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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

The article explains that the low-paid EU workers are no longer there to fill service sector jobs. Domestic employees won't accept those wages or working conditions.

We can see real time in the UK the effect that mass immigration has on wages: it keeps them way lower than the market rate otherwise.

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You can already see it. The early 2010s was a period of very high population growth due to immigration, the economy has flatlined. This year has seen the same thing: rather than employ the large number of workless Brits, record visa numbers...no growth.

Btw, something interesting about the UK is that there has been zero growth in the natural population for (I believe) almost three decades. All the growth has been immigration and natural growth from immigrants (who often have significantly higher fertility).

That's most of the developed world now. People are having fewer kids and having them later, all or almost all population growth is being driven by the developing world.

Personally, I don't know how the UK puts up with it. My colleagues over there make 1/3 of what I make, have 1/3 the size house, and pay 5x as much for it.

Disposable income per capita is high relative to Europe. Prices are relatively low (at a cost, food is one of the highest inflation categories, meat highest within that...I still don't understand how chicken is so cheap, animal welfare is generally high...but it just shouldn't be this cheap...same thing with vegetables, retail is so consolidated that farmers have been getting short-changed for decades). Generally, it is good to be a consumer.

The issues that the UK are similar to a lot of developed countries just worse, and made worse by unusually bad govt interventions over decades. The frustrating thing about the UK is that a lot of the hard stuff is done well but it is just thrown away by nonsense policy in other areas (i.e. we have a great tertiary education system, and absolutely horrible primary/secondary so relatively few Brits can actually get value of more education...it is just nonsensical)

If planning/housing was solved conclusively, it would resolve 75% of the issues impacting consumers.

Interesting is that the children of immigrants adopt the reproductive habits of the native population, so their total fertility rate as a group drops below replacement from one generation to the next (unless very religious, but they see a drop too). See Canada, american hispanics, asian-americans (Korean, Vietnamese), muslims in Scandinavia, etc.

Which only works if the rate of immigration isn't increasing...but it is in the UK. This year was the largest gross immigration level (and it is widely acknowledged that net numbers are likely not accurate).

You see this in London and some cities outside (Glasgow is one) where there are primary schools with one or two white students (not making a racial point here, I making a point about immigration, Scotland is 99% white so these people have to be immigrants) in a class of 30 students.

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