🇫🇷 Updated graphics on the French national debt and the retirement pensions:

Since 2017 when Emmanuel Macron took office, France accumulated 1 trillion EURs in debts and 490 billion of it was spent on French boomers and their retirement pensions, or ~50% of all the debt was wasted for the comfort of people who had a few short more years to live, which the new generations now have to spend decades to pay back.

The total national debt of France is worth 3.3 trillion EURs or 113% of the French GDP and one third of it was acquired in the last 8 years. This is unsustainable.

@CIG_telegram

🇬🇧 There is a great retrospective in the WSJ today on how the UK's post-Brexit experiment with big increases in legal immigration went wrong.

Their mistakes yield some important policy lessons for supporters *and* critics of skilled immigration. Let's dive in:

(tl;dr: What was intended to be a skilled immigration surge made the catastrophic mistake of setting visa criteria based on college degrees and workers filling so-called "labor shortages," ultimately leading instead to a surge in low-skilled, rather than high-skilled, immigration.)

Post-pandemic Britain dramatically increased net migration, shifting away from the EU and towards migrants from outside Europe.

Visa issuance went up across the board: work visas, study visas, and particularly dependent visas.

The plan was initially supposed to be a limited, targeted, skilled immigration surge. The UK, post-Brexit, would be free to go out and attract top talent from anywhere. But things went wrong quickly. What constituted "skilled" work included roofers (!) alongside business executives.

The system was then blown apart by businesses claiming "labor shortages." Rather than raise pay, businesses appealed for special carve-outs in areas like construction. Basing their visa programs on filling so-called shortages invited this kind of lobbying. Nobody agrees on what a labor shortage actually means. The UK has a technocratic body meant to identify them, but it's ultimately just vibes and raw interest group battles all the way down.

Next, the UK rubber-stamped visas for students and their dependents regardless of the quality of the program or school in which they enrolled. There was a subsequent explosion in low-quality degree programs catering to foreign students (and their dependents) to take advantage of this option.

🔗 Connor O'Brien