Sunday, July 10, 2011

You Couldn't Make It Up ...

One of the results of mass low-skilled immigration into both the UK and US economies has been to depress wages, by the simple mechanism of supply and demand. As Marx put it :

“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”
So far so bad for those at the sharp end, so far so good for the people who employ them.

But why stop there ? As long as your income's safe - and let's theorise that you're one of the elite - why not expose a few people higher up the economic food chain to the bracing discipline of "if you don't want to do it, there are plenty of other people ...". After all, you don't pay anywhere near as much for cleaners and clerks as you used to. Why can't you cut the cost of your accountants and engineers?

But how do you do lobby for this without saying why? In the case of the low-skilled imported worker, it was easy - they were "doing the jobs the natives just didn't want to do for £5 an hour", but you needn't mention that last bit. They were doing us a favour by coming here at all - we should be grateful - how would the NHS run or City offices get cleaned otherwise?

So what's the narrative to be?

"Tell you what - and this'll kill you - how about social justice?"

"What ?"

"Well, you know how the incomes of the wealthiest have spiralled away while incomes at the bottom stagnated or declined?"

"Do I ! Great, isn't it !"

"Well, lots of people think it's very bad that we're stonkingly rich while some chav serving in Maccies is a tad penurious. There's something called the Gini coefficient ... but I had this thought. All we have to do is deflect attention down a bit - let's say onto something called 'high-income people' - you know - accountants, engineers, IT, scientists, the analysts and bean-counters - we can define who qualifies - and we can argue that their wages - and hence inequality ratios - are kept artificially high by lack of global competition - no, they're "subsidised by their protection" - no one likes a subsidy - "

"I do - I love 'em. Where would we have been without the bailout? "

"Will you let me finish? - and so we should allow far more high-skilled immigration, because that means greater equality - and that means we can do to their terms and conditions what we've already done at the bottom!"

"You, my son, are a ******* genius"

"But it doesn't stop there. You know how mass immigration's depressed wages in lower-paid jobs - the sort young people often do"

"I might have heard something to that effect ... nonsense of course (cough)"

"Well, we can also argue that their lower incomes indicate lower productivity - and that therefore we really need more high-skill immigrants to provide the productivity the natives just don't want to provide"

"Brilliant"

"And there might even be some truth in the bit about productivity. Between ourselves, you know and I know that some of the people who've come over aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer (anyone who says that is a racist, of course, and we'll say it's down to bad teachers) - so it's possible that the 20-somethings really aren't as productive. Either way, it just means we need more high-skill immigrants."

"Awesome. All we have to do is get the ball rolling."

Obviously, the above is just complete fantasy.

At The Globalist, an interview with former Fed chief Alan Greenspan :

Q. How could immigration reform reduce income inequality?

A. “Most of the debate on income inequality correctly focuses on raising the level of low-income individuals. However, it also works by lowering top-level incomes via more competitive immigration. There is much academic research demonstrating that it is the relative position of people in society that fosters views of ‘fairness,’ not one’s absolute status.

Q. Turning back to the United States, what demographic shift will have major economic implications?

A. “In the United States, we are in the process of seeing the baby boomers — the most productive, highly skilled, educated part of our labor force — retire. They are being replaced by groups of young workers who have regrettably scored rather poorly in international educational match-ups over the last two decades.

Q. What else points to the inability of young workers to compete?

A. “Most disturbing is that the average income of U.S. households headed by 25-year-olds and younger has been declining relative to the average income of the baby boomer population. This is a reasonably good indication that the productivity of the younger part of our workforce is declining relative to the level of productivity achieved by the retiring baby boomers. This raises some major concerns about the productive skills of our future U.S. labor force.

Q. Can the U.S. government counter this trend?

A.“Yes, there are options to combat that decline, but contrary to what many people believe, we do very poorly in opening up our borders to skilled immigrants. Our H1-B visa restrictions are a disgrace. Most high-income people in our country do not realize that their incomes are being subsidized by their protection from competition from highly skilled people who are prevented from immigrating to the United States. But we need such skills in order to staff our productive economy, so that the standard of living for Americans as a whole can grow.

Q. What needs to change with respect to U.S. immigration?

A. “My view is that we should give a green card to every immigrant who gets an advanced degree in the United States. The proportion of those people who will be terrorists is miniscule. That would have a major positive economic impact.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Economics have nothing to do with it.

You know as well as I do that this guy would favour mass immigration regardless of the circumstances.

Economy not doing well, we need more vibrant immigrants to show us how to run businesses. Or to do the jobs we wont..
Economy doing well, then we need more 'skilled' workers...

Once you realise that they favour mass immigration regardless, you have to ask what the real reason is.

And you have to also wonder how it is that so many countries 'independently' adopted the same policies at the same time.

Sgt Troy 11th Dragoons said...

Greenspan's a crook - see Inside Job(Savings and Loans, derivatives)

Nulab's open door hasn't done us a lot of good - economy's flatlining

"Yes, I'm on this list of treacherous high achievers......."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-what-hope-for-tolerance-if-we-treat-foreign-artists-like-dirt-2311675.html

I wouldn't have called a demented interloping Londongrad scribbler a high achiever myself - if only she would just xxxx off and leave us alone

"The vast majority of the 165,000 pupils covered by the research were white Britons. As an ethnic group, they were found to be likely to perform worse than others."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/three-in-five-of-the-poorest-11yearolds-lack-basic-literacy-2311642.html

We are not an ethnic group, it's our xxxxxxx country.

I presume the very poor results would have nothing to do with the continual belittling and denigration of English history and culture(we being the only people in the world who never had one apparently) by leftist maggots on one side and the assault of vicious right-wing free marketeers on the other.

kb said...

It's an ill wind etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14105065

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Sgt Troy:

I'm sure I've read before that in areas home to large numbers of 'coloured' immigrants extra money is pumped into education...

Anonymous said...

Yes, hardly anyone wants mass immigration.

But you seem strangely silent on the Rebekah Brooks/News of the World scandal, Laban.

Does it lie outside your comfort zone?

Laban said...

If you look back 3 posts or so, you'll see I did post on it.

Anonymous said...

Sarge - I havent picked through it yet but I wouldnt be at all surprised to find that, once Ive hacked through the qualifications, equivocations and outright falsehoods the real story will be laid bare. Black pupils way behind whites.

Most of these white educational failure horror stories turn out to be based on statistical jiggery pokery.

I say horror storieand the liberal believers amongst their readers, one can well imagine Indy hacks wanking furiously over such white-failure-porn.

The last time this kind of toss did the rounds, it turned out to be highly specific. Based on the slight edge that recent African immigrant girl children had over poor white boys. An achievement gap so small it wasnt even visible on the graphic used by the BBC at the time.

Still enough to cause an outbreak of five knuckle shuffling amongst the liberal classes. Each trying to outdo each other in pretending to be worried by it.

Anonymous said...

Just had a very quick look at the report.

It compares white British pupils unfavourably with Bangladeshis (if they are so bright, why arent they in Bangladesh?)

So, whats the sleight of hand there?

I would surmise that most bangladeshis in the UK go to schools within the scope of the study. Therefore the study gets to compare the range of achievement of nearly all Bangladeshis with a subset of whites.

In other words why not compare all whites with all Bagladeshis or compare the poorest whites with the poorest Bangladeshis.

It also begs the question as to why Bangladeshis can supposedly outperform whites as a group but remain one of the poorest groups in the UK and their home country one of the poorest in the world.

Guess it will all turn out to be racism, and we all know who is responsible for that!

Anonymous said...

Here is the actual report the Indy piece is based on:

Report!

Anonymous said...

anon, why are you comparing Bangladeshis on one hand with a skin colour on the other?

That makes no sense.

The term 'white' British can mean almost anything, and does not specifically reference Britains histortical demographic.
There is probably Albanians, MiddleEasterners, Gypies and all sorts in the mix. Not that I have anything against them ofcourse.

But they are not English.

Sgt Troy 11th Dragoons said...

Thanks for that anon

The Report covers a relatively small group overall

"The EEF will focus on a small group of the most disadvantaged pupils in England: children who are eligible for Free School Meals and who attend schools that are below
government floor standards in national exams*. These are the poorest children in the
most challenging schools"

1 in 40 pupils

I am not all suprised by the findings that our people in this situation are performing so badly.
What has happened to us over the last 30 years has been devastating to the morale of anybody with any claims to love of country. How much worse then for those in the firing line at the bottom of society?

To keep any sort of balance I am of the belief that you need knowledge of history and literature to keep up reserves of cultural strength and identity. The regime has contrived to dispossess the English working class of the tools to access this; to say nothing of the levelling down denigration that they have employed to construct their grotesque multi-culti castles on the rubble they have created.

Combined with unemployment, chronic job insecurity, very low wages and a complete lack of repect from their "betters" it does not suprise me that so many have just given up.

However the only people who are making a stand are the EDL, who come from working class background; which is encouraging; and a reproach to the propagandised middle class left-liberal dupes if they did but know it

This is an instructive watch I think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU6uvKixSro

Sgt Troy 11th Dragoons said...

Anonymous said...
Sgt Troy:

I'm sure I've read before that in areas home to large numbers of 'coloured' immigrants extra money is pumped into education..."

Ethnic minority achievement grant

"Mr Gibb: Currently each local authority receives an ethnic minority achievement grant based on an agreed formula. In 2010-11, ethnic minority achievement grant funding amounted to £201 million overall. The funding formula takes account of the number of minority ethnic pupils from underperforming groups and those with English as an additional language. The Department does not collect information on how much of a local authority's individual allocation supports each group of pupils mentioned in the question."

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110110/text/110110w0003.htm

Wonder what they'll do for our people; ram more Nelson Mandela down their throats no doubt

Horatio who?