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Comment by diazon | Hacker News Reader

Money is very important to people who don't have much money. If you are a plumber whose wages are going down and down because the market is being flooded with cheaper Eastern Europeans, you know who to blame. Of course I don't expect HN users who are sitting on a pile of money in SF or London to ever understand this.

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Or are Brit plumbers simply overvalued and Eastern Europeans represent the true value of plumbing? I’m not sure if I should put a /s here or if I actually believe this.

That Brit plumbers are more expensive does not mean they are overvalued. It means they are not cost effective, and that means they'll get less jobs. You can only be overvalued if anyone is actually paying you for your job. The reason that they're expensive is that cost of living is too high.

So the real question to ask is, do British plumbers expect a too high quality of life?

Anything has to be overvalued because there wouldn't be benefits then.

Neither proposition is true to the exclusion of the other. British ${plumbers} have had it easy; those from the East will work for less.

Until the foothold is gained, and then the immigrant's prices start to go backup when they establish themselves better in their new home. All of this is still a market force, and is how it works in general. On another note, I think you need to see a list of what people think they are gaining for a good comparison to this list of what you are potentially losing.

Depends if you value plumbing as a skill or something anyone with a few basic tools can accomplish well enough?

Personal anecdote: about four years ago, living in London, I needed a plumber to do a small job just before Christmas (replacing a leaking shower tray).

Of the three who came out to quote, we went with the Polish one because he was the most professional in his manner, gave us a written quote on paperwork with a company VAT (tax) number, and gave us confidence that he would do a quality job using quality parts.

This he did, for the amount he quoted.

As for cost? His quote was the most expensive.

Multiple studies have shown that in a lot of areas that's total bollocks, and in the pockets where it is true, is a fraction of a percentage difference: https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/

Try harder when trolling.

Are plumber wages really going down, though? I am not familiar with the situation in the UK, but in Denmark where I live, demand for plumbers (and construction workers) has outstripped supply for many years now. It's difficult to find a plumber who's willing to pick up the phone let alone commit to a job, and when you do find one, they are outrageously expensive. In this environment, I have a hard time sympathising with anyone who complains that e.g. Polish workers are coming and offering to take the assignments for less money.

Plumber wages in the UK are above average and growing faster than most salaries, and self-employed plumbers in undersupplied regions can make six figures whilst turning down a lot of work. Of all the industries to pick to argue "the market is saturated with too many workers", plumbing and specialised construction workers have to be the weirdest

I see you've created an account just to make provocative statements on various political issues, which isn't the purpose of HN.

The "immigrants depress wages" trope is never that simple, as the UK is about to find out. In an economy where unemployment is very low, like the UK, they need that supply of labour to keep business ticking over. Should it disappear, growth will become constrained, and prices (along with wages) will have to rise.

Well, microeconomic theory is not that complicated either. If you take a particular labour market, and increase the supply, the point of equilibrium for wages shifts downwards. The magnitude of the shift depends on the elasticity of demand. If demand is fairly static, as is the case for basic services such as plumbing, then the shift in wages will be large.

Now, the question of immigration is not just about economics. It's a political question, so other factors come into play. But as far as the economic part is concerned, there is no question that substantial immigration depresses wages in specific labour markets.

Had a little look around for empirical data and came across this, looks like trade wages are about stagnant but this is only over a few years. https://infogram.com/2018-trades-salary-survey-electricians-...

And if you build cars for Nissan's European plant in Sunderland, you know who to thank... except that Sunderland voted to leave. So clearly the leave vote was not based on rational economical terms.

The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and of all the countries in the world it would be most hypocritical for the UK to criticise globalism...

They actually understand it very well. Many of them complain about the same thing happening with H1B workers.

Yes, money is important. But it is not the only thing that is VERY important to most poeple. As a EU citizen I am yet to see any overflow whatsoever of plumbers! Nor do their wages, at least in my country (in Scandinavia) seem to go down at all.

That point aside, EU /is/ a peace project and will continue to serve that purpose as long as it is standing. I do not dare think too much of how fractured western Europe would be at this point in time if we had to rely on Russia and USA for our peace.

EDIT: switched ""rely"" to "rely". Not sure why I quoted it in the first place.

Oh sure, and if you're a plumber whose wages are going down and down because businesses aren't investing, you know who to blame, too.

Blaming based on hypotheticals is fun, even even more so when the hypotheticals sound plausible. Let's do more of it!

Or maybe people who seemingly understood this "simple issue" forgot to see how the economy takes a hit, because of thousands of reasons, the middle class in GB becomes less wealthy and thus has less money to pay for plumbers.

And then maybe realize that it's all the same plus a bunch of downsides, but now the cheap Eastern Europeans cannot be blamed anymore.

My experience suggests that people in dire circumstances, regardless of location or time, will always find ways to blame foreigners for it.

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