GDP per head falling

[vetran]

We are bashing government policy.

If we threw out all recent immigrants there would be very few doctors or nurses. We would be a bit light in IT.

I am as any sensible person should be against unplanned & uncontrolled immigration.

If there is a shortage of workers willing to work for minimum wage then either encourage the idle or up the minimum wage we should not import people to cut wages further. Of course we could automate and require fewer staff which is the future.

Whilst many migrants are driven and mainly a benefit to society in real economic terms they may not contribute as much as they take out.

Others are an active drain on society and never should have been allowed in.

That includes the Albanian crime lords that dominate the drugs trade.
And many foreign criminals who are due to be deported because their crimes are so bad.

Many are over represented in our prisons.

https://www.ein.org.uk/news/new-hous...not%20recorded.

Foreign national offenders in the UK

The Ministry of Justice publishes annual snapshots of the prison population in England and Wales, which include a breakdown by nationality. As of the end of June 2023, there were at least 10,321 foreign nationals in prison, out of a total prison population of 85,851. [1] In a small number of cases, nationality was not recorded. Over half of foreign prisoners were European and, overall, the most common nationalities were Albanian, Polish, Romanian, Irish, and Jamaican.

Three prisons are exclusively used for foreign national offenders: HMP Huntercombe, HMP Maidstone, and HMP Morton Hall. [2] They hold foreign national offenders of interest to the Home Office who have between three and 36 months left to serve. The remainder of foreign national offenders are spread across the prison estate.

Time-served foreign national offenders might be transferred into immigration detention upon completion of their custodial sentence if they are still being considered for deportation. They might alternatively be released from prison or immigration detention but put on immigration bail conditions such as electronic monitoring, regular reporting restrictions, and a requirement to reside at a specified address. Home Office statistics indicate that, as of 30 September 2022, there were 11,769 foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community. [3]

[edison]

Put aside immigration for a moment. Even if we had no net immigration, there are still key structural factors that are contributing to the long term decline of GDP growth

Low business investment is a key one as mentioned above. UK firms just don't invest enough in R&D, automation and IT.

Lower R&D has a big impact on innovation. There is a 20 year long term decline in the number of patents applied for in the UK.

We don't produce enough high quality STEM graduates. Along with low innovation, firms are not developing enough new products and services especially in newer high tech industries.

We have become very conservative and risk averse with a focus on short term results. We have few high quality entrepreneurs. It's interesting to see in the USA that so many successful startups are founded by children of immigrants, often from India and Eastern Europe. We just don't have that here for a variety of reasons. The recent Top 50 Global University visa is a bit of a joke. Half of them are in the US. No student in their right mind from Harvard, MIT or the like would move to the UK today.

All the long term factors point to anaemic growth for years to come. I'm glad I'll be retiring in a few years but worry about what kind of economic future my teenage kids will inherit.

[vetran]

Put aside immigration for a moment. Even if we had no net immigration, there are still key structural factors that are contributing to the long term decline of GDP growth

Low business investment is a key one as mentioned above. UK firms just don't invest enough in R&D, automation and IT.

Lower R&D has a big impact on innovation. There is a 20 year long term decline in the number of patents applied for in the UK.

We don't produce enough high quality STEM graduates. Along with low innovation, firms are not developing enough new products and services especially in newer high tech industries.

We have become very conservative and risk averse with a focus on short term results. We have few high quality entrepreneurs. It's interesting to see in the USA that so many successful startups are founded by children of immigrants, often from India and Eastern Europe. We just don't have that here for a variety of reasons. The recent Top 50 Global University visa is a bit of a joke. Half of them are in the US. No student in their right mind from Harvard, MIT or the like would move to the UK today.

All the long term factors point to anaemic growth for years to come. I'm glad I'll be retiring in a few years but worry about what kind of economic future my teenage kids will inherit.

Totally agree that its just one of the factors. Its just one of the easiest to fix.

[xoggoth]

We don't produce enough high quality STEM graduates

Quite. Can't be a*d to find the link but we are funding fees for a lot of students who avoid work for 3+ years doing pointless courses that are of little benefit to them or our economy. Time we started only handing student grants to the most able who are doing the sort of courses we need.

[Zigenare]

Quite. Can't be a*d to find the link but we are funding fees for a lot of students who avoid work for 3+ years doing pointless courses that are of little benefit to them or our economy. Time we started only handing student grants to the most able who are doing the sort of courses we need.

Surely industry sponsorship could be playing more of a role here...

[Fraidycat]

It's interesting to see in the USA that so many successful startups are founded by children of immigrants,

Listening to higlights of Bidens state of the union, he seems to think $400,000 a year is considered the threshold for high pay, and he promises not to raise taxes for lower paid workers who earn less than that.

Here in the UK if you earn 50K you are considered a high earner and you start to get taxed to death, 42% + loss of child benefits if you get it leads to 62% tax bands. And another 62% tax band for those earning between 100K and 120K. This reduces the incentive to do overtime for those near the thresholds of 50K and 100K. And those thresholds are not keeping up with inflation.. Both should have moved up 20% since 2021.
And Instead of moving the 45% threshold from 150K to 180K to keep up with inflation, they moved it down 20% instead.

Table shows Federal income Tax bands in the US, and states like Florida and Texas have no additional state income taxes:

10%	$11,600 or less
12%	$11,601 to $47,150
22%	$47,151 to $100,525
24%	$100,526 to $191,950
32%	$191,951 to $243,725
35%	$243,726 to $609,350
37%	Over $609,350

With the minimum wage nearing 25K a year, the UK will operate an almost communist equal pay for all after tax system, in a few years 95% of full time workers will all earn between 2000 and 4000 a month after tax.

[WTFH]

Quite. Can't be a*d to find the link but we are funding fees for a lot of students who avoid work for 3+ years doing pointless courses that are of little benefit to them or our economy. Time we started only handing student grants to the most able who are doing the sort of courses we need.

The courses we need - "we" don't give out grants for them, instead "we" charge a small fortune to the students to do those courses, so only the rich or students from abroad can afford to study them.

I'd love to see a link to show how many grants are given to students out of taxpayers money these days.

[malvolio]

Blame it all on the immigrants?

Immigrants are mostly working age, and willing to accept low paid jobs. Low paid workers help to make a profit for their employers, so it does not make much sense to claim they are responsible for falling GDP per head.

What is the reason? I think the main reason is that the baby boomers, who are the largest generation we have ever had, are now heading into retirement. Instead of earning, they are drawing down their pensions. Capital is more scarce, its harder for businesses to raise capital. Government revenues are falling and we are failing to invest in the national infrastructure.

The earnings power of a nation is its working population size multiplied by their productivity. Our working population is shrinking and so is our productivity, in no small part due to low rates of investment.

Right, you can get back to your Daily Fail now...

Not really sure I agree. Job-related pensions and non-state pensions are coming from invested funds, not capital, so that argument doesn't stand up. State pensions are paid for out of taxation, but that is not a huge cost in terms of overall GDP. There has also been an increase in inward investment since Brexit; £28bn in the motor industry is one example.

GDP per head is falling, that is true, but the causes are 90% about population, not lack of money in the system. That in turn is driven more by the ever increasing economically inactive population rather than retirees.

But enough of the good news. Another six months or so and today will look like the boom times...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Ah, "The Brain Drain".

It's been A Thing since the 1950s.

Lots of Brits went to Silicon Valley etc. since there's so little opportunity here.

Lots of British patents unexploited here & exploited abroad.

[sreed]

The "boomers" by the way paid significant taxes before they retired.

They have, but (on average) they’ll take out a lot more than they paid in unlike the generations after them who will simply not have that luxury.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240214...-in-a-dark-age

I’ve nothing against boomers and one day I’ll be old too. But, the principles of equity dictate that the tax burden must be shared more fairly unlike the current setup where the burden of taxes is overly weighted towards earned income and the ever shrinking % of the population that works and keeps getting squeezed for more taxes to make up for the rising dependency ratio.