There has been a lot of comment this week about a House of Lords report on the benefits, or otherwise, of mass immigration to the UK as far as the economics is concerned. It did not address the cultural aspects, such as the influx of large numbers of people from fundamentalist Islamic states or people with other, very different traditions to those of the existing population. It talked about the impact on the economy. The general conclusion is that in the long run, there is a very small, positive impact on growth but no real impact overall on GDP per head. And for some parts of the existing workforce, the impact is bad: lower wages, or no work at all.
The Sunday Telegraph, in its leader column, broadly endorses this analysis. What bothers me, however, is this: if immigrants are ‘taking’ a certain number of jobs (our old friend, the Lump of Labour Fallacy, is at it again), why not recommend say, a drastic pro-emigration policy for say, 25 per cent of the population, or even half? I mean, if there are “too many” people in the UK, why not go for a massive reduction? Indeed, if you take the argument to extremes, you could argue that we would be fabulously rich if the population were reduced to say, 100,000 or one million.
But that would remove all the benefits of a large population, which the immigrant-bashers overlook: the skills, or ‘human capital’ that a large population makes available. The silliness of the complaints about all those foreigners ‘taking’ ‘our’ jobs is not just the Lump of Labour Fallacy, however, which by extension is part of the closed-system thinking one associates with socialism and many other collectivistic doctrines.. It is also the unspoken assumption, rarely explicitly spelled out, that there is some sort of optimum, or “just about right” level of population for a given geographic area. But how do the noble Lords or even a mere economist figure out how many people in a country is right or wrong? And as a commenter said, I believe on this site, some months ago, you do not hear about Tescos or Vodafone moaning about “too many customers” putting pressures on their services.
Of course, some commenters will insist that the cultural implications of mass immigration from the Islamic world, say, outweighs what economic benefits there might be, but that is a separate issue.
So you set up a straw man “if immigrants are “taking” a certain number of jobs” then take an absurd position “why not recommend say, a drastic pro-emigration policy for say, 25 per cent of the population, or even half” and then demolish it – Polly Toynbee would be proud.
Perhaps because wealth is generated by the rich? Adding more people would normally result in more rich people, and therefore more wealth. But if you add more people at the bottom of the ladder, barely above minimum wage, you skew the distribution towards poverty.
You see, the wealth distribution commonly tends to settle close to a Pareto distribution. This has a big peak at the poorest end tailing off towards the minority of rich. You can pile it up at the poor end and have a fast-decaying tail – the average wealth is low, and nearly everybody earns nearly the same. Or you can stretch it out so you have relatively few poor, more rich, richer rich, and a much higher average wealth. The average wealth of society increases with its inequality.
So if you dump more people into the population but don’t change the skew, you will get a few more rich people and a little more wealth creation, but increase the number of poor proportionately more, so the average wealth doesn’t change or rises only a little.
What you need to do is to increase the spread – more rich, fewer poor, more inequality, more wealth creation per head. You can do that either by encouraging wealth creation, or adding population up at the rich end. (e.g. by tax breaks attracting the mobile rich.)
Or if you’re a socialist, you can shave wealth off the rich end, dump it into the bottom few percent to move the minimum up slightly, and get a more equal but much poorer society.
Or you can import the poor of other nations, drop them onto the bottom end of your curve, which when it levels out to match a Pareto curve again gives you a poorer, more egalitarian skew.
Overall, having more people helps, but having them pile preferentially on to the bottom end of the scale rather than the top does not, especially when you support it with socialist tax and welfare. From the point of view of the British economy, it isn’t all that brilliant. While there is no fixed lump of labour to share out, there is a limit to how many low paid jobs and welfare claimants can be supported by the number of rich wealth-generators. The ‘lump’ is a variable quantity, depending on the skew. The more it is stretched out towards the rich end, the bigger the ‘lump’ is in proportion to the population.
But it isn’t just the British economy we have to count here. The Eastern European economies are involved too. They’re getting an injection of wealthy, well-trained, capitalism-savvy workers going home into the top end of their economy. So long as they don’t kick back and live off their savings, it should do wonders for their economy, which is a good thing.
As is usually the case with trade, the net gain summed over all participants is positive – they need the jobs more, so it does more good overall for them to get them.
Kit, it is not a strawman at all. The anti-immigration lobby are stating that immigrations are squeezing the existing workforce out of work and reducing GDP per head. So, my challenge to those who use this argument is to point out that taken to its logical, mad conclusion, such anti-immigration people should favour reducing population as a way to boost GDP per head.
So how did the rich get rich in the first place, Pa?
Well obviously from a socialist point of view
Performing three card tricks on the poor, Johnathan.
“So how did the rich get rich in the first place, Pa?”
By investing their disposable income in goods and services for wealth creation.
Don’t feel offended Pa. It wouldn’t matter to Johnathan if civil war broke out so long as labour reduced his taxes by a percentage point or two and scrapped red light cameras. This is what it means to be an English libertarian.
So where did the disposable income come from?
Arty, I don’t recognise you so I don’t know if you have read this blog before. If you had, you’d be perfectly well aware that I want a damn sight more than a small cut to the marginal rate of tax. And as I explicitly made clear in the article, I do understand the strong cultural arguments against uncontrolled immigration, on grounds of maintaining a certain level of common cultural assumptions. But that is not what the House of Lords report was about.
Johnathan,
“So where did the disposable income come from?”
In what sense? It comes the same way any other income comes. Are you asking why some people initially got to have so much more of it? By the application of violence to take it. By luck. By cleverness. By inventing something or doing something better. By having something other people wanted. By sacrificing their own welfare so that their children could have a chance. All sorts of ways.
They’re often not things the people involved had any say in, but there are always a few people around who just get lucky. Once they’ve got a bit, then capitalism enables them to get more, but you need capital to get started; to make capitalism work.
Of course. But since you raised the issue with the rather delphic sentence “because they were rich”, I then asked you to explain where that came from. It does not help the argument against immigration, since all of the causes of wealth you mention apply to immigrants, including quite poor ones who scrimp and save to give their children a better life, as they have in the past. As a crucial proviso, of course, is that there is no Welfare State to blunt the incentive to do these things.
The Lord’s report does no tackle the cultural impact is a major flaw. Most if not all large scale migrations cause friction between hot population and immigrants – even when they share the same cultural mores.
I’d take issue with you on the point issue you describe akin to “foreigners don’t take our jobs”. The short term supply of employment is inelastic – so immigrants can be seen to “steal” jobs from what appears to be a finite supply. Even assuming certain elasticity, the increased pool of labour will force down wages. So if you are a non/low skilled worker with little chance to sell your labour elsewhere, are you are going to rejoice at the message that immigration is good?
These effects are increased in the UK by the benefits system, in this case the size of the pie is much more visibly finite. So if you want unfettered immigration – then remove the benefits system. Until then you will get major downsides to mass immigration. That is of course ignoring the fact that if the incomers stay their offspring may well be additions to the feckless benefit classes.
Please excuse the typos and bad grammar but my points stand 🙂
Hovis:
Good. This culture need a kick up the arse. We need more ‘friction’, not less.
Not really and in fact the availability of new and higher quality people actually creates incentives to hire that were not there before. In truth motivated Eastern Europeans are not truly in competition with low skill low motivation native born people because said folks don’t seem to actually want the jobs and employers tend to not want to hire them.
Oh and Arty is just one of our fascist trolls re-badging.
Except this is not a free-market situation. Welfare creates incentives for immigrants to come to Britain above and beyond what the market would itself create. As with all government subsidies the consequence is misallocation of resources and increased poverty. In the absence of abolishing the subsidies in question (welfare, the NHS etc.) we must mitigate the effects by restricting immigration.
Further, even without these subsidies for immigration, consider the following scenario. There are two towns. In town A there is a surplus of labour, in town B there is a shortage; people move from A to B with beneficial results all round. However, suddenly a man takes over town A and starts randomly shooting people, the trickle of people going from A to B becomes a flood. Now, it may be argued that the residents of Town B have a moral duty to take in the refugees, but only a prat would argue it is still economically beneficial.
Overall, if someone wants to make the Libertarian case that free immigration is simply like any form of Free Trade and should be left to the market to decide rather than governments*, they have to take into account the perverse distorting incentives created both by the host country and the immigrants’ homelands, which, as far as I can see, you have as yet failed to do.
*who are, of course, not only practically incapable of making the right decision as to population levels, but are conceptually so as well
I’m fairly pro-immigration for an unashamed conservative, but that strikes me as a very foolish thing to say indeed. How many people need to die to give us the vibrancy you crave? Exactly how much of a kick were you thinking of?
Ah, I see what you mean now.
It’s not a case of them starting rich and then creating wealth, it’s a cyclic, feedback thing.
When you have disposable income, you have a choice of how to spend it. You can spend it on either what I’ll call “consumption” or “wealth multipliers”.
“Consumption” is stuff that you need, or you like. Food, clothes, booze, drugs, women, holidays, toys, etc. It’s great fun, but when you’ve spent it you’ve got a big pile of nothing left. The effect on the wealth curve is to diffuse the money evenly (on average) across the whole population – it goes to all those who provide the goods and services you use. It evens out the wealth.
In opposition to this effect there are “wealth multipliers” – better tools, automation, better power sources, organisation, engineering, education, training. Things that when you spend money on you get something that enhances your ability to make money. The more money you have, the more and better multipliers you can get, and the more your wealth generating capacity is enhanced. The effect on the wealth distribution curve is to stretch or scale it.
The combination of the two effects is that the wealth spreads out into a certain sort of curve – what is known as a “scale-invariant” distribution. In essence, it is an exponential, and has the property that Exp(a+b) = Exp(a) Exp(b). Addition inside the bracket corresponds to multiplication outside it. The diffusive effect of consumption is exactly balanced at every level of society by the multiplicative effect of wealth generation. The only sort of curve that satisfies such a relationship is a Pareto distribution. (That’s grossly simplified, and not very accurate, but is more or less related to the actual reasons for the Pareto curve showing up in so many different phenomena.)
At the bottom of the wealth distribution curve, disposable income is zero. Everything you earn you have to spend on consumption just to survive. When you have a little more, you can choose whether to consume it and live a little better, or to better yourself. But because you’re still close to the bottom, you can only afford a little betterment, enhance your skills a little. The overall effect on the wealth of society is not insignificant (because of the sheer number of poor), but is small. It is only quite a bit further up the scale that you start to get more leverage, and only when you get to the level of multinationals that you can invest capital in the world-changing technologies that drive the rate of progress we have seen recently.
Wealth generates more wealth. The strongest influences on the overall wealth of an economy are up at the top end, not down at the bottom. Adding people down there draws money down by diffusion (as they provide their Polish plumbing services to the rich) but does not itself create much wealth, unless they’re plumbing in a new factory or something. It creates some, as all positive-sum trade does, but has no permanent cumulative, multiplier effect. Since the disposable income of immigrants often goes overseas, it doesn’t help the British economy very much. That’s not to say it’s very bad, either. Effects around the zero line of disposable income just don’t have much overall effect. That’s why I’m not very surprised by the House of Lords enquiry’s results.
Well it goes without saying – and I tire of having to point it out on a libertarian blog – that I oppose the Welfare State – for exactly the kind of reason you mention, Gabriel. But the trouble with “only allow free trade if there a no artificial factors” will in practice mean that immigration will always be a problem. Yes, if a country is persecuting people and driving them abroad, that encourage immigration. So? When the Chinese left Hong Kong after the 1997 handover by Britain, it encouraged many Hong Kongers to quit and move to countries like Canada, to the mighty benefit of the latter. The same happened when Idi Amin attacked many of the businesses in his country, encouraging Ugandans to come to Britain, again to the benefit of the UK. Many immigrants who flee terrible regimes nevertheless do much to benefit their new host countries: the French Hugenots, Russian and other Jews, Vietnamese, etc.
Banned. Sod off, troll
Though it may be bordering on pedantry I have to take issue with this too. ‘The British economy’ is an abstraction useful for certain types of intellectual analysis, it is not something that exist independently outside of the individuals that compose the British population (and by the way to think it does smacks curiously of 70s technocratic socialism). These ‘cultural implications’ will have unavoidable ramifications for production and consumption, however extra-economic they may appear.
Undeniably! However we have been luck with the latest wave to have got large numbers of easy to integrate Eastern Europeans who are not here for the benefits. That said, clearly we also have some imported benefit parasites who are just as undesirable at the locally born versions.
No. Accepting the ground rules of the enemy makes little sense and if enough immigrants make the welfare system untenable, well that is just an unlooked for bonus.
However a less happy alternative scenario is that the influx of productive (and taxable) people will actually keep the welfare system alive for longer than it might otherwise be the case.
My goodness Gabriel, and there I was thinking you abominated modern culture!
Well that’s hard to say, let’s see what happens and I’ll tell you went we reach my ‘comfort level’.
And many immigrants fleeing oppression have proved to be a constant pain in the butt, we just can’t predict how things will turn out. The point is that the right answer to the question is not simply whatever the market decides, because that will be too many. We have to pick a point, no doubt arbitrary, above which we say, that’s enough for this year. I think we can afford to be fairly liberal about these things, others disagree, together we can all try and hammer out a solution that is not too crap.
Which leads me to home in on this:
Immigration will always be a problem, as well as always being beneficial. The ship of state is not heading for any port.
You appear to live in an Austrian dreamworld where the consequence of people with no jobs having their welfare cheques stopped is that they starve to death. If you’re in a sensitive mood it makes you sad, if more robust you can be quite bullish about it.
However, in reality they don’t starve, they rob your house.
The mess we are in is far more intractable than you realise. Perhaps because as a Libertarian-Utopian you fail to appreciate that the human condition is a predicament without solution.
I know exactly how intractable it is and I would rather not help entrench it any deeper.
I am a ‘sort of’ libertarian because I am not a utopian. To be a statist is to be a utopian, pretending that wise people get into government and regulate us into a better place, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I have a fairly dismal view of much of the population of this planet but generally if you regress the majority of problems to do with poverty and social evils, you will find some state ‘solution’ at its core that is actually causing it. I no more what rioting starving mobs that you do, but Ponzi scheme ‘welfare’ is actually the best way to get to precisely that.
No human society or political state will ever be even close to perfect as long as we are human: utopia is simply not on offer. But entrusting a wide and ‘growable’ range of force backed powers to any state is always going to end in a doom-loop of socially corrosive distortions that end in ruin. Markets are not a perfect solution to anything. They are the best solution to most things however.
Us old fogies
say right on to that Perry!
That was Quintessence
not just a jam!
So do you think it is on balance, a net good thing or a bad thing? You seem to be now sitting on the fence. Funny, because the general tone of your comments suggests that you are hostile.
Quite a few indigenous peoples can be a “constant pain in the butt” as well.
Actually, people who flee a terrible regime or who choose to improve their life chances by emigration tend, on balance, to be often more enterprising, hard-working and generally motivated than someone who just wants to keep life the way it is and is hostile to new ways of doing things.
Even here in relatively economically liberal(in the classic sense) Singapore, there is a growing resentment against foreign workers who come here and compete against locals for jobs. Many local folks are getting very fed up, even if the positive impact on our economy is undeniable, because they simply don’t see how they can benefit when they can’t even get jobs or earn enough to support their families.
As a skilled professional, I don’t have such problems, but I can well understand where they are coming from. Add in rising costs of living, inflation, and the inability to save/invest enough for retirement, and people have many reasons to get upset.
And Gabriel is completely right. Starving, desperate people don’t sit passively for the end; they steal your stuff. In the worst case scenario, you get a revolution.
Wobbly, Singapore owes almost all of its dynamism to the globalised world we live in; for the locals to bleat that those nasty foreigners are spoiling things is pretty stupid, even though in a crowded place like Singapore, rising population growth can put pressure on costs. As costs rise, though, some of the money pouring into the place will go elsewhere.
As for the idea that if countries like Britain absorb more people, we will have a bloody civil war or whatever, that is a nonsense: it depends on whether the country in question is rich or not. Most of the violent, dangerous places on the planet: N. Korea, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Iran, etc, are not exactly famed for their open-door policies. Immigration does cause frictions, and unchecked immigration where you have a Welfare State, etc, does raise genuine issues, but to argue that immigration leads to civil wars is at best a conjecture. Most of the religious/ethnic conflicts that affected Europe, for example, were not caused by large-scale population movements. Rather, it was usually tyrannical regimes that caused such movements in the first place.
Jonathan:
But this is the situation you have in Britain right now. There is no end to the welfare state in the foreseeable future. How do you deal with the problems unchecked immigration raises?
Do I recall correctly that Rome imploded in part due to a high volume of immigration by peoples who did not integrate and could not understand why they had to conform and pay taxes?
And there’s the rub. They ARE stupid, comparatively speaking. But who can criticise them? If any politician says that about the anti-FT crowd(you are a bunch of idiots for thinking that way), he can kiss his election hopes goodbye.
The rest of us who are okay with it are derided as elitist, uncaring, and a whole host of perjoratives that are eerily reminiscent of the adjectives oft used to describe libertarians.
Some people are beyond reasoning. Just read the link below and you’ll get an idea of the deep set resentment.
http://mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com/2007/02/thoughts-on-foreign-talent.html(Link)
A welfare state attracts immigration. Then the welfare becomes unaffordable and so the welfare state will have to change.
The big problem is probably more likely to be the detrimental impact on what shared culture the UK possesses.
Overall the ‘pro’ economic arguments seem to be New Labour’s justification for their policy, largely tailored specifically to support it, but not as relevant as they are presented, or necessarily actually true.
The problem about ‘taking jobs’ and ‘stretching resources’ are symptoms of any welfare system in such circumstances, especially one designed to work in isolation. It is the welfare state that actually makes it a problem.
Arty, Re your comment “It wouldn’t matter to Johnathan if civil war broke out so long as labour reduced his taxes by a percentage point or two and scrapped red light cameras. This is what it means to be an English libertarian.”.
Spoken like someone who wouldn’t want liberty for all if it was offered, but would probably rather like to be in charge of those who don’t have it – and have them grateful for it too.
Re Tim C’s “Do I recall correctly that Rome imploded in part due to a high volume of immigration by peoples who did not integrate and could not understand why they had to conform and pay taxes?”
I vaguely recall it was because the Romans eventually came to want beer and circuses, the welfare of citizenship. Reds and greens fighting it out in the streets. While the empire, in the latter years was supported by ‘immigrants’ joining the legions and settling in the provinces if they made it to retirement.
The lead in the water didn’t help either…
Obviously it varies from situation to situation, but in all in situations there will be upsides and downsides. Current levels of immigration give a net benefit compared to zero immigration, but a net defecit compared to other immigration policies.
My point is really very simple. We have to make a decision as to how many immigrants we let in. As you have correctly pointed out there is no ‘correct’ population for Britain, but the decision still has to be made. Your answer, namely “whatever the market decides” is wrong for the reasons I have outlined. The answer of many Britons, namely “none”, is also wrong. Somehow or other we have to find a number in between. (There are also some fairly obvious adjustments we could make i.e. no bearded loonies who want to destroy western civilization). There are no good answers and no final ones, only an ever changing succession of less bad ones.
We don’t have a choice with them and we do with immigrants. Lucky us, we should take advantage of it.
This is just dogma. Sure, the Poles seem to have been vastly improved by their experience of being treated like dirt for 40 years and though my great-grandparents came to Britain precisely to escape East Europeans, I would agree that they are indeed generally enterprising, hard working and motivated. However, the Pakistani regime is a pretty oppressive one, as I’m sure you’ll agree, and you would be hard pressed to make the same case. Sometimes oppression is a salutary experience, sometimes it turns you into a shit (compare with child abuse). Though we may sympathise with the people in question for what has been done to them to turn them into shits, we don’t particularly want them voting in our elections (imagine if 10,000s of Russian peasants had fled to Britain in the early 1900s for example.)
As an extra point, I’d say mass immigration not only creates problems in conjunction with the Welfare State, but also with the presence of Lefties, of which we have many. When immigrants and their children are taught by the media and education establishments to nurse an endless list of grievances about colonialism, institutional racism, the war in Iraq etc. we get problems. My solution would be to keep shooting lefties until the rest of them just STFU, but this is probably impracticable.
Better: The mess we are in is wider than you realise. Your solution “let the whole edifice tumble down” is no solution at all once you realise the ramifications. Unless you have a Mad Max fetish.
Frankly I couldn’t give a crap whether Britain contains a healthy multi-racial, free market society in 2100 thanks to the financial insolvency of 2015 because by then I’ll be dead. What it means in the meantime is a horde of desparate hungry people robbing my house. Hell, I may be a desparate hungry person robbing someone elses house.
So what is your answer? Toss a coin?
So how do you figure out the “good” immigrants from the “pains in the butt”, to use your own term?
God almighty. You really are a piece of work. The people who fled the Czsars, Hitler or the Khmer Rouge had a “salutary experience”.
Well it is true that the left have tried, with great success, to run a grievance-mongering industry. But many of the most recent immigrant groups to Britain, such as Poles, for example, don’t seem to be falling for it. So no shooting required.
For what it is worth, we need to also remember the number of people who leave this country every year. It’s a large number.
Somewhere out there are even more facts to be observed:
All immigration involves emigration elswhere. Consider the impact of Eastern European emigration on those countries – currently, growing labor shortages, rising wages, businesses closing, governments revenues falling, consideration being given to bringing in labor from the FAR east (even Vietnam).
So ever Eastward moves Western Civilization, with it, Europeanization – and ever westward move the emigrants (often in cycles).
It was not so long ago (pre EU membership) that Polish Electrical Engineering graduates were staying unemployed rather than take the jobs available (“beneath their status”).
The Czech Republic is feeling a drain. Factories close in Latvia, etc.
So, will there be a “regression to the mean” and will that affect “culture” as well? Very likely, just a matter of time – if’n we don’t run outa vittals!
But my point is that the state’s, and presumably your, solution inevitably lead to economic disaster regardless, so just accepting the ground rules is not very sensible.
Politics.
Politics.
It’s immature to pick a fight for no reason. I was specifically talking about Poles and other Eastern Europeans and, yes, Soviet rule was indeed a salutary experience for them.
Obviously oppressive regimes don’t have a foolproof track record at creating hard working, motivated and entrepeneurial individuals. If it did why would you be a Libertarian? In fact, as a general rule, nasty, uncivilized government turns out nasty, uncivilized people. Again, try and think through the consequences of a flood of Russian peasants entering this country in the early 1900s. (And the answer to all three of your questions is no by the way.)
That is indeed no doubt one factor to consider.
Well my solution would be to dismantle the wlefare state piece by piece and though it has a low chance of success you plan is failure by definition.
I for one am tired of commenters of all stripes, but especially libertarians, trying to sound profound while ignoring the elephant in the room. The elephant is welfare payments to immigrants. In other words, tax-expropriated transfer payments from resident tax-payers to immigrant welfare cases. You can’t have a meaningful discussion about optimum levels of immigration without addressing this, and until you succeed in cutting off welfare, you’re going to need some controls on immigration.
Oh wow. In other words, the usual “pragmatic”, back-of-the-envelope approach that has achieved the current state of affairs, to wit: an unexplained open-door policy/welfare system that pleases no-one, neither libertarians like me or for that matter, gloomongers who fear all those furriners are going to break into your home searching for bread.
No. While in a democracy the rules will get set – partly – by politics, there is still a need to think these things through on grounds of principle, economics, culture, etc.
We have mentioned this angle several times. No elephant has been ignored, or even a small gorilla.
What about hamsters? 😉
Saladman,
I understand the concerns many people have about the possible burden to the welfare state. Personally I and, I imagine, other open border advocates would have no problems if open immigration only gave a status in which benefits were not available, or delayed. This is a system which has been introduced in Australia I understand. Surely, this is the way to address the issue, not to limit immigration itself.
I have a question to those who advocate limiting immigration on an economic basis. Do they feel that immigration is not beneficial even when considering all parties concerned? When we look at the total effect on both the receiving country and the people who move and perhaps also people who receive remmitances, do they still think the net effect of more open borders is negative?
When considering policies as an independant individual, surely we should advocate that which is best for all men not just the men who happened to be born in the same artificially defined land area.
“if immigrants are ‘taking’ a certain number of jobs (our old friend, the Lump of Labour Fallacy, is at it again)”
“Kit, it is not a strawman at all. The anti-immigration lobby are stating that immigrations are squeezing the existing workforce out of work and reducing GDP per head.”
It is a straw man. The sensible anti-net-immigration people like me and MigrationWatch don’t think this. In 2003, the government said we need mass immigration to fill 600,000 vacancies. In 2008, 1.5m immigrants later, we still have 600,000 vacancies! Because of course immigrants create jobs as well, by increasing demand.
One might reasonably have predicted that immigration would allow economies of scale and make us all richer on average. But the evidence shows that that hasn’t happened. Okay, it raises GDP per head by 57 pence per week on average, but makes the poor poorer. Not by taking jobs, but by depressing wages. The native poor can still have jobs, but only if they accept lower wages. I am a big free-trade supporter because growth (per person!) improves everyone’s lives in the long run. But the Lords report shows that immigration is not causing growth (per person!).
A higher population also drives up house prices and population density reduces quality of life.
So can we please stop it?
Man born of woman is long of days and full of sorrow.
*short of days
WTF?
Hugo writes:
Ah, so you are sensible, well, let’s check. If unemployment of 600,000 or whatever it is now is high, I doubt it has much to do foreign entrants to the labour force except in the very short run. Yes, in the short run, a large arrival of cheap, motivated, hardworking and in most cases, intelligent labour can force down average wages for the indigenous population without marketable skills. But in the medium and long-term, not so. Also, as others have noted, the reason for the large number of inactive but able-bodies indigenous Brits on the dole is caused by the impact of high taxes and high welfare benefits, which seriously blunts the incentive to work.
I see little difference between the argument that we should restrict immigration to “protect” jobs and the daft, protectionist nonsense in France that supported the 35-hour week to increase the amount of work. Fat lot of good that did.
That’s an assertion without clear evidence. Some people like living in places where there are lots of other people to make life more varied and interesting. You may prefer to live in a sparsely populated place with no other horrible humans to mess up the view.
Even without immigration, the population can rise – as it did after the industrial revolution – due to changes in infant mortality and so forth. The Chinese took a rather drastic approach to limiting all those annoying people, resulting in the disgusting one-child policy and as a result, have an imbalance between males and females.
Indeed, I agree. Allowing people to go to those parts of the world where they can earn the highest marginal returns of their labour and skill is all of a piece with that insight. To argue otherwise is to sneak in the fixed-wealth fallacy in by the back door.
I suspect that regardless of what I say or the logic, there will be restrictions on immigration, probably by a points system or somesuch. The reason also for limiting immigration, in my view, is to curb the influx from Muslim nations for reasons of cultural assimilation.
I would also, as a pretty practical measure, say that no immigrant can sign on for any form of public welfare or other tax-funded services for at least five years. Equally, I would remove all the current job-destroying taxes like national insurance, as well as various rules on hire and fire. That might also ease some of the current troubles.
Logic has little to do with it. Most anti-immigration people, especially those workers whose livelihoods are affected, have every reason to oppose it. The rest who are ambivalent or even supportive of foreign workers coming in are, as I have said, derided as elitist and uncaring.
The point about population driving up housing prices has already been conclusively proven here in Singapore. So there is some truth in their assertions, that the lower class workers are those hardest hit by foreign immigration, as their rental goes up, food prices goes up, unable to save enough for themselves and support their families, etc.
I’m still thinking of solutions, and I’m very sure stopping immigration is not it. Something else, perhaps negative income taxes, may be the answer.
“A higher population also drives up house prices and population density reduces quality of life.”
“That’s an assertion without clear evidence.”
Okay, I’ll address it, because it’s the heart of my argument.
More people in a country increases demand for land. Therefore prices go up. The Lords report backs me up: net immigration is responsible for house prices rising much faster than wages. This hurts the poor the most, of course. The remark about quality of life: I oppose building on green land. If we don’t increase people, the market won’t need to.
I think immigration is bad because of these two things. They outweigh the benefit of 57 pence per week.
I think immigration can only be justified if it benefits the people who already live here. If I was working without experience, I would have predicted that immigration would benefit us. But the evidence shows that it hasn’t.
So my question to Jonathan is: Your article has attacked arguments against immigration. But why do you support it in the first place? Is it because you thought it would make us richer? Because that hasn’t happened.
Of course, if we limited immigration to skilled workers, we would raise GDP/person more. Less immigration is better than no immigration but also better than the current state of affairs.
I think immigration can only be justified if it benefits the people who already live here.
I really don’t understand this. Why? I can sort of understand why someone from the government might say this, though even then I think it’s wrong. They can at least say they are paid to advocate the interests of only a certain group of people. But why do you as a private citizen say something like this? Can it really be that when you add up the plusses and minusses of your cost benefit analysis you just disregard all those people born outside your own nationality. Why would you do that? Are they not equally human, with an equal valid happiness gain or suffering loss?
But why do you support it in the first place?
I cannot speak for Jonathan but I would say that I think for many libertarian types, the default position is to support liberty. Involving government in the coercion of people is something I support very reluctantly and only when convinced that this measure is either morally correct or greatly beneficial in a broad utilitarian way. I think the burden of proof that a policy is broadly beneficial lies much more with the side that wants to increase coercion. A lack of evidence of benefit for a certain group is certainly not enough. I need to see proof that it is univerally damaging.
You will perhaps see things differently but to me advocating immigration controls around a country is no different from identifying a poor area within a country and putting a border around it and preventing its people from moving freely. Please explain to me how it is different.
Whatever the causes of rising costs of land – either immigration, low interest rates, lack of building, or all three – rising land prices will eventually deter people from entering the UK and encourage existing Britons to sell their now-rising properties and leave for less expensive climes, like Australia or across the English Channel. That is in fact what is happening.
As Simon points out in the comment immediately above this one, the benefits of immigration to those who already live here are not the main reason for my support of it. I am a Briton by the accident of birth; that accident does not confer upon me the right to prevent people, if they freely do so without stealing or robbing, from achieving what happiness and wealth they can themselves. You are talking as if the UK were a private organisation with the right to protect its existing shareholders from having the equity diluted by the issuance of new stock.
In the short run, it may not have boosted UK GDP – although if we had had a more flexible labour market and lower taxes – its benefits would have come through more quickly. But as Simon points out, I support the right to migrate from place to place as part of the right of individuals to pursue their happiness and clearly, for millions, that means getting out of a country and moving to another one. I reject utterly the idea that I, as a Briton, have some sort of right to prevent people from doing that.
I also happen to maintain that immigrants are, by their very nature, motivated people who bring something of value to the place where they go. There are just too many examples to ignore, such as the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Hugenot, and Jewish immigrants who have enriched the places they went to. I am afraid that underneath all too many bleats about immigration is something fairly unpleasant.
“for many libertarian types, the default position is to support liberty.”
I suppose the difference is libertarianism because it benefits you or libertarianism even if it doesn’t because it’s moral. Yeah, drawing an arbitrary ring around the UK is arbitrary. But why not? With most other things, like restricting movement of goods, because that doesn’t benefit us. In this case, preventing unlimited numbers of people crossing our arbitrary border would benefit us.
You make a good case. But I think I’m still libertarian while it benefits me, not just because it’s the moral thing to do.
One last thing:
“I am a big free-trade supporter because growth (per person!) improves everyone’s lives in the long run.” Johnathan: “Indeed, I agree. Allowing people to go to those parts of the world where they can earn the highest marginal returns of their labour and skill is all of a piece with that insight. To argue otherwise is to sneak in the fixed-wealth fallacy in by the back door.”
Is it? Could you explain? I don’t think it is. Indeed, I was arguing that unlimited immigration was bad because it didn’t increase wealth (well, hardly at all. In your article you mention “the benefits of a large population”. But there are diminishing returns. So yeah, current immigration levels do increase GDP/person, but only by 57p/week). Or is it because I was only thinking about UK GDP/person, rather than world?
(Also:
“Even without immigration, the population can rise”
Yeah, but without net immigration it’s predicted that the UK population would be falling by 2020.
We all agree benefits need to be changed. I wouldn’t scrap them. I’d say everyone gets £500 if they get fired, and that should give them enough time to get a new job.
As for other welfare, if you don’t scrap it but do remove the poverty trap, then you have to cap immigration, because otherwise people can just come here and get free money.)
Well, all of those worries by Gabriel, yourself and others about crowding would seem to be unfounded. The growth or fall of population is not in and of itself a good or bad thing, although personally, like the late economist Julian Simon, I think that having lots of people in a country tends to increase the chances of great ideas, great scientists, great entrepreneurs, etc. Sparsely populated places are, well, sparse in every sense of the term.
It is a bit of both. Immigration, particularly if it involves high-skilled, well motivated immigrants, is a net good for GDP (and a darn sight more than 57p); it is also good for the whole stock of human happiness if people can live where they want to live rather than put up with what they have. Of course, the existing population can moan that marginally, their happiness/quality of life has been reduced by immigration, either because they fear foreigners for some reason. Change is upsetting, not just for the older generation. I don’t think, in the end, there is a sort of utilitarian calculus that gives anyone the killer argument in favour or against. What my gut instinct and intellectual conviction is that things work best when people are free to reside where they wish so long as they do not rob or coerce others so to do.
The same argument applies in say, judging the pros and cons of people in rural areas moving to the city and vice versa. I am sure you are familiar with all the complaints one hears of rural dwellers about “townies” “invading” “their” countryside, etc.
On welfare, we are in agreement. It does complicate things somewhat.
libertarianism because it benefits you or libertarianism even if it doesn’t because it’s moral… I’m still libertarian while it benefits me, not just because it’s the moral thing to do.
Wow! Can I really have understood you correctly? Certainly it makes your position perfectly logical, if I have. My apologies if I have misunderstood but I admire your honesty if I have not. Let me get it straight. You see open immigration as against your own interests so you oppose it, is that right? Personally, of course, actually I don’t think it is against your interest but that would become a very difficult argument… Still, are you really saying that you support restricting immigration because you see it as in your own interests, even though you admit that it has a global cost? Is it really that you would apply the power of the state to suffer others, probably less fortunate than yourself just for your own benefit? If that is the case, there’s not that much I can say in reply, except that it seems unbelievably selfish. Also I don’t think you can really call it libertarianism to when it’s “libertarianism because it benefits you.” But I’m still shocked. Surely I have misunderstood you?…
As for other welfare, if you don’t scrap it but do remove the poverty trap, then you have to cap immigration, because otherwise people can just come here and get free money.
I have mentioned this above but it is also possible to allow free immigration and combine this with a limited access to welfare. Such a system is in place in Australia, for example.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I didn’t mean my own interest, I meant the interest of people in this country. Especially the poor.
Yes, it is a bit arbitrary to want to benefit the poor of one particular country and ignore the rest. But can you imagine a politician standing up and saying: we’re going to do this, which is bad for everyone in the country, but hey, it’s good for Africa!
No one seems to want to admit the conclusion of the Lords report: The current UK immigration system hardly benefits anyone in the UK. It only benefits the richest, and the immigrants themselves. Normally I am in favour of things that benefit the rich but only because I think they benefit the poor (of this country) in the long run. Unlimited immigration doesn’t.
Please admit this, rather than asserting “actually I don’t think it is against your interest”, “my gut instinct and intellectual conviction”, or adding caveats which I agree to: only “if it involves high-skilled, well motivated immigrants”.
“Also I don’t think you can really call it libertarianism to when it’s ‘libertarianism because it benefits you.'” (Read “you” as “this country”.)
I suppose libertarianism (never coercing others) is an all or nothing thing. If you pick and choose when to apply it, then agreed, it’s not libertarianism. But I can still choose to apply the methods most of the time and not claim to be a libertarian: I can say, for one thing I’m doing what a libertarian would do, but for another I won’t because I think it’s a bad idea. Of those who do apply libertarianism all the time (libertarians) there are those who do it because they think it’s moral, and those who think it will always increase the sum of human happiness. You seem to be saying we should be libertarianism in any case because coercion is immoral, but then you don’t want to admit that sometimes lack of coercion will not lead to the greatest good.
(“Yeah, but without net immigration it’s predicted that the UK population would be falling by 2020.”
“Well, all of those worries by Gabriel, yourself and others about crowding would seem to be unfounded.”
Only without net immigration.
“Sparsely populated places are, well, sparse in every sense of the term.”
But we’re not currently sparse. More population has severely diminishing returns (as we have seen: 57p/week).
I don’t think immigration should be stopped completely; I think it should be reduced to the same amount per year as emigration.)
You have a decent point: there is disagreement, for instance, on the immigration issue not so much because of the economics, as to the cultural issues (like allowing lots of people to enter a country who, for whatever reason, may wish to utterly change the laws of said). Libertarians also disagree on the precise boundaries of the state, of how much, if any, powers it should have. We disagree on things like abortion, the death penalty, the the treatment of children, to name just a few.
I think, however, that if anyone is going to argue for limiting the freedoms of others to migrate, for example, on the grounds that their actions will prove irksome to others by raising house prices or competing for jobs, they should at the least realise that there is almost no action on this earth that cannot harm or annoy someone else or benefit someone else. But the distinctive characteristic of libertarianism, in the general sense, is that we don’t think that constitutes a reason to ban such activity. We err on the side of “live and let live”.
I accept it does not benefit everyone. That would be an extraordinary claim to make anyway. I think it benefits most people, not least the immigrants themselves. As I accept, in the short run, some people’s wages may be squeezed by a sudden, rapid influx, but in a free and flexible economy, wages will grow overall. To deny that is to deny, for example, the example of the history of the United States.
Personally, I’ll wrap this up by stating that I find it rather irkesome to have to defend the right of people to migrate on the grounds that it will lower the living standards of people or somehow take something from them to which they feel entitled. That is the language of socialism, of the fixed-wealth mindset.
Many elephants in the middle of the room that people are trying (with varying degrees of success) to work around.
One, there is a big BIG difference between immigration with assimilation*1 and colonization. The problem with Spanish language only enclaves in the US is that they are colonies. There have been non-English speaking colonies before*2 but they have never been a large enough fraction of the population to give rise to a parallel national culture, complete with package labeling, nationwide TV and radio networks and large swathes of the nation where most larger businesses (like box stores) keep staff on hand to speak to them in their own language.
My impression is that Asian Muslims are doing something similar in the UK, but I do not know enough to defend that assertion. I also don’t think they are as big of a fraction of the population. Asians are ~4% of the UK population, Spanish speakers are ~10% of the US population.
Two, redistribution. We simply do not have an effective way to separate out those who come here to work and those who come here to collect benefits.
I also think some of the ‘libertarian’ arguments here against immigration would run afoul of ‘gated’ communities. It is certainly the right of property owners to cooperatively reject trespassers according to the rules established by them as owners of the gated community. I have no problem with the residents of a piece of property behaving as a gated community even on a scale we normally associate with nation/states. The serious ethical problems are all internal ones revolving around how the members make and enforce rules on each other. Not whether gated communities locking out nonmembers is ‘moral’.
I don’t see either side of this debate having clear moral high ground. Therefore, I think decisions should be taken on tactical merits. Whatever furthers the cause of personal liberty is preferred, whatever sets it back is to be avoided. There is most definitely a continuing support for welfare-collecting immigration by the collectivist side of the conflict. I presume they see a tactical advantage to bringing these voters into the country.
*1 Assimilation is a two way street. In the US we have absorbed something from every new wave of immigrants. Good thing, too. Can you imagine if we were still eating a 17th English diet? Not even today’s English could stand that.
*2 A famous example is Lawrence Welk. In many ways he is an example of ‘America’. He was born in a German language enclave in South Dakota and didn’t learn English until he was 21.
Oops. ” ‘libertarian’ arguments here against immigration” should read ” ”libertarian’ arguments here against restricting immigration”.
Yes, it is a bit arbitrary to want to benefit the poor of one particular country and ignore the rest. But can you imagine a politician standing up and saying: we’re going to do this, which is bad for everyone in the country, but hey, it’s good for Africa!
Thank you for expanding on your point but I still don’t understand. Absolutely I cannot imagine a politician doing this. As I said, they have strong incentives not to! They are given funds and power by a restricted set of people and, of course, cater to them. What I don’t understand is why you are saying it. Why do you value the welfare of your fellow citizens over the rest of the world’s? (Unless you are a politician of course!) This is the point I’m not yet following you on. I think that it would be very hard to argue the case with you only considering the interests of the UK. Given time and space I would try, but it would be long and hard. However, it’s much easier to see that it is a global loss to restrict immigration and this is for me the most important point. If UK citizens are somehow really fundamentally more important than others then I just don’t understand why that is. I would really like to understand your thoughts on this.
I was going to leave Johnathan to have the last word, but since I’m replying to subsequent comments I’ll repudiate a couple of things. I do not at all have “the fixed-wealth mindset”: I agree utterly with this: “if markets are as massively productive as we libertarians believe and compounding returns to growth in the long term are taken into account, you could probably justify no more than very basic safety nets, for fear of distorting the economy and dramatically lowering everyone’s goods in the future.”
I also note that Johnathan still won’t admit that immigration has not so far benefited anyone other than a few business owners and the immigrants themselves. It doesn’t benefit the “natives”, at least not according to the evidence. And I did not notice any arguments to back up the assertion that it will.
Summary of my position:
“We err on the side of ‘live and let live’.” Me too: my sympathies lie mostly with libertarianism. I’m a Gabbian “libertarian and conservative” / Hitchens/Heffer cultural conservative, usually thinking the best way to conserve culture is for the government to leave people alone.
But in the case of immigration to the UK, the cost/benefit analysis is quite simple. It doesn’t benefit people who live here. It just doesn’t (well, hardly at all). The evidence is on my side. 57p per person per week, on average.
But the costs: “change is upsetting”; cultural issues; immigrants who hate freedom; the pace of immigration causing ghettoisation rather than integration. Rather like Enoch Powell, I’m not a racist but note that other people are, and lots of problems could have been avoided just by restricting immigration. Space: even unlimited economic growth can’t replace it.
Simon:
“I think that it would be very hard to argue the case with you only considering the interests of the UK. Given time and space I would try, but it would be long and hard.” I think it would be impossible, but you’re welcome to try to argue that net immigration does benefit more than a few people in the UK.
As for your query: “If UK citizens are somehow really fundamentally more important than others then I just don’t understand why that is. I would really like to understand your thoughts on this.”
I can’t justify it.
UK citizens aren’t morally special. But hey, so what? I’m fairly lighthearted about all this.
Consider: I totally agree with this: “no one chooses his or her country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it” (though I might be proud of qualities of a country)). But it doesn’t really hurt, and may do some good. So hey, let’s be patriotic.
Similarly, political borders are arbitrary lines on a map. Why shouldn’t someone in one country be allowed to trade just the same with a foreigner as they do with a countryman? Of course they should. But free trade benefits both countries. It might hurt a few people, but they can get new jobs. However, if free trade actually didn’t make countries any richer, or even made everyone poorer in the long run except the individual traders, then I’d probably say ban it.
But while borders might be irrelevant as far as free trade is concerned, I am opposed to political union with other European countries. Even if the EU wasn’t horribly corrupt and completely undemocratic and totalitarian, I’d still oppose integration if it didn’t have any benefits. One might say, if borders are arbitrary, and European political union was no better and no worse than not, surely they are no better than one another?
I’d say, our existing border is good enough. Hey, let’s keep it.
To cut a long story short, I can’t justify it, but don’t really mind and don’t think it’s that terrible.
((Humour: Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic (digested)
“I see now that the first edition of this work was in every sense a young man’s book. It has since been pointed out to me that its main thesis was neither logically provable nor empirically verifiable and therefore by its own definition nonsense. However, I still think it is substantially correct, which just goes to show how age makes you lose interest in rigorously justifying yourself.”)
I suspect he will not admit is because it ain’t true. I am a ‘native’ and I benefit massively from being able to get my plumbing done without taking out a mortgage. Likewise I have had (excellent) work done on my house by Eastern European builders that I would not have even contemplated until the recent influx.
Then you are not looking very hard. And by the way, Sean Gabb’s wife is Slovak, so I would say he has benefited from immigration too 🙂
I endorse Perry’s own response to that same line; I’d also add that it has benefited a lot more than a “few business owners”, which seems absurdly dismissive. Ah, those evil cheap labourers robbing honest, hardworking Brits of their livelihood! The only part of the domestic population that could plausibly claim to have been “harmed” by a sudden influx are non-skilled poor. And even then, that point operates on the short run.
some problems could have been limited. I don’t quite see how getting angry about Eastern European immigrants, many of whom put the domestic workforce to shame, has much of a racial aspect to it, if at all. That’s a red herring.
You seem to be a fan of the lump of labour fallacy, however hard you deny it. I can see no argument that you have put against immigration that could not apply to a rise in the population in general. (I’d be interested to know if this issue was put to the House of Lords committee). In which case, as I have said before, you need to confront the implications of this, such as argue for strict population controls and the like.
I see also no argument you have made to convincingly argue as to why, given that national borders are the results of accident/conquest, etc, what is so special about them that one group of people are entitled to ban others from moving to where they want, so long as no violence/fraud etc is used. Your argument could be used, for instance, to prevent me from moving from London to Newcastle or Birmingham, on the grounds that I am “taking” jobs from the locals. It is bullshit. for someone who claims to be sympathetic to the liberal point of view, you have a decidedly odd set of intellectual blindspots.
I can’t justify it.
Well, thank you for coming back with explanations. I must admit I’m disappointed though that in the end you views seem to be unsusceptable to logic. If we cannot apply logic then, no we can say nothing.
But hey, so what?
I think I have to take issue with you here. This is a very important issue. To my mind it is the most important issue in all of politics. I believe opening borders would be the most effective means of reducing global poverty. It’s not something I can be easily lighthearted about.
Hi everyone, sorry for the length of this, thanks for this very interesting and challenging argument, and thanks for persevering with me. I still think you’re wrong, and am more sure after writing this comment. However, I’ve dealt with creationists etc before, so it was a jolt to be accused of “intellectual blindspots” and that my “views seem to be unsusceptable to logic”.
It’s only my consideration of UK residents as a group distinct from the rest of the world which is apparently “unsusceptable to logic”. Everything else I could be convinced of by arguments which I don’t find problems with.
Actually, even with the UK/world distinction, I could be persuaded. I accept that there is no logical distinction.
I’m similar with vegetarianism. I am convinced by argument that there is no logical distinction between animals and humans relevant to whether we should eat them. Yet I still eat meat, and it doesn’t bother me. The problem you have is that I am convinced by an argument but still don’t alter my behaviour.
Arguments:
First, remember that I am not arguing for zero immigration. I am arguing for zero net immigration. There would still be immigration of 400000 / year. How do we choose which 400000 out of the 600000 who want to? Skills. Australian points system.
We need 400,000 (or maybe less) to replace the brain drain from emigration. If we had no immigration, GDP/person would go down. But the net immigration doesn’t increase GDP/person. I have said that reducing immigration would improve its effects. So stop net immigration and then wait for the population to decline slowly, naturally. “I can see no argument that you have put against immigration that could not apply to a rise in the population in general.” Yes, once you have a certain population, more people have diminishing returns, whether from birth or immigration. But I don’t need to contemplate coercion like population control, because without net immigration the population will reduce anyway – we’re developed enough to have fewer kids. I don’t have to worry about population rising from births, so I’ll worry about population from immigration. I don’t know why you brought up lump of labour when you raised this, I don’t see how it’s relevant.
(Actually, one reason for treating the UK border differently for the London/Newcastle border is that we have one government in the UK. If countries know they can export excess population, they have less incentive to have fewer kids. Tragedy of the commons?: there’s no point us having fewer kids if we don’t get the benefit because other countries take up the slack…)
Also, I haven’t denied committing the lump of labour fallacy as you claim, because I haven’t been accused of it before. Before I was accused of committing the fixed wealth fallacy and others. Now that I am accused of it, I note in defence that I said
So I deny it. I have never said that there is a fixed number of jobs. Obviously there isn’t. Johnathan, it seems to me you mention various fallacies very carelessly without thinking very hard about whether they are actually being committed. Just if it sounds like they are, “the language of socialism, the fixed wealth mindset” (which are of course different things, though connected).
The Enoch remark was just one of a list of cultural problems with mass immigration.
“I suspect he will not admit is because it ain’t true. I am a ‘native’ and I benefit massively from being able to get my plumbing done without taking out a mortgage. Likewise I have had (excellent) work done on my house by Eastern European builders that I would not have even contemplated until the recent influx.”
But the Lords Report says the average wealth hasn’t gone up. Yes, you might have benefited, but on average we haven’t. The Lords report does take into account inflation, though admittedly measures of inflation might not have fully take into account the deflation caused by cheap building work.
In any case, who’s to say that plumbers wouldn’t be skilled enough to fall into the most skilled 400,000 that do make us better off?
“Ah, those evil cheap labourers robbing honest, hardworking Brits of their livelihood!” There you go again, accusing me of the lump of labour fallacy. I don’t think immigrants steal jobs. I haven’t ever said that immigrants make us on average poorer, even if they make some people poorer (inevitably). I say they’ve hardly made us richer. I just keep pointing out what you seem to have missed not only in your comments, but in your original article: immigration hasn’t harmed us on average, but it has only benefited us by 57p/week each on average, taking inflation into account. This is what I think you “refuse to admit”. You like to point to theoretical reasons why immigration will benefit us. But these don’t tell us by how much it will benefit us. Your theory is correct. It has benefited us. By 57p/week each. I don’t think that’s worth paying for with cultural problems.
“I believe opening borders would be the most effective means of reducing global poverty.”
Opening borders to trade will be the most effective means of reducing global poverty. Opening them to people will have a miniscule effect.
Immigration benefits the immigrants. It does increase World GDP/capita, but this only benefits the home country if the money is sent home. Admittedly this is a lot more money than aid money, and the capital helps, but it’s still small in the long run. Global poverty will be reduced mainly by poor economies growing. The main thing we can do is trade.
It’s only my consideration of UK residents as a group distinct from the rest of the world which is apparently “unsusceptable to logic… I accept that there is no logical distinction.
You say “only” as if this is a small problem but until you address this issue, the rest of what you have to say is not even relevant to the discussion. Unless you can explain why considering the effect on only UK citizens is correct, arguing the case on that basis is meaningless.
Then arguing for X or Y with you is a bit of a waste of time, frankly. You have pretty much confessed to being a mule!
Glad you noticed.
Oh please. The general thrust of your comments has been to play up the negative effects of immigration and to pour scorn on the arguments that immigration adds something of value to a nation that welcomes them.
I think the House of Lords calculation is of the absurdly, and suspiciously precise sort that I cannot take it seriously. Anyway, even if that figure were credible, how do you measure a hard figure against something vague like “cultural problems”; it is like comparing apples versus oranges.
You did not answer my point that there is no obvious argument against immigration that could not apply to a rise in the general population level. I sometimes think that in the end, the arguments flush out those who just want to keep things the way they are used to, which includes resistance to foreigners, outsiders or whatever.
The idea that people should remain close to where they were born is frankly nothing more than habitual prejudice. Sometimes it is dressed up in the superficially persuasive language of economics, sometimes in cultural garb.
“I think the House of Lords calculation is of the absurdly, and suspiciously precise sort that I cannot take it seriously.”
You haven’t even looked into the report. Actually it was me who got 57p/week/person. I did this by dividing their figure (£30/year/person) by 52. They got the figure by dividing the estimate of the size of the economy now with the population size now, and comparing it with what they estimate the size of the economy would be without immigration (£6 billion less) divided by population without immigration. (It appears this is not net immigration, which makes my argument even stronger.)
You say 57p is suspiciously precise. How do we know it isn’t 56p or 58p? Because a penny would be significant overall. Even an extra billion or two would be something like 80p/week/person. Whatever it is, it’s below a quid.
If you lose the argument, deny the other person’s facts?
Oh great. So a couple of variables move slightly, and you are out by a mile due to a simple rounding error or sampling difference. That is supposed to convince me that 57p is accurate or even close, or even meaningful?
I am sorry but this whole debate is getting farcial. It is as pointless as trying to figure out the cost of providing pensions in 30 years time by extrapolating from tiny adjustments in interest rates, GDP and expected lifespans.
Anyway, take a look at my new posting on this issue.