The Refugees as a Burden on the West German Economy

Abstract

As the foregoing pages have shown, such an influx of penniless masses in such a short time would mean extraordinary difficulties for any land. At the present time no country is large and rich enough, even in boom times, to absorb 9 to 10 million miscellaneous immigrants without serious difficulties. At least no modern country of the West would welcome such a migration.

“There is an increasing confidence that if we are successful in adjusting our economic system to the circumstances of a stationary or slowly declining population, cessation of population increase may on balance be conducive to higher standards of living in the densely populated countries of Western civilization....” — Isaac ¹).