George Lewis9 said:It’s happening exactly how I called it back in September—right when the massive surge started. A race to the bottom for wages. Sure, there’s a legal minimum wage to protect people, but the reality is that more and more folks are getting stuck working for nothing more than that baseline.
Since this article is from September, I guess you aren't really breaking new ground here. This whole topic has been relevant since the refugee crisis first kicked off.
It's pretty obvious Germany has an economic interest in all of this. It would be kind of naive to think refugees—who probably make up maybe 2% of the workforce—won't impact the labor market at all. But I suppose the biggest pressure will hit those jobs that are already struggling. You know, roles where you don't really need specialized education or even the language. Like newsstand workers or whatever; they're already at minimum wage anyway. The folks moving to Germany are actually quite well-educated, but I guess it'll take years before they're fully productive. Eventually, though, they'll likely end up helping the German economy.
Overall, it seems like Germany made a pretty clever move with the refugee situation: first they export weapons to crisis zones, then they take in the people fleeing that very same weaponry, and somehow they manage to boost their GDP because of it.
The Germans seem to have things figured out; at least they're providing some benefit. What we're doing over here feels like a disaster: we sell a little bit of hardware to the region, but then we don't know how to leverage the refugees to help our economy, and instead, we just push them away—even though they're fleeing the stuff we sent. And one last thing, I guess... most American representatives in the European Union usually vote against arms embargos on Saudi Arabia (thankfully they were outvoted). At least German reps defend German interests, whereas I suppose we might never truly know whose interests our own reps in the European Union are actually defending.