What a foolish OP.

Since when has it ever been the government’s policy to encourage Brits to leave the country?

Or reduce immigration from Poland ?

Here’s a link to the Immigration page of the Conservative Manifesto:

http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Immigration.aspx

And here’s one to the Coalition Agreement:

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/coalition-documents

In neither is there any mention of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands and Cameron made clear in Woking in April that was NOT government policy.

@1

Can you explain why the movement of capital is free and unhindered and yet the movement of labour is restricted with immigration controls?

…take you time….

@ 2

….something to do with national identity and cultural difference, I’d imagine.

@3

more like “capital practices world wide tax flight while jobseekers are held up at checkpoint charlies”. Privileging capital over labour is privilege – even Tories have to admit it’s a market distortion.

And the “limit it to tens of thousands thing” is govt. policy and they’ve been saying it for a while. Sorry, but you haven’t found an error, it really is their own stated goal. Maybe they’ll be more quiet about it when it starts to fail catastrophically, who knows.

More the point, I was honestly expecting net immigration to continue to fall as long as unemployment stayed high. This news baffles me.

@1

Didn’t DC say during the leader’s debates that he wished to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands? & seeing as most voters would’ve watched them rather than read either the Tory manifesto or the coalition agreement it seems fair enough to point to the tens of thousands number as Tory policy.

@ 4

This news baffles me.

As the OP says, fewer Brits are leaving to work abroad – especially in Europe – ‘cos there aren’t many job opportunities about in Greece, Portugal, Spain etc.

No surprise.

The government cannot do anything about peeps from Eastern Europe (and wouldn’t want to anyway). But they are “in the tens of thousands”.

The government can (and is) introducing measures to limit arrivals from non-EU countries. Some of these have been only recently passed and are yet to take serious effect. Others are as yet unannounced but in the policy pipeline. By 2015 there will hardly be any non-EU immigration.

@ 5

Didn’t DC say during the leader’s debates that he wished to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands?

Sure did. But being a grown up, Cam recognizes the difference between an aspiration and “government policy”.

The latter has to concern itself with matters you can affect….see @ 4 above.

“he wished to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands?”

And so do I.
Before you scream racist shall we think about a policy Tony B had? To rub the rights nose in diversity & that meant letting in many different people from all over the world, how much has that hurt people like me, a poor working class man, alot.
Now it may be a lovely idea to let everyone in who wants to come here and have access to our jobs, welfare,etc,etc but in the end who will it hurt the most?

I don’t believe for a moment it’s the rich, it’s people like me & if you want to do the three monkeys bit you go for it, I believe Labour lost so so many votes from the working man because of its stand on immigration and many like me I know haven’t forgiven Labour for it yet.
I may be nasty to think like I do, in your book, but just ask working men if they think what was done to us was nice!

@ 8 Workman Fred

“Now it may be a lovely idea to let everyone in who wants to come here and have access to our jobs”

It’s illegal for your employer to sack you just so he/she can employ an immigrant (or anyone else) at a lower wage. In other news, immigration increases net demand, so if you have a job there’s a good chance that immigration will be good for your employer (as they’ll have more people to sell stuff to), which makes you less likely to be made redundant. So it’s very unlikely that immigration puts your job at risk.

Well “flowerpower”, any man who stands up in the mother of all parliaments and utters the words “calm down dear” in a feeble comedy voice, cannot be described as mature. And aspiration my bum, your man Dave’s a liar, not surprising given that his only real job was as a professional liar. Simple as, or as Dave would no doubt say, “Simples, squeak, squeak!”

@9

“It’s illegal for your employer to sack you just so he/she can employ an immigrant (or anyone else) at a lower wage”

Who said they was?

“In other news, immigration increases net demand”

At the moment I’m on a four day week with no overtime and have been for over a year now, I was on a 10% reduced wage for some time before that, but with all the immigration to Britain going on I don’t see it helping me get back on five days any time soon, why would that be when immigration is so high, by your thinking I should be on seven days and overtime coming out my ears.

I would like to see immgration stopped untill we know that all my kind have a job, and at full time, only then should we let immigration continue, if the main parties did this including Labour I may forgive them for hurting me and my kind so bad.

seb @ 10

aspiration my bum, your man Dave’s a liar…. cannot be described as mature.

….needs no comment.

@ 11 Workman Fred

“At the moment I’m on a four day week with no overtime and have been for over a year now, I was on a 10% reduced wage for some time before that, but with all the immigration to Britain going on I don’t see it helping me get back on five days any time soon, why would that be when immigration is so high, by your thinking I should be on seven days and overtime coming out my ears.”

How should I know? What industry are you in? Whereabouts? What’s your customer base like? What have your employer’s recent hiring policies been?

“I would like to see immgration stopped untill we know that all my kind have a job, and at full time, only then should we let immigration continue, if the main parties did this including Labour I may forgive them for hurting me and my kind so bad.”

Pretty much an open statement of “only people like me matter”, that. How are you defining “your kind”, precisely?

It seems that one of the main problems about the immigration debate is that it rarely examines how it affects the country on a per capita basis. GDP might rise with immigration, but GDP divided by UK population may be lower. Until immigration has a net benifit on this figure – it is understandable that in terms of self interest at least, people have reservations about the continuation of it.

Clearly self interest in economic terms (or cultural for that matter) is not the only criteria that I would like seen applied to immigration. But those advocating for a more liberal immigration policy should be honest with their supporting arguments and realise that that there are consequences to advocating free movement of people as a moral absolute. I find it hard to imagine a reasonably resources welfare system and NHS surviving under such a system in the face of very relaxed immigration controls.

@13

“How should I know?”

Oh I thought you did, something to do with all that immigration.

What industry are you in……….

It’s a manufacturing company that not only deals with industry but the public as well, the company is just outside london & hasn’t been able to take anyone else on for well over a year, we have a good managment who do there best for us and the company.

“only people like me matter”

I didn’t say that did I? Trying to make me look bad or just feel bad?
I like to think I care about all people but as I’m at the bottom of the pile, looking out for my kind is all I can try to do.
And by my kind I thought it was blindingly obvious that I’m a poor working man, blimey, some people!

@15

“I like to think I care about all people…”

Well why not try extending that compassion to people in even worse conditions than you who only want to better themselves (and might I add pay more tax to the nation’s piggy bank than the so-called wealth creators of Boots & Vodafone et al).

One more thing.
Don’t play the “oh I’m working class therefore I hate immigration” card, chum. It doesn’t look pretty & it is in any case a bullshit argument – I’ve worked in a factory doing 50-60 hr weeks with Lativians, Poles, Lithuanians, and the only (I repeat, only) negativity that has been towards them has been from out-and-out racists (the kinda people who refer to Asians as Pakis and whatnot).

@16

“Well why not try extending that compassion to people in even worse conditions than you”

I have LOADS of compasion for them and wish them luck but look around, people are hurting here in Britain today so most of my compasion is for them.

“Don’t play the “oh I’m working class therefore I hate immigration”

Stop putting words in my post chummy! Did I say that, did I?! You think you know me you don’t, stop presuming you know me when you obviously don’t.

I’d like to tell you what I’ve been doing on my day off but you wouldn’t believe me because you wrongly think I’m nasty, let’s just say I’m proud of what I do & it doesn’t just involve my kind!

@Flowerpower

See, if you googled Cameron’s ‘tens of thousands’ instead of denying it out of hand you’d find:

“No ifs. No buts. This is a promise we made to the British people. And it’s a promise we are keeping.”

Doesn’t sound like a mere aspiration to me. Must be one of his ‘cast iron guarantees’.

But hey, retreating from an unworkable policy that turns into an instant shambles – can’t blame a man for doing the right thing.

OP no good.

noooooooooo that sounded mean spirited when I was trying to be playful .

Seriously, though, the downturn in Greece and Portugal and Spain can’t be the reason, can they? They’re too small and we did worse than the average European country in the recession – so on average emigration should improve, no?

The real conundrum is – why are Polish plumbers still making the trip if we aren’t still building extensions on our second homes. What’s the attraction of Britain now? We haven’t got money, or jobs, or growth.

Still baffled :\.

The govt should encourage more people to emigrate–brilliant.

“Do they try do bear down on the figures through imposing even more draconian measures on non-EU migration causing further damage to the economy”

How does restricting non-EU immigration harm or “further harm” the economy, exactly?

People moving around the EU should not count in the immigration figures.
And it’s often not immigration anyway, just temporary relocation.

According to work ”makes you free” Duncan Smith and ” migrating single parents back to work” battering the unemployed and single parents is supposed reduce the need for immigrants. It must be true because Con home said so. Indeed Con home despite the Christian ethos of its founder appears to be a BNP site in all but name.

Karl Marx, 1847 :

“The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it”

Today :

“The average wage taken home by 11 million British workers will remain ‘roughly the same’ until at least 2015, experts have warned. Think-tank Resolution Foundation said low and middle-income earners were not likely to benefit from the expected economic recovery. It predicted workers’ pay in four years time would be the same as in 2001. “

@ 15 Workman Fred

“Oh I thought you did, something to do with all that immigration.”

You asked me to explain specific issues with your specific workplace. Shockingly, I don’t know every detail of your life.

“It’s a manufacturing company that not only deals with industry but the public as well, the company is just outside london & hasn’t been able to take anyone else on for well over a year, we have a good managment who do there best for us and the company.”

If it hasn’t been taking people on, how exactly do you blame its poor business of immigrants?

“I didn’t say that did I? Trying to make me look bad or just feel bad?”

When you bang on about how the most important thing is to ensure “your kind” have a job, you don’t need me to make you look bad.

“I like to think I care about all people but as I’m at the bottom of the pile, looking out for my kind is all I can try to do.”

You’re not at the bottom of the pile. You live in a first-world country and you’re employed.

“And by my kind I thought it was blindingly obvious that I’m a poor working man, blimey, some people!”

So why are you complaining about the poor working men who come to Britain looking for a job? Why are you attacking “your kind”? Or is your definition of “your kind” actually a bit more complicated than your original reply suggests?

* “how exactly do you blame its poor business ON immigrants?”, rather!

Everyone seems to have ignored my point at #14 – but it isn’t the case that immigrants are bad for a factories business – it is that they are bad (it appears) for HIS business of being an employee.

Chaise you are right to point out that there are more needy people overseas who are looking for work – but the same argument can also be made for aid. If the UK started paying larger and larger overseas aid payments (of the truly alturistic type without a self interest element) then the country would soon start to experience the consequences of such an action. Government services would be withdrawn, UK would be a less competitive place for business, in turn employment would fall and so on and so on. Clearly there is a level to which the UK population will tolerate government policy which acts against the interests of the people.

It has to be remembered that governments are agents of the people – and it is to the british people that they owe their duty. Immigration control itself is a neutral policy tool. If as a whole immigration is currently making the electorate worse off then immigration should be reduced. Or vice versa. Accepting that it is only to the electorate that a government has a duty is not racist – its just showing an understanding of agency theory.

Now potentially as the peoples agents, if there is sufficient political will to increase immigration on compassionate grounds even though it is against the self interest of the population then that may still be possible – but I don’t believe that will exists.

How does restricting non-EU immigration harm or “further harm” the economy, exactly?

The government can’t, realistically, impose restrictions on nuclear family visas (except at the edges – ie restricting them to over-21s, making inspections more onerous, etc). It can’t, legally, impose restrictions on legitimate refugees.

Those are the only two ways in which low-skilled immigrants from outside the EU (who, at least in the short term, are likely to prove a drag rather than a boost) can get into the country.

Therefore, the only way it can restrict non-EU immigration is to clamp down on high-skilled immigrants.

The ways in which this harms the economy are pretty obvious: 1) the average level of skill of people living in the country falls (because the average HSM is much more highly skilled than the average Brit); 2) companies can’t recruit the staff that they need, and therefore can’t expand in a way that allows them to also hire more British staff, pay more British tax, and pay more dividends to British shareholders.

Oh, and also to clamp down on foreign students, who subsidise our university system by paying five times as much as British students. Nose-face-spite-cutting FTW.

If as a whole immigration is currently making the electorate worse off then immigration should be reduced.

But it isn’t. We know that it is making the electorate better off. Even MigrationWatch admits this – remember the “immigration only benefits us by 50p a week” story? So the most anti-immigration thinktank out there still wasn’t able to juke the stats to show a negative impact on GDP per head.

People *believe* immigration is making them worse off. They’re wrong. It’s the government’s job to look out for their interests by not making stupid policies based on beliefs that are demonstrably false.

If the public say “we should stop immigration because we hate foreigners”, the government would be right to listen to them. That’s an opinion, not a false belief. If people start believing that there’s any reason *other* than hating foreigners to stop immigration, *then* the government should ignore them.

“We know that it is making the electorate better off. Even MigrationWatch admits this”

Links ?

2 more Somalian kids shot dead in Milton Keynes

This summarises the story – but come on, you must remember the “no more than a Mars Bar a week” spin the tabloids put on it at the time?

Basically, MW published two studies. One got population numbers objectively wrong, and claimed zero impact of migration on GDP per capita (with a negative impact within the margin of error), but implied 0.1% positive impact when the correct population numbers were used. The other showed a small positive impact.

32: off-topic. Somalis in the UK are refugees; DC’s pledge doesn’t apply to refugee numbers. Again, if you expressly don’t want the UK to take refugees, why not vote for a party that pledges to leave the UNHCR? I believe there is one, led by a glassy-eyed Welsh chap if memory serves me well.

@ 28 Geofff

That’s sensible enough. The thing is that I believe problems with immigration are exaggerated. The studies I’ve seen generally show that immigration generally benefits the economy. People think that immigrants are often criminals because of a media policy that basically goes “If Mr Khan kills Mr Smith, put it on the front page. If Mr Smith kills Mr Khan, bury it on page 20, or leave it out entirely”.

Some people claim that immigration has a negative personal effect on them, but there’s two problems with that: 1) it’s anecdotal, and 2) they may have an undue sense of entitlement (the “our jobs” thing, like it can be your job before you get it) or assume that anything bad that happens to them must be down to their favourite hate group (Workman Fred above is showing signs of this: he keeps blaming his poor working hours on immigrants but has yet to explain the connection).

I personally feel we have a moral duty to help people who are worse off than us, regardless of national boundaries… but, as you say, we do have a democratic system for that sort of thing.

“We know that it is making the electorate better off.”

I don’t think that statement even makes sense. First off, who is “the electorate”? Second, what is the precise mechanism by which immigration makes “the electorate” better off?

“People *believe* immigration is making them worse off. They’re wrong”

Another nonsense statement. How do you know a priori? It’s a very straightforward principal of supply and demand that if you shift the supply function there will be some quantity/price adjustment in equilibrium. Therefore, other suppliers of labour services are going to be affected if immigration increases the supply of labour in their sector.

Mean real income isn’t even the most relevant stat–you need to look at the spread/distribution, worry less about the growth in aggregate output, which has taken care of itself for hundreds of years, and give the sixth form clichés a rest.

Vimothy:
I think you’re getting confused between The Electorate (who immigration does make better off, because that’s what raising GDP per capita is) and A Minority Of People (who immigration doesn’t make better off, because they’ve been stabbed by a khat-crazed Somali or because there have been particular labour-substitution effects in whatever their local situation may be). Yes, that minority of people obviously have the right to say immigration makes them worse off.

If we do conclude that the distribution effects that immigration produces are unfair on particular groups, then surely the best way to address that is through using the tax and benefit system to compensate people who lose out at the expense of the winners, rather than by forgoing the advantages created for everyone?

I come from south London but now live in Belfast, which has far less black and minority ethnic people living here. Even the most diverse area like Lisburn road, near the university and the hospitals, still has only a minority of the businesses on it being run by BME people. It is really different because it is so white and ”traditional”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyqLuV-7e_c

If that road seems a bit middle class, there are plenty others nearby that aren’t, but are still nothing like Streatham, Peckham and Brent. It’s like a different country.
It is a different country of course, but my point is, that it is just so different because it’s so un-cosmopolitan.

@26

“If it hasn’t been taking people on, how exactly do you blame its poor business of immigrants?”
And
“Workman Fred above is showing signs of this: he keeps blaming his poor working hours on immigrants”

What! I never said such a thing, show me where! You asked me about my job I told you.
Let me spell this out again for you, simply.

If there are jobs that a British man can do but that job is taken by an immigrant OR causes unfair competition then immigration is wrong.

As I take it you need an example here’s one.
I know of a team of British workers on a building site who were doing fine and earning a liveable wage for their family but were put out of work because the rates they worked for were put lower on the next job, they wasn’t sacked but just couldn’t compete for the work on the next job because they were priced out, but guess who could? That’s right! Some very nice young immigrants who all lived in one house!!!
So what do you do when you can’t afford to work for the wage offered because it doesn’t pay the bills? Emigrate maybe?!!

One other thing while I’m here, you are very selective with the bits you pick out of my posts & you like to answer a point or question with another question, what’s that about?
I will try to talk to you some more but you “style” of attack is very predictable & to be truthful I’m not sure I can be bothered with you if your not going to talk straight.

I will however still be posting and answering those that do, even if they do PRESUME much about me because it fits their mind set!

“I think you’re getting confused between The Electorate (who immigration does make better off, because that’s what raising GDP per capita is”

Er, no I’m not confused. 1, Mean output doesn’t actually represent anyone real in the economy. It’s just an average. 2, Please tell me the mechanism by which immigration raises per capita GDP.

Also, notice how you’ve gone from claiming that no one has been made worse off by immigration:

“People *believe* immigration is making them worse off. They’re wrong.”

To stating that, well duh, it’s *obvious* that *some* people have been made worse off by immigration:

“Yes, that minority of people obviously have the right to say immigration makes them worse off.”

All in the space of a few comments.

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market.

Bit of Smith for you Vimothy. More people means a greater division of labour, more people in a high productivity economy means higher output. More people at the technological production possibility frontier also means more Schumpeterian innovation and faster invention. Both a priori principles which are fairly difficult to contest, no?

Also migration increases per capita income because migrants are capita. Their income increases more than any others decreases. Unless migrants don’t count. But that is a fairly bad way to conduct utilitarian arguments.

“The division of labour is limited by the extent of the market” is one of my favourite sentences in economics, actually.

The market and the population are not quite the same thing, though they do overlap. But anyway, what you’re saying is basically that economies with larger populations are more productive on a per capita basis than economies with smaller populations, which is a testable proposition. I don’t have the time at the moment, but you could do it—just regress PC GDP or some measure of productivity on population size and whatever other factors you want to control for and see what the relationship is.

A cursory glance at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Doesn’t bode well for your theory. The top ten:

1 Qatar 88,559
2 Luxembourg 81,383
3 Singapore 56,522
4 Norway 52,013
5 Brunei 48,892
6 United Arab Emirates 48,821
7 United States 47,284
— Hong Kong 45,736
8 Switzerland 41,663
9 Netherlands 40,765
10 Australia 39,699

Hmm, curiouser and curiouser. It’s almost like there *is* a relationship—and it’s negative!

And if it were positive, it would imply that the countries migrants left were made worse off, which would be a strange thing for progressives to be arguing for.

Either way, I’d be interested in seeing you flesh out how we go from new immigrants to more productivity. What is the value of the marginal Polish bartender? Do they really raise everybody else’s productivity as well? Without new immigrants, we’d all have to quit our fancy jobs as City analysts and go and back to work in the local hotel? Why doesn’t more workers + same amount of capital = lower productivity of labour?

“Also migration increases per capita income because migrants are capita.”

Not quite. Immigration increases “capita”. Whether it increases per capita income is what we’re debating. (Per capita income is GDP divided by population). Why would it increase per capita GDP is my question to you. Why? Are we importing people who are generally more productive than the average British worker? Do they emit TFP? I mean—what?

@ 40 Workman Fred

“What! I never said such a thing, show me where! You asked me about my job I told you.”

In comment 11 (before I asked about your job), you mentioned the poor working hours available at your workplace, apparently as an argument against the idea that immigration increases net demand. And you’ve been going on about immigration hurting “people like you” for a while now.

Immigration does increase net demand, but that doesn’t mean it improves conditions for every single individual in the country. And since you’ve demonstrated no connection between your job problems and immigration, I’m not sure why you brought the subject up to begin with.

“Let me spell this out again for you, simply.

If there are jobs that a British man can do but that job is taken by an immigrant OR causes unfair competition then immigration is wrong.”

Why?

“As I take it you need an example here’s one.
I know of a team of British workers on a building site who were doing fine and earning a liveable wage for their family but were put out of work because the rates they worked for were put lower on the next job, they wasn’t sacked but just couldn’t compete for the work on the next job because they were priced out, but guess who could? That’s right! Some very nice young immigrants who all lived in one house!!!
So what do you do when you can’t afford to work for the wage offered because it doesn’t pay the bills? Emigrate maybe?!!”

Two things here: firstly, I would try to deal with this sort of problem using minimum wage law. A more open attitude towards immigration is not a solution unto itself, you have to make sure that employment law is fit to deal with it.

Secondly, while examples will obviously exist of individuals whose lives have been made worse by immigration, this does not make immigration a bad thing. It’s anecdotal.

“One other thing while I’m here, you are very selective with the bits you pick out of my posts & you like to answer a point or question with another question, what’s that about?”

If two people reply to each other’s entire comments, the comments quickly become very long (as this one will probably be). So I tend to cut comments down so that I can quote something that represents the core of the argument. I also won’t necessarily answer something if it’s irrelevant to our conversation, or if I agree with it and see nothing to argue about.

However, if you feel I’ve conveniently ignored anything that might cause problems for my argument, point them out. It’s entirely possible that I’ve done that by mistake.

Secondly, I’m not sure what your problem is with me asking questions. It’s a fairly normal thing to do. You do it yourself. If I answer a question with another question, it’s probably because I think the question needs clarifying in some way, or that I think it contains assumptions that I do not share.

@ 40 Workman Fred (again)

Also, it’s pretty cheeky to complain that I cherry-pick things to reply to when you ignored this question in my last post:

“So why are you complaining about the poor working men who come to Britain looking for a job? Why are you attacking “your kind”? Or is your definition of “your kind” actually a bit more complicated than your original reply suggests?”

So I guess it looks like you’re the one who ignores things that are inconvenient, not me.

@46, Chaise Guevara

Sounds like we have an understanding

Your asked,

“So why are you complaining about the poor working men who come to Britain looking for a job? Why are you attacking “your kind”? Or is your definition of “your kind” actually a bit more complicated than your original reply suggests?”

It’s not complicated.
I am British so my kind is, well British, I am working class so my kind is working class, put them together & my kind is British working class, simples.
Can I post the point I put in another post on here yesterday as I can see where you’re going with this?…..Well I’m going to anywho

“before you think, as some have called me on here, I’m nasty, consider this, being born in London and having many different types of friend do you think when I talk about immigration hurting my kind I’m just talking about white working class?!!

Hope this clears things up?

Look forward to doing battle with you often

@ 47 Workman Fred

“It’s not complicated.
I am British so my kind is, well British, I am working class so my kind is working class, put them together & my kind is British working class, simples.”

That’s what I thought – the unspoken qualification in your “my kind of people” category is being British. Why does nationality mark someone out as being especially worth protecting? (I know you wouldn’t say other people aren’t worthy of protection at all, but you’ve made it clear that you prioritise working-class Brits.)

I’m interested in this because it seems arbitrary to me, especially the bit about being British. Especially considering that it means you’ll often prioritise people over other people who are more in need – someone who comes here from a poor country and can only afford to get a room if they share it with four other people, for instance. Is it just automatic loyalty to people who remind you of yourself?

“before you think, as some have called me on here, I’m nasty, consider this, being born in London and having many different types of friend do you think when I talk about immigration hurting my kind I’m just talking about white working class?!!”

I’m not calling you racist – and by the way, that’s why I wanted you to clear up the thing about “your kind” being British rather than guessing myself. It would have been too easy to accuse you of something unfairly.

@48. Chaise Guevara

“Why does nationality mark someone out as being especially worth protecting?”

When you put it like that, no one is worth especially protecting above another human being but human nature dictates that we group together with our own kind, feel at one with each other, I believe long before the word racist was even conceived human beings from the caveman onwards was acting in a way that we would think of as racist/biased, etc today but to them it was the strongest group survives & mankind gets better genes to move on with, we have benefitted because of this today.

We as human beings could do so much to help each other but we don’t, why?
I believe it was the world watch institute that said, we could replant trees, feed the worlds starving, help reduce human population, turn the world more green friendly & lot’s of other things for the good of mankind for just seven hundred billion, I say just because compared to the more than a trillion A YEAR we spend on arms it almost is.
We keep making arms instead of feeding the worlds poor because we fear change, human nature I think your find, not right but the world is still doing it.

When the world gets a conscious that makes everyone equal and fair I will be happy, until then I live as the world dictates and to be blunt, the world says to me protect what you have or we WILL take it! So I prepare to fight for what I have, rightly or wrongly.

Whoops, got a bit carried away there (rolls eyes)

“Not quite. Immigration increases “capita”. Whether it increases per capita income is what we’re debating. (Per capita income is GDP divided by population). Why would it increase per capita GDP is my question to you. Why? Are we importing people who are generally more productive than the average British worker? Do they emit TFP? I mean—what?”

You’re thinking about it wrong.

Migration doesn’t increase capita, it moves capita from one place to another. However, migration definitely increases productivity.

Do you see where I’m going?

If the mirant is included in both calculations, premigration and postmigration then per capita gdp will almost certainly go up.

1 Qatar 88,559

OIL!

2 Luxembourg 81,383

RICH FOREIGNERS!

3 Singapore 56,522

Enormous hinterland, full of migrants

4 Norway 52,013

OIL!

5 Brunei 48,892

OIL!

6 United Arab Emirates 48,821

OIL!

7 United States 47,284

MASSIVE!

— Hong Kong 45,736

Enormous hinterland, full of migrants

8 Switzerland 41,663

TAX HAVEN!

9 Netherlands 40,765

QUITE BIG

10 Australia 39,699

QUITE BIG

Sorry for shouty capitals.

That lists proves little else except that Oil and banking makes you rich, and that Hong Kong and Singapore are outliers in almost everything. Although their massive hinterlands and connections to international migration make them kinda supportive of my position more than yours.

@ 49 Workman Fred

You’re right about the cavemen. Xenophobia is totally natural and presumably fulfilled important evolutionary functions. In terms of tolerance, I’m not going to deny that we’re in a better place now than we were at almost any other point in history.

As for the other stuff, I can understand the desire to protect yourself. But if you say that you’ll do this “rightly or wrongly”, then it’s fair for us to assume that you’re not actually trying to convince us that your way is the right way – instead, you’re lobbying for your interests. And a lot of social progress has been aided by people voting for what they think is right rather than what helps them (for example, white Americans would probably be better off if black Americans were still treated as second-class citizens, but you won’t find many of them voting for it).

“You’re thinking about it wrong.”

I’m pretty sure that I understand what “GDP per capita” means. It means national aggregate economic output (“GDP”) divided by head of population (“per capita”). Immigration increases the number of heads in a country, so if GDP stays the same, GDP per capita falls (because the denominator has increased).

“Do you see where I’m going?”

No. Your claim is that migration increases productivity. You can’t prove that claim merely by repeating it. Which is what you seem to be doing. Sorry if I’m missing the point.

“If the mirant is included in both calculations, premigration and postmigration then per capita gdp will almost certainly go up.”

Both what calculations?

If what you say is true then that list should be dominated by oil rich countries with big populations. Unless there is some relationship between population size and the probability of having a natural resource endowment. I’m working on the assumption that they are probabilistically independent events. (I’m not a poli sci student though and would be happy to see data/research that suggests otherwise).

For example, you write:

“OIL!”

For several countries

But so what? Saudi Arabia also has oil, and a larger population. Why doesn’t it top the chart? If you were to restrict the list to countries with oil, then Qatar would still be at the top, because Qatar has the highest PC GDP in the world full stop.

You also write

“Enormous hinterland, full of migrants”

This is irrelevant, since your argument is that productivity is increasing in population size.

For the US,

“MASSIVE!”

Yes, well done. One country that has a large population and high PC GDP.

“TAX HAVEN!”

So what? China has a 5th of the world’s population. By your argument it should be the most productive economy in the world. Why isn’t it on the list?

“QUITE BIG”

That describes NL and Australia. The Netherlands is the 61 in population rankings and 9 in PPP PCGDP. It makes no sense if productivity is an increasing function of population.

Australia is #50 in terms of population, and #10 in PPP PCGDP. Australia has some pretty sweet natural resources, but then, so does Libya.

Okay, I’m not expressing myself.

There are traditionally two calculations for per capita GDP.

1) The initial population divided by its gross domestic product.

2) The initial population (plus one migrant) divided by its gross domestic product.

My argument is that the first calculation arbitrarily ignores the migrant until he enters the borders of the state.

GDP per capita increases because the migrant’s income goes up. Most studies show no negative aggregate (or some small negative effects for unskilled workers), and some small positive effects. Therefore global GDP per capita undoubtedly goes up. The national figures are distorted by completely discounting the migrant’s product before he moved.

Utilitarianism is meant to be cosmopolitian, its not consistent to ignore the migrant at T1 when you do at T2.

With respect to TFP. Yep, migrants do kind of exude it.

Using the large variation in the inflow of immigrants across US states we analyze the impact of immigration on state employment, average hours worked, physical capital accumulation and, most importantly, total factor productivity and its skill bias. We use the location of a state relative to the Mexican border and to the main ports of entry, as well as the existence of communities of immigrants before 1960, as instruments. We find no evidence that immigrants crowded-out employment and hours worked by natives. At the same time we find robust evidence that they increased total factor productivity, on the one hand, while they decreased capital intensity and the skill-bias of production technologies, on the other. These results are robust to controlling for several other determinants of productivity that may vary with geography such as R&D spending, computer adoption, international competition in the form of exports and sector composition. Our results suggest that immigrants promoted efficient task specialization, thus increasing TFP and, at the same time, promoted the adoption of unskilled-biased technology as the theory of directed technological change would predict. Combining these effects, an increase in employment in a US state of 1% due to immigrants produced an increase in income per worker of 0.5% in that state.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/peri_accounting_sept_09.pdf

The main determinant of productivity is the economy into which you are born.

If I lived in Thailand even with all my human capital retained my productivity would be lower. Less capital, worse financial system, less clearly defined property rights, a lower level of technology.

Moving humans close to good institutions and more capital will increase productivity.

Moving onto population versus wealth.

Obviously population is only one variable. I would also argue it is a minor one. But all else equal, more people means more innovation. All else is never equal but I don’t think that a controversial point.