European Politics

[TheTalisman]

Sweden has a lot of space though.

The problem is not with space, it's that most parts of the swedish labour market has moved on from lowed-skilled workers a long time ago - that is where the real issue is.

And there's still lot of small towns around the country, with available housing, and with factories which haven't been moved over seas yet. But these type of companies do not demand much labour anymore, because production is mostly automated, as in most western countries. Most people employed in these places have at least 2 years of post secondary education now as well.

Where I live (in a city with 100 000 habitants), asylum immigrants who make it as far as to actually have a job mainly end up working with pizza delivery, housekeeping, driving cabs, or working in fast food places. Swedish government also pay 1/2 of the salary for immigrant workers for the first 6 months in employment, but this doesn't seem to help much.

Unemployment levels in 2020, were at the highest rate for people with a background in Africa, with 30 %. People born in Sweden had an unemployment level of just 5 % at the same time.

Arbetslöshet - utrikes födda

Arbetslösheten bland utrikes födda är högre än bland inrikes födda.

www.ekonomifakta.se

 

[GhostofCain]

I think Yax summed up what I was referring to pretty well. The situation has been quite insane. I voted for the guy pictured afterwards, but no one on the political spectrum would say it was handled well. Oppurtunists made fortunes on living spaces, there's an insane shortage on rentals due to something like 25% of the public housing available for rent having been seized for that purpose, lots of the immigrants ended up in the middle of nowhere small towns (I think this is what @Forostar is referring to with "space") where no one wants to live and the schools can't recruit teachers which is turning out quite badly (who would have guessed).

So you end up with a new lower class without education or with poor language skills in a country which has no jobs for them and a school system with no way of handling already severely dropping results gets smacked with another 5-10 kids in every class (reality in some places) who have to learn a new culture, language, school language and make up for years of already lost education to compete with their peers. Some make it, most will not.

I guess it's better than a war torn region, but you can't stand and invite people in and then stick your head in the sand when it comes to handling the issues that present themselves afterwards. It has fed racism, nationalism and gang violence. Add covid to that pot, and you have areas which government information didn't reach.

The question you really need to think of here - how do you most effectively collapse a welfare state?

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Forostar]

I think Yax summed up what I was referring to pretty well. The situation has been quite insane. I voted for the guy pictured afterwards, but no one on the political spectrum would say it was handled well. Oppurtunists made fortunes on living spaces, there's an insane shortage on rentals due to something like 25% of the public housing available for rent having been seized for that purpose, lots of the immigrants ended up in the middle of nowhere small towns (I think this is what @Forostar is referring to with "space") where no one wants to live and the schools can't recruit teachers which is turning out quite badly (who would have guessed).

So you end up with a new lower class without education or with poor language skills in a country which has no jobs for them and a school system with no way of handling already severely dropping results gets smacked with another 5-10 kids in every class (reality in some places) who have to learn a new culture, language, school language and make up for years of already lost education to compete with their peers. Some make it, most will not.

I guess it's better than a war torn region, but you can't stand and invite people in and then stick your head in the sand when it comes to handling the issues that present themselves afterwards. It has fed racism, nationalism and gang violence. Add covid to that pot, and you have areas which government information didn't reach.

The question you really need to think of here - how do you most effectively collapse a welfare state?

I find it hard to imagine that immigrants do not want to live in smaller towns. Everything better than where they came from(?) And why would they all have low education? Hmm, I do not agree with these assumptions.

 

[Forostar]

Unemployment levels in 2020, were at the highest rate for people with a background in Africa, with 30 %. People born in Sweden had an unemployment level of just 5 % at the same time.

Arbetslöshet - utrikes födda

Arbetslösheten bland utrikes födda är högre än bland inrikes födda.

www.ekonomifakta.se

How come you think? Perhaps they are not given a chance enough. Blame the immigrants, blame the immigration policy, do not blame the society itself.

 

[TheTalisman]

How come you think?

Well I think arriving with a low education from their home countries is the primary reason, this makes it very difficult to learn the swedish language, and get an upper secondary education, as well as getting a driving license, which is required for many jobs.

On a side note, i just want to make it clear: people who haven't graduated High school/Upper Secondary School have difficulties in the swedish labour overall, not just immigrants.
Their unemployment rate is currently at 26,4 %, compared to 5.2 % for the group with post-secondary education.

Arbetslöshet efter utbildningsnivå

Arbetslösheten är som högst bland personer som saknar gymnasial utbildning. Under år 2023 uppgick arbetslösheten i den här gruppen till 27,1 procent.

www.ekonomifakta.se

 

[Maturin]

I find it hard to imagine that immigrants do not want to live in smaller towns. Everything better than where they came from(?) And why would they all have low education? Hmm, I do not agree with these assumptions.

Stora skillnader i utbildningsnivå mellan nyinvandrade

Andelen högutbildade bland vuxna som har invandrat till Sverige de senaste åren är högre än i befolkningen som helhet. Men samtidigt har var fjärde nyinvandrad inte gått gymnasiet.

www.scb.se

Official statistics from Statens Statistiska Centralbyrå, SCB. 40% of the 60,000 arriving from Syria did not have secondary education completed, around the same for the 11,300 from Iraq. 65% out of the 4800 from Somalia did not have secondary education completed. You need secondary education to even get a cleaning job in today's Sweden.

Not saying the immigrants don't want to live there, Swedish people don't want to live there. It's a well known fact the small towns in rural areas are shrinking because it doesn't make sense to live there with current politics which is favourable for the cities (completely opposite Norway).

But if an hour to get an ambulance sounds promising to you, I recommend Hagfors, Värmland. Really cheap housing.

 

[Yax]

That being said, well educated immigrants can have a hard time finding qualified employment too. There was an article in the DN newspaper a while back, citing a medical doctor who could not get an interview until DN sent his CV with a fake, typical Swedish name instead, and got instant callbacks.

 

[Forostar]

You need secondary education to even get a cleaning job in today's Sweden.

Aha, well... maybe, just maybe Sweden is a little too demanding. Have an education or else you are a problem?*

Still, there is access for immigrants to have an education in Sweden, if I understand well.

edit:
* at the same time, Sweden is doing much more its best to admit refugees than other countries, I guess.
It is something to be praised, when not being picky, when not having strict acceptance criteria.

 

[Maturin]

Aha, well... maybe, just maybe Sweden is a little too demanding. Have an education or else you are a problem?

Still, there is access for immigrants to have an education in Sweden, if I understand well.

Not really. It's just than when an unskilled position gets 500 applications, there's going to be someone who's proven themselves and have grades to show for it. Sorry, better luck next time.

(Edit: Education is free) Problem is you have to pass the education and get a final grade/degree. It takes a couple of years to just learn the language. Swedish has the same requirements to pass, no matter your background.

 

[Yax]

I believe the inflation of academic qualifications has had a negative impact on society as a whole. Academic credentials is vital in strengthening a profession class' status etc. the problem is, when academic credentials is required for most starting positions then the status increasal gets returned to zero. I'm back in uni myself at this point in my life, but I still believe the scope of the academization of the western world has had a net negative impact in many different ways. I believe you could make education more accessible, effective and attractive, both on a macro level but certain specific education paths as well by not trying to fit everything into a university standard. The over academization of elementary school teacher programs is just one example (although that has been somewhat reversed in the past 25 years).

 

[Maturin]

The over academization of elementary school teacher programs is just one example (although that has been somewhat reversed in the past 25 years).

While I agree teaching is a job you learn the best in practice, elementary school teachers are, well, elemental in developing primary skills in reading and mathematics and need to be qualified. How you reach that professional skill I'm all for debating, spending 4 years at uni doing... things with very little to do with the actual job is maybe not the best, I agree.

 

[Yax]

While I agree teaching is a job you learn the best in practice, elementary school teachers are, well, elemental in developing primary skills in reading and mathematics and need to be qualified. How you reach that professional skill I'm all for debating, spending 4 years at uni doing... things with very little to do with the actual job is maybe not the best, I agree.

Yes, they do - But I can easily see how the program I'm undertaking could be cut by at least one semester better spent out in schools. That's the core of it. Uni education needs to be made more effective. My first degree could have been achieved in two years instead of three without any significant knowledge or skills lost.

 

[bearfan]

I believe the inflation of academic qualifications has had a negative impact on society as a whole.

This I agree with 100%. Obviously this is more from a US viewpoint, but I imagine it is similar in most places .. that work qualifications do not hold as much value. I started in IT in the mid 90s, degrees of any kind were a bonus, computer science degrees would open some doors, but I worked with plenty of people with High School degrees that got into networking, programming, engineering (sometimes getting certs) that did really well in those careers . .that is disappearing ... same with several of the more traditional trades. Not everyone is good in an academic setting and some degrees are essentially worthless in the job market as a whole. These have been the types of jobs people could get and advance into the middle classes and become more successful in life. Beyond hurting society, I think it has hurt the trades themselves.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

In IT/CS it is due to tools being easier, abstractions being higher, and access barriers getting lower all the time. "Engineers" are less and less competent as time goes by because they need to know less in order to achieve something. Whether that something is optimal or even correct is very questionable most of the time.

 

[bearfan]

In IT/CS it is due to tools being easier, abstractions being higher, and access barriers getting lower all the time. "Engineers" are less and less competent as time goes by because they need to know less in order to achieve something. Whether that something is optimal or even correct is very questionable most of the time.

That is true ... but that really comes down to who is leading the department/project. You need people to complete and/or monitor generally fairly rote tasks (backups for example) .... not architect out a strategy. Back in my earlier career, I would assign insanely banal tasks to the new hires and pretty rapidly promoted/mentored those who came up and said "this sucks, this is boring, there has to be a better way to do this". But you still needed someone in the NOC at 2AM to call people when alerts came up, run patches, recycle batteries, run cabling, set up laptops for people, fix a printer, etc. All those are completely fine without any kind of degree.

 

[Perun]

Federal elections in Germany tomorrow. This was the most disgusting electoral campaign I ever witnessed, with no focus on important topics and all the energy devoted to character assassination. How you can have a campaign in 2021 without talking about climate change, in Germany of all places, is beyond me.

To everyone's surprise, the Social Democrats may win this one, less so because they are running on a particularly convincing platform and more because nobody took them seriously in the beginning and therefore didn't bother to try and destroy their main candidate, despite the fact that he has a pretty bad history of corruption. Instead, the conservatives (Merkel's party) and the Greens focused on wearing each other down, which they pretty much did, neither is predicted to gain anywhere near the amount of votes projected half a year ago.

My biggest gripe is the strength which is predicted for the liberals, who are running on an unashamedly market worshipping platform based entirely around their party leader who is very charismatic but knows shit about the economy or human decency.
Both the Communists and the Nazis are predicted to lose votes, which is at least some solace.

The party I voted for is not projected to win any seats anywhere, but I expected that. I reject the idea of tactical voting or voting for the lesser evil, although the more I learn about the party I voted for, the less happy I am with my vote.

Everything sucks.

 

[Perun]

Also, there are gubernatorial elections in Berlin tomorrow and the two main candidates are a Catholic fundamentalist who wants to turn the city into a playground for rich people and a former federal minister of science and education who lost her job because of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation.

I feel so oddly detached from all this, as if these people had nothing to do with me.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

Federal elections in Germany tomorrow. This was the most disgusting electoral campaign I ever witnessed, with no focus on important topics and all the energy devoted to character assassination. How you can have a campaign in 2021 without talking about climate change, in Germany of all places, is beyond me.

You need something to compensate when renewables don't perform. There is less wind this year than previously in Germany, because the last few years were stormy. So the grid compensated with increased lignite burning. Renewables need fallback and only fallback we have is like yelling 'Macbeth' to the politicians. They hate nukes. The only answer to the question "how do we avoid burning coal or gas if nature isn't as giving this season". Average politician is more likely to dodge this topic in favour of filling the void with personal insults than tackle a controversial topic.

 

[Perun]

I think nuclear power is a necessary evil in our present-day situation. We have to strive to get rid of it, but we can't do it just yet.
But that's not a topic. The nuclear plants are going to be shut down for good in Germany, there's been a majority for that for ten years. I just don't know where all the power for electric cars, buses, scooters etc. that are supposed to dominate traffic soon is supposed to come from but hey, who cares.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

You just answered your own (rhetorical) question. You can't strive to get rid of nuclear energy because it's the greenest method of fuel generation per MW. Counties like France, US, Russia will eventually adapt new technologies, while countries that categorically shun nuclear energy out will have a rough time.

In case you meant we should get rid of old reactors for something less dangerous then I agree.