Fink: Countries with less immigration will be richer

Larry Fink changes sides: less immigration and more wealth with AI

Some portray this firm as a fund manager that made a killing for years with sustainability and diversity on display, and that now defends the opposite. The most widespread reading of his words is that the CEO of BlackRock argues that countries with restrictive migration policies —those that, according to the circulated message, he himself called xenophobic— will have a higher standard of living when advances in artificial intelligence make importing cheap labor unnecessary. The argument of a declining population, presented for years as a cover, would be deactivated. The trigger circulated as a screenshot and in a few hours went from anecdote to economic thesis.

Why the message clashes coming from such a source

The first reaction was not economic, but one of distrust. Some read the shift as a textbook pendulum swing: the same ones who financed climate and diversity policies for years reposition themselves when they smell the wind changing, aiming to get along with upcoming governments. The suspicion has a precedent in the sector's own script: the firm made a killing with those programs and now would seek to do so with the opposite ones. That the message comes from a fund manager and not from any random opponent is what makes it news.

It is worth clarifying what BlackRock is. It is not an investment fund, it is a fund manager: it manages money put in by third parties, whether states or a saver with a name and surname who declares themselves anti-BlackRock while buying its product. And its influence has a ceiling. The Dutch company ASML, a leader in lithography machines for chip manufacturing, stopped exporting to China by order of the Dutch state, not out of corporate whim. The rules are written by governments, even if the firm is the main shareholder of the affected company.

The economic argument: aggregate demand and contained wages

The most repeated explanation is that companies are interested in immigration for two reasons. First, because it generates aggregate demand: more people consuming, more growth by brute force, even if it is not very productive. Second, because it expands the labor supply and that curbs wage increases or directly prevents them. The result would be an economy that grows in the GDP picture and not in the pocket of those who were already there. On that basis, the massive arrival of workers is understood as a net cost for public accounts, not as a solution.

Against that, the scenario posed by automation inverts the equation. If machines cover the tasks that previously required hands, the demographic pressure on wages disappears, and with it the supposed need to import staff. Population reduction stops being a threat and becomes a relief. This is exactly the reasoning attributed to the executive, and the one that has set the hare running.

Who finances the state, taxes or debt?

The matter soon drifted into more slippery terrain: who really sustains the state machinery. The accounting answer is simple: taxes and debt. Some add a third leg, that of a supposed international financial elite that would finance states and control them from within, with the 2030 Agenda as proof. That thesis is not supported by any evidence and serves, above all, to exonerate public power from its own decisions: privatizing and nationalizing banks is done by governments, each thing when it is their turn, and from the sale price and subsequent taxes they benefit twice over.

At bottom, the discussion is whether power resides in money or in force. Debt, in that framework, is nothing more than a way to keep the wheel turning, and wars, one of the ways to close it. Hence part of the most uncomfortable analysis points to the state apparatus itself as the primary interested party in migratory flows: it needs young replacements for a conflict scenario, not comfortable urbanites with acquired rights. The hypothesis circulates without verification, but it sets the tone of the conversation.

What's at stake for the European economy with this narrative shift

The backdrop is demographic decline and its bill. Those who defend that thesis argue that maintaining an aging population has a high social cost, and those who do not have workers paying contributions face the same bill as those who do, only without added income. The thesis that countries with less immigration will come out richer relies precisely on that: less social spending and more productivity through technology. Against it, some point out that automation is not the only reason to be richer, nor even the most determining one.

The closing is made clear by the messenger's own profile. The firm that manages the savings of half the world has just said that the business is no longer where it was. Off stage, we will have to see how long it takes for that discourse to reach the media that still treat it as an anomaly. Only the definitive confirmation is missing: that it becomes a majority media talking point.