Opportunities and risks must be in balance

By Albrecht Mueller

MUNICH (DPA): Barely 25 years ago, population "scientists," several journalists and the then-opposition began popularizing the notion that Germans are a people who on the verge of dying out.

The birth rate was too low, they said. Centrists of the government even called for special benefits for those giving birth. But there followed a critical and in-depth public debate. The proposed "birth prize" was rejected and the debate died down.

Now the debate is back, thankfully minus the birth prize and minus the hyper-German-ness. The proposal now is for foreigners to save German pensions along with the economy.

Estimates vary as to exactly how many foreigners Germany may need. Somewhere between 10,000 and 370,000 more people should be allowed to immigrate into Germany, depending on whose plan you look at -- immigration overseen by the state.

Anyone who views immigration as primarily the need to integrate more of the foreigners who arrive and have arrived in Germany without the encouragement of the state, will have been left rubbing his eyes in disbelief at a debate marked by its lack of insight and abundance of stereotypes.

The widely held theory that Germany needs a great number of immigrants to prevent a slumping standard of living proves that its public opinion, and by extension political will, are guided not by in-depth analysis but by vested interests.

It is strange that a commission financed by the taxpayer should regurgitate popular arguments. A commission which was focused on the topic in hand would present a balanced assessment of the opportunities and risks involved.

Many Germans are already suffering due to the country's population density, which is more than twice that of France. They are subject to noise and environmental pollution and face disadvantages brought about by the overdevelopment of the countryside. But no, these facts are buried by page upon page devoted to the negative impact of population depletion and the blessing of immigration "for the good of all".

These arguments are so far removed from reality that they would provide any professor of domestic economics with a veritable mine of essay material. For example, what flawed logic and what vested interests prompt the commission to claim that the falling birth rate could lead to a rise in inflation and a slowing down of the rate of improvement in productivity, could endanger international competitiveness and raise per capita debt?

The commission and mainstream politicians, scientists and journalists need these incredible claims which are based on economic factors which could just as well be used to argue the opposite case. The theories support their conclusions that Germany needs x thousand qualified immigrants per year.

Analysts warn against taking population projections which span 50 years too seriously because people can alter their so-called generative behavior over such a long period of time. And more importantly, migration between EU states is on its way, having already been firmly established by European legislation. Germany needs to adopt an organized and humane policy on integration, as the commission has proposed, and foster a climate which is friendly toward foreigners.

However, the present debate does not contribute to the latter. The essential message is that only foreigners who are useful to us Germans should be allowed in. To reduce national hospitality to this level is to climb into bed with right-wing radicals, who will waste no time proving that friendliness does not extend to asylum-seekers, the sick and the tortured.

Germans are being urged to syphon off the best brains from other countries. That effectively means Germany robbing poorer nations of that which they have managed to scrimp and save, namely the education of their most active and independent minds. In this regard, the commission's report and the essence of its conclusions makes one wonder just what its members from the conservative Christian Democratic Party and Christian Social Union have been up to.

The commission views not only population depletion but also aging as problematic. Passages written by members of the commission speak of a "greying" process. Over the next 50 years, the burden caused by elderly citizens will double, the report says, suggesting that an ageing population is something to be afraid of. If that were the case, we should all feel very old today.

Compare the statistics: in 1950, 30.5 percent of the total German population was younger than 20. By 1995, this figure had fallen to 21.6 percent. Dramatic "greying" had taken place over the 45 years. Did this process damage the population?

When the awful term the massively increasing burden of old age is used, people fail to mention that in future young workers will have to bear less "burdens for children, adolescents and education" than their parents and that they will be using an infrastructure and institutions of learning which their ancestors established.

In particular, no mention is made of the fact that automatisation and rationalization generally lead to the ability of labor productivity to rise considerably. In the coming decades, the young people will still be at the receiving end of income increases per head even if they share some with the elderly.

In this connection, it should be pointed out that there are also those dramatizers who are invoking an end to available work. If we merge the individual grains of truth contained in the two contradictory dramatizations, then the young and the aging could lean back and relax.

That will not happen, however. Many media and scientists are allowing themselves to become involved in public relations campaigns that dominate the public debate and politics to a large extent today. They are lobbyists instead of critical companions.

They have diagnosed a demographic problem ahead of the introduction of state-promoted old age provisions and aroused the impression that private provisions could solve this problem; the insurance sector thanked them with many television spots, ads and contracts for expertises. And policymakers did not resist the pressure of public opinion.

The writer is an economist and a former Social Democrat member of the Bundestag. He was a campaign manager for Chancellor Willy Brandt and headed Brandt's public affairs department from 1970- 1972.