Right-wing populists may not yet be in power in Germany, but they are certainly to blame for the country's struggling economy, a top globalist think tank has said, blaming their anti-immigration rhetoric for stifling economic growth.
The old neoliberal orthodoxy that immigration leads to economic growth may be dead in the minds of many, but it lives on in the minds of think tanks such as the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). Blaming the lack of immigration Regarding the gloomy economic forecast for Germany.
The IfW, which operates under the cheery motto “Understanding and Shaping Globalization”, sharply cut its growth forecasts for 2025, saying unemployment is likely to rise while manufacturing and construction are “deeply into recessionary territory”.
Actual political leaders have also been criticized, with the German central government being cited for not spending enough money and the European Central Bank's interest rate decisions. German media I soon realised that the IfW was also criticising people who were talking about border control.
Moritz Schlarick, president of the institute, said: “The German economy is increasingly facing a crisis that is not only cyclical but also structural in nature. The refugee debate is undermining the dialogue on the economic need to attract skilled workers from abroad. As long as this situation persists, we will see reduced opportunities for growth.”
It has been Western dogma for decades that immigration is a fundamental element of economic growth, and virtually every debate over possible border controls has ended with governments refusing to budge, believing that border controls would ruin the economy. But cracks are finally starting to show in this belief, with a report examining the UK experience earlier this year pointing out, shockingly, that record immigration levels did not actually correlate with increases in GDP per capita.
According to reports at the time,
According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UK GDP grew by 0.1% last year due to record immigration, but GDP per capita fell by 0.8%, well below the G7 average of 1.2%. This is despite the UK having the second highest level of population growth, mainly due to mass immigration…The CPS report points out that “if the large-scale immigration we have seen is truly a big benefit to the economy, we need to ask ourselves why we are not seeing this in the GDP per capita data”.
…The report found that of the two million immigrants who came to the UK from outside the EU in the past five years, only 15% did so as their main purpose.
The report also found that the rush to attract migration from around the world is coming at an economic cost: immigrants from Spain, for example, earn 40% more on average than those from Pakistan or Bangladesh, while immigrants aged 25 to 64 from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey are nearly twice as likely to be “economically inactive” than native-born Britons.
