Immigration - social trouble on its way

[stackpole]

The immigrants/aging population thing is a fact. All very well saying people can work till an older age but what if they don't want to - you can't force people not to retire.

I'm afraid you can, and you must. This isn't heaven we live in.

Where do you see it all going in 50 years time then? At current rates of increase our population will be double and our space and infrastructure, which is struggling to cope now, will be hopelessly inadequate. But we will STILL need more immigrants to feed the ever-increasing numbers of elderly because "you can't force people not to retire".

The journey from now to that point will become more and more unpleasant. We need a better plan than that.

[meridian]

I wonder what happened in Ireland and Sweden since 2004...

According to my Irish in-laws, "a feck of a lot of Poles, but at least they're better than the Romanians and Nigerians".

[DodgyAgent]

I'm afraid you can, and you must. This isn't heaven we live in.

Where do you see it all going in 50 years time then? At current rates of increase our population will be double and our space and infrastructure, which is struggling to cope now, will be hopelessly inadequate. But we will STILL need more immigrants to feed the ever-increasing numbers of elderly because "you can't force people not to retire".

The journey from now to that point will become more and more unpleasant. We need a better plan than that.

What I find interesting is how poor some of you are at understanding how human nature in conjunction with market forces has a way of sorting things out for themselves. I suspect few of you really bother to look at history and that even fewer have little capacity to envisage the future.

The whole point of the European Union (apart from stopping the Germans from invading France and Poland) is that there should be a free flow of labour and capital. What is happening is that the UK is indeed becoming a crowded and expensive place to live, work and invest. This will mean that investment will shift to countries where it is cheaper thus creating a self balancing economic system. So if I were to set up a recruitment business with resourcers I would seriously consider somewhere like Hungary or Lithuania and maybe run a smaller sales operation in the UK.

What prevents the markets from sorting out demograhic inbalances are governments wishing to engineer specific outcomes themselves. For example the reason why no one investe in the cheaper North of England, Scotland or France is because in the case of the first two the work forces have been trained "not to work" and in the case of the latter border controls and job destroying employment laws and taxes have completely killed off any interest from investors.

Lithuania has reached melting point in terms of economic growth because it has a flat tax (low ) regime that has encouraged vast amounts of entrepreneurial activity in the country. Likewise the Irish government has also built a tax friendly system of government that has encouraged investment. The UK also is still living off the business friendly environment (slowly being eroded by NL) created by the Thatcher government.

The problem lies with the governments of France, Germany and Italy who's economies would be kicked nicely up the arse with a dose of labour and service competition.

If a country is having problems then you can bet your pension (if you have one left after the govt has squandered or taxed it) that the blame can be laid squarely at the foot of socialism.

[snaw]

I'm afraid you can, and you must. This isn't heaven we live in.

Where do you see it all going in 50 years time then? At current rates of increase our population will be double and our space and infrastructure, which is struggling to cope now, will be hopelessly inadequate. But we will STILL need more immigrants to feed the ever-increasing numbers of elderly because "you can't force people not to retire".

The journey from now to that point will become more and more unpleasant. We need a better plan than that.

Essentially all you're doing by increasing the retirment age is prolonging the issue. Plus all those old cogers got a vote and they're a pretty sizable chunk of the population - are they gonna be voting for pensions at 70 - I doubt it somehow, and no party will take the chance of pissing them all off.

What's the options available to at least maintain the working population - move retirement till later, increase the birth rate and fill the shortfall with immigration. The right kind of immigrants are net contributers, even over the long term and by that stage will have earned the right to retire here.

Then there's rising health costs with the ever increasing age of the population, and an equal drop in the numbers of those people working ...

To say immigration is bad, is for me a wee bit too much thinking with the heart and not using the head. We've got serious issues in the future which need addressing, and immigration is one part of the solution. IMO.

[snaw]

What prevents the markets from sorting out demograhic inbalances are governments wishing to engineer specific outcomes themselves. For example the reason why no one investe in the cheaper North of England, Scotland or France is because in the case of the first two the work forces have been trained "not to work" and in the case of the latter border controls and job destroying employment laws and taxes have completely killed off any interest from investors.

I'd have to disagree with you a wee bit on that first paragraph as it stands vis-a-vis Scotland. You're probably close but miss one big factor in that because the jobs are all in the South-East then the best talent in Scotland, generally, heads south to take advantage. I think it's something like 10% of Scots in the UK work in England - that's a pretty sizeable part of the population, especially the working population.

Cor me it's catch-22, people as a whole (Obviously there are exceptions) will work when there are jobs available, but once you create that sort of unemployment blackhole the only companies attracted to it are the low skilled, low paying kind.

If a country is having problems then you can bet your pension (if you have one left after the govt has squandered or taxed it) that the blame can be laid squarely at the foot of socialism.

As for who's fault it is - I think you're way off the mark. If you're gonna blame someone for this then Maggie Thatcher can take a fair share of that blame, there were plenty of hard working people where I'm from when I grew up, who would all have been happy to take jobs on offer. Except she came along and destroyed the local industries, and gave nothing in return. By the time the 'socialists' got into power the unemployment blackspots and social problems were well and truly entrenched.

[DodgyAgent]

I'd have to disagree with you a wee bit on that first paragraph as it stands vis-a-vis Scotland. You're probably close but miss one big factor in that because the jobs are all in the South-East then the best talent in Scotland, generally, heads south to take advantage. I think it's something like 10% of Scots in the UK work in England - that's a pretty sizeable part of the population, especially the working population.

Cor me it's catch-22, people as a whole (Obviously there are exceptions) will work when there are jobs available, but once you create that sort of unemployment blackhole the only companies attracted to it are the low skilled, low paying kind.




As for who's fault it is - I think you're way off the mark. If you're gonna blame someone for this then Maggie Thatcher can take a fair share of that blame, there were plenty of hard working people where I'm from when I grew up, who would all have been happy to take jobs on offer. Except she came along and destroyed the local industries, and gave nothing in return. By the time the 'socialists' got into power the unemployment blackspots and social problems were well and truly entrenched.

we have had this argument before and you have yet to argue a proper case for these businesses to have been supported at taxpayers expense. The local industries were destroyed because they were not competitive. This is what has happened to Eastern Europe but instead of moaning and sitting back on welfare handouts (you will never work again payments) the Poles got on their bikes or buses and travelled to where the work was.

You talk about giving something in return I would like to know exactly what that should have been. You condemne maggie yet you offer no alternative doctrine. If she had never come to power the UK would today be on a par with Poland.

The jobs are in the South East because the South East enjoys a culture of freedom end entrepreneurial spirit. The work force reflects this. In scotland the so called work force is a drug/alcohol crazed population of no hopers thanks to the curse of welfare. In scotland entrepreneur is a dirty word.

If unemployment blackspots are so impossible to change why is it that Lithuania, which was a far more serious and larger unemployment blackspot than anywhere in the UK 5 years ago, now doing so well. Also why is it that all your so-called blackspots such as Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool now cannot get enough Polish workers despite having such a huge population of their own unemployed workers?

The answer lies in welfare.

[stackpole]

Essentially all you're doing by increasing the retirment age is prolonging the issue.

How does it prolong the issue? It would improve the worker-to-retired ratio, which is what your argument is all about.

Plus all those old cogers got a vote and they're a pretty sizable chunk of the population - are they gonna be voting for pensions at 70 - I doubt it somehow, and no party will take the chance of pissing them all off.

Maybe, but if all three main parties say the same thing, and we aren't far away from that now, who will they vote for?

What's the options available to at least maintain the working population - move retirement till later, increase the birth rate and fill the shortfall with immigration. The right kind of immigrants are net contributers, even over the long term and by that stage will have earned the right to retire here.

How good or bad they are isn't an issue. The issue is space and infrastructure overload, as I outlined in my last post. Even with a stable population we are running out of resources in the UK.

Then there's rising health costs with the ever increasing age of the population, and an equal drop in the numbers of those people working ...

I think we've been over this ratio before. Remember, immigrants get old too, and will add the the problem, and the problem will spiral as a result.

To say immigration is bad, is for me a wee bit too much thinking with the heart and not using the head. We've got serious issues in the future which need addressing, and immigration is one part of the solution. IMO.

I have never said that immigration is bad, I say increasing the population through immigration is bad. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[John Galt]

Essentially all you're doing by increasing the retirment age is prolonging the issue. Plus all those old cogers got a vote and they're a pretty sizable chunk of the population - are they gonna be voting for pensions at 70 - I doubt it somehow, and no party will take the chance of pissing them all off.

What's the options available to at least maintain the working population - move retirement till later, increase the birth rate and fill the shortfall with immigration. The right kind of immigrants are net contributers, even over the long term and by that stage will have earned the right to retire here.

Then there's rising health costs with the ever increasing age of the population, and an equal drop in the numbers of those people working ...

To say immigration is bad, is for me a wee bit too much thinking with the heart and not using the head. We've got serious issues in the future which need addressing, and immigration is one part of the solution. IMO.

It is not a case of not using our heads - this country is desperately overcrowded; there is no 2 ways about that. The infrastructures of our major cities are on the point of collapse yet we are bringing in more and more without any kind of regulation - net immigration last year was about 900,00 - according to NL figures that should have plugged the labour gap! As far as increasing the retirement age - this would be totally unnecessary if the Government hadn't raided the state pension funds.

[DodgyAgent]

It is not a case of not using our heads - this country is desperately overcrowded; there is no 2 ways about that. The infrastructures of our major cities are on the point of collapse yet we are bringing in more and more without any kind of regulation - net immigration last year was about 900,00 - according to NL figures that should have plugged the labour gap! As far as increasing the retirement age - this would be totally unnecessary if the Government hadn't raided the state pension funds.

we should give our own army of 3.7 million unemployed the same privileges as the Poles.. remove welfare.
If we did this then we could slap up border controls until all but the truly unemployable were working and then review the situation.

[Bagpuss]

What prevents the markets from sorting out demograhic inbalances are governments wishing to engineer specific outcomes themselves. For example the reason why no one investe in the cheaper North of England, Scotland or France is because in the case of the first two the work forces have been trained "not to work"

Can you tell me what you mean by people 'trained not to work'?
When I look around the major cities of 'the North' (and I'm not sure what you mean by that, maybe north of Watford?) I see major investment from industry. Look at a city like Leeds it's bustling with investment from banks and financial institutions etc. If you want to believe the stereotypes from 20 years ago still exist then firstly have a look around the newtowns in the South East, you will easily find those 'trained not to work' and it isn't because of lack of investment.