Just why is it that a country with superb natural resources per head of population can lose 12% of its population in a decade?

Romania has lost 2.3 million people. It now has 19 million, the same as in 1966. Another 700,000 are working outside of the country's borders. Borders that enclose an almost identical land area to the United Kingdom.

And this despite a good climate, beautiful landscapes and all those natural resources.

Dont know. When I was there in 2002, everyone of around my age (I was 21 then) was doing all they could to leave for US/England/Italy/Germany.

I'd move there, but the wife says nay.

one word, beurocracy.

thats why thousands leave the uk each week.

Stuart Meikle:

Just why is it that a country with superb natural resources per head of population can lose 12% of its population in a decade?

I asked that question a year ago to a group of eight Romanian lads who were working in the Ledbury area and still are. Their answers used words such as:

Opportunity, Learn/Improve English, See something new and better standard of living.

They are all still here. Two are running an English owned cafeteria. Two have a car washing business of their own and the other two are working hard and being considered for promotion  in a local company in which I am interested. The other two are working in a packing plant around Ludlow I believe.  

 

Glasshouse, I think you got it in one.

http://www.agri-focus.ro/governance/bureaucracy/february-5th-2012/

The article is one that I have written to raise awareness of the issue. It is not just agricultue that is so impacted but every SME. Too much emphasis is on the big numbers here (GDP, inflation, very low official unemployment (they have all left) and the budget deficit. It will soon become evident that the dramatic cuts taken to try to balance the budget swiftly have done immeasurable damage to the economy. They will become the case study of future generations on how not to do it. The real issue lies within the near impossibility that exists to run an SME. The public sector is down-sizing and foreign investment has dried up. Major investments are few so it is the SMEs that have to generate economic activity but they are in a position where the bureaucracy has forced them to a standstill.

I don't take issue with anything said above, but isn't the primary, if not overwhelming, reason for people to leave a country that they think they can get a substantially better standard of living elsewhere? If they're right, then nobody can blame them for leaving. Once started, these movements also develop a momentum of their own: several neighbours leave, and appear to be doing well elsewhere, so you start thinking about joining them yourself. Large areas of the US and Canadian mid west were certainly settled that way.

Excess bureaucracy, corruption, or other features of an over-bloated public sector, may well be the primary underlying reasons why standards of living are low in one country, but I suggest quite a lot of emigration would have happened from Romania however good or bad the current government, just because there is a lot of catching up to do after the Communist era, and at best that takes decades to recover from. It might well be true to suggest that the present Romanian government are slowing that process down.

the emigrantswill return with cash if they can see a future, obviously they dont.

on the land question, the state should rent all the land from those who dont farmit, and sublet it on long leases to those who do, in small units as well as large.

come to think of it, scotland should do the same. our land structure is as bad as romanias, but in a different way.

What I am writing is not actually focused on the current government, it has been a problem of successive governments. I am also not sure that it is so easy to say people are just leaving en-masse to get a better standard of living elsewhere. I suspect the majority would stay if there was the economic opportunity to do so. I think they would prefer to be following the Poles, work away for a few years and then come home and start a business, be near the family, bring up their children where they were brought up etc. Sadly I meet returnees who within weeks are packing their bags again because it is just impossible to make a living within the constraints of the bureaucracy. It is that 'un-reformed'.

I think I have moved country more times than most rural people. A lot of jobs require moving to different postings, but I consider that different, as is short-term contracts.

2658336 and glasshouse are both correct. Many people move for a better standard of living,and will return to their country of origin when in a better financial position - especially if that origin has a lower cost of living. I used to be surprised at the number of Portuguese I met who had done just that. I now consider it normal for them to have done so.

We move because we enjoy the experience of living somewhere new. My wife has different plants in her garden and I have kept a fair range of livestock (sheep for wool and those for fat lambs are not the same thing) and grown different crops as well as some interesting things in the vegetable and fruit area. New crops last year were peanuts, loofahs, maize for grain (previously grown for fodder)  and white lupins. All garden scale except the maize, but I sowed about a hectare of white lupins a couple of weeks ago - protein for the goats and to complement a bit more maize this year.