an influx of thousands of people will eventually grow the size of the economy by the nature of the economic development required to accommodate them. you can't add thousands of people without creating thousands of jobs: you need more food, more housing, more transit, etc. that job creation should largely offset downward pressures on wages - especially of there's a minimum wage and service jobs are already at or near it.

but, let's take a step back. who says they want to stay forever?

syria has some problems with freedom of expression, but (under normal circumstances) it's not a place where people are starving. it's a secular country. it has a welfare state with social services. syrians would broadly be better off in syria, if it were properly functioning, than they would be in the united states. home is an intangible concept. and a lot of people will go home when it's safe. not everybody, but plenty.

the question is whether it will ever be safe. and it won't be if the united states continues to funnel weapons to isis through the saudis, and the saudis maintain their policies in the region. but, i don't think this is particularly amenable to pressure, even if it were to materialize. the saudi regime is not really a rational agent.

i don't like war, but my honest assessment is that a serious one is building in this region that will primarily pit the saudis against the turks, and that we will need to take the turks' side on - eventually. and, that's going to be extremely messy. the alliances in this region are quite complex. we tend to compare every conflict to world war two, because we're trained to. this one looks more like world war one, where it's not entirely clear who is fighting who or even why they're fighting when they are.

i don't think we can just accept the spread of salafism like this. but this is not the era of conscription. being a soldier in today's world requires a lot of training and a specific kind of mindset. we can't force people to fight. and, it's not in our recent history to do this, either. there is no circumstance where it is justifiable to give civilians guns and march them off as cannon fodder.

but, it doesn't change the reality that there is no clear, short-term answer. if we withdraw altogether, we're telling these people that they can never go home - because the extremists will have won. and, that merely sets up future battles. it's appeasement, and appeasement always fails. if we keep bombing like we are, we're just fueling an endless war. to get to the root causes means to get to the funding of these groups and cut them off. but, there's no political will to do this, and very little understanding of what it even means to do this.

i'm partial to the idea that accepting large amounts of refugees comes with the _obligation_ of helping them go home. not as an expulsion strategy. but, as a part of the humanitarian process of alleviating the problem. what's frustrating is the impossibility of following through with this obligation, given the current policies in washington.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/refugees-austria-germany-1.3217421

Never 4Get - Never 4Give....(The 1 Who Lies)
.... uh so by that rational I guess India with 1.2b people must be doing great...

Jessica Murray
again with your "most absurd possible" comparisons. i'd like to visit your planet some day to get a better understanding of it, but i'm sure glad i don't live there.

obviously, europe would have a hard time allowing 800 million people in at the same time. that's a lot more people than 800,000.

but, india's problems are not due entirely to overpopulation, either. that's a complicated discussion that i'm not going to bite on.

Western U.
What do you call recent history...because in WW2 conscription was in several countries...and right now if your in Israel, male or female you have to enlist...the States had conscription for Vietnam....Canada has had conscription...Germany sure did...as did Russia...don't know if they still do...all forces are cannon fodder...it is just a matter of who gives in first.

Jessica, it has been an endless war for centuries...it isn't going to change anytime soon, and I doubt in your lifetime...there are just some places on the planet that you don't plan a vacation and the Middle East is one of them.

Jessica Murray
canada has not had conscription in it's recent history, and it allowed americans who were conscripted against their will to settle here during vietnam. if you would prefer to live in a country with conscription, i would suggest migrating to north korea.

it hasn't been an endless war of this nature for centuries - there have been very long periods of stability and relative prosperity. some people will no doubt jump through hoops of rationalization that allow them to deduce that the levant belongs to the saudis, and they're carrying out their extremism in their sphere of influence. not only do i have a hard time doing that, i feel we should be helping the opposition forces in saudi arabia, proper. it's a regime that we shouldn't just not let spread but should be actively working against.