So what’s so wrong with labour shortages driving up low wages?

[west didsblue]

BRINO then? What a fucking wasteful exercise its been.

Worse than that. BRINO for EU. Hard Brexit for us.

 

[Samidred]

Interesting views on this topic in the paper the other day:

"For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

It expanded demand. It filled all the jobs the British didn’t want to do. It made the economy more dynamic, and it rescued us from demographic stagnation. For the past twenty years, everyone from big business to the economic establishment to Left-leaning wonks pumping out think-tank papers lectured us on how mass immigration made no difference to wages. In fact, it made us all richer.

But hold on. Now that we have left the EU and put in place some modest, normal restrictions on who can come into the country, it turns out that wages – and blue-collar wages most of all – are soaring. The immigration lie has been exposed for what it was. A deceit. And we are owed an apology.

If Shell had a couple of tanker drivers for every “expert” who told us that mass, low-skilled immigration had no impact on wages then the fuel crisis would be fixed in the blink of an eye. Common sense, and the briefest acquaintance with chapter one of an economics textbook, would seem to suggest that if you increase the supply of something – in this case workers – then the price will go down. And if there is unlimited extra supply, the price will never go up.

Although everyone accepts that that is true of most commodities, for some reason labour was viewed as an exception. In fairness, there are some differences. Additional people earn and spend money, so to some degree expand the economy. And often the new arrivals weren’t competing directly with native workers. Lots of oh-so-clever models were constructed to prove there was no impact. Anyone who argued otherwise was sneered at for ignoring the “evidence” and dubbed a bigot.

Now that we have restricted freedom of movement from the EU, what is happening? Wages are rising rapidly. Average earnings are going up 8 per cent annually, and in trades such as transport or construction by 20 per cent. While this has much to do with the effect of workers returning from furlough, these are still astonishing figures.

The Labour Party, the main architect of unrestricted immigration, ties itself up in knots over whether to back a £15 minimum wage, deaf to the irony that most companies would kill to find someone willing to work for less than twenty quid an hour right now. If this was a lab experiment, and to some degree it is, the conclusion would be clear. Turning off the flow of workers increases salaries.

With unlimited access to a young, talented workforce from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, British companies became hooked on cheap labour. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds automating that supply depot when an agency in Budapest could supply plenty of guys to do the night shift at minimum wage? Who needs to spend money on complex check-in software for a hotel when you can hire a cheerful Portuguese youngster for peanuts? It was great for profits, and also pretty good for skilled professionals who didn’t compete for those jobs. But it was hardly great for productivity.

Even worse, we created industries based entirely on cheap imported labour. Britain is the only major developed country where hand car washes have been available everywhere. We produce far more chicken than Germany, although it is a larger country (and not the organic, free-range kind, but the battery, force-fed stuff) using an immigrant labour force. Does that make any sense? Not really. It is tough for the owners of battery chicken factories, but it makes more sense to import birds from the EU than people.

Sure, there will be some disruption. And some prices will rise, although in other cases profits will be lower instead. We are witnessing that now. The Government could have planned for the transition better, and so could business, but we need to keep a couple of points in mind. The market works through shocks and disruption. They are not usually this extreme, to put it mildly, but they are also part of the process. And it is very difficult to plan an economy. You can try, but there’s no point being surprised if it goes wrong.

The important point is this. The experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn’t impact wages got it badly wrong. The result? Wages stagnated for millions of blue-collar workers for years. We won’t get an apology – but we also shouldn’t listen to them again."

The case for mass migration is built on lies

For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[hgblue]

Interesting views on this topic in the paper the other day:

"For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

It expanded demand. It filled all the jobs the British didn’t want to do. It made the economy more dynamic, and it rescued us from demographic stagnation. For the past twenty years, everyone from big business to the economic establishment to Left-leaning wonks pumping out think-tank papers lectured us on how mass immigration made no difference to wages. In fact, it made us all richer.

But hold on. Now that we have left the EU and put in place some modest, normal restrictions on who can come into the country, it turns out that wages – and blue-collar wages most of all – are soaring. The immigration lie has been exposed for what it was. A deceit. And we are owed an apology.

If Shell had a couple of tanker drivers for every “expert” who told us that mass, low-skilled immigration had no impact on wages then the fuel crisis would be fixed in the blink of an eye. Common sense, and the briefest acquaintance with chapter one of an economics textbook, would seem to suggest that if you increase the supply of something – in this case workers – then the price will go down. And if there is unlimited extra supply, the price will never go up.

Although everyone accepts that that is true of most commodities, for some reason labour was viewed as an exception. In fairness, there are some differences. Additional people earn and spend money, so to some degree expand the economy. And often the new arrivals weren’t competing directly with native workers. Lots of oh-so-clever models were constructed to prove there was no impact. Anyone who argued otherwise was sneered at for ignoring the “evidence” and dubbed a bigot.

Now that we have restricted freedom of movement from the EU, what is happening? Wages are rising rapidly. Average earnings are going up 8 per cent annually, and in trades such as transport or construction by 20 per cent. While this has much to do with the effect of workers returning from furlough, these are still astonishing figures.

The Labour Party, the main architect of unrestricted immigration, ties itself up in knots over whether to back a £15 minimum wage, deaf to the irony that most companies would kill to find someone willing to work for less than twenty quid an hour right now. If this was a lab experiment, and to some degree it is, the conclusion would be clear. Turning off the flow of workers increases salaries.

With unlimited access to a young, talented workforce from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, British companies became hooked on cheap labour. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds automating that supply depot when an agency in Budapest could supply plenty of guys to do the night shift at minimum wage? Who needs to spend money on complex check-in software for a hotel when you can hire a cheerful Portuguese youngster for peanuts? It was great for profits, and also pretty good for skilled professionals who didn’t compete for those jobs. But it was hardly great for productivity.

Even worse, we created industries based entirely on cheap imported labour. Britain is the only major developed country where hand car washes have been available everywhere. We produce far more chicken than Germany, although it is a larger country (and not the organic, free-range kind, but the battery, force-fed stuff) using an immigrant labour force. Does that make any sense? Not really. It is tough for the owners of battery chicken factories, but it makes more sense to import birds from the EU than people.

Sure, there will be some disruption. And some prices will rise, although in other cases profits will be lower instead. We are witnessing that now. The Government could have planned for the transition better, and so could business, but we need to keep a couple of points in mind. The market works through shocks and disruption. They are not usually this extreme, to put it mildly, but they are also part of the process. And it is very difficult to plan an economy. You can try, but there’s no point being surprised if it goes wrong.

The important point is this. The experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn’t impact wages got it badly wrong. The result? Wages stagnated for millions of blue-collar workers for years. We won’t get an apology – but we also shouldn’t listen to them again."

The case for mass migration is built on lies

For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

www.telegraph.co.uk

Good post, although I'd take exception with the sentence in the last paragraph that states the experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn't affect wages got it badly wrong, they didn't get it badly wrong, they were lying through their teeth. Much easier to bring in cheap foreign labour than to train people, pay them appropriately, and treat them with respect to retain their services.

The British working class saw through their lies because they were on the receiving end of immigration suppressing their wages for years, whilst the middle class woke wankers who now run the Labour party abandoned them, and worse still, mocked them and labelled them racists for raising their concerns. Their new supporters in the middle class were doing very nicely, freedom of movement was very appealing to them, plenty of cheap foreigners to serve them in pret keeping the price down, fuck the working class who were getting screwed over.

So now business leaders are crying because they have to pay people more money and their profits are going to be affected, well fuck them, and fuck the Labour party which no longer represents the working people who created it.

 

[BobKowalski]

Interesting views on this topic in the paper the other day:

"For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

It expanded demand. It filled all the jobs the British didn’t want to do. It made the economy more dynamic, and it rescued us from demographic stagnation. For the past twenty years, everyone from big business to the economic establishment to Left-leaning wonks pumping out think-tank papers lectured us on how mass immigration made no difference to wages. In fact, it made us all richer.

But hold on. Now that we have left the EU and put in place some modest, normal restrictions on who can come into the country, it turns out that wages – and blue-collar wages most of all – are soaring. The immigration lie has been exposed for what it was. A deceit. And we are owed an apology.

If Shell had a couple of tanker drivers for every “expert” who told us that mass, low-skilled immigration had no impact on wages then the fuel crisis would be fixed in the blink of an eye. Common sense, and the briefest acquaintance with chapter one of an economics textbook, would seem to suggest that if you increase the supply of something – in this case workers – then the price will go down. And if there is unlimited extra supply, the price will never go up.

Although everyone accepts that that is true of most commodities, for some reason labour was viewed as an exception. In fairness, there are some differences. Additional people earn and spend money, so to some degree expand the economy. And often the new arrivals weren’t competing directly with native workers. Lots of oh-so-clever models were constructed to prove there was no impact. Anyone who argued otherwise was sneered at for ignoring the “evidence” and dubbed a bigot.

Now that we have restricted freedom of movement from the EU, what is happening? Wages are rising rapidly. Average earnings are going up 8 per cent annually, and in trades such as transport or construction by 20 per cent. While this has much to do with the effect of workers returning from furlough, these are still astonishing figures.

The Labour Party, the main architect of unrestricted immigration, ties itself up in knots over whether to back a £15 minimum wage, deaf to the irony that most companies would kill to find someone willing to work for less than twenty quid an hour right now. If this was a lab experiment, and to some degree it is, the conclusion would be clear. Turning off the flow of workers increases salaries.

With unlimited access to a young, talented workforce from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, British companies became hooked on cheap labour. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds automating that supply depot when an agency in Budapest could supply plenty of guys to do the night shift at minimum wage? Who needs to spend money on complex check-in software for a hotel when you can hire a cheerful Portuguese youngster for peanuts? It was great for profits, and also pretty good for skilled professionals who didn’t compete for those jobs. But it was hardly great for productivity.

Even worse, we created industries based entirely on cheap imported labour. Britain is the only major developed country where hand car washes have been available everywhere. We produce far more chicken than Germany, although it is a larger country (and not the organic, free-range kind, but the battery, force-fed stuff) using an immigrant labour force. Does that make any sense? Not really. It is tough for the owners of battery chicken factories, but it makes more sense to import birds from the EU than people.

Sure, there will be some disruption. And some prices will rise, although in other cases profits will be lower instead. We are witnessing that now. The Government could have planned for the transition better, and so could business, but we need to keep a couple of points in mind. The market works through shocks and disruption. They are not usually this extreme, to put it mildly, but they are also part of the process. And it is very difficult to plan an economy. You can try, but there’s no point being surprised if it goes wrong.

The important point is this. The experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn’t impact wages got it badly wrong. The result? Wages stagnated for millions of blue-collar workers for years. We won’t get an apology – but we also shouldn’t listen to them again."

The case for mass migration is built on lies

For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

www.telegraph.co.uk

That’s nice. Shame it’s bollocks. But then it’s the Telegraph.

Switzerland which is plugged into the EU system and has Freedom of Movement has the highest average wage in Europe. Approx 25% of the Swiss population are immigrants.

Germany, Denmark, to name but two, all have FoM and all have high wage economies. All 27 EU countries have FoM and all have differing economies with varying average wages. Domestic policies, cultural attitudes, stronger unions, better productivity. These impact wage levels.

Finally, we have a labour shortage. To fill a labour shortage you need more people. Restrict the supply of people and the economy starts to slow, productivity dips, shortages start to appear and people start fighting in garage forecourts for a sniff of petrol.

As a country we have become economically illiterate, but then the PM is a journalist with no fucking clue how business or a modern economy works, nor what it is like in the real world.

What Brexiteers are trying to do, having first denied there are supply chain issues, is to pretend that this is all part of the ’solution’ and ‘look everyone will get paid more’. Well, they won’t. Public sector workers are on a pay freeze. Haulage drivers will get a pay hike, so bin drivers get a job driving a truck and councils can’t find anyone to drive the bin lorry. And then you still have the problem of paying truck drivers more to deliver less because produce is not making it into the food supply chain because of a lack of labour.

Putting up trade barriers, imposing admin and red tape costs, crippling the agriculture sectors so that we have to import pork from Germany while culling pigs here, is an odd way to grow the economy and make everyone prosperous.

I would also point out the Leave campaign specifically said that none of this would happen. Brexit was only going to be a positive. Remember that? Happy days.

 

[BobKowalski]

Good post, although I'd take exception with the sentence in the last paragraph that states the experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn't affect wages got it badly wrong, they didn't get it badly wrong, they were lying through their teeth. Much easier to bring in cheap foreign labour than to train people, pay them appropriately, and treat them with respect to retain their services.

The British working class saw through their lies because they were on the receiving end of immigration suppressing their wages for years, whilst the middle class woke wankers who now run the Labour party abandoned them, and worse still, mocked them and labelled them racists for raising their concerns. Their new supporters in the middle class were doing very nicely, freedom of movement was very appealing to them, plenty of cheap foreigners to serve them in pret keeping the price down, fuck the working class who were getting screwed over.

So now business leaders are crying because they have to pay people more money and their profits are going to be affected, well fuck them, and fuck the Labour party which no longer represents the working people who created it.

Emotional nonsense. A lot of the ‘British working class’ work in the public sector (pay freeze) and just saw their in-work benefit cut by the Govt.

But, yeah. Immigrants and the middle classes. Jeez. No wonder we‘re fucked.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Interesting views on this topic in the paper the other day:

"For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

It expanded demand. It filled all the jobs the British didn’t want to do. It made the economy more dynamic, and it rescued us from demographic stagnation. For the past twenty years, everyone from big business to the economic establishment to Left-leaning wonks pumping out think-tank papers lectured us on how mass immigration made no difference to wages. In fact, it made us all richer.

But hold on. Now that we have left the EU and put in place some modest, normal restrictions on who can come into the country, it turns out that wages – and blue-collar wages most of all – are soaring. The immigration lie has been exposed for what it was. A deceit. And we are owed an apology.

If Shell had a couple of tanker drivers for every “expert” who told us that mass, low-skilled immigration had no impact on wages then the fuel crisis would be fixed in the blink of an eye. Common sense, and the briefest acquaintance with chapter one of an economics textbook, would seem to suggest that if you increase the supply of something – in this case workers – then the price will go down. And if there is unlimited extra supply, the price will never go up.

Although everyone accepts that that is true of most commodities, for some reason labour was viewed as an exception. In fairness, there are some differences. Additional people earn and spend money, so to some degree expand the economy. And often the new arrivals weren’t competing directly with native workers. Lots of oh-so-clever models were constructed to prove there was no impact. Anyone who argued otherwise was sneered at for ignoring the “evidence” and dubbed a bigot.

Now that we have restricted freedom of movement from the EU, what is happening? Wages are rising rapidly. Average earnings are going up 8 per cent annually, and in trades such as transport or construction by 20 per cent. While this has much to do with the effect of workers returning from furlough, these are still astonishing figures.

The Labour Party, the main architect of unrestricted immigration, ties itself up in knots over whether to back a £15 minimum wage, deaf to the irony that most companies would kill to find someone willing to work for less than twenty quid an hour right now. If this was a lab experiment, and to some degree it is, the conclusion would be clear. Turning off the flow of workers increases salaries.

With unlimited access to a young, talented workforce from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, British companies became hooked on cheap labour. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds automating that supply depot when an agency in Budapest could supply plenty of guys to do the night shift at minimum wage? Who needs to spend money on complex check-in software for a hotel when you can hire a cheerful Portuguese youngster for peanuts? It was great for profits, and also pretty good for skilled professionals who didn’t compete for those jobs. But it was hardly great for productivity.

Even worse, we created industries based entirely on cheap imported labour. Britain is the only major developed country where hand car washes have been available everywhere. We produce far more chicken than Germany, although it is a larger country (and not the organic, free-range kind, but the battery, force-fed stuff) using an immigrant labour force. Does that make any sense? Not really. It is tough for the owners of battery chicken factories, but it makes more sense to import birds from the EU than people.

Sure, there will be some disruption. And some prices will rise, although in other cases profits will be lower instead. We are witnessing that now. The Government could have planned for the transition better, and so could business, but we need to keep a couple of points in mind. The market works through shocks and disruption. They are not usually this extreme, to put it mildly, but they are also part of the process. And it is very difficult to plan an economy. You can try, but there’s no point being surprised if it goes wrong.

The important point is this. The experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn’t impact wages got it badly wrong. The result? Wages stagnated for millions of blue-collar workers for years. We won’t get an apology – but we also shouldn’t listen to them again."

The case for mass migration is built on lies

For decades we were told that free movement was not depressing wages. Britain is owed an apology

www.telegraph.co.uk

Yeah right - from the Brexit supporting Torygraph. That only makes any sense at all if - for every immigrant hospital porter, lorry driver, doctor, server etc you had an unemployed suitably skilled porter . driver, doctor etc who is a UK resident. We don't. End of.
Now - we could have planned for this and trained up people who probably don't exist to do these jobs for when we made life here unbearable for immigrants but as industry didn't want to cover the cost of training its existing workforce it sure as hell wasn't going to train people on the off chance they were needed.
If Wetherspoons are having to pay £15ph to get bar staff why do you think Tim Martin wants a relaxation on immigration? Because he would want to pay people as little as possible.
That article is exactly what you would expect - Brexit has failed - badly - so its supporters embark on a course of storytelling explaining that failure was part of the plan ( unicorns? sunlit uplands? nobody said that ) and claim labour shortages were planned to push up wages ( inflationary? who said that? ) whereas we all know given half a chance they'd recruit at £5ph if the law would allow them to,

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Good post, although I'd take exception with the sentence in the last paragraph that states the experts and business leaders who told us immigration didn't affect wages got it badly wrong, they didn't get it badly wrong, they were lying through their teeth. Much easier to bring in cheap foreign labour than to train people, pay them appropriately, and treat them with respect to retain their services.

The British working class saw through their lies because they were on the receiving end of immigration suppressing their wages for years, whilst the middle class woke wankers who now run the Labour party abandoned them, and worse still, mocked them and labelled them racists for raising their concerns. Their new supporters in the middle class were doing very nicely, freedom of movement was very appealing to them, plenty of cheap foreigners to serve them in pret keeping the price down, fuck the working class who were getting screwed over.

So now business leaders are crying because they have to pay people more money and their profits are going to be affected, well fuck them, and fuck the Labour party which no longer represents the working people who created it.

What you failed to address is that wages are still rising under the rate of inflation, meaning everyone is worse off and we can’t buy as much stuff or potentially get petrol.

 

[Bigga]

Timely, as I was listening to a discussion on a not so far away subject, this morning.

 

[BobKowalski]

Timely, as I was listening to a discussion on a not so far away subject, this morning.

Summary, mate. No way am I subjecting myself to Brand on a Saturday lunch time.

 

[Bigga]

Summary, mate. No way am I subjecting myself to Brand on a Saturday lunch time.

Bob, mate, get off your high horse and use it as a headphone podcast.

Brand HARDLY speaks.

It's INTERESTING.