Only Immigration can save us from Pensioners

Graham_Devon

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I've answered it numerous times Graham.

You may think you have answered it. You haven't. Your "entire history" thing doesn't answer it. The immigrants won't simply go home like the good little saviours that they are after having paid their dues and taxes and saved our little souls.

They will, quite rightly, want their slice of the pie after paying in too. What do you do then?

LydiaJ

Hamish, you seem to me to be saying that because world population has been rising for much of human history, then it's a good thing for it to continue doing so indefinitely. Is that really what you think? Are you not at all concerned about the finite resources of the planet as a whole or this little island in particular? Or have I misunderstood your position?

zagubov

michaels wrote: »

Could we not outsource all the pensioners to Spain - lots of empty property, cheaper heating bills and lots of unemployed youngsters to do all those caring things.

In the 80s the letter pages of many papers were full of proposals to ship the unemployed to the Costas as a a cheaper place than receiving Housing Benefit at UK prices.
Would have saved the UK money and boosted the Spanish economy too.

For pensioners it already happens to some extent on a voluntary individual basis but suffers from the Spanish Healthcare system's tendency to keep you in hospital for treatment then dump you at your home for your family to look after afterwards (what do you mean you don't have family in this country?). With a transfer of funding to cover the extra costs it may still work out cheaper.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Not completely without merit as far as lateral thinking goes.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And I rather suspect some form of outside the box thinking will be required to ultimately find a workable solution.

The people behind Club Med did propose a Skills for Sunlight exchange, where retired Europeans with skills would retire in warmer developing countries where they would help local communities by passing on thier skills and expertise.

They got some way in developing a deal between Morocco and France but I don't know what happened after that (I think it couldn't be expanded easily because the retirees would be potential hostages/terrorist targets in many countries).

Sadly when I googled it I found the only internet reference was by me in my Best Idea I‘ve Seen Abroad thread last year, so I guess it didn't last into the internet era.:(

jojo1964

One of the arguments for immigration i seem to read over and over, is that immigrants do the low paid jobs the workshy Brits wont do, so how will that increase tax revenue? surely many will end up on tax credits.

Secondly, where will they all be housed?

homelessskilledworker

jojo1964 wrote: »

One of the arguments for immigration i seem to read over and over, is that immigrants do the low paid jobs the workshy Brits wont do, so how will that increase tax revenue? surely many will end up on tax credits.

Secondly, where will they all be housed?

Exactly!!

And that is the only point that our MSE anti facists who these days love everything about immigration rights along with black/yellow/little red men rights really care about "where will they live"?

Truth is that many on here really do not care if the population jumps to 100 million, we are invaded occupied Jersey/France style, half the population live in shanty towns, as long as the price of their property holds firm, "I am alright Jack".

House ramping and property speculation has caused so much damage(and a little good) in the UK, and those blinded by greed just do not see or want to see what is really happening to our wonderful(and it is still wondeful) country.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

LydiaJ wrote: »

Hamish, you seem to me to be saying that because world population has been rising for much of human history, then it's a good thing for it to continue doing so indefinitely.

No what I'm saying is that throughout human history it has always been the case that the number of people of working age were greater by far than the number of old people unable to work. Despite GD's efforts to write that off as a pyramid scheme, it is in fact the natural order of things and has been throughout hundreds of thousands of years of humanity.

Thanks to advances in medical science in first world western economies, we are now experiencing, for the first time ever, a situation where that may not be the case.

The problem is that all of our systems, healthcare, economy, infrastructure, pensions, etc, are dependent on there being 4-5 workers for every pensioner.

If that changes markedly, such that there are only 2 workers for every pensioner, then the financial burden on the average young person for caring for the old will double, because we don't pay for our own retirement, we pay for the retirement of people 2-3 generations ahead of us. If it gets to the stage of 1:1 then the costs per worker would quadruple. Basically, the economy and society as we know it would collapse.

Now over time this will have to change if we're to avoid the requirement for an exponentially growing population forever. But you can't do it overnight. It will take many decades to adjust the situation such that the cost burden is passed down through the generations until we get to the point that we are all paying for our own retirements.

Because to try and do it any quicker than that would result in such a huge percentage of income being saved/hoarded that we end up in a multi-decade recession, and thanks to the paradox of thrift, eventually we'd all end up being poorer despite the increase in savings.

Is that really what you think? Are you not at all concerned about the finite resources of the planet as a whole or this little island in particular? Or have I misunderstood your position?

Well I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of Henry Malthus and assume we are all doomed if population keeps growing for the foreseeable future.

Our biggest resource is our people. And in a world where many countries will suffer economic decline thanks to a falling working age population and demographic imbalance, our competitive advantage in the world is dependent on us doing so to a lesser extent than others.

It is currently forecast that the UK will overtake Germany to become the biggest economy in Europe by 2050, largely thanks to our enlightened immigration policies over the last decade.

China is pretty much doomed economically speaking over the long term thanks to the one-child policy with the decline due to start after 2020, Japan has been in decline for ages already.

Of the major powers, only America is bucking this trend, with a still rising population of working age people. Again, thanks to a long held positive immigration policy.....

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

We could learn a lot from those words, written of course on the Statue of Liberty, and embodying a value that has been one of the main reasons behind American success over the last century.

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Hamish Hamish Hamish.

You never ever answer this point....

If we bring a load more people into the country to pay for todays's pensioners, that just means loads more people to pay for when those people imported require pensions themselves.

As I keep saying to you, it's a pyramid scheme through and through.

You hardly ever answer this point, though have seen you suggesting that all the immigrants will duly pay their taxes through their working life, and then emigrate back to their home countries just before retirement. Head in clouds stuff that my boy. Head in clouds.

But it would be nice for you to look at what you are doing. Just shovelling more people at the bottom of the pyramid in the hope it keeps those at the top going.

The music stops at some point. You know that, I know that. Shovelling more and more people into the bottom of the pyramid just makes the problem bigger. However, it sorts your lifetime out. And that's about the crux of it. Someone else with no kids, no grandkids, and no concern for those following them in respect to these issues.

A Parliamentary study agrees with you:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/82.pdf

"Impacts on pensions
152. It is frequently argued that immigrants are needed to defuse the “pensions time bomb” by helping to support an increasing population of elderly people in the UK. This argument is usually made in the context of Britain’s rising dependency ratio—the ratio of pensioners and children to the working age population. The IPPR presented estimates of the income tax increases required to help maintain the UK pension system if net immigration was to decline (p 302).

153. A number of witnesses suggested that the argument that immigrants are needed to help maintain the UK pension system is greatly overstated. First, immigrants too grow old and eventually add to the old-age population drawing pensions. Second, as Lord Turner of Ecchinswell pointed out in his recent lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE), arguments for high immigration to reduce the dependency ratio are usually made on the basis of figures which assume that the retirement age remains unchanged, an assumption he described as “absurd”.

63 Lord Turner argued that as people live longer, it is reasonable to assume that the extra years of life are divided between working years and retirement so as to keep roughly stable the proportions of life spent working and retired. Under this assumption, half of the projected increase in the dependency ratio disappears, when compared with the simplistic case in which the retirement age stays unchanged."

Summarised in the report:

"Arguments in favour of high immigration to defuse the “pensions time bomb” do not stand up to scrutiny as they are based on the unreasonable assumption of a static retirement age as people live longer and ignore the fact that, in time, immigrants too will grow old and draw pensions. Increasing the retirement age, as the Government has done, is the only viable approach to resolving this issue."

homelessskilledworker

What astounds me about this board(and it is a great education to me) is that many posters on here will take a postion, and in the case of Hamish, Wosthat, Johnybigmouth and half a dozen others it is "WE LIKE EXPENSIVE HOUSING".

They then become supportive of every cause that will aid that want, they are Immigrant loving, debt loving, estate agent loving, government fiscal loving, Gordon Brown loving, single jobless mother loving, population growth loving, property ramping, high rents loving blinkerd individuals, it's laughable.

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

From the same report, an interesting point on House Prices:

"Immigration is one of many factors contributing to more demand for housing and higher house prices. We note the forecasts that, if current rates of net immigration persist, 20 years hence house prices would be over 10% higher than what they would be if there were zero net immigration. Housing matters alone should not dictate immigration policy but they should be an important consideration when assessing the economic impacts of immigration on the resident population in the UK."

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

From the same report, an interesting point on the impact of immigration on the economy:

"Our overall conclusion is that the economic benefits to the resident population of net immigration are small, especially in the long run"