[websites222]

Europe yes. US, no. The US is in an amazing position in terms of demography and growth. Aging population, but not immigrant averse like Japan and not an island. The US borders a rising economy with perfect demographics for growth (Mexico). The US is the least involved country in global trade. The US is increasingly disinterested in being the world police, so that capability can be deployed to protect economic interests abroad.

We’re headed for global instability, but don’t expect the US to have a fate similar to Europe.

[GordonS]

> not immigrant averse like Japan and not an island

As the past 4 years have demonstrated, there is a very large segment of the US population is very much against immigration, and would happily turn the country into an "island" by building walls around the land borders.

[_-david-_]

That is not really the case. The last poll I saw said 78% of Americans are fine with some immigration.

The exact amount of immigrants and the requirements to come here legally is less uniform in acceptance.

The biggest issue is between legal and illegal immigration.

[tzs]

That 78% breaks down to something like 90% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 60% of Republicans.

Among the Republicans, the 40% who are anti-immigration tend to feel very strongly about it, and are likely to consider it a major issue. The 60% of Republicans who are OK with immigration are less likely to consider it a major issue.

This makes it hard nowadays to get Republican support in the House for pro-immigration policies, because a pro-immigration Republican member of the House will attract anti-immigration primary challengers who will get the vote of the 40% who are anti-immigration. With that big bloc in hand its hard for the challenger to lose.

You can see a similar thing with abortion. About 60% of Republicans favor keeping Roe v. Wade, about 30% want to overturn it, and the rest are unsure [1]. But how many Republican members of Congress will come out or vote in favor of keeping Roe v. Wade? Pretty close to zero because doing so is political suicide in their next election.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-...

[andonisus]

The US still allows, and has been allowing over the past four years, people to immigrate.

[frockington1]

Compared to other nations, the US has the least restrictive immigration laws. The US also benefits by bordering Canada with some of the most restrictive immigration laws. If you want to go where there is growth, there's no other option

[ardy42]

> Compared to other nations, the US has the least restrictive immigration laws. The US also benefits by bordering Canada with some of the most restrictive immigration laws. If you want to go where there is growth, there's no other option

I thought Canada was far easier. I knew a software engineer who, about 15 years ago, got the Canadian equivalent of a green card as a "backup" without ever having actually lived there, in case she had problems with her US immigration. It sounded like a box ticking exercise, though this person had two masters degrees (IIRC, the second was to keep her status since she graduated from the first into a recession).

[smooth_remmy]

Canada is easier for legal immigrants, and much harder for illegal immigrants.

If you try to illegally immigrate into Canada, they will deport you

[unicornfinder]

Surely you jest? The UK, Canada, Australia are all far easier to immigrate into as a skilled worker.

[ChuckNorris89]

You're right. Though, the tough US immigration laws ensure they only allow in the crem of the crop or the most dedicated illegal immigrants.

[websites222]

The last four years can’t really be compared to the last 2000 of Japan’s. Immigration is already ingrained in American culture. The aging boomers will die and be replaced by the most ethnically diverse generation in American history.

[tjs8rj]

It's disingenuous to cast immigration concerns like an "aging boomer thing". The vast majority of Americans are fine with vetted, legal immigration. According to Pew, nearly 80% worry about illegal immigration "At least a little" to "A great deal". Furthermore there are real concerns, costs, and benefits to be weighed with immigration of all kind (legal and not), and dismissing them is just naive.

To list a few different people find concerning: depressing wages of domestic population, rapid cultural change of domestic population, brain drain from foreign population, strain on tax / social systems, ineffective vetting allowing cross-border contraband and criminal activity, and so on.

All of these are valid and deserve scrutiny and investigation. Obviously there are many beneficial aspects to immigration, and nearly all examples of very successful civilizations in history were at a crossroads of many cultures. Just wanted to make it clear that the immigration debate won't "die with boomers", and it shouldn't, because it is an important discussion to have.

[WalterSear]

Large in number, yes, but not in proportion to the total population.

Moreover, mostly in the places where productivity is not happening. Their growing irrelevance and sociocultural aversion to change are primary reasons for their vocality.

[imtringued]

There was an article about this on HN. The perception of polarization is greater than reality. The overlap between republicans and democrats is pretty high. Most of them are only moderately against or in favor of migration.

[aaomidi]

Good thing is that segment of population is:

1. Dying out.

2. Not in places immigrants want to immigrate to.

[ardy42]

> 2. Not in places immigrants want to immigrate to.

There's reason to doubt that. A lot of Trump's support was rural, and a lot of immigrants are farm laborers.

[WalterSear]

Farm laborers perform an essential role, but it isn't one that is driving US economy.

[mcv]

Why Europe yes but US no? Europe is also not immigrant-averse and not an island. It doesn't border on Mexico, but it does border on many other countries.

I don't see why Europe would suffer a much different fate from the US.

I think the main thing holding the EU back is their love for austerity. They could do a lot more to invest in their economy.

[websites222]

Europe as a going United concern is headed towards a breakup. Germany’s demographics (and patience) will not not hold to support countries like Greece and Italy, which funded pensions instead of spending their bailouts responsibly. France will flourish, like it always does, because it’s more or less self sufficient and is strategically located and internally configured, but other countries like Spain will flounder due to internal conflicts. All of these will lead to a mixed to poor economic condition of slow growth and low to negative interest rates.

[me_me_me]

Maybe if you are writing a political thriller.

EU as a concept is still highly supported amongst adults and young adults. And if anything Brexit strengthened that, since UK is a now a clown that everyone laughs at with all the issues they are going through.

A lot of young people migrate between EU countries and just that is the biggest visible positive that all working adults recognise. Its something people would not want to lose willy-nilly. Something realllly serious would have to happen for EU to fail catastrophically.

[websites222]

Nationalism is on the rise. We are 7 decades removed from the horrors of conflict on the continent. Everyone who remembers that is dying.

The EU is a globalization project in an era where globalization is on the decline. It was held together by US warships and will fall apart as they recede, a vacuum filled by local, competing powers. Europe will not be immune to it, since it is after all composed of many cultures and many economies with competing aims.

It’s not a matter of what people want, it’s a matter of economic realities that will impugn any high-minded desire for unity and collaboration.

[thu2111]

Die Zeit: "In the dispute over the delivery delay of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU Commission is currently making the best advertisement for Brexit: It is acting slowly, bureaucratically, and protectionist. And if something goes wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault. This is how many Britons see the EU, and so the prejudices were confirmed at the beginning of the week"

https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2021-01/astrazeneca-eu-k...

MSN Money: "Bild tore apart Von Der Leyen's explanation of the vaccine delays and threat to stop supplies heading to the UK line by line, accusing her of placing 'junk' orders for vaccines three months behind Britain. 'She says: "We know that there is no time to lose in a pandemic," but what she means is: "We may have wasted time. But we will NEVER admit that",' the newspaper wrote. Meanwhile 'Brexit Brits continue to receive full supplies,' the paper added.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/german-media-savages-e...

New York Times: "E.U. Makes a Sudden and Embarrassing U-Turn on Vaccines"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/world/europe/covid-vaccin...

The Telegraph: De Standaard, a Belgian newspaper, said the success of the Prime Minister’s move was a source of great frustration to the French, in particular, who are lagging far behind in their vaccine programme. It suggested that Brexiteers would take heart from that because Paris had regularly taken a hardline stance in the Brexit negotiations. The Flemish newspaper said that Mr Johnson liked to take risks and in this case, as opposed to in Brexit, the gambit had worked.

An El Mundo editorial accused the EU of a "failure" on vaccine procurement, citing a "lack of coordination between member states to articulate a homogeneous process" which is "ruining the prospect of achieving herd immunity after the summer"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/28/best-advertiseme...

Daniel Stelter, Manager Magazin: It is dawning on the German and European population that the political class has failed across the board in meeting the enormous economic and social challenges of the Corona crisis. It marks the accelerating decline of the EU. Everybody in the economic sphere now knows that whenever there is a problem at a production site in the EU, there is a risk of being hit with an export ban: vaccines today, biotech tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow what? This destruction of trust in the EU as a place of business (Standort EU) is all of a piece with its tendency towards over-regulation and planned-economy control. The gap between wish and reality in the EU is greater than ever. By failing to procure vaccines, the EU has validated Brexit and given all EU citizens an objective reason for euroscepticism.

https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/exp...

But yeah sure, it's a clown and everyone is laughing ... all the stuff I just quoted is fiction only happening in a political thriller.

[me_me_me]

What are you even trying to say though?

I command you for putting effort to writing a post.

But you probably have no idea of british politics beyond headlines for newspapers. Uk dealing with covid was a circus on fire.

Here [0] UK has highest death per capita behind Belgium (super high pop density) and Slovenia (they had also excelent ideas on dealing with covid - have slovenian friend).

Johnsons gov did multiple 180 when dealing with covid, recently promised schools will stay absolutely open, only to closed them after 1 day that they were open.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...

I am not going to change you mind anyhow so have a great day living in your political thriller.

[thu2111]

I think I understand British politics pretty well, being British.

Here [0] UK has highest death per capita behind Belgium

No, it has one of the highest numbers of "people who died within 28 days of a positive test" which isn't the same thing. COVID is highly infectious but not very deadly, so with this definition the more you test the more such events can be found. This problem becomes obvious when you look at excess death stats and discover more people have died of COVID than the overall increase in deaths.

The UK does more than double the amount of testing Belgium has done [1]. This will automatically lead it to reporting more deaths in proximity to a positive test.

Johnsons gov did multiple 180 when dealing with covid, recently promised schools will stay absolutely open, only to closed them after 1 day that they were open

Like almost everywhere except Sweden the UK has a problem with any attempt to reopen being sunk by supposedly 'expert' scientists who seem to consider lockdowns to be free. Johnson is trapped by the public's expectation that scientists know what they're doing, which in this case they don't. Constant see-sawing, announcing garbage numbers and other problems have been seen in many countries, not just the UK. Really only Sweden has managed to avoid this, thanks to Anders Tegnell who has been both (a) consistent and (b) correct. It'd be great if the UK had Tegnell too, but no such luck.

I am not going to change you mind anyhow so have a great day living in your political thriller.

You could change my mind if you raised points I hadn't previously considered months ago, or weren't claiming things that are obviously false about how the UK and Brexit are currently being reported.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

[mcv]

Still, the US seems to have a lot more internal conflicts. People are openly discussing civil war there. I think the EU does a better job of learning from its past, and support for the EU is pretty high.

Of course there will always be problems in the EU, but I don't see it breaking apart any time soon.

[rasz]

Support Greece? By forcing it to pay back bad German bank loans that should be defaulted?

[godtoldmetodoit]

You might want to mention some sources in case people are interested in reading more on this theory.

Namely: Peter Zeihan. I'm a fan of the guy - his logic and rough predictions certainly seem to be bearing fruit over the last decade. If he's right about the coming decade we are in for a bit of a bumpy ride.

[websites222]

Agreed! I'm plagiarizing wholesale from Peter Zeihan, I'm not a geopolitical expert. I recently read Disunited Nations. His YouTube videos and podcasts are very interesting.

Re: your comment about being in for a bumpy ride: I think his logic is solid in that the bumpy ride is only in relation to the unprecedented post-WWII/post-cold-war era. We know from history that the norm in the world is instability.

[pepperonipizza]

Pretty much all the countries in America have a fertility rate around 2 more or less. Even Mexico is approximately at 2.1 They will start to lose population in a few decades.

https://www.cepal.org/en/pressreleases/latin-america-and-car...