Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
When European workers lose entitlements, they hit the streets.
Europeans demonstrate: It's in their blood and a healthy part of their democracy.
When frustrated and needing to vent grievances, they hit the streets. I've been caught up
in huge and boisterous marches all over Europe, and it's not scary; in fact, it's kind of ex-
hilarating. “
La Manifestation!
” as they say in France. All that marching is just too much
trouble for many Americans. When dealing with similar frustrations, we find a website or
a TV station (on the left or right) that affirms our beliefs…and then shake our collective
fists vigorously.
Interestingly, as Europe's native population declines, its population growth may come
largely from immigrants. And Europe's immigration challenges are much like America's.
Around the world, rich nations import poor immigrants to do their dirty work. If a society
doesn't want to pay for expensive apples picked by rich kids at high wages, it gets cheaper
apples by hiring people willing to work for less. If you're wealthy enough to hire an im-
migrant to clean your house, you do it—you get a clean house, and the immigrant earns a
wage. That's just the honest reality of capitalism.
In Europe,
Gastarbeiter
—German for “guest worker”—is the generic term for this
situation because Germans so famously imported Turkish people to do their scut work
a generation ago, when Germany's post-WWII economic boom finally kicked into gear.
