Blaming Immigrants For Everything
We got the sad news that Austria has joined the ranks of European countries where right-wing xenophobic, nationalistic parties with an agenda of being anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant is about to win an election.
(Update: Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party ended up losing, but with a tiny margin. But that doesn’t change the message of this article.)
Basically, what’s happening in Europe is the same thing that is happening in the US. There is a group of mostly older, less educated and therefore also more vulnerable group of people who are afraid of all the changes that are happening in the world.
So when someone comes along and says that they will ‘Put Austria First’ or ‘Make America Great Again’, with a narrative of blaming everything on the immigrants, many of these people latch on to this message like a drowning man would latch on to a life preserver.
The problem, of course, is that this isn’t actually true. The data doesn’t support their narratives, and they are basically winning the elections by deliberately misinforming the public.
And we see this very clearly in Austria.
In Austria, there are two major problems facing the country. The first problem is with pensions and the future outlook of older people. The second problem is the rising rate of unemployment.
And in Austria, the right-wing Freedom Party is claiming that it will fix all of these by closing the borders, not integrating refugees, and enacting laws that give preferential treatment to Austrians first. It’s exactly the same narrative that we hear from other right-wing parties in the rest of Europe and the US.
But let’s look at each one of these.
Pensions
First, let’s talk about pensions.
Back in 2014, the Economist published this wonderful explainer video about the changes we see in our populations.
This is a fascinating video, but there is one thing you should know about it. It shows us the trends of the world as a whole, and what the whole world will look like in 2060.
In Europe, however, this has already happened. This is not a future trend for us. It’s the reality… today!
Here, for instance, is the population graph from 2014 for Austria.
Remember, the people who pay for all welfare in our societies are those between 20 and 65. But look at the above graph and think 15 years into the future. By then, that big group of people in the middle will have reached retirement age, and the population graph will look like this.
Oh shit!
So over the next 15–45 years, the Austrian pension and welfare system is going to collapse. And it will be getting worse and worse starting today.
The problem here is that there are only three ways to solve this.
- You can either cut the welfare system and raise taxes even more so that you can afford the increasing number of old people who are no longer working. This is obviously not a popular choice.
- You can raise the age of when people can retire and gradually force that big group of people to keep working. This is also not a popular choice.
- Or, you can somehow boost the younger population, so that this trend isn’t happening. The problem is just that it’s too late to do this by encouraging people to have more babies (nor will modern families accept this). By the time they go through the education system and enter the job market, the problem with pensioners will already be so big that now you will just have two problems instead of one.
- An alternative option is to invite in more immigrants, especially younger immigrants. But this obviously isn’t a popular choice in today’s society either.
But these are your only choices. And as you can see from the population graphs above, it’s something that just has to be done. But it’s scary. It has a massive impact, especially for the older generations who have either already retired or are near doing so.
So people are angry at their governments. They don’t want this change, and they blame the government for it.
The problem then is when these right-wing nationalist parties go out and promised that they will protect the pension system, which is exactly what happened in Austria and in the rest of Europe. These nationalist parties are telling people that, with your votes, they will maintain the pension system, make sure that people can still retire early, and they even promise (as we also see in Austria) to raise the amount of money pensioners are entitled to.
And many people who feel threatened by these changes latch on to this. It gives them a way out that doesn’t involve changing anything. But it’s not really away out. It’s more like shooting yourself in the foot. These nationalistic parties are winning because of this lie.
As the now popular Freedom Party said:
“One thing has become clear here — a huge and massive dissatisfaction with the Government … I am convinced that as president, Norbert Hofer will act as protector of the Austrian people.”
And this is the same guy who said that pensions should pay more, not less, and that the government is stealing money from people with disabilities.
Either he is stupid for not realizing the population trends that should be obvious to all, or he is a fraud for selling a political narrative that he has no hope of achieving.
But no matter what, he is telling people what they want to hear, completely disregarding the known data. In other words, he is using the power of the misinformed. And this guy is currently looking to become the new President of Austria.
I’m reminded of the movie Tomorrowland, in which the Governor, played by Hugh Laurie, explains why humanity is failing. He says:
In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future. But you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality.
So you dwell on this terrible future, and you resign yourselves to it. For one reason, because that future doesn’t ask anything of you today.
So, yes, we saw the iceberg, we warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up.
This is exactly what is happening in Austria… and across Europe and the US. This is what these nationalist parties are offering. A future that won’t ask anything of you today.
Which leads us to immigration.
The terrible unemployment rate
The reason why these nationalistic parties can get away with what they are doing is because they are using the anti-immigration and anti-Muslim narrative to blame all the problems on the refugees.
It’s a very easy way out, and one place we see this very clearly is with unemployment.
Here is the graph showing the increasing unemployment rate in Austria over the past 50 years.
As you can see, it’s bad. Very bad!
Something went terribly wrong in the 1980s, and all the governments since then have been unable to do anything about it. The recent governments did manage to flatten the curve at around 7.5%, but then came 2013 and we are now looking at a 10.8% unemployment rate in 2016.
It’s no surprise that people in Austria are deeply frustrated by this. It is also not a surprise that nationalist parties are winning by blaming this on the influx of refugees from Syria. “They are coming to take your jobs”, they say. “They threaten our welfare system”, they say.
The problem, of course, is that the unemployment problem isn’t exactly a new thing, and it wouldn’t be solved if Austria closed its border to immigrants.
The second issue is that the jobs immigrants do take are usually a different type of jobs. This was very brilliantly explained by Professor of Economics Ben Powell, from Texas Tech University.
As you can see here, there is a short-term impact of getting 100,000 refugees from Syria (which Austria did in 2015), but in the long term, it doesn’t change anything. More so, the jobs immigrants take are usually different than the jobs the Austrian’s want. 100,000 refugees from Syria isn’t going to take the jobs of teachers, engineers, nurses, sales people, or most of the other types of jobs in today’s service economy.
And Austria needs more young people to energize the markets.
Again, look at the graphs I showed in this article and think 15 years into the future. Even if Austria were to close its borders and turn away all refugees, nothing would be solved. The unemployment rate would still be terrible, and the welfare and pension system would still be under tremendous pressure.
This is happening all over Europe and in the US. Nationalist parties are convincing more and more people that every problem is caused by the refugees, and that just building walls will fix the problem. But absolutely nothing in the data supports that narrative.
But it’s easy and popular to blame someone else for your own problems.
The key to this future is to stop being misinformed. It’s not about what political party you vote for, or whether you are leaning to the right or the left. It’s about looking at the data and realize when you are being mislead.
