Perception vs Reality

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

Which suggests what hurts Britain is not the immigration levels but the structure of our welfare state.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that benefits tourism is largely a myth, and that EU immigrants deliver a net fiscal positive, ie, they pay in far more than they take out....

I'd actually have no problem with reforming the benefits system to a contribution based one if that was what it took to shut down this absurd anti-immigrant/immigration debate.

If people are feeling annoyed about immigrants...... despite them being vital to the economy, causing UK wages to rise, improving the labour market outcomes of the native born, keeping taxes from rising to support the ageing/pensions crisis, and preventing that ageing burden being born by ever smaller numbers of working age people.......

And if it turns out that said annoyance is mostly over such trivial and inconsequential matters as a few people sending £10 a week child benefit overseas, then shut down the benefits to those that haven't paid in.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Putting aside for a moment the fact that benefits tourism is largely a myth, and that EU immigrants deliver a net fiscal positive, ie, they pay in far more than they take out....

I'd actually have no problem with reforming the benefits system to a contribution based one if that was what it took to shut down this absurd anti-immigrant/immigration debate.

If people are feeling annoyed about immigrants...... despite them being vital to the economy, causing UK wages to rise, improving the labour market outcomes of the native born, keeping taxes from rising to support the ageing/pensions crisis, and preventing that ageing burden being born by ever smaller numbers of working age people.......

And if it turns out that said annoyance is mostly over such trivial and inconsequential matters as a few people sending £10 a week child benefit overseas, then shut down the benefits to those that haven't paid in.

as all the studies show, including the latest OECD 50 year study over a wide number of countries, even using the GDP measure, the effects of immigration is marginal and within margins of measure error is, in fact zero.

Using GDP as the measure is, as very single economist in the world knows, is a very very poor measure of income as it incorrectly measure 'costs' as improvements in GDP.
So if Londoners are forced out of London into the surrrounding areas, due to pressure of population rise, what is clearly a cost to those commuters is counted by GDP as a increase due the the increase in fuel consumption, increase in CO2 emmission, increase in global warming and employment of extra staff etc. Total madness.


And, if you wish to maintain the current ratio of working age people to retired people we would need another 20 -30 million new immigrants over the next few years with all the tremendous burden that will place on our infrastructure.

I'ld be interested to know your estimate for Scotland as their demographics are 'worse' than the UK as a whole.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

And, if you wish to maintain the current ratio of working age people to retired people we would need another 20 -30 million new immigrants over the next few years

I think your estimates are vastly exaggerated.

Net migration of around 250k - 300k a year is pretty much enough to keep things stable, from what I recall, as remember it only has to replace the existing deficit caused by decades of the birth rate being too low and life expectancy increasing.

So you might need in the order of 10m net migrants over the next 4 decades.

And this only has to last as long as average population age keeps increasing and the birthrate is below replacement level.

There are limits to how long that will keep happening as well.... Life expectancy growth is slowing, and birth rate is rising. It may well be possible to reduce net migration targets within the next decade or two.

I'd be interested to know your estimate for Scotland as their demographics are 'worse' than the UK as a whole.

We need more immigrants in percentage terms than the rest of the UK. As you rightly note, our ageing crisis is worse.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I think your estimates are vastly exaggerated.

Net migration of around 250k - 300k a year is pretty much enough to keep things stable, from what I recall, as remember it only has to replace the existing deficit caused by decades of the birth rate being too low and life expectancy increasing.

So you might need in the order of 10m net migrants over the next 4 decades.

And this only has to last as long as average population age keeps increasing and the birthrate is below replacement level.

There are limits to how long that will keep happening as well.... Life expectancy growth is slowing, and birth rate is rising. It may well be possible to reduce net migration targets within the next decade or two.



We need more immigrants in percentage terms than the rest of the UK. As you rightly note, our ageing crisis is worse.

all the demographic projections which assume 500,000 per year immigration (200-250k net) show that this is insufficient to maintain current ratio of working age to retired (and they take into a/c the planned increase in retirement age).

wildincrawley

Perelandra wrote: »

And this is what I find most disturbing about UKIP.

When I studied "between wars" at school, I was astonished that the democratic process had been successfully used to gain power, through policies which ultimately history would determine at the time.

I could not, at least when I was at school, understand how enough of the population could have been "taken in" by National Socialist German Workers Party to elect them.

I'm very disturbed by the fact that I now understand far better how it could have been done, and that understanding has been given to me by Farage and UKIP.

I don't think Hitler's main policy was withdrawal from Europe. In fact he seemed quite keen on his own version of European Union, as events later proved.

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Putting aside for a moment the fact that benefits tourism is largely a myth, and that EU immigrants deliver a net fiscal positive, ie, they pay in far more than they take out....

I'd actually have no problem with reforming the benefits system to a contribution based one if that was what it took to shut down this absurd anti-immigrant/immigration debate.

If people are feeling annoyed about immigrants...... despite them being vital to the economy, causing UK wages to rise, improving the labour market outcomes of the native born, keeping taxes from rising to support the ageing/pensions crisis, and preventing that ageing burden being born by ever smaller numbers of working age people.......

And if it turns out that said annoyance is mostly over such trivial and inconsequential matters as a few people sending £10 a week child benefit overseas, then shut down the benefits to those that haven't paid in.

Child benefit isn't £10 a week. It's £20 a week for the first child and £13 a week for each subsequent one. Maybe, as money goes, this is just a drop in the ocean.

Immigrants can affect an individual's chances of getting a job. I doubt if there would be many native born gangmasters running the crews working on farms in and around Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. It's not the immigrants per se I object to, but rather the knock on effect it has for our unemployed, who are being forced off the dole into, often, very marginal self employment, just because they can't get jobs. Jobs that are available but going to immigrants rather than our own people. It would be hard to make a living these days from pursuits like dog walking, child minding, hairdressing outside of a salon, doing odd jobs.

Immigrants may well add new jobs, but certainly not enough jobs to absorb all of the immigrants. If it weren't for the relentless rise of the self employed, we could have had 3 million unemployed by now. How is it you don't see the trickle down effect from immigration on the employment prospects of our own people?

All those well educated Swiss and French people who work in the city of London, yes all 300,000 of them, take financial and stock broking jobs off our own graduates, who are then forced to look for work lower down the rungs. Say they get jobs, doing back room work, or as actuaries or accountants. That means people who were ideally qualified for those roles are also pushed down the ladder. Say into assistant accounting roles or even as accounts receivable and payable clerks. There could be someone in a role like that who is forced out, pensioned off at 50 because the 50 year old costs £24k a year and the graduate comes for only £16k a year. And lo and behold, our well qualified French immigrant, on £180k a year on the city plus wild bonuses, has indirectly deprived a 50 year old accounts payable clerk of his job.

Yorkie1

dktreesea wrote: »

Immigrants can affect an individual's chances of getting a job. I doubt if there would be many native born gangmasters running the crews working on farms in and around Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

I have seen several news reports, interviewing farmers in such regions, saying that they would willingly give jobs to local individuals, but that locals never apply for them. If it wasn't for the immigrants, the farmers would be unable to harvest their crops.

Similarly, I have seen news reports where an individual was complaining that the immigrants were taking their jobs. When asked whether they had actually applied for these jobs, the reply was usually "no, wouldn't want to do that job, it's outdoors and hard work" (or similar variant).

So, whilst I accept that there may be some occasions where immigrants have successfully outcompeted locals, let's not get run away with the thought that locals are always outcompeted - when in fact, they haven't even bothered to turn up to compete.

Sampong

Yorkie1 wrote: »

I have seen several news reports, interviewing farmers in such regions, saying that they would willingly give jobs to local individuals, but that locals never apply for them. If it wasn't for the immigrants, the farmers would be unable to harvest their crops.

Similarly, I have seen news reports where an individual was complaining that the immigrants were taking their jobs. When asked whether they had actually applied for these jobs, the reply was usually "no, wouldn't want to do that job, it's outdoors and hard work" (or similar variant).

So, whilst I accept that there may be some occasions where immigrants have successfully outcompeted locals, let's not get run away with the thought that locals are always outcompeted - when in fact, they haven't even bothered to turn up to compete.

Prior to open door mass immigration from Eastern Europe, the cabbages weren't left in the fields rotting, they were picked by local workers.

The farmers and gangmasters would of course say they rely on immigrant labour, because they also are the landlords for the immigrant workers, deducting the rent from their wages, packing as many as possible into one substandard, unsanitary property.

Exploitation of migrant workers in the agricultural industry is rife, it is the elephant in the room that the progressives would rather not talk about, dismissing anybody who raises the issue as a racist.

Meanwhile modern day slavery continues to grow, and the self appointed "enlightened" blame British workers lazy and un-competitive.

The tip of the iceberg; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24108665

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

Maybe, as money goes, this is just a drop in the ocean.

It is.

Immigrants may well add new jobs, but certainly not enough jobs to absorb all of the immigrants..

Seriously?

After all this time on these boards, and the reams of statistical evidence and research papers that prove the exact opposite of what you claim, you still believe the fallacy that 'immigrants steal our jobs'?

Unbelievable....

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Yorkie1 wrote: »

I have seen news reports where an individual was complaining that the immigrants were taking their jobs. When asked whether they had actually applied for these jobs, the reply was usually "no, wouldn't want to do that job, it's outdoors and hard work" (or similar variant)..

Spot on.

The only thing holding back these people, is their sense of entitlement and unwillingness to work hard for a living.