Posted on 04/02/2012 4:59:09 PM PDT by Pinkbell
More than 20 years after the fall of communism, the wealth gap between the east and west of Europe persists, and countries from the Black Sea to the Baltic are shedding people at an alarming rate.
While membership in the European Union has brought prosperity to many, it has also made it easier to emigrate, drawing young people out of the east, especially rural areas, and leaving behind an ever older and poorer population.
Romania, the EU’s second-poorest member with an average monthly wage of US$450, is one of the worst affected, with a 12% population drop in a decade, according to census data.
At the other end of the continent, the census in Latvia —a Baltic state which was seen as a great success story until the current financial crisis sent its economy into freefall — showed it lost 13% of its people, mostly to emigration.
Both countries have had to impose harsh austerity programs under the terms of International Monetary Fund-led bailouts.
The population in comparatively richer countries like the Czech Republic and Poland has remained steady thanks to returning emigrants and others arriving from less well-off states in the region.
But to the south, in the Balkans, and in the northern Baltic states, the picture is grim. Censuses conducted across the continent in 2011 showed Lithuania has lost 12% of its population in a decade, Bulgaria 7% and Serbia, still outside the EU, 5%. Hungary had 10.4 million people just after the 1989 fall of communism, but statistics office data show that slipped below 10 million last year.
Wealthy Germany’s population, by contrast, rose last year for the first time since 2002 thanks to immigration from the EU’s new members, despite the fact deaths were projected to exceed births, according to its statistics office.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.financialpost.com ...
By 2060, Romania, Latvia, Poland and Bulgaria will have the highest share of elderly people compared with working population in the EU, Eurostat data shows. That means the number of taxed workers will decline just as government expenditure rises to help ever more pensioners in need of support.
Of Romania’s 19 million population, less than 5 million are workers paying taxes, with most of the rest pensioners, children, subsistence farmers or people working illegally. Costs for the more than 5 million pensioners amounted to 9% of GDP in 2010.
Romania has raised the retirement age to 65 for men and 63 for women, but it will not be enough to keep the budget on track, and Latvia is considering a similar step.
“Under this worst case scenario, social security costs will mount to very high levels,” said Mihai Patrulescu, an economist at Bancpost, part of Greece’s EFG Eurobank.
“To address this problem, governments would have three options: raise the retirement age, increase taxes or run permanently higher deficits.”
And all of this in spite of massive deaths during WWII. Can you imagine what is in store for the United States? I see a bleak, bleak future and droves of youngsters who desert their parents. They will be unable or unwilling to take care of them and the parents have saved almost no money to take care of themselves.
Social Security could never have saved them, it was a safety net, not a solution and could never be more than that. Doesn’t matter what it was... it isn’t there anymore.
The migration of people to the west has always been the final solution in Europe. Read the histories starting with the Roman Empire and continue through the 19th Century
In all cases the best and brightest left dead ends (and their extended families) behind to make a better life in the West.
The old Soviet solution of building walls with kill zones to stop westward migration was proven to be a failure. I am fairly certain that the solutions hinted at in this article will also be failures.
How to stop it?
Make life better at home and the best and brightest will stay home. But that is an extremely difficult process for a “Professional Politician” since it would require them to abandon every falsehood they are currently using to stay in power.
My grandmother emigrated from Romania during another economic crisis, over 80 years ago. Although I’ve visited, and found much of the country beautiful, I think I’ll leave it to the Romanians.
>Make life better at home and the best and brightest will stay home.<
.
You think this also applies to muslims?
>Make life better at home and the best and brightest will stay home.<
.
You think this also applies to muslims?
So Germany is getting useful, educated immigrants who are not from third-world countries?
Germany is now advertising for skilled workers from Portugal - which has high unemployment and a shaky economy.
Australia is now advertising for skilled workers from the USA
- which has high unemployment and a shaky economy.
Can you direct me to some of those ads in Australia? We have a Brit friend there who’s looking for a gig. Thanks.
The problem is that we have nowhere to go.
The horror. Things really must be bad there if they resort to such desperate measures. It sounds like something straight out of Dickens.
The Romanians, or rather Romanian Romas have been pests on much of Europe. Watch you wallets (front pockets, please!), and no fanny packs! They’re highly hand skilled, no firearms required.
Of course, this is why muslim countries send all their unemployable angry young men to us. They have sclerotic economies based only on oil production (if at all) and the ruling emirs won’t share it outside the family, so....
the population rebounded in the 50s and 60s. e.g. Poland had 30 million odd people before the war (and that was including many Lithuanians, Ruthenians etc.) — and 20% of it’s population was Jewish. 6 million Poles (Gentiles and Jews) were killed. But the country rebounded in the 50s and 60s and 70s. Now it is about 38 million
Not really. The Migration of the Germanics was caused by the movements west of the alans pushed by the huns etc. that were pushed by the Chinese actions north of the wall.
But many Germanics went south to Anatolia.
And, when the Western Empire fell, many people went to the Eastern.
also, when the Jews were chased out of England in the 1200s and then the Sephardic jews out of spain in the 1400s, they moved east to the Polish-lithuanian commonwealth
Also, the Germans started moving back east starting from the 9th century -- and many were invited back like the TRansylvanian Saxons, the Volga Germans etc.
“....this is why muslim countries send all their unemployable angry young men to us.”
.
And as a country, hell bent on committing suicide, we gratefully accept them.
Poland had 30 million odd people before the war
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No matter what people say about the Polish this seems a little harsh...
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