It'd be better than not having them.
Major problems are rarely solved with one fell swoop, but instead thousands and thousands of small improvements.
Major problems are rarely solved with one fell swoop, but instead thousands and thousands of small improvements.
I live in the countryside (I live in a small flat btw so I don't care about property prices) and I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
Importing cheap foreign labour from the third world was always one of the goals of Brexit. This game gets played over and over - import cheap labour to keep wages down, lament about how the country is being invaded, and then blame immigrants for lack of investment, corporate profiteering, and other structural policy problems.
That does also make utilities easier, but it's not magic… well, you could say it is but only in the sense of Penn and Teller: lots of effort that most people don't ever think of that already happened before the audience started watching.
There was problems with houses becoming to expensive (there are multitude of reasons for this) while we were still in the EU. Part of this was also do with the monetary policy of central banks after the 2008. Part of this is there is a shortage of housing. There was problems with utilities well before we left the EU, because of mismanagement.
This is all a deflection anyway from the point that high levels of immigration increase demand. Unless you don't believe in supply and demand, which is basic economics. BTW I don't believe that immigration is the only reason there is high demand, there are others. But it certainly doesn't help that we have record numbers of people entering the UK.
*Supply* and demand.
Immigrants supply, they don't just demand.
Immigrants (everywhere, not just to the UK) have a slightly higher supply-to-demand ratio than locals, owing to many of them not starting at age 0; likewise emigration tends to means supply going down faster than demand.
Berlin wall was there to keep people in.
Why is there a massive shortfall then when we've had the largest amount of immigration then?
Why was there a shortfall previously when we were still in the EU?
> Immigrants (everywhere, not just to the UK) have a slightly higher supply-to-demand ratio than locals, owing to many of them not starting at age 0; likewise emigration tends to means supply going down faster than demand.
You can assert this but I don't believe it for a second. It is pretty much accepted by anyone that is doing any stats on this that demand is increased by immigration.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/mi...
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/514/record-n...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
Almost everything says that immigration has raised prices on rent and buying (which is a proxy for demand). It depends on the area because each area has different rates of immigration.
So your statement doesn't pass the sniff test.
> Berlin wall was there to keep people in.
Not sure what this has to do with anything.
Of housing and public infrastructure in the UK? Politics: Green belt and similar planning restrictions, austerity, Thatcherism, privatisation, restricting local councils' ability to own and supply council housing.
> You can assert this but I don't believe it for a second. It is pretty much accepted by anyone that is doing any stats on this that demand is increased by immigration.
And supply. Not at the expense of supply.
The figures here show that in 2011 (when it was measured as "country of birth" rather than "nationality") were 9:1 ratio of locals to migrants in construction. The overall ratio for the entire population in that year was 8.4 to one.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
Both have changed since then, of course; between the statistical value being measured (nationality vs country of birth, Brexit, Covid, austerity), this is just to give a flavour for a specific date when the numbers were easier to compare.
> Not sure what this has to do with anything.
You don't understand that keeping people from leaving was because of the economic catastrophe that the people in charge knew would have happened if they didn't keep people from leaving?
So you don't know. All you have done is provide a list of grievances with previous governments.
Even if I accepted all of this being true, then having more migrant construction workers wouldn't solve these problems anyway.
> And supply. Not at the expense of supply.
Yet the sources I cited indicated the opposite. You constantly assert that but there is no data I've seen that proves that. Supply of labour != supply of houses. It can certainly help, but they may not be directly proportional.
I also don't care whether it does increase supply. I don't think we should keep on constantly importing people at the expense of everything else to get the GDP numbers up a few percent.
There are other problems with high amounts of immigration that I have seen up close because I've lived in poorer areas. There is a lack of integration in the communities, language barriers and it causes tensions.
I used to be an expat. So you tend to actually notice this a lot more because you see your own country with a fresh set of eyes.
Additionally none of this matters now. The UK has left the EU. The situation has changed. If we can't import labour now (there is no reason we can't issue temporary visas), then demand has to be decreased. Like it or not, however much you want to dodge it, immigration has to be curbed to help lower demand.
> You don't understand that keeping people from leaving was because of the economic catastrophe that the people in charge knew would have happened if they didn't keep people from leaving?
Are you suggesting we should have kept people from leaving by force?
Thinking of "surely this is obvious" on the other thread, to me it seemed obvious that this is a list of things which caused the results, i.e. they are the why.
> Yet the sources I cited indicated the opposite
You seem to have difficulty understanding what I'm saying here, and I don't know why.
Your citations were about demand. Demand is not what I am disputing. You said yourself "supply and demand", but seem to be blind to half the equation.
> I also don't care whether it does increase supply.
Ah, that explains it.
You're arguing in bad faith.
The UK may decide less immigration, or skill-weighted immigration, or lots more indiscriminate immigration - but the vote should be in the Mother of Parliaments, where else?
Scale issue here: if "everywhere in the country" were build up to the population density of Manchester city, the UK would house 1.2 billion people.
I'm fairly confident there are not 1.2 billion people who currently want to live in the UK.
It's not Poe's law, but it's close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
β) 1.2 billion demonstrates there's enough room for 90% of the UK to be completely empty at the same time as the population doubles.