An interesting observation – politicalbetting.com

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

That's just not true though, a big chuck are students who go to shit "unis" and do shit jobs for the 3 or 4 years they are here for before going home. We don't need them and we also don't need those "universities" that are glorified visa agents. If we need more care workers then we have millions of people on benefits in the country that can do those jobs with training and withdrawal of benefits as punishment for not doing the work. We can increase the number of training roles for nurses and doctors and tell the medical unions to get fucked if they object.

We have decided as a nation to be happy that some people just refuse to work and sit on various benefits then import low wage workers to take their place in the economy. That has a cost and it's time to unwind that.

I'd also be surprised if there was a substantial difference between tax contributions per worker from low wage EU migrants and low wage non-EU migrants. The difference is that non-EU migrants were stupidly given the right to bring dependents by Boris which meant 100k workers meant gross migration of 500k people while EU workers were probably more like 100k workers for 150k migrants in total because most came alone with the eventual intention of going back to their home country or if they were young then making a life here.

Boris absolutely fucked it, there is no doubt. I think if immigration had been 150k rather than 500k per 100k workers we would probably have had significantly better per capita and overall growth.

pigeon said:

MJW said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d

Hope the elderly don't like their state pensions then, because we'll not be able to pay them.

There's sadly a lot of wilful delusion being expressed on here about the consequences of adopting a cliff-edge approach to cutting immigration. You can't cut off the supply of key workers and then breezily assert that everything will come right in a decade. It might do, but the amount of suffering that would occur during that period would be immense. Not so much a case of ripping off the patient's plaster as cutting off their legs. Letting mass immigration drag on indefinitely is a terrible idea but so is abruptly hauling up the drawbridge. These problems need to be addressed properly. That takes time.

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

That's just not true though, a big chuck are students who go to shit "unis" and do shit jobs for the 3 or 4 years they are here for before going home. We don't need them and we also don't need those "universities" that are glorified visa agents. If we need more care workers then we have millions of people on benefits in the country that can do those jobs with training and withdrawal of benefits as punishment for not doing the work. We can increase the number of training roles for nurses and doctors and tell the medical unions to get fucked if they object.

We have decided as a nation to be happy that some people just refuse to work and sit on various benefits then import low wage workers to take their place in the economy. That has a cost and it's time to unwind that.

I'd also be surprised if there was a substantial difference between tax contributions per worker from low wage EU migrants and low wage non-EU migrants. The difference is that non-EU migrants were stupidly given the right to bring dependents by Boris which meant 100k workers meant gross migration of 500k people while EU workers were probably more like 100k workers for 150k migrants in total because most came alone with the eventual intention of going back to their home country or if they were young then making a life here.

Boris absolutely fucked it, there is no doubt. I think if immigration had been 150k rather than 500k per 100k workers we would probably have had significantly better per capita and overall growth.

Which universities would you close down? How would you manage the adverse impact on the towns and cities in which they are situated?

Yes, we can force people into work and then find out they can't or won't do it. What then?

The thing about low paid EU workers is that they came as part of a larger package which, overall, made a positive net contribution. They were also much more likely to come alone and to go home again.

The biggest welfare cost we have, by far, is the elderly - and the vast majority of them were born here.

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Incidentally, this is now openly talked about at dinner parties with no one worried about 'seeming racist'

Finally!

Is this the point in Tomorrow belongs to me when the grumpy middle classes get up and start joining in?

https://youtu.be/SDuHXTG3uyY

I hope you appreciate my new avatar. It's a silent character who appears on screen for only 7 seconds, but expresses what I feel.

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

No, that's not my argument.

They're here because Boris Johnson changed the policy to encourage them to come, similar to Justin Trudeau in Canda.

The current Labour Prime Minister has described it as an "open borders experiment". You on the other hand appear to be arguing in support of Johnson and against Starmer by claiming that "the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going".

williamglenn said:

pigeon said:

Malmesbury said:

pigeon said:

MJW said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d

Hope the elderly don't like their state pensions then, because we'll not be able to pay them.

There's sadly a lot of wilful delusion being expressed on here about the consequences of adopting a cliff-edge approach to cutting immigration. You can't cut off the supply of key workers and then breezily assert that everything will come right in a decade. It might do, but the amount of suffering that would occur during that period would be immense. Not so much a case of ripping off the patient's plaster as cutting off their legs. Letting mass immigration drag on indefinitely is a terrible idea but so is abruptly hauling up the drawbridge. These problems need to be addressed properly. That takes time.

The real problem is that mass immigration, of the kind we have now, is fuelling - a stagnation of GDP per head.

When you take into account that *some* people are doing really well…. People at the bottom are looking at shrinking take home pay, as costs escalate.

The current setup is not delivering for a large chunk of the population.

I know that. The major bone of contention I have with those who want it to stop now is the notion that it can all be brought to an end abruptly without very serious consequences. If you're going to remodel the whole of society to try to cope with the immense burden of an ageing population without recourse to legions of imported workers then it needs to be done over many years, not overnight.

After the experience of Covid and the Boriswave vertical jump in immigration, the argument that abrupt changes are unmanageable looks quite weak.

The best time to change the approach would have been 25 years ago, but as we can't go back in time, we shouldn't delay any longer.

williamglenn said:

pigeon said:

Malmesbury said:

pigeon said:

MJW said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d

Hope the elderly don't like their state pensions then, because we'll not be able to pay them.

There's sadly a lot of wilful delusion being expressed on here about the consequences of adopting a cliff-edge approach to cutting immigration. You can't cut off the supply of key workers and then breezily assert that everything will come right in a decade. It might do, but the amount of suffering that would occur during that period would be immense. Not so much a case of ripping off the patient's plaster as cutting off their legs. Letting mass immigration drag on indefinitely is a terrible idea but so is abruptly hauling up the drawbridge. These problems need to be addressed properly. That takes time.

The real problem is that mass immigration, of the kind we have now, is fuelling - a stagnation of GDP per head.

When you take into account that *some* people are doing really well…. People at the bottom are looking at shrinking take home pay, as costs escalate.

The current setup is not delivering for a large chunk of the population.

I know that. The major bone of contention I have with those who want it to stop now is the notion that it can all be brought to an end abruptly without very serious consequences. If you're going to remodel the whole of society to try to cope with the immense burden of an ageing population without recourse to legions of imported workers then it needs to be done over many years, not overnight.

After the experience of Covid and the Boriswave vertical jump in immigration, the argument that abrupt changes are unmanageable looks quite weak.

The best time to change the approach would have been 25 years ago, but as we can't go back in time, we shouldn't delay any longer.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scotland are putting in the worst performance against a side from Rome since the Battle of Zama.

MoonRabbit said:

Gardenwalker said:

SouthamObserver said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

No, that's not my argument.

They're here because Boris Johnson changed the policy to encourage them to come, similar to Justin Trudeau in Canda.

The current Labour Prime Minister has described it as an "open borders experiment". You on the other hand appear to be arguing in support of Johnson and against Starmer by claiming that "the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going".

My argument is that Boris Johnson got it totally wrong on Brexit and ending freedom of movement and opened the floodgates because if he hadn't have done the country would have collapsed and he would have been blamed. He did it for himself, not for anyone else. I do think Starmer is mistaken if he believes growth can be delivered without enough people of working age building homes and infrastructure, as well as manning our public services.

“Hilariously”, Max and cohort cheered him almost every step of the way.

To be fair, it’s hard to know what’s going on at the time, or how things will turn out.

It’s clear now, Brexit wasn’t a lefty bashing thing, it smashed up UK’s Thatcherite unpinning of government, is the truth of it. Sound finance, look after businesses as that will look after income into our own coffers and pockets - UK Public Services need to be sustainably financed by something other than borrowing - that’s the sound economics in UK that has been tossed into turmoil and shredded by Brexit.

algarkirk said:

MattW said:

Starmer’s polling numbers and personal favorability ratings are already bad, with the far-right Reform UK now within touching distance of Labour in voting intention surveys. Of course, polling can be unreliable, and there’s a long way to go before the next election. Starmer himself recently indicated to POLITICO that he won’t call the vote before he has to in 2029.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-starmer-might-need-to-bring-back-blair/

I don't support Reform, but describing them as 'Far Right' is delusional. If you want to see 'Far Right' at work try USA for the next few months, and check out the fascism index. Reform is delusional as to what state stuff costs and various other things, but so are the other parties. Its published and documented policies are broadly welfare state social democracy of the 1950s + extra populism + cultural conservatism + low levels of migration.

Gallowgate said:

Reform will be found out in government because they do not have a coherent plan. The same reason Labour are being found out, and the Conservatives were found out. There has been no coherent plan since the coalition.

algarkirk said:

MattW said:

Starmer’s polling numbers and personal favorability ratings are already bad, with the far-right Reform UK now within touching distance of Labour in voting intention surveys. Of course, polling can be unreliable, and there’s a long way to go before the next election. Starmer himself recently indicated to POLITICO that he won’t call the vote before he has to in 2029.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-starmer-might-need-to-bring-back-blair/

I don't support Reform, but describing them as 'Far Right' is delusional. If you want to see 'Far Right' at work try USA for the next few months, and check out the fascism index. Reform is delusional as to what state stuff costs and various other things, but so are the other parties. Its published and documented policies are broadly welfare state social democracy of the 1950s + extra populism + cultural conservatism + low levels of migration.

Gardenwalker said:

Gallowgate said:

Reform will be found out in government because they do not have a coherent plan. The same reason Labour are being found out, and the Conservatives were found out. There has been no coherent plan since the coalition.

Labour have suddenly realised they need one, though.
It’s one of the great farces of British life that this seems to have come as a surprise.

SouthamObserver said:

Gallowgate said:

Reform will be found out in government because they do not have a coherent plan. The same reason Labour are being found out, and the Conservatives were found out. There has been no coherent plan since the coalition.

I am not sure it's possible for any party with a coherent plan to be elected into power because any coherent plan requires pointing out serious sacrifices will be required of millions of voters over a sustained period of time. No party trusts voters enough - or, maybe more precisely, trusts how voters get their information enough - to offer such a prospectus. Labour won't tell the truth on taxes. The Tories and Reform won't tell the truth on immigration. None of them will tell the truth on Brexit. And so on. We are stuck in downward spiral and it's really hard to see how that changes.

Andy_JS said:

MattW said:

Starmer’s polling numbers and personal favorability ratings are already bad, with the far-right Reform UK now within touching distance of Labour in voting intention surveys. Of course, polling can be unreliable, and there’s a long way to go before the next election. Starmer himself recently indicated to POLITICO that he won’t call the vote before he has to in 2029.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-starmer-might-need-to-bring-back-blair/

They're far-right now?

Carnyx said:

algarkirk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scotland are putting in the worst performance against a side from Rome since the Battle of Zama.

I think the issue of the Pictish contribution, and its weaknesses, to Hannibal's forces at Zama is worth a PhD grant. It's a long time since I read Livy but I recall few references to the stout hearts and mournful piping of our Scottish friends.

I suspect some of us are uncharacteristically confusing P. Cornelius Scipio with Cn. Julius Agricola.

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scotland are putting in the worst performance against a side from Rome since the Battle of Zama.

Thanks, we needed that.

No probs, I am fully expecting England to get fuckwangled by Ireland later on.

The only highlight of this weekend on the rugby front was seeing Wales get nilled.

You don’t cap’n Itoje will make a difference?
I heard this am that he avoids swearing. We’ll see how that goes in Dublin.

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

algarkirk said:

MattW said:

Starmer’s polling numbers and personal favorability ratings are already bad, with the far-right Reform UK now within touching distance of Labour in voting intention surveys. Of course, polling can be unreliable, and there’s a long way to go before the next election. Starmer himself recently indicated to POLITICO that he won’t call the vote before he has to in 2029.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-starmer-might-need-to-bring-back-blair/

I don't support Reform, but describing them as 'Far Right' is delusional. If you want to see 'Far Right' at work try USA for the next few months, and check out the fascism index. Reform is delusional as to what state stuff costs and various other things, but so are the other parties. Its published and documented policies are broadly welfare state social democracy of the 1950s + extra populism + cultural conservatism + low levels of migration.

I think the “far right” tag should remain with those who advocate for extra-judicial force or violence.

Tommy Robinson, for example.

That's a better rule of thumb than conflating it with racism. Ironically Tommy Robinson is more of a civic nationalist.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scotland are putting in the worst performance against a side from Rome since the Battle of Zama.

Thanks, we needed that.

No probs, I am fully expecting England to get fuckwangled by Ireland later on.

The only highlight of this weekend on the rugby front was seeing Wales get nilled.

You don’t cap’n Itoje will make a difference?
I heard this am that he avoids swearing. We’ll see how that goes in Dublin.

Nope, this England team have left an indelible mark on my psyche.

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

I like him for the LOLs

TheScreamingEagles said:

Well now.

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Um, I'm not "ganging up on him". I was defending him.

Please read my posts properly.

rcs1000 said:

Gardenwalker said:

Trump has declared tariffs effective today, but nobody knows what they are yet.

He has no public announcements in his diary for today.

Legally, the US President has only a few rationales he can use for imposing tariffs - he doesn't have absolute authority in this area.

So:

- National Security, if the commerce department determines the imports in question are a threat to the US. So, the 2017 Trump aluminum tariffs were imposed on this basis, as it was considered that destroying the US aluminium industry was a threat to national security.

- To Retaliate Against Unfair Foreign Trade Practices, such as dumping or intellectual property theft. So, the 2018 China tariffs were imposed under this rationale.

- A Balance of Payments Emergency. If the U.S. faces a serious balance of payments deficit, the president can impose temporary tariffs. But this is limited to a 150-day duration unless extended by Congress.

- National Emergency, which requires a presidential declaration of a national emergency and must be reported to Congress.

My assumption is that President Trump is going to go for the fourth option... but he's generally not a big fan of process. His view is that he is the boss, and he should choose what happens.

rcs1000 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

I like him for the LOLs

I like him for his alternate perspective. I find his whataboutery, and answering every question with a question, irritating.

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Um, I'm not "ganging up on him". I was defending him.

Please read my posts properly.

Well, maybe.

Stop being picky and rude though. We have this really quite cool thing that's called PB - gifted to us by the enviable Mr Smithson. Let's not fuck it up.

I thought your post was rude.

If you accuse someone of ganging up on someone else, which was totally unfounded, then you can't cry blue murder if your target doesn't take kindly to it.

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Um, I'm not "ganging up on him". I was defending him.

Please read my posts properly.

Well, maybe.

Stop being picky and rude though. We have this really quite cool thing that's called PB - gifted to us by the enviable Mr Smithson. Let's not fuck it up.

I thought your post was rude.

If you accuse someone of ganging up on someone else, which was totally unfounded, then you can't cry blue murder if your target doesn't take kindly to it.

Well then I apologise,

'Blue murder', really?

Mexicanpete said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

I think Casino was defending William. I believe I have been complintary on William's rather readable posts. Although I don't agree with much of his narrative.

Casino_Royale said:

Right, how badly are we going to get mullered here?

Sunil_Prasannan said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Well now.

"We who are about to drive, salute you!"

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Um, I'm not "ganging up on him". I was defending him.

Please read my posts properly.

Well, maybe.

Stop being picky and rude though. We have this really quite cool thing that's called PB - gifted to us by the enviable Mr Smithson. Let's not fuck it up.

I thought your post was rude.

If you accuse someone of ganging up on someone else, which was totally unfounded, then you can't cry blue murder if your target doesn't take kindly to it.

Omnium said:

Mexicanpete said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

I think Casino was defending William. I believe I have been complintary on William's rather readable posts. Although I don't agree with much of his narrative.

However you can I hope see why I posted this. It's just very dispiriting to have weird playground stuff. To disagree directly with what a person says is one thing, but to extend that disagreement into an ongoing campaign isn't top form.

I've undoubtedly been guilty of these sins, no doubt I'll fall foul again, but it doesn't hurt to wave a flag of sense when one has the odd lucid moment.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Casino_Royale said:

Right, how badly are we going to get mullered here?

We are getting stepommed, my only hope is that we lose by fewer points than the Welsh.

Andy_JS said:

Gallowgate said:

Reform will be found out in government because they do not have a coherent plan. The same reason Labour are being found out, and the Conservatives were found out. There has been no coherent plan since the coalition.

Reform aren't going to win a majority. It would be a coalition with what's left of the Tories.

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Starmer accused of ‘fudging the facts’ over his education
Former Blair adviser and Sutton Trust founder criticises Prime Minister for ‘pretending’ he went to state school
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/31/keir-starmer-accused-fudging-facts-education-vat-raid/

But he did, to all intents and purposes. It was free when he arrived and that was kept the case for any pupils present before the decision to go feepaying.

Basically Starmer started off in a grammar school which became a private school when he reached its sixth form.

So Sir Keir had a very Tory education essentially and never set foot in the local comp even if his initial secondary education was in a state grammar

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

Um, I'm not "ganging up on him". I was defending him.

Please read my posts properly.

Well, maybe.

Stop being picky and rude though. We have this really quite cool thing that's called PB - gifted to us by the enviable Mr Smithson. Let's not fuck it up.

I thought your post was rude.

If you accuse someone of ganging up on someone else, which was totally unfounded, then you can't cry blue murder if your target doesn't take kindly to it.

Omnium said:

Mexicanpete said:

Omnium said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mexicanpete said:

MoonRabbit said:

williamglenn said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

SouthamObserver said:

MaxPB said:

Eabhal said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Jonathan said:

If a paradigm has shifted, it’s the fall of the free trade pro business conservative centre right replaced by the nationalist, protectionist “fuck business” populist right.

Yes, I think that's correct

Britain has enjoyed or endured spectacular levels of immigration in the last 10-20 years. We are constantly assured this contributes to growth. Yet, as @Sandpit shows, the reality is that GDP per capita has not grown at all even as our population has exploded by many millions, putting pressure on everything - from sewage systems to landscapes, from education to health. Meanwhile our cities crumble and we have very real and unpleasant social problems stemming from the migration

Now we are told "another 5 million must come in the next ten years". Why? What the fuck? We don't want any more. Polls show that voters - by almost 2 to 1 - would rather have LESS immigration EVEN IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF GROWTH

https://x.com/GideonSkinner/status/1884199390463799730/photo/1

No one buys the "growth" shit any more, and even if they do, they are past caring

I think that's true. There are exceptions for very highly motivated or wealthy individuals, but generally per capita growth does not generally come from opening the floodgates to unskilled or semi-skilled immigration - it comes from low taxes, low but efficient government spending and light but effective regulation.

In short the exact opposite of the route we've been following for more than twenty years.

Yes. And the public has finally woken up to this reality. Hence the paradigm shift

Here's a good thought experiment - imagine a scenario where we get a Reform/Tory government next time out and they get serious about immigration, not only do we pause inwards migration from people with income under £50-60k we also pause visa renewals and revoke visas for immigrants who earn under £35k. This results in net emigration of 300-400k per year as low wage workers and their dependents are forced to leave the country. It will result in overall growth falling due to falling aggregate demand from those 400k leaving but per capita GDP will rise as there's 400k fewer low and no wage people in the country.

We may have headlines showing the country in recession or zero growth but people will feel better off because within a few years of such action there will be a couple of million fewer people relying on the state for welfare for their dependents (education for many kids, NHS care for families, in some insane cases housing benefits) while removing net negative tax contributions from them.

In a falling or stagnating economy, we can achieve pretty strong net growth in per capita GDP if the government halts low wage immigration and revokes visa status for low wage migrants already in the country. It is within our power to fix this and send these people home unless they have a significant contribution to the tax base of the country which we know only starts at about £45k.

That's entirely true, but it would be enormously disruptive and the market wage for shelf stackers and social care workers would rocket. The NHS in particular would come under huge funding pressure, particularly as it already suffers from Baumol's cost disease. And if you thought the reaction to employer NICs was bad....

But we would finally fix our unusually bad problem with (relative) in-work poverty. PB doesn't like relative measures, but it's really important here for making work at the bottom of the labour market pay for a half decent lifestyle, with median wages the price setter for stuff like eating out.

So it would need to be brought in very gradually. In the long term, it must be accompanied with something that makes having children very attractive - income tax break allowances, council tax exemptions, stamp duty abolished etc. Otherwise the dependency ratio - which isn't too bad with current immigration levels - would spiral out of control.

Immigration drives up rent and property prices and makes it much more difficult for middle income families to have more children. Net emigration of 2-3m of low wage people and their dependents over 5 years would see a huge drop in property demand which would lower rent and stall house prices while also increasing GDP per capita so people will feel better off.

Immigration is a bit like a heroin addict thinking that one more hit will make them feel better. That's the situation we're in right now, we don't want to go through the short term pain of cold turkey which will make a lot of headline numbers look bad but in 5-7 years rebalance the whole economy with, as you point out, pay at the bottom of the scale looking liveable, lower rents, more affordable housing, falling demand leading to lower inflation overall. The country is at breaking point, we simply don't have the capacity in infrastructure to take another 5m people, in fact with the infrastructure we have the country is probably about 3m overpopulated. People including us, talk about lack of infrastructure investment over the last 20 years but the maths of our low wage immigration is the cause of this. We've grown the population from 60m to about 68m, but the economy has grown by far, far less than that population growth should be worth. That has left little to no money for infrastructure, the migrants that have arrived all have dependents and need welfare spending (healthcare, education) which means the government has had to increase spending in these areas more than the tax that those people generate, hence borrowing rising and taxe rates increasing and the overall proportion of the economy accounted for by state spending continually rising.

Immigration must fall rapidly and, I think, in the next government term it must move into a prolonged period of net emigration of low wage and low skill workers. A minimum salary bar of £55-60k for migrants should be implemented for people with dependents and £45-50k for single people. If that causes a labour shortage in healthcare it will force wages to rise and the lazy unemployed/"sick" can actually do some work for once.

Or, put another way, I'll be fine but good luck if you require public services.

But immigration hugely increases demand for public services and welfare. They increase overall aggregate demand by a much larger amount than their contribution. It is why immigration has resulting in falling GDP per capita so no, reducing immigration and moving into net emigration of low skill and low wage workers will reduce demand more than it reduces their contribution meaning more overall resource per person.

You have completely ignored the actual result of immigration for the past decade to draw your pithy one liner which makes you a fool.

I am very aware that non-EU immigration has soared since we left the EU and that non-EU migrants do tend to be lower paid, are more likely to have dependents and may not generate as much taxable income as EU migrants did. However, the new arrivals are here because we need them to keep aspects of the country that you do not need or notice going.

So your argument is that Boris Johnson was acting altruistically out of concern for the less well off?

Not at all. I think he has always been and always will be a bullshitter, interested only in mugging a living, and lying his way to the trappings of power.

Brexit allows UK government control of migration into UK? But at what impact to the size and nature of the British economy? The same British Economy that puts money in everybody’s pocket and pays the public service bills and pensions at the end of the day. That key element of Brexit implementation was never clearly spelt out amongst all Boris and Farage big promises and bluster.

The UK government can only stop importing migration by saying fuck business, and apart from muttering it, those in power implementing Brexit have left the reigns free on business to do pretty much what ever they like, with a “this is caps and stringent rules now post Brexit… apart these billion opt outs.” Swiftly followed by another tranche of loosening, and another tranche of loosening until, guess what, back in exactly the same place as before Brexit implementation.

Brexit is already a dead duck - it was based on the twin whoppers it generates money for public services like NHS, and that it will allow UK to control immigration. Both these lies are already politically coming home to roost in just five years!

We entered the EEC to generate money by removing hidden and admin costs on business, and on exit we reversed exactly that. We lost far more than we gained.

And back in the day @williamglenn knew this. He used to make a compelling case that the UK had, in 2016, voted to impose absurd economic sanctions on itself. And then having climbed out of the Trump rabbit hole he fell back down again.

Williamglenn is quite consistent in believing in empires and federalism, be they European, American or Anglospheric.

He's just changed his mind on which is/should be in the ascendancy.

I've always quite liked @williamglenn. Why are you @Mexicanpete and @Casino_Royale and others ganging up on him?

I think Casino was defending William. I believe I have been complintary on William's rather readable posts. Although I don't agree with much of his narrative.

However you can I hope see why I posted this. It's just very dispiriting to have weird playground stuff. To disagree directly with what a person says is one thing, but to extend that disagreement into an ongoing campaign isn't top form.

I've undoubtedly been guilty of these sins, no doubt I'll fall foul again, but it doesn't hurt to wave a flag of sense when one has the odd lucid moment.

To be honest. No I can't. A few days ago I suggested to William that I view the world through a clear lens and he through a kaleidescope. He "liked" the post. If William thinks my snarky remarks are offesive he is welcome to tell me to stop, and I will. As for myself and Casino tag teaming against other posters we are too preoccupied having our own punch up behind the bike sheds.

If I was behind the bike sheds, I was more interested in snogging not punch ups.

[For clarity, this does not include you]

CJohn said:

Neither Le Pen's Rassemblement in France nor Reform are "far right".

Rassemblement has leftish socio-economic policies; Reform's are mere make believe: tax cuts, spending increases and decreased borrowimg and deficit.

But unlike MAGA, Reform has shown no signs of wanting to assault democracy.

Unfortunately, it also shows no sign of any idea of how to wean the UK off immigration.