[Tsagadai]

Migration is a significant part of many countries growth. If Australia and New Zealand, for example, did not have such massive migration they would be effectively in serious depression. In both countries migration has added more than 1% to GDP growth for the last 30 years. Merely in recession is kind of surprising as for many other countries with such stagnant or declining population growth (low birthrates and barely any immigration) they would be in a much worse situation.

[alphaalpha101]

As someone from NZ: we have an election in about 4 weeks, and this is a serious issue here. We know that this immigration-driven growth is not real growth.

[Tsagadai]

But it really is. You get a resource (human in this case) that usually comes with education and healthcare paid for in the X years before they came. Usually immigrant X has a higher level of education than the general population due to restrictions. Not to mention that said person has money (usually also a requirement), which adds to the economy in the same way that tourism does. How is that not adding growth to an economy?

Conversely, a mass exodus of educated citizens emigrating from a country negatively impacts growth.

[matt4077]

> We know that this immigration-driven growth is not real growth.

Do you? Here's a list of US companies founded by immigrants:

Google, Apple (2nd gen), Intel, Tesla, ebay, Yahoo

[alphaalpha101]

Lol. I'm not anti-immigration, don't be so defensive, and I'm also not talking about the US. Stop bringing up the US. This is a thread about Japan and I'm talking about New Zealand.

The New Zealand government really wants people to believe that we're experiencing 'economic growth'. But while they might be technically right, they're effectively wrong. Economic growth that is so much entirely from immigration that we're effectively in per-capita-GDP recession is not real, useful, good growth.

[matt4077]

Lol yourself, and don't be so wrong.

Here's per-capita GDP growth in New Zealand, showing that there is real growth after normalising for changes in population: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

[flukus]

Here is the GDP per capita growth: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&... .

When you shave ~1% off to account for immigration, then shave off another ~1% for inflation and you can see the hidden recessions.

And then you get into where that economic growth is going, which isn't to the bottom 80% of society. The end result looks a lot like the US median household income: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=c8op9mhgodplq_&...

[matt4077]

I'm sorry, but I don't think you're arguing in good faith here. "Per capita" means "per head", i. e. per person. That means that any population growth due to immigration is already factored in.

If you click on the little question mark, you'll also learn that inflation is also factored in already:

"Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars."

[alphaalpha101]

1% growth is completely irrelevant. That's what I said: effectively in recession. The difference between 1% growth and 1% shrink is nothing.

There's no reason we shouldn't be growing much more quickly. But we're not going to do so in a neoliberal world. That's just not going to happen. Draining the wealth of society to a small group of people that spend little money just doesn't drive growth.

People can't spend and drive the economy when they're dirt poor.

[matt4077]

Growth in 2016 was 4%, not 1% and not -1%: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

It seems like NZ is growing at a pace of around 3%p.a. You're free to argue that there's some fantastic economic system that only you know, but most people will rightfully be sceptical of such claims unless you have a few examples of countries at NZ's high level of development growing at a much higher pace.

Other than that I've lost track of what were arguing. It appears as if you just start making completely unrelated arguments when you're proven wrong.