We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Immigrants are incoming assets … in a global economy, their labour is vital both to tackle severe skills shortages and to fill long-term vacancies. Immigrants are not taking jobs that British workers could fill, but jobs which British workers are unable or unwilling to do … the idea that immigration is an intolerable burden on the taxpayer and the welfare state is baloney. Immigrants give far more than they take. It is estimated that they make a net contribution to the economy of £2.5bn …
– House of Commons Speaker John Bercow in an article in the Independent in 2005, quoted by Henry Oliver today in Adam Smith Institute’s Pin Factory Blog.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I’m all for the free movement of labour but it doesn’t work in a welfare state. In Canada the Fraser Institute recently completed the first detailed cost-benefit analysis of immigration and found it costs a net $23 billion a year.
Now if Canada didn’t have national health care and made immigration solely dependent on employment rather than family connections and an ineffective points system, it would be a lot different.
But it’s not and it’s expensive.
Furthermore, many of the immigrants in question come from countries with even weaker traditions of and less respect for individual liberties and free-markets then our own. This would be fine if the majority came here precisely because of this tradition, but in practice more strengthen and vote for statist politicians like those from home out of habit and familiarity. Then there’s damage caused by the ethnic lobbies and support for interventionist foreign policies designed to help the ‘mother country,’ despite the cost to their new country’s treasury and interests.
John Bercow said:
When the welfare state provides for people rather than them providing for themselves some will see it as rational to work that system.
The state education system producing unemployable youths doesn’t help either.
Immigrant workers and welfare tourists are a symptom of an intolerable burden not a cause – the causes are a welfare state that is out of proportion to the population and economy and Government policies that send the wrong signals to the population.
Imo when politicians sing the praises of immigration it is simply a cheap political trick to close down discussion of the underlying causes of that immigration. They are using foreigners as human shields. The UK provides opportunities beyond that of many poorer, less developed nations. Some of it is for historical reasons, some of it is through being a relatively liberal economy, but some of it *is* because the state has squatted on the economy to such a great extent that it employs many people and pays more besides them to not work.
That there are plenty of jobs for people who want to work, and at the same time plenty of people who don’t work and get paid to not work, is a sign that Government policy is wrong.
‘Welfare reform!’ is the cry we often hear yet they never get round to it. All too often they fall at the first hurdle – that there are people and families today that would be far worse off if a more strict, simpler and less distorting welfare system was introduced. They should never have been able to get into those circumstances in the first place but they must be accommodated now. So you end up with a slight shaving here, a minor tweak there and no real change to the cost or distortions. They never quite grasp (possibly intentionally) that while those distortions are set fairly solid in existing claimants *they don’t need to keep allowing those distortions to continue being created*.
Good on John Bercow for saying this. I don’t like the guy but this is spot on. If open immigration can’t co-exist with a welfare state then all the more reason to open the borders.
Immigrants are never representative of where they come from because they are high initiative people.
And new immigrants rarely vote for anyone, let alone statist politicians.
“Immigrants are not taking jobs that British workers could fill, but jobs which British workers are unable or unwilling to do”
Unable or unwilling to do *for such low wages*.
Because that is what some jobs are worth if they are to make economic sense. And keeping some jobs priced artificially high means that prices elsewhere get forced up to pay for it or, more usually, the jobs simply disappear and alternatives to that job are found (such as automation).
Is it ‘what some jobs are worth if they are to make economic sense’? I am doubtful.
In the absence of immigrants doing low-paid work there would be a market-clearing price for hotel chambermaids, higher than it is now.
If the market price for hotel roooms were not to be adjusted then rates of pay for higher graded hotel employees would adjust.
I see nothing wrong with that.
Immigration of unskilled workers is causing problems in the developed world.
It seems to me that there are 3 major proponents of it:
hard-core libertarians
politicians wanting to create a client base
employers wanting cheap labour
and they all fail to count the social cost.
I’m sorry but I completely fail to understand why an opinion from a man who not only has a deserved reputation for being a weapons grade twat but also an unenviable record of having his snout firmly submerged in the public trough & a wife who combines an obsession with personal publicity & wealth with an avowed delight for more ‘equality’ for everyone else, merits a ‘Quote of the Day’.
Unless you’re suggesting that the entire substance of the quote is discredited by its author.
He could be wrong.
Paying for the products done by the immigrants plus the welfare of the unemployed might be more costly than a bigger salary.
“Because that is what some jobs are worth if they are to make economic sense. And keeping some jobs priced artificially high means that prices elsewhere get forced up to pay for it or, more usually, the jobs simply disappear and alternatives to that job are found (such as automation).”
Economic sense depends on market and that depends on what importance the thing.
Cleaning a bathroom has to be done no matter what. In a world where everyone have a college degree someone that is willing to clean bathrooms could/should have a premium pay.
Of course the aristocratic mindset of socialists and conservatives works as opposition to free market value.
The culture destroys any attempt of the free market to hike the price the work of menial jobs .
If there is lack of cleaners 1:3 the firm still can’t hike the cleaners pay over the office pay even if there are 3:1 for office work. The culture trumps the market.
The immigrant appears as a partly “free lunch” for the manager. It falsifies the market price.
Of course when the world will be as whole free market which means comparable salaries everywhere this free ride will end.
Btw i am against widespread immigration due to the cultural problems it brings.
The sooner there is a world market the faster this issue will disappears.
Even if it is true that they make a “net benefit to the economy of 2.5bn” that is only £44 per person in the UK
Who benefits from this?
Certainly not the workers who are already here, all we see are lower wages, higher rents, a more crowded country, more competition for access to public services and the feeling of being a foreigner in one’s own land.
lucklucky, please correct me if I’m wrong, but you appear to be making a circular argument: you are opposing free [labor] market (i.e. labor immigration) for cultural reasons, while at the same time admitting that said cultural reasons will be made obsolete by free [labor] market?
Conversely, I think that cultural differences of immigrants can be easily made immaterial by simultaneously abandoning the welfare state and returning to strict enforcement of laws that protect life and property.
Yes, which means either less hotel chambermaids or more expensive hotel rooms
Why is ‘social cost’ only used when people want higher labour costs? What about the ‘social cost’ to the person who can no longer afford that hotel room because prices have gone up due to having to hire locals who refuse to work for what an immigrant will? Or to those whose hotel room is less clean because there are less chambermaids hired in order to keep prices affordable to customers?
Tell that to my resident teenager…
“If open immigration can’t co-exist with a welfare state then all the more reason to open the borders.”
We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
Our government spends almost £2.5 billion every day. It is a rounding error in their accounts. If that is really the “benefit” of immigration, it is hardly worth the social unrest and ghettoisation of large parts of our cities. Anyway, Bercow is a weapons grade twat. Anything he says must automatically be presumed to be bollocks until proved otherwise.
What Mr. Bercow says is correct as far as it goes.
He omits to mention that British workers are unwilling to do the jobs that immigrants do precisely because benefits offer them a better option.
All well and good as long as we can afford to pay immigrants to do the work and at the same time pay Britons for doing nothing- I have a feeling that time is passing.
Further, the reason Britons are unable to do the jobs that immigrants do is mostly that Britons have- again because of benefits- little incentive to learn. After all most immigrants are not in high status or high paid positions
There is currently an experiment to see if virtually unrestricted immigration can co-exist with a minimal welfare state. That experiment is called Singapore.
Sad to say, the returns so far have been quite negative for the majority of citizens and very positive for the elites. Employers shaft the natives for cheap imported labour. Why are immigrants often cheaper? Because when they have earned enough, they can take their earnings home and enjoy lower costs of living in their home countries, advantages natives do not have.
This leads to enhanced profits for employers, and less job opportunities for natives. Sure, things are cheaper too, but to a significant fraction of the population (the bottom 20%), it doesn’t matter if things are cheaper because you still don’t have a job to earn money to afford ANYTHING.
Not everybody is cut out to be a member of the intelligentsia. There are those whose aptitudes and potential allow them to be municipal workers (for example) at most. These are the people whose livelihoods are destroyed by waves of cheap foreign labour.
I suppose one could argue that these people could try moving to other countries with lower costs of living and try competing there, or go to rich countries like the UK and do unto them what is being done unto Singapore.
But then again, most other countries and societies aren’t exactly advocates of open borders and unrestricted immigration either. And if I remember correctly, there was some report some time back about Labour’s intentional importation of huge numbers of foreigners. I suppose they’re good for Britain’s economy too, although the backlash suggests that most native Britons are peeved about it. But hey, it’s cheap labour! They do things that Britons won’t do, right?
As a result of this huge influx of cheap labour in Singapore, the difference in wealth has never been greater. Our gini coeff is astoundingly bad – this will have dire consequences in a multi-racial society like ours where the various ethnic groups have clearly different levels of aptitude. The elites are prospering like never before, but the bottom rungs of society are suffering and that seething frustration is slowly turning into anger.
Perhaps libertarians might not think it as a big issue, but politically, there will be repercussions. Not to mention all that overcrowding and subsequent breakdown in the social fabric.
It’s possible to just tell people to suck it up and move out if they think the place is so bad, but the fact remains there’re not a lot of places which will accept them, especially for the lower classes.
The choice is slowly becoming starker by the day. We can all be a bit poorer and a bit more equal with a more intact social fabric and ‘contract’ with highly restricted immigration in our respective countries, or we can enrich the elites and say to heck to any social contract and the notion of nation-states with their internal values and culture.
How important is the notion of a country? If it is not important, as the anarcho-capitalists think, then it’s certainly not a big deal. We could turn Singapore, nay, every country into a giant hotel – come and stay for a few years, earn your money, then scoot off. No loyalty requirements, certainly no need for an extensive defence force – who would be stupid enough to defend a hotel unless they’re willing to pay big bucks? And what’s to stop the hired guns from running off at the first sign of real trouble?
I suspect that the real reason why there has never been an anarcho-capitalist society in history is because they were all wiped up by collectivist neighbours.
In the same vein, I’m not sure if we go down the route of economic and demographic liberalism, Hotel Singapore can last for long before some bigger neighbour (hello Malaysia and Indonesia!) decides it’s ripe for the picking.
No Alisa what i meant is that free trade will more or less level the pay in all countries.
We can see the wages in China doubling in less than 10 years.
With that evolution most people will not see great advantages to move or if they move they don’t make a big hit downsizing the wages.
I mean the problems that we can see by very different cultures like Islamism. If the culture is different then the implication is more regulation, more laws and more bureaucracy since there is not a shared culture with unwritten behavior rules.
That is one of the hidden costs of widespread immigration.
That is also one of the reasons that US is increasingly a bureaucratic nightmare: no shared culture.
free trade will more or less level the pay in all countries
No it won’t; the EU has free trade and free movement of people, and Greece and friends are nowhere near as rich as Bavaria, for example.
Immigrants to the rich North instantly benefit from the physical and social infrastructure (rule of law etc) that is already in existence.
It is I feel, somewhat immoral to deny others access to the capital that we have in such abundance. It has been proposed (by Gary Becker, in the case of the US; although I don’t think the idea is new) that visas could be auctioned off. This seems like a pretty good idea to me. Certainly the treasuries of the West could do with the cash.
Hardly. The last thing anyone who likes the idea of liberty should want to see just now is Western governments with full treasuries, unless they got them not by finding new ways to raise money but rather by spending vastly less of other people’s money 😛
Immigration: Privatizing profit and socializing cost.
Then stop supporting the idea of a welfare state.
@James,
Even in the absence of a welfare state, costs can still be socialized, especially if they are externalities.
The trains in my country just broke down 3 times in a week, an unprecedented level of failure.
Why did they break down?
Ans: The power couplings/tracks are jarred from their previously secure positions by the increased frequency of the trains.
Why did the frequency of the trains need to increase? Ans: Because they needed to increase the carrying capacity to accommodate the increased population.
Who pays for this increase in failure rate, and the transport fees that ensue as a result of the more intensive checks to ensure the system runs smoothly? Ans: The passengers, who are mostly ordinary folks who are utterly dependent on the train network for their travel needs.
See, James, no need for a welfare state to socialise costs.
I also point out this comment on Samizdata a few months ago:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2011/07/random_fact_for.html#239675
Privatized profit and socialised costs – couldn’t put it better myself. The libertarians may need to resolve this immigration issue once and for all – how far can economic liberalism stretch before the costs are too great?
MP doesn’t deviate from Political Elites proscribed position on mass immigration. What a surprise.
Sorry, TWG, while it may indeed be true that there is “no need for a welfare state to socialise costs”, your train illustration fails to demonstrate it. If there are more passengers necessitating more frequent trains, there is also more revenue to cover the maintenance/repair costs because those extra passengers are all paying fares. If preventative maintenance isn’t being done sufficiently often that’s not due to lack of revenue to pay for it but rather to poor management.
Not really, Laird, you are assuming that the relationship between train frequency, infrastructure deterioration and thus maintenance costs is linear. Many relationships in nature are exponential.
There is another issue. Immigration hides the education bubble. The “educated” in welfare stay quiet because they get what they have free. If they had to work to get it there will be much more criticism towards education.
George-
What precludes the railway from adjusting its fares to recover its costs, when the costs change?
@Sunfish,
Nothing precludes the railway from adjusting its fares. It needs the fare increase to cover the maintenance costs. And in doing so, ‘socialises’ the cost of immigration.
The benefits from cheaper goods and services due to immigrants, could well be outweighed by the increase in cost of other services stressed by the increase in population. Especially if the cost factors are, as George suggested, exponentially related.
Wobbly, correct me if I’m wrong, but you are making what is basically a Malthusian argument, as I see no difference if it was applied to high birth/low death rates in the native population, instead of immigration.
I don’t accept George’s argument that train maintenance costs increase exponentially. The rate at which something wears out is a direct function of the rate of use. Linear.
Well maybe. Then again, I think one might as well apply the same sort of calculations to any rise in populations, either through migrations or through an increase in the birth rate. Given the problems of those countries with declining birthrates and the associated problems for pension funds, we should be wary of pandering to variations of Malthusianism.
And if more people are using railways and other infrastructure, then that is also more people to produce stuff and services, so the benefits and costs balance out.
The late Julian Simon pointed out that having more people around is generally better in terms of growth, ideas and innovation. The logical outcome of some of the sort of anti-migrant views out there seems to be support for chaining people to their homes, like serfs, or insisting on a draconian anti-birth policy on the vile Chinese model, or some combination of the two.
I sometimes think that certain opponents of immigration just don’t like their fellow human beings all that much.
Alisa, have you thought about paying your teenager to clean up around the house? As libertarians, we believe in fair exchange, after all.
And as for the general principle, I recently read a good book about trends, by Harry Dent, if my memory is more reliable than a politician’s promise. One of his ideas is that innovative countries will be the leaders of the world, and that increasing internal numbers (more babies, or immigration, etc.) forces change in a nation, and thus generates an innovative culture. An idea worth thinking about- didn’t Japanese demographics and innovativeness go down at the same time?
That depends on the type of people, surely? I can well believe that a million new Chinese immigrants would benefit the British economy. A million Somali immigrants? Not so sure about that. If that means I’m one of those people “who just doesn’t like their fellow human beings all that much” then I guess I’m a hater.
One can sympathise and admire the individual Somali immigrant one meets, while at the same time recognising that if millions (or even just thousands) followed, the cultural, political and economic consequences would be bad.
TWG:
I’m lost. How is it “socializing” costs for the railway to recover its own costs of operation from its own passengers?