Matters of Immigration - Bulgaria Edition

Can emigration slowly kill a country? That's apparently what some people think. Aside of Bulgaria, there is also Hungary that has a real emigration problem and even the "tiger state" of Romania.



The problem is, of course, manifold. The opening up of the labour market towards central europe, the non-existence of modern market reforms and a political instability that is the legacy of a long soviet and despotic reign. All of them have an increasing GDP/person ratio:


So there is a silver lining after all. This bodes well for the private sector, but the falling population rates spell doom for public retirement schemes. These public expenditures in the future might mean that harsh cuts await future retirées. And yet I believe even though population levels are decreasing, the agile markets in those countries could save them if given the freedom necessary.
Given enough time and a more stable law and order environment, all three countries might regain their footing. People usually don't quit countries easily and many hang on to their homeland for a long time, even reconsidering going back.
Of course, you can only capture those people, if they see the opportunity to come back and live a decent life again. This means that wealth creation should be the top priority of those governments.

Gay Marriage and Immigration

Ok, I am in for a change of pace, especially, since I don’t wanna deal with climate change for a moment. It is just too depressing to see everyone run into a politicized spending spree trap, which will result in a lot of billions of dollars lost and not much gained.

Gay Marriage, however, is a topic I have no stake in. I couldn’t care less if a Gay person gets married or not. I am neither a Christian, nor in a Gay Rights advocacy group (whatever that is, aren’t rights fundamentally the same for all HUMANS?). I don’t think that marriage (gay or straight) is a turn-off or –on for adoption and I don’t see why gays couldn’t or shouldn’t adopt a baby/child.

However, I have two different strategies competing on this issue. The first is purely libertarian and says in the long-run all marriage should be devoid of state influence and thus gay marriage should not be “legalized” by the state but allowed on an individual level, as should Christian marriage between male and female.

In the short-run, I am a lot more realistic and pragmatic. Since it is almost impossible to separate Christian marriage from the Holy German Empire of nowadays, we should as well give the same rights to Gays.

And I think that people who believe that Gays shouldn’t get the same rights as normal people, because they are not able to populate the Earth as the Fuhrer… aehh.. as the social concept of community dictates, are just as evil as those old-timers that still believe that there was something good about Nazi Germany.

It’s the equivalent (though not as harsh) to restricting immigration on the basis of race or wealth or education. I am against it. However, this doesn’t mean that people immigrating here have a right to welfare services! So, one can reconcile those two apparently contradictory ideas by saying that one doesn’t necessarily be followed by the second. You can have immigration (unlimited) while having a welfare state, but you have to consider separating immigrants who don’t work from the goodies.