that the "poor countries" were "taking advantage" of the "rich countries"?

A lot of the drivers behind Brexit have a tenuous relationship to facts. There are some legitimate reasons to leave, but there are also self-interested parties telling people the lies they want to be told. And "mistaken people believe this" is no support for a position.

The thing about rich people moving to places with lower taxes and poor people moving to places with more services is that it's the sort of thing that seems intuitively obvious until you actually think about it, and you realize it's like arguing that lakes are impossible because water evaporates.

It's not that water doesn't evaporate. It's not that poor people don't prefer more services and rich people don't prefer lower taxes. It's that everything is not one dimensional and there are other factors that outweigh that one by enough that the lake is still full of water.

My understanding is that unrestricted immigration has the opposite effect: rich countries taking advantage of poor ones, via “brain drain”. That’s why the average age of medicine doctors in Poland seems to be around 50: all the younger ones went to Germany or Scandinavia.

It’s true for blue collar workers as well: try hiring a contractor to remodel your house and then watch them leave the job unfinished because they got a better paying gig in UK (that actually happened to a friend of mine)

Both is true. There is brain drain as well as welfare migration. My hometown in Germany with a population of ~300k now has ~11k migrants from Romania und Bulgaria. Aside from various social problems this is also a big strain on the social systems. 85%+ of households are dependent on child support checks.

There's also the fact that Western European countries desperately need immigration for covering future pensions. Countries like Germany and Finland are the next to follow Japan's crippling issues with aging population and poor dependency ratio.

The studies I have seen referenced suggest that EU migrants to the UK are generally net contributors as they pay their taxes like everyone else but tend to travel here without dependents, be younger and eventually go home before they are too old. Migrants from outside of the UK on the other hand tend to be older and come with families so tend to be a net drain on services.

Leaving the EU will mean more migrants from outside of the EU - so will actually cause the situation a lot of Leavers were worrying about to get a lot worse.

See Robert Peston's WTF? for details.

>This doesn't seem to be a major problem for the EU

Are you serious?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis

That's taking about external migration (refugees and illegal immigrants), not internal migration under the EU's freedom of movement. Of course, the latter was a major factor in the Brexit referendum, so I wouldn't say it's not a major problem for the EU...

What's even the point of the distinction if the EU is not adequately restricting immigration from those other countries? The point remains the same: people from poor countries are mass migrating to rich countries with the most social programs. This is a major problem for the EU.

The point of distinction is that EU internal immigration and the refugee situation are entirely different things. Refugees leave there home countries because of war and terror. Members of the UN are obligated [1] to give shelter to those people. Inside the EU there is indeed some welfare migration. This is however not only driven by social systems but also by available jobs.

[1] https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html

This is in fact a major problem for the EU.

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