re: #97 Killgore Trout

Good points. I forgot about the aspect of the cheap labor pool being a plus.

Oh, it is. Large parts of Europe are turning into a geriatric home, to be honest, and the Europeans are either going to have to import a labor force if they want to keep things going, or, cut back on some of the social-welfare programs.

I’m not knocking the social-welfare programs; there’s many of them I quite like, such as paid maternity/paternity leave, care for pensioners and the disabled, etc. But of course, that costs $$$, and if you don’t have tax-paying workers to keep it afloat, you’re gonna have to cut it back significantly. So in the next decade or so, Europe’s going to have to make a major decision as to the longer-term future.