If we vote for Brexit what happens

CLAPTON

gfplux wrote: »

Interesting video
https://youtu.be/Ul_LmbLyado

Do you think anything will happen on February 20th next year?

without the 8-9 million immigrants, we wouldn't need new schools or new extensions so we would all be enjoying better housing and better schooling now rather than discussing the need for 2-3 million new houses sometime in 10 -20 years time.
Additionally there would be jobs for the unemployed.

steampowered

CLAPTON wrote: »

without the 8-9 million immigrants, we wouldn't need new schools or new extensions so we would all be enjoying better housing and better schooling now rather than discussing the need for 2-3 million new houses sometime in 10 -20 years time.
Additionally there would be jobs for the unemployed.

Doesn't quite work like that. Jobs and house/schools etc. are not a zero-sum game. If you reduce the population by 8-9 million, economic output goes down as well.

What you would find is that the ratio of retired people to working age people would go down (since a much higher proportion of immigrants are working age). You'd effectively have more retired people/children for each working person to support.

CLAPTON

steampowered wrote: »

Doesn't quite work like that. Jobs and house/schools etc. are not a zero-sum game. If you reduce the population by 8-9 million, economic output goes down as well.

What you would find is that the ratio of retired people to working age people would go down (since a much higher proportion of immigrants are working age). You'd effectively have more retired people/children for each working person to support.

what matters is the welfare of the people
this is difficult to measure

you may feel that, in london and the SE , people are better off that 25 years ago: my view in the housing situation is so bad that this is NOT so.

It may be that in 20 -30-40 years there may or may not be a demographic issue : plenty of time to solve that rather than sacrifice the current young generation to a life of renting and flat sharing and not being able to afford a family sized home.

they only live once

Herzlos

Plenty of young people couldn't afford a family sized home 25 years ago either.

CLAPTON

Herzlos wrote: »

Plenty of young people couldn't afford a family sized home 25 years ago either.

why are you in denial over easily checked facts?

Herzlos

CLAPTON wrote: »

why are you in denial over easily checked facts?

I'm not. House price inflation is definitely a thing and getting bigger houses in popular areas is definitely harder than it used to be, but it was never "easy".

CLAPTON

Herzlos wrote: »

I'm not. House price inflation is definitely a thing and getting bigger houses in popular areas is definitely harder than it used to be, but it was never "easy".

simply pendantic nonsense to avoid trhe essential issue : that is, that the increase in population has made people worse off with respect to housing in London and the SE.
Housing is very imortant in most people's lives both due to the cost but also if they wish to have a family. Much more important than more restaurants and coffee bars.

Herzlos

You mean pedantic nonsense to highlight the fact that you're wrong, again?

Sure, housing costs are definitely a problem, particularly in high-demand areas where there's a massive wage gap between rich and poor (thus pushing prices up a range where only the rich stand a chance). When you've got 100 couples earning £200k a year wanting to start a family and buy a family home, competing with 100 couples earning £20k a year, then the latter 100 have no chance at getting on the market, because it's been priced well away from them.
Narrow it down to say £120k and £100k, and it's much more likely the latter group will be able to compete.

So what's the solution? I'd suggest before we get to population control (which seems to only be directed to those of foreign descent and not UK-based migrants), it'd be much more productive to (a) improve supply (b) reduce the wage inequality.

CLAPTON

Herzlos wrote: »

You mean pedantic nonsense to highlight the fact that you're wrong, again?

Sure, housing costs are definitely a problem, particularly in high-demand areas where there's a massive wage gap between rich and poor (thus pushing prices up a range where only the rich stand a chance). When you've got 100 couples earning £200k a year wanting to start a family and buy a family home, competing with 100 couples earning £20k a year, then the latter 100 have no chance at getting on the market, because it's been priced well away from them.
Narrow it down to say £120k and £100k, and it's much more likely the latter group will be able to compete.

So what's the solution? I'd suggest before we get to population control (which seems to only be directed to those of foreign descent and not UK-based migrants), it'd be much more productive to (a) improve supply (b) reduce the wage inequality.

The current actual situation is that the people of the UK are worse off because of the housing situation than they were 25 years ago. The effect of the population increase has been to make people worse off in terms of housing availability.

The gap between rich and poor is not central to the availibility of family sized houses ; it does affect who gets to live in them, but not the number we have available. Reducing the wage gap doesn't of inself create a single new family sized house.

Improving supply is indeed a good idea: we need a million or two immediately. This would require large increase in taxation for absolutley no gain to UK citizens.
There is little prospect of any political party proposing significant tax increase to fund the costs of immigration infrastructure and even if the tax was raised it would take years to actually build sufficient even to meet to current rate of population growth let alone compensate for the huge backlog.

The overall result is, that in practice, the housing standards of people in the London /SE will continue to worsen due to the increase in population.

kabayiri

Herzlos wrote: »

...
So what's the solution? I'd suggest before we get to population control (which seems to only be directed to those of foreign descent and not UK-based migrants), it'd be much more productive to (a) improve supply (b) reduce the wage inequality.

The solution is clearly a combination of long term planning and more honesty with the public from politicians.

Why is it always the media who intro these stories of how automation will change the number of jobs?

It should be politicians who acknowledge this as a challenge, and explain how open ended migration fits in with an increasingly automated world in 10/20/30 years time.