What did Labour do for me when spanking all our money away?
Discussion
V88Dicky said:
UK debt in 1997 was £350 Billion.
UK debt in 2010/11 is either £1.7 or £4.8 Trillion depending on who you believe.
Either way, I could f
king cry. 
That's the long and short of it.UK debt in 2010/11 is either £1.7 or £4.8 Trillion depending on who you believe.
Either way, I could f
king cry. Labour spent way too much of our money. We have to start paying it back sooner or later.
But what to cut?
University support and increased fees? Hospitals? Bin collections? Cutting benefits? Lowering the 40% tax from £37.5k to £35k? Srapping EMA? Child savings funds? Cutting the state pension? Pay cuts for the public sector?
Something has to be done, we won't like it whatever gets cut but we simply can't spend the volume of money we did and getting so far into debt we're struggling to keep up with the interest alone is bad news.
Dibblington said:
That's the long and short of it.
Labour spent way too much of our money. We have to start paying it back sooner or later.
But what to cut?
University support and increased fees? Hospitals? Bin collections? Cutting benefits? Lowering the 40% tax from £37.5k to £35k? Srapping EMA? Child savings funds? Cutting the state pension? Pay cuts for the public sector?
Something has to be done, we won't like it whatever gets cut but we simply can't spend the volume of money we did and getting so far into debt we're struggling to keep up with the interest alone is bad news.
Scrap business rates to encourage new business growth and foreign investmentLabour spent way too much of our money. We have to start paying it back sooner or later.
But what to cut?
University support and increased fees? Hospitals? Bin collections? Cutting benefits? Lowering the 40% tax from £37.5k to £35k? Srapping EMA? Child savings funds? Cutting the state pension? Pay cuts for the public sector?
Something has to be done, we won't like it whatever gets cut but we simply can't spend the volume of money we did and getting so far into debt we're struggling to keep up with the interest alone is bad news.
5% paycut across public sector
End climate change funding
Cut state benefits to bare minimum so that claimants have enough to survive but not a life of luxury
That'd be a good start..
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I refer you to my previous answer:
Someone asked the question, I simply used google to answer. For the record I think politicians are all scum of the earth whatever colour tie that they wear. I want a change of government system, couldn't care less which political party is in power."
As for the wars I don't recall the conservatives opposing it.
If you're just looking at the Government spending and the impact of running a deficit then a lot of what Fittster listed is irrelevant as it's policy change that is not directly government funded (e.g. minimum wage).
The deficit spending was largely shared across lots of departments, there was no single policy directly funded by it.
I find this is most clearly shown on the Public Spending diagrams at the links below;
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
I can find no obvious areas that didn't exist 15 years ago that cost anywhere near the deficit amount.
So the answer is that each department could nominally;
- Employ more people
- Pay people more
- Buy more external goods and services
- Redistribute more money back out (to citizens or external to the country)
Some of these changes will have been converted into 'improved' services, though it's unlikely to have been 100% efficient.
You 'benefitted' on average if you
- Were employed by the departments
- Sold goods or services to the departments, or sold goods and services to people employed selling goods and services to the departments, etc... down the supply and employment chain, including investments that yielded greater returns because of the extra money sloshing around
- Used services these departments provided
- Had money redistributed back to you
BUT, many citizens are also left with the debt to pay, so the only people who net benefitted financially are those who aren't going to pay back their share of the debt. e.g. someone who died in 2007, someone who had money redistributed to them who is not a tax payer, etc...
The social benefits should have been less crime, better health, etc... The problem here is that agreeing on social benefit measures is very difficult and it is very very difficult to determine if the cause of changes in the social measure are due to deficit spending, technology advances or continuous improvement. The Labour Government were aware of this and it showed when they often touted their acheivements in terms on inputs rather than outputs. e.g. More funding for pupils, not better education. More police, not less crime. More nurses, not better health. Etc...
The deficit spending was largely shared across lots of departments, there was no single policy directly funded by it.
I find this is most clearly shown on the Public Spending diagrams at the links below;
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
I can find no obvious areas that didn't exist 15 years ago that cost anywhere near the deficit amount.
So the answer is that each department could nominally;
- Employ more people
- Pay people more
- Buy more external goods and services
- Redistribute more money back out (to citizens or external to the country)
Some of these changes will have been converted into 'improved' services, though it's unlikely to have been 100% efficient.
You 'benefitted' on average if you
- Were employed by the departments
- Sold goods or services to the departments, or sold goods and services to people employed selling goods and services to the departments, etc... down the supply and employment chain, including investments that yielded greater returns because of the extra money sloshing around
- Used services these departments provided
- Had money redistributed back to you
BUT, many citizens are also left with the debt to pay, so the only people who net benefitted financially are those who aren't going to pay back their share of the debt. e.g. someone who died in 2007, someone who had money redistributed to them who is not a tax payer, etc...
The social benefits should have been less crime, better health, etc... The problem here is that agreeing on social benefit measures is very difficult and it is very very difficult to determine if the cause of changes in the social measure are due to deficit spending, technology advances or continuous improvement. The Labour Government were aware of this and it showed when they often touted their acheivements in terms on inputs rather than outputs. e.g. More funding for pupils, not better education. More police, not less crime. More nurses, not better health. Etc...
Edited by grantone on Tuesday 1st February 14:12
Fittster said:
I refer you to my previous answer:
Someone asked the question, I simply used google to answer. For the record I think politicians are all scum of the earth whatever colour tie that they wear. I want a change of government system, couldn't care less which political party is in power."
As for the wars I don't recall the conservatives opposing it.
Tsippy said:
Dibblington said:
That's the long and short of it.
Labour spent way too much of our money. We have to start paying it back sooner or later.
But what to cut?
University support and increased fees? Hospitals? Bin collections? Cutting benefits? Lowering the 40% tax from £37.5k to £35k? Srapping EMA? Child savings funds? Cutting the state pension? Pay cuts for the public sector?
Something has to be done, we won't like it whatever gets cut but we simply can't spend the volume of money we did and getting so far into debt we're struggling to keep up with the interest alone is bad news.
Scrap business rates to encourage new business growth and foreign investmentLabour spent way too much of our money. We have to start paying it back sooner or later.
But what to cut?
University support and increased fees? Hospitals? Bin collections? Cutting benefits? Lowering the 40% tax from £37.5k to £35k? Srapping EMA? Child savings funds? Cutting the state pension? Pay cuts for the public sector?
Something has to be done, we won't like it whatever gets cut but we simply can't spend the volume of money we did and getting so far into debt we're struggling to keep up with the interest alone is bad news.
5% paycut across public sector
End climate change funding
Cut state benefits to bare minimum so that claimants have enough to survive but not a life of luxury
That'd be a good start..
Then we'll see how many people are unemployed, or holding out for that £30k job in IT. If I can graduate with a Masters in engineering and find myself labouring 40 hours a week on building sites plus 40 hours in a bar on top, so can everyone else, I'm nothing special. If I can do it, so can the fat sod over the road, they've not worked a day in their life while wife and I both have Masters degrees and both work full time to pay a mortgage, they get the same 3 bed semi on the same road as us for free!
A recent trip to Singapore was a right eye opener, no benefits system meant there was 0% unemployment. How come we colonised them umpteen years ago and they are so far ahead of us already?
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Sadly, I suspect the answer is nothing more than "Blair's ego".Epic idiot IMO and I hope history will not be kind to him. Can't stand Brown either but I'm quite convinced he never stood a chance. The ship was already sinking fast by the time Blair handed the captain's hat to Brown and sped away in his own personal lifeboat.
Ozzie Osmond said:
Sadly, I suspect the answer is nothing more than "Blair's ego".
Epic idiot IMO and I hope history will not be kind to him. Can't stand Brown either but I'm quite convinced he never stood a chance. The ship was already sinking fast by the time Blair handed the captain's hat to Brown and sped away in his own personal lifeboat.
If the ship had been run aground by Blair, Brown would still have managed to sink it.Epic idiot IMO and I hope history will not be kind to him. Can't stand Brown either but I'm quite convinced he never stood a chance. The ship was already sinking fast by the time Blair handed the captain's hat to Brown and sped away in his own personal lifeboat.
The minimum wage is a red herring. Labour supporters will claim it's a massive increase on the '£1.50ph you'd have earnt under the Tories in the 80s' yet don't seem to realise that that £1.50 in todays money works out at about the minimum wage! If anything it's simply kept wages lower for longer as employers don't have to make an effort to lure in staff, they simply offer the minimum wage or thereabouts as they know their competitors will do similar.
Fittster said:
You can decide for yourself which of the following were worth having. A google returns the following:
Introduced the National Minimum Wage and raised it to £5.52.
4. Over 14,000 more police in England and Wales.
5. Cut overall crime by 32 per cent.
6. Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools.
7. Young people achieving some of the best ever results at 14, 16, and 18.
8. Funding for every pupil in England has doubled.
9. Employment is at its highest level ever.
10. Written off up to 100 per cent of debt owed by poorest countries.
11. 85,000 more nurses.
12. 32,000 more doctors.
13. Brought back matrons to hospital wards.
14. Devolved power to the Scottish Parliament.
15. Devolved power to the Welsh Assembly.
16. Dads now get paternity leave of 2 weeks for the first time.
17. NHS Direct offering free convenient patient advice.
18. Gift aid was worth £828 million to charities last year.
19. Restored city-wide government to London.
20. Record number of students in higher education.
21. Child benefit up 26 per cent since 1997.
22. Delivered 2,200 Sure Start Children’s Centres.
23. Introduced the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
24. £200 winter fuel payment to pensioners & up to £300 for over-80s.
25. On course to exceed our Kyoto target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
26. Restored devolved government to Northern Ireland.
27. Over 36,000 more teachers in England and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants.
28. All full time workers now have a right to 24 days paid holiday.
29. A million pensioners lifted out of poverty.
30. 600,000 children lifted out of relative poverty.
31. Introduced child tax credit giving more money to parents.
32. Scrapped Section 28 and introduced Civil Partnerships.
33. Brought over 1 million social homes up to standard.
34. Inpatient waiting lists down by over half a million since 1997.
35. Banned fox hunting.
36. Cleanest rivers, beaches, drinking water and air since before the industrial revolution.
37. Free TV licences for over-75s.
38. Banned fur farming and the testing of cosmetics on animals.
39. Free breast cancer screening for all women aged between 50-70.
40. Free off peak local bus travel for over-60s.
41. New Deal – helped over 1.8 million people into work.
42. Over 3 million child trust funds have been started.
43. Free eye test for over 60s.
44. More than doubled the number of apprenticeships.
45. Free entry to national museums and galleries.
46. Overseas aid budget more than doubled.
47. Heart disease deaths down by 150,000 and cancer deaths down by 50,000.
48. Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75 per cent.
49. Free nursery places for every three and four-year-olds.
50. Free fruit for most four to six-year-olds at school.
1. Yes they did, then they had to continually raise it to limit the amount of tax credits they gave away. but it did nothing to get long term unemployed back to work.Introduced the National Minimum Wage and raised it to £5.52.
4. Over 14,000 more police in England and Wales.
5. Cut overall crime by 32 per cent.
6. Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools.
7. Young people achieving some of the best ever results at 14, 16, and 18.
8. Funding for every pupil in England has doubled.
9. Employment is at its highest level ever.
10. Written off up to 100 per cent of debt owed by poorest countries.
11. 85,000 more nurses.
12. 32,000 more doctors.
13. Brought back matrons to hospital wards.
14. Devolved power to the Scottish Parliament.
15. Devolved power to the Welsh Assembly.
16. Dads now get paternity leave of 2 weeks for the first time.
17. NHS Direct offering free convenient patient advice.
18. Gift aid was worth £828 million to charities last year.
19. Restored city-wide government to London.
20. Record number of students in higher education.
21. Child benefit up 26 per cent since 1997.
22. Delivered 2,200 Sure Start Children’s Centres.
23. Introduced the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
24. £200 winter fuel payment to pensioners & up to £300 for over-80s.
25. On course to exceed our Kyoto target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
26. Restored devolved government to Northern Ireland.
27. Over 36,000 more teachers in England and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants.
28. All full time workers now have a right to 24 days paid holiday.
29. A million pensioners lifted out of poverty.
30. 600,000 children lifted out of relative poverty.
31. Introduced child tax credit giving more money to parents.
32. Scrapped Section 28 and introduced Civil Partnerships.
33. Brought over 1 million social homes up to standard.
34. Inpatient waiting lists down by over half a million since 1997.
35. Banned fox hunting.
36. Cleanest rivers, beaches, drinking water and air since before the industrial revolution.
37. Free TV licences for over-75s.
38. Banned fur farming and the testing of cosmetics on animals.
39. Free breast cancer screening for all women aged between 50-70.
40. Free off peak local bus travel for over-60s.
41. New Deal – helped over 1.8 million people into work.
42. Over 3 million child trust funds have been started.
43. Free eye test for over 60s.
44. More than doubled the number of apprenticeships.
45. Free entry to national museums and galleries.
46. Overseas aid budget more than doubled.
47. Heart disease deaths down by 150,000 and cancer deaths down by 50,000.
48. Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75 per cent.
49. Free nursery places for every three and four-year-olds.
50. Free fruit for most four to six-year-olds at school.
2. ?
3. ?
4. what use are extra police if you are continually cutting the court systems budgets and doing nothing about prison overcrowding. May aswell have been 14,000 street sweepers.
5. I doubt that very much. As most crime now goes unreported (see above)
6. I doubt that aswell from the tables and news reports I have seen.
7. Set easy targets more like.
8. Shame the standards didn't double with it.
9. The population growth did that, mostly due to their astonishing lack of border control.
10.Did any country write off our debt when labour f
ked everything up?11.I think that is a play on words, Maybe 85,000 recruited in that time but as they closed alot of hospitals I don't think it was 85,000 extra.
12.Well the contract debacle made them want come here and work, we only trained the same amount so the extra must have been from outside the UK.
13.Should have brought back cleaners.
14.And did a half arsed job of that aswell allowing scottish MP's to vote for up there and against down here.(that west lothian thing you may have heard of)
15.See above
16.Shame it wasn't paid for properly or it may have made a difference.
17.And advise you to take something that's not available at the time of night you called or requires prescription and a doctor visit anyway. Or if serious enough tell yuo you wasted the call time and should have dialed 999.
18.Charities wouldn't be required if they spent money where it was needed.
19.f
k london, that was an excuse to draw every last bit of money out of it's residents with things like the CC charge.20.free for the scotish, yet fees paid by us english. THAT WAS FAIR WASN'T IT.
21.What was the point of that? surely you wouldn't have children you can't support yourself would you?
22.Never used one, but I am told this is a good thing.
23.So all the low life scum can know their rights.
24.If they hadn't increased pensions that year by 67p this wouldn't have happened. It was a way of calming down the grey vote.
25.LOL just f
king LOL26.A process completed by John Major but signed off by his tonyness.
27.With the population boom they were an essential, they had to do it. The teaching assistants were to minimise the cost.
28.I like holidays so i'll give you that one. even though most companies gave more than that amount anyway.
29.By what measure? and how? This interests me.
30.Yes throw money at the parents, the kids can have the change if they go the off liscence for me.
31.This is the main reason why the country is f
ked financially. Being paid to have kids you can't support is now the easiest way of getting on in life.32.I don't agree! thats not a good thing.
33.and sold as many more
34.There had to be an improvement with the amount of money robbed from the pension funds that paid for it. They did claim it would only be £42 Billion but left one hand in the till.
35.I'm a city boy and don't have an oppinion on that.
36.I know nothing on this matter, I have never even come across an article on it.
37.Stop stealing from the really old, we steal enough from everybody else.
38.I assume this is a good thing.
39.A good thing
40.It's not free though is it?
41.Anything that gets people working is good.
42.Why?
43.It's not free though is it?
44.while destroying a great manufacturing nations ability to manufacture so they ended up at McDonalds anyway.
45.It's not free though is it?
46.Great! get us into massive debt then borrow some more to give away.
47.Good see point 34
48.Yes give them all £30 a week and send them to college. Sorted.
49.It's not free though is it?
50.It's not free though is it?
They did do a couple of good things I see.
Oakey said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Exactly, the fact you can claim more in benefits for being unemployed speaks volumes about the 'minimum wage'. It's a minimum wage alright, but not in a positive way. "We find that all European countries experienced a decrease in their average wages and a worsening of their wage inequality because of emigration. Whereas, contrary to the popular belief, immigration had nearly equal but opposite effects: positive on average wages and reducing wage inequality…
Public fears in European countries are misplaced; immigration has had a positive average wage effect on native workers."
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/ludemar/Wage%20...
Edited by Fittster on Tuesday 1st February 20:14
The NHS gave my Mil 4 xtimes the dose of Herceptin that she should have had. Yep. That's the really, really, really expensive rationed one. You would have thought they'd get that right wouldn't you?
S'ok though - They have no evidence to suggest it will do her any harm at all - mainly because no-one has ever been given that much before.
S'ok though - They have no evidence to suggest it will do her any harm at all - mainly because no-one has ever been given that much before.
Well how about:
Does immigration cut wages? Here’s some new evidence. Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen estimate that a five percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants working in a particular occupation leads to a fall in wages in that occupation of 0.2%.
This is statistically significant, but hardly economically so. It means that 1.5 million new immigrants would cut average wages by less than 3p an hour.
However, all this effect is concentrated in low-skill service sector occupations, such as retailing, cleaning or bars. Here, a 10 percentage point rise in the immigrant workforce as a share of the total is associated with a 5.2% fall in wages.
Is this significant enough to justify restricting immigration? I’m not sure:
1. There are lots of others things which have depressed unskilled wages in recent years - globalization, technical change, the decline of unions and the fact that new technology allows efficiency wages to be replaced by direct control. It could be that failure to control for these leads to an over-estimate of the impact of immigration.
It's odd to focus so much upon immigration when considering causes of falling relative wages.
2. This paper (pdf) finds that the main effect of immigration is to reduce the wages not of natives but of previous immigrants; the Polish cleaner cuts the wages of the Nigerian cleaner.
3. Even if immigrants do reduce wages of unskilled natives, it doesn’t follow that immigration controls are the best policy response. These have a deadweight cost, and might not work, as restricting non-EU immigration might merely cause a rise in migration from the EU.
It might instead be that a better response would be tax or benefit changes to help those on low pay.
So, my Bayesian prior remains - if you want an argument for immigration controls, you can’t find it in the economic research.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_...
Does immigration cut wages? Here’s some new evidence. Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen estimate that a five percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants working in a particular occupation leads to a fall in wages in that occupation of 0.2%.
This is statistically significant, but hardly economically so. It means that 1.5 million new immigrants would cut average wages by less than 3p an hour.
However, all this effect is concentrated in low-skill service sector occupations, such as retailing, cleaning or bars. Here, a 10 percentage point rise in the immigrant workforce as a share of the total is associated with a 5.2% fall in wages.
Is this significant enough to justify restricting immigration? I’m not sure:
1. There are lots of others things which have depressed unskilled wages in recent years - globalization, technical change, the decline of unions and the fact that new technology allows efficiency wages to be replaced by direct control. It could be that failure to control for these leads to an over-estimate of the impact of immigration.
It's odd to focus so much upon immigration when considering causes of falling relative wages.
2. This paper (pdf) finds that the main effect of immigration is to reduce the wages not of natives but of previous immigrants; the Polish cleaner cuts the wages of the Nigerian cleaner.
3. Even if immigrants do reduce wages of unskilled natives, it doesn’t follow that immigration controls are the best policy response. These have a deadweight cost, and might not work, as restricting non-EU immigration might merely cause a rise in migration from the EU.
It might instead be that a better response would be tax or benefit changes to help those on low pay.
So, my Bayesian prior remains - if you want an argument for immigration controls, you can’t find it in the economic research.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_...
grantone said:
If you're just looking at the Government spending and the impact of running a deficit then a lot of what Fittster listed is irrelevant as it's policy change that is not directly government funded (e.g. minimum wage).
The deficit spending was largely shared across lots of departments, there was no single policy directly funded by it.
I find this is most clearly shown on the Public Spending diagrams at the links below;
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
I can find no obvious areas that didn't exist 15 years ago that cost anywhere near the deficit amount.
So the answer is that each department could nominally;
- Employ more people
- Pay people more
- Buy more external goods and services
- Redistribute more money back out (to citizens or external to the country)
Some of these changes will have been converted into 'improved' services, though it's unlikely to have been 100% efficient.
You 'benefitted' on average if you
- Were employed by the departments
- Sold goods or services to the departments, or sold goods and services to people employed selling goods and services to the departments, etc... down the supply and employment chain, including investments that yielded greater returns because of the extra money sloshing around
- Used services these departments provided
- Had money redistributed back to you
BUT, many citizens are also left with the debt to pay, so the only people who net benefitted financially are those who aren't going to pay back their share of the debt. e.g. someone who died in 2007, someone who had money redistributed to them who is not a tax payer, etc...
The social benefits should have been less crime, better health, etc... The problem here is that agreeing on social benefit measures is very difficult and it is very very difficult to determine if the cause of changes in the social measure are due to deficit spending, technology advances or continuous improvement. The Labour Government were aware of this and it showed when they often touted their acheivements in terms on inputs rather than outputs. e.g. More funding for pupils, not better education. More police, not less crime. More nurses, not better health. Etc...
Thanks, interesting points. It'll be interesting to see the long term trends from the extra spending in health etc, as you say.The deficit spending was largely shared across lots of departments, there was no single policy directly funded by it.
I find this is most clearly shown on the Public Spending diagrams at the links below;
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc...
I can find no obvious areas that didn't exist 15 years ago that cost anywhere near the deficit amount.
So the answer is that each department could nominally;
- Employ more people
- Pay people more
- Buy more external goods and services
- Redistribute more money back out (to citizens or external to the country)
Some of these changes will have been converted into 'improved' services, though it's unlikely to have been 100% efficient.
You 'benefitted' on average if you
- Were employed by the departments
- Sold goods or services to the departments, or sold goods and services to people employed selling goods and services to the departments, etc... down the supply and employment chain, including investments that yielded greater returns because of the extra money sloshing around
- Used services these departments provided
- Had money redistributed back to you
BUT, many citizens are also left with the debt to pay, so the only people who net benefitted financially are those who aren't going to pay back their share of the debt. e.g. someone who died in 2007, someone who had money redistributed to them who is not a tax payer, etc...
The social benefits should have been less crime, better health, etc... The problem here is that agreeing on social benefit measures is very difficult and it is very very difficult to determine if the cause of changes in the social measure are due to deficit spending, technology advances or continuous improvement. The Labour Government were aware of this and it showed when they often touted their acheivements in terms on inputs rather than outputs. e.g. More funding for pupils, not better education. More police, not less crime. More nurses, not better health. Etc...
Edited by grantone on Tuesday 1st February 14:12
Point two of who benefits - that'll be almost all of us then, one way or another?
Fittster said:
Well how about:
Does immigration cut wages? Here’s some new evidence. Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen estimate that a five percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants working in a particular occupation leads to a fall in wages in that occupation of 0.2%.
This is statistically significant, but hardly economically so. It means that 1.5 million new immigrants would cut average wages by less than 3p an hour.
However, all this effect is concentrated in low-skill service sector occupations, such as retailing, cleaning or bars. Here, a 10 percentage point rise in the immigrant workforce as a share of the total is associated with a 5.2% fall in wages.
Is this significant enough to justify restricting immigration? I’m not sure:
1. There are lots of others things which have depressed unskilled wages in recent years - globalization, technical change, the decline of unions and the fact that new technology allows efficiency wages to be replaced by direct control. It could be that failure to control for these leads to an over-estimate of the impact of immigration.
It's odd to focus so much upon immigration when considering causes of falling relative wages.
2. This paper (pdf) finds that the main effect of immigration is to reduce the wages not of natives but of previous immigrants; the Polish cleaner cuts the wages of the Nigerian cleaner.
3. Even if immigrants do reduce wages of unskilled natives, it doesn’t follow that immigration controls are the best policy response. These have a deadweight cost, and might not work, as restricting non-EU immigration might merely cause a rise in migration from the EU.
It might instead be that a better response would be tax or benefit changes to help those on low pay.
So, my Bayesian prior remains - if you want an argument for immigration controls, you can’t find it in the economic research.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_...
you don't get it!Does immigration cut wages? Here’s some new evidence. Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen estimate that a five percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants working in a particular occupation leads to a fall in wages in that occupation of 0.2%.
This is statistically significant, but hardly economically so. It means that 1.5 million new immigrants would cut average wages by less than 3p an hour.
However, all this effect is concentrated in low-skill service sector occupations, such as retailing, cleaning or bars. Here, a 10 percentage point rise in the immigrant workforce as a share of the total is associated with a 5.2% fall in wages.
Is this significant enough to justify restricting immigration? I’m not sure:
1. There are lots of others things which have depressed unskilled wages in recent years - globalization, technical change, the decline of unions and the fact that new technology allows efficiency wages to be replaced by direct control. It could be that failure to control for these leads to an over-estimate of the impact of immigration.
It's odd to focus so much upon immigration when considering causes of falling relative wages.
2. This paper (pdf) finds that the main effect of immigration is to reduce the wages not of natives but of previous immigrants; the Polish cleaner cuts the wages of the Nigerian cleaner.
3. Even if immigrants do reduce wages of unskilled natives, it doesn’t follow that immigration controls are the best policy response. These have a deadweight cost, and might not work, as restricting non-EU immigration might merely cause a rise in migration from the EU.
It might instead be that a better response would be tax or benefit changes to help those on low pay.
So, my Bayesian prior remains - if you want an argument for immigration controls, you can’t find it in the economic research.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_...
why import when we could get those on the dole to do it?
Fittster said:
I was trying to respond to Tonkers' statement:
"mass almost uncontrolled immigration and student visas and the like have had a MASSIVE effect on the wage levels in this country, coupled with enormous (relatively) riches for being on benefits, it has made the poverty trap/reason to only vote for one party much much larger...."
I'm not convinced the impact of immigration is as great a Tonker suggests.
if the jobs go to immigrants it is easy for those on the dole to claim there are no jobs."mass almost uncontrolled immigration and student visas and the like have had a MASSIVE effect on the wage levels in this country, coupled with enormous (relatively) riches for being on benefits, it has made the poverty trap/reason to only vote for one party much much larger...."
I'm not convinced the impact of immigration is as great a Tonker suggests.
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