letrowekwel

It's not xenophobia to point out that a nation's migration policy is failing, when it obviously is. It's a systemic issue, not some cultures or people being better or worse.

I fully agree. Globally highly multicultural countries tend to be less stable on average, and it makes perfect sense if we consider basic human biology. We are tribal animals, it's hard to get around that.

Places like Sweden will have it even worse than the US, because migrants need to learn a fully new language to fully integrate, while most migrants to the US have at least some English skills to begin with.

It's not a good idea to take in massive amounts of poor and uneducated refugees from distant cultures, give them free money and housing, and then just leave them be. That's not a real migration policy, it's just a recipe for creating a segregated society. The Swedish welfare state has certainly taken care of the basic needs of the migrants, but it hasn't really worked well at actual integration, and creating social mobility. Poorly integrated youths who see no future prospects through honest work are prime material for crime gangs to recruit.

I still haven't figured out whether Swedish politicians and voters didn't realize this, or simply didn't care. What's happening has seemed inevitable to me for well over a decade.

I fully agree. It's all about meeting enough potential partners with similar interests. Shared-activities with healthy gender balance (at least for heterosexual relationships) are the best bet for most people. Many such activities also don't require long-term commitment or hanging out with same people all the time, so rejection isn't as awkward as in workplace for example.

Of all things I tried shared activities worked the best, Tinder the worst.

The boomers are retiring, and the US economy is strong. Here in EU boomers are also retiring, but many countries still have high youth unemployment, and there is no real worker shortage even if businesses like to complain about one.

These devices do have their value, but most users would be better off cycling or walking. From public health point of view replacing cars with these is only a minor improvement.

Wow, I had zero idea Brazil is doing so good in that front. I agree with you completely. EU's biggest economy shuts down nuclear plants in favor of coal, I think that tells us all enough about how much those in charge really care about the environment. Votes from irrational, brainwashed German population seems to be more important.

Yes, people with decent education are almost never causing trouble, no matter the country of origin. They can find legal paths to improving their lives, while migrants with difficult background (and their children) have very difficult time doing that. Sweden isn't like the USA in the 1800's, you need education and decent language skills for any good jobs. Free education is no silver bullet that suddenly turns masses of illiterate people into doctors and economists, because even under such system there's competition for university spots.

Sweden quite simply took in way too many people who would have required a lot of help to integrate, stuffed them into bad neighbourhoods and gave them free money. I'm sure many companies have benefited from this supply of slave labour, but for the society as a whole it has been a disaster.

Integration is exponentially harder if you're a (potentially traumatized) and uneducated asylum seeker from a poor country, compared to someone who migrates for work and already holds some qualifications. So, in that sense Sweden's migration policies are to be blamed, since the country has received way more asylum seekers per capita than most other EU countries.

Apparently Sweden has the highest gap between employment rate of citizen and non-EU citizen in the whole European Union. I think it's mainly because so many migrants arrived to seek asylum rather than work. But yes, city planning and ineffective legal system do not exactly help either.

No it won't. Once the economy starts booming again, RTO'd people who like remote work and have the choice will look for new jobs.

Yeah it all depends from how much you actually use the machine, My old i7 gaming system runs maybe 7 hours a week on average. I drive barely 10k kilometers a year with my old ICE car. Upgrading to a new gaming PC and Tesla would make neither economic or environmental sense.

Similarly I've never bothered to upgrade from my from old i7-2600k gaming build from 2011, and will likely use it for many years to come. Paired with GTX1070, more RAM, and a larger SSD, it still delivers good enough performance for anything I want (and have time) to play, including AAA games from few years ago.

Lumber is widely used in Nordic and other Northern European countries, precisely because they have lots of forests. It's most common in houses, but even apartment locks are being built from wood these days. Fire safety is not much of an issue if you do it right.

Using more wood would make a lot of sense, since it's essentially a long-term carbon sink. Concrete production on the other hand causes massive carbon emissions. After spending some time in a house with lumber from 1800s, I can only admire the quality and craftmanship.

At least in my country, there are three types of "labor shortages".

1. Pay and/or working conditions suck so much people aren't interested. Think of nurses, various staff (restaurant, cleaning etc) that are often employed through third-party companies that offer you limited hours on weekly basis.

2. Labor limited through artificial constraints on supply. Doctors are a good example of this here - doctors associations successfully lobby to keep medical school student intake low, which means lower supply and better pay for those who make it.

3. Positions that require just too much experience, knowledge or talent to be obtained simply through right education. Think of top senior software engineers for example.