Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

kabayiri

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And yet the UK now has a record high number of people in employment and more vacancies than dole claimants.
...

You have to look at the types of role being created. A twentyfold increase in coffee shops. A plethora of hand car washes manned by an army of eager cleaners. Nail bars and beauty salons in every town centre.

Yes, I can clearly see why there is a record high in employment.

A hand car wash worker is never going to pay the tax that a factory worker in a British Leyland factory paid.

Admittedly, the job of flogging dead horses is a limited market

buglawton

cogito wrote: »

Oh God. Here we go again. Only three countries in the EU (one of them Malta) have greater population densities than the UK, much of the land is moors, forests, lakes and mountains but Hamish has figured out a way for us to put up housing estates on top of Snowdon, Rannoch Moor or to persuade people to live in the Shetlands. When you exclude parts of the country where it's impossible to build, you're left with flood plains where it's stupid to build.

And he accuses other posters of being stupid.

You're a bit late there, the UKs flood plains have already been built over

buglawton

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And they both import a higher percentage of their population each year than us.

A great start for an 'optimal population' is simply breeding enough to replace the old people with the same number of young ones.

We don't do that and haven't done that for 5 decades.

The UK is virtually empty.

We use just 1.1% of our land for housing, and less than 3% is built on with anything at all, including all the roads, railways, factories, shops, etc.

Meanwhile there is a huge shortage of workers building up with unemployment at near record lows - and a vast empty country that could accommodate 100 years worth of growth with just a fraction of a percent more land used.

I did say 'countries with a lot of natural resources vs their population'. The UK is no longer in that position.
So any further increase in the UK is just more people providing more (possibly low grade) services for more people. Zero sum game, maybe?

Herzlos

kabayiri wrote: »

You have to look at the types of role being created. A twentyfold increase in coffee shops. A plethora of hand car washes manned by an army of eager cleaners. Nail bars and beauty salons in every town centre.

Yes, I can clearly see why there is a record high in employment.

A hand car wash worker is never going to pay the tax that a factory worker in a British Leyland factory paid.

Admittedly, the job of flogging dead horses is a limited market

And also look at the jobs being replaced: cashiers, customer service, warehousing. Low paid jobs are being replaced with robots, and low paid jobs are appearing in their place, along with some better paid ones.

Robots have a long way to go to make most jobs obsolete (taxi drivers is the big one, if it ever becomes politically viable; people don't trust machines and I suspect it'll be another couple of generations before the majoity of people would choose a self driving taxi.

Is the under table economy worse now than before? I suspect HRMC pay a lot more attention to these places than they used to.

Herzlos

3 fresh defeats for Mays Brexit plan today. Brexit deadline gone, involvement in EU agencies required, single market essentially maintained.

http://!!!!!!/2I3xb4z

At least it means she's got less decisions to put off.

LHW99

So again - can you provide a link to a source which demonstrates the average EU migrant on minimum wage costs the UK £3000 each please.

This one is from 2014, taking data from the HMRC, on various tax credits, where on p.8 (and summary):
"The bulk of tax credits paid to migrant families is to lower income working families with children ...... with an average annualised award of nearly £9500 per family (per year)"

http://www.strongerinnumbers.com/komposersitelocal/TaxCreditMigrant2014.pdf

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Herzlos wrote: »

3 fresh defeats for Mays Brexit plan today. Brexit deadline gone, involvement in EU agencies required, single market essentially maintained.

http://!!!!!!/2I3xb4z

At least it means she's got less decisions to put off.

Yes - it was an exceptionally good day.:beer:

We already know May doesn't have the votes in the Commons for an extremist Hard Brexit.

So the real question now is how much of a sensible, compromise Brexit can we get that actually has a chance of re-uniting most of the country.

Well done to the Lords for making Parliament now take the time to consider and debate ALL the various options on their merits rather than Mayhem's previous policy 'on the hoof' after playing to the crowd at the Tory conference.

Herzlos

I don't think there's anything that will unify the leavers and remainers.

LHW99 wrote: »

This one is from 2014, taking data from the HMRC, on various tax credits, where on p.8 (and summary):
"The bulk of tax credits paid to migrant families is to lower income working families with children ...... with an average annualised award of nearly £9500 per family (per year)"

http://www.strongerinnumbers.com/komposersitelocal/TaxCreditMigrant2014.pdf

That's giving figures for how much a migrant claiming benefits gets. EU migrants making up by far the smaller group. You'd claimed that migrants were taking an average of £3k out in benefits, unless I misunderstood.

Though to be fair a huge number of those (migrant or not) on zero hours contracts are relying on benefits to sustain themselves. The problem there is with the zero hour contracts and not the migrants though.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

LHW99 wrote: »

This one is from 2014, taking data from the HMRC, on various tax credits, where on p.8 (and summary)

Which is nice and all but it doesn't even begin to answer the question.

What percentage of EU migrants claim in work benefits?

What percentage of EU migrants claim out of work benefits?

From memory the last time this was debated a clear majority of EU migrants claim no benefits of any kind whatsoever - largely because most EU migrants are young and single with no children - and so are pretty much ineligible for benefits anyway.

Which is why EU migrants - in the numbers we've had and int he mix of skills/ages/etc we've had pay in Billions a year more than they take out - they subsidise the rest of us.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

kabayiri wrote: »

A twentyfold increase in coffee shops. A plethora of hand car washes manned by an army of eager cleaners. Nail bars and beauty salons in every town centre.

Consumption drives all economies. Without consumption there is no production. And what consumers want consumers will get.

It's not up to you or to me to play God and judge what people want to consume - nor to moralise that some types of business or job are not worth having.

Let the free market decide.