Isn’t that like debating free speech and asking if you’re in favour of being verbally abused? If someone doesn’t meet the criteria for welfare then they shouldn’t receive it. Criteria for that is of course debatable, however few of us could argue that its primary purpose is to help those in need. If a radical preacher requires welfare, why shouldn’t they receive it? Because you don’t like radical preachers?
I think few people argue for unregulated and unlimited immigration. The debate is not one of all or nothing.
It’s amazing how you’ve kept to your claim that each immigrant will cost £11.5K, and have continuous ignored the arguments that say that it is complete bunk.
And when a study shows that immigrants pay more than they cost, instead of taking a step back and questing your £11.5K figure, you just say the well-respected study “doesn’t make sense.”
Other people have said it, but I’ll say it again: You can’t just take the entire government’s expenditure, divide it by the number of people, get X, and assume that means that each new person will cost X. What you are completely ignoring is that the majority of a government’s expenditures don’t increase linearly.
The UK spends £38 billion on defense. It has 19 battleships. When another immigrant arrives, is it going to buy another 3x10-7th of a battleship?
It spends £30 billion servicing its existing debt. Does that new immigrant add to the interest rates of the existing debt?
Does the new immigrant require installing another fraction of a cabinet minister?
Even the costs that increase the most with additional people – health care and education (which account for only about a quarter of the budget, or of your £11.5K) – still don’t increase anything like linearly. The more infrastructure is already in place, the less is needed for each additional usage.
So I’ll say it again: a well-respected study has shown that immigrants contribute to the economy. You, random commenter, say it doesn’t, but none of your arguments hold any water when viewed closely.
OK. Let me see if I’ve understood your sunk cost argument.
Population 62 ml
Spending 722 bn
Spending per person 11.46K per annum
Now we add 1 million migrants. However, lets say 50% is additional spending (plucked from the air) and 50% is fixed costs such as defence.
So we get 11.46 * 50% * 1 million = 5.73 bn extra spending.
So total spend is 727.37 for 63+1=64 million or 11.37K per person. In otherwords, 90 quid per migrant if they are the same as everyone else. No arguments about migrants being better.
Is that your argument in numbers?
Now it may surprise you that I’m also in favour of unrestricted migration, subject to certain conditions.
You aren’t allow to migrate and get other people’s money in the process. The heart of my argument. I don’t think the state should allow migrants who take other people’s money. Are you going to make the obvious point, well if you want people who are net contributors, aren’t you taking advantage of them? The answer is yes, but they have a choice. British citizens who are net contributors have no choice. Why favour one, not the other?
If you commit crimes, you’re out.
It’s subject to a vote. Referenda on migration. With no democratic mandate one way or the other, its going to go wrong.
It doesn’t. I read the report and I’ve asked the obvious questions that you haven’t answered. Back to the 11.5K that people here have accepted as the average government spend per person.
Question 1.
Does every migrant pay more than 11.5K a year in tax? That’s a salary of 44K a year. Think barista in Starbucks. If they do not, then that migrant isn’t a net contributor.
Question 2
In your report where does it say what migrants pay in tax? A page number would be ideal. Without it we can’t tell if they are net contributors or not
Question 3
Are all migrants net contributors? Since migrants are an option, the UK can pick or choose, why not pick the beneficial ones?
Question 4
Any other effects we could do without? Think Abu Hamzah, think housing shortage.
Question 5
Your 25%.
144.1 bn on pensions. Is your idea to exclude migrants from pensions? I doubt it. So that’s in the pot.
129 bn on health - yes you and I agree its in.
88.6 bn Education - in.
112.5 Welfare - in (We have migrants on welfare)
…
Defence 46 bn - OK lets leave it out, and I’ll give you the numbers without defence.
OK, where do you get the 25% from?
So I’ll say it again: a well-respected study has shown that immigrants contribute to the economy.
And I say it again. They do contribute. However in that statement there is a deceipt. The question is are they individually a net benefit to the UK? It’s a far more subtle question and you may not have appreciated that’s the question I’ve asked.
You ignored essentially my entire comment (it was about linear scaling) and have an amazing false-consensus bias that lets you believe that “people here have accepted” your ludicrous figure for how much the government will have to spend on each new immigrant. I guess there’s no point talking to brick walls.
I beat you too it and posted an analysis of the linear scaling before in reply to someone else.
Here’s it reposted
Population 62 ml
Spending 722 bn
Spending per person 11.46K per annum
Now we add 1 million migrants. However, lets say 50% is additional spending (plucked from the air) and 50% is fixed costs such as defence.
So we get 11.46 50% 1 million = 5.73 bn extra spending.
So total spend is 727.37 for 63+1=64 million or 11.37K per person. In otherwords, 90 quid per migrant if they are the same as everyone else. No arguments about migrants being better.
Is that your argument in numbers?
I think that’s the argument you are trying to make in numbers.
I also replied with a look at the current spending, putting anything obvious onto your scaling issue. As far as I can see, the only fixed cost is defence.
Policing - per head
Welfare - per head
Medical - per head
Schooling - per head
Pension - per head
…
I can’t see where you get the 25% of spending is per head and the rest fixed from. Please enlighten me.
I addressed your argument in my other post posted just after this one; it should be about, somewhere. This post was about your Winston Smith-like cry of “Do it to them, don’t do it to me!” That comment was pretty silly, so I treated it in a fairly light way. You’re being a xenophobe; just saying “I’m not a racist” doesn’t neutralise the xenophobia that is obviously present in your argument.
I can’t think of a clearer way of putting it: applying one standard to one group and another to your favoured group is discrimination of whatever stripe you want to apply. It bankrupts your entire argument, even if you can’t admit that the xenophobia is there. Dividing the unfavoured group into “good” (i.e. well off, even rich by the standards of a lot of the world) foreigners, and “bad” (i.e. poor) foreigners, and leaving your favoured group (Britons) undivided makes your argument inconsistent, and therefore worthless.
I am not a xenophobic for the reasons I have outlined.
I want migration
I don’t want to steal money from poor people, (or anyone for that matter) to pay for migration.
Nothing there is xenophobic.
Read the dictionary definition.
What I think you are trying to do is quite simple. You’ve not got any counter arguments. So your approach to the debate is an ad hominim attack trying to distract from what is fundamentatly true.
There are migrants who cost the UK dear. There are migrants who are good for the UK.
e.g
Abu Hamzah is bad
Abramovich is good.
Let me makes some educated guess. You’re a Labour party member, and you’ve got problems about the free for all migration policy. It was designed just like Shirley Porter’s gerrymandering, for political advantage. However, its now caused problems to Labour’s core vote. That puts Labour in a bad position. So rather than address the issues, you’ll attempt a distraction by playing the man and not the ideas and facts.
You seem to have read my argument about the fact that none of these costs scale linearly and taken it to mean “remove defense and leave everything else as linear.” I can’t do anything for your reading comprehension.
I attack your xenophobia, discrimination, hypocrisy, whatever-it-is because that is where your argument is weakest. When you respond with a reasoned argument rather than simple, and non-credible, negation perhaps I’ll carry on and attack your economics. But there’s no point in dealing with your economic argument when you choose not to apply it to your fellow countrymen. It is a double standard which you will replace with another when it is disproven because you like foreigner’s money more than you like foreigners. Really, there’s no other way to interpret your argument.
Countries have the right to decide who comes into the country and who doesn’t.
Countries do not have the right to decide, we don’t want welfare claimants so we’re going to deport them.
Now you may well want to deport welfare claimants, I don’t know. Do countries have a right to do this? For example, should we invade Tasmania and start deporting the unwanted as some new generation of convicts?
That’s why your argument is bogus. You’re desperate to try and get me to think that’s a good idea, when its a bad idea.
I wouldn’t class anyone who pays less than £11.5K tax a welfare claimant. Welfare claimants, in fact, don’t pay any tax, except VAT for the very occasional item that isn’t a necessity of life. As the median wage in the UK is around £24K — which if my math isn’t failing me means they’re paying only about £4–5K in income tax — your definition of welfare claimant would seem to include the majority of wage-earners in this country.
If the immigrant who will be earning less than around 40 grand is undesirable, then so is the natural-born citizen who earns less, which means you’re putting the majority of your fellow citizens in the ‘undesirable’ bucket. I’ve never earned that much money; am I worth less to my nation than, I don’t know, a bank manager? Are people who earn less than an arbitrary limit second-class citizens?
Yes, they’re sub-human and therefore disposable, according to our new moral code of the 21st century. Your ‘worth’ is completely codified in an integer stored in a bank balance, for your convenience. If your worth is less than a pre-defined threshold, you are deemed expendable and a drain on society, therefore you deserve to be eliminated.
You may have had the naive notion that society is primarily about people, and that money is simply a way of organising society for people’s benefit. Quite the opposite. The purpose of soceity is to accumulate as much money as possible - your value as a human being is wholly determined by your ability to accumulate money, and if you don’t accumulate enough money, then it must be because you are a worthless person who deserves to be destroyed and disposed of, because money is more important than the people who exchange it, remember? - People only exist to further the aim of accumulating money. Right? Everyone understand their place? Great…
Edited to add: your civic duty is also to accumulate money and therefore pay taxes. You can hold money in a bank where it depreciates. And the only way money is created is by fiat of the government printing money, and by commercial and high street banks issuing money as debt. So ultimately we determine the worth of our society by fiscal policy. So it’s our government / commercial policy that some, but not all people are going to be deemed unworthy of a viable existence, and it’s up to the citizens/subjects to duke it out.
Exactly. I don’t think you are eligable to claim any welfare if you are on that sort of income. [Bar the current plan not to pay state pension to wealthy people]
Median wage is 26K. Correct, they are paying 5,502.24 in tax and NI.
On to your point.
It is undesireable that migrants who don’t pay 11.5K are here. That means they are taking money from other natives, as well are those migrants who are paying more.
You still persist in the thinking t hat we can deport natives, hence you get yourself tied up in logical knots. We can’t deport them.
So that means its desireable to make them better off. Not taking money from them is a good start. So if they don’t have to fund migrants who are net consumers, they are better off.
You’ve a perculiar way of thinking… The native poor aren’t for deporting, they are there. Your solution of deporting them isn’t on. However neither is forcing them to pay for poor migrants. There is no/either or about it.
Why do you want to make the native poor poorer by forcing them to pay for poor migrants?
The purpose of money is to act as a store of value, and to enable free exchange of goods and services. No more, no less.
My aim is to make the native poor better off. Your ideas are making them poorer because you are forcing them to pay lots of tax so that poor migrants can come to the UK and consume their taxes
In practise VAT gets added onto a load of stuff that’s not luxuries. Also fuel duty, VED, since it’s hard to practically get a job around these parts without wheels, council tax, TV licence, tax on interest on savings (if any). Waving around numbers just based on Income Tax and NI is a little disingenuous.
I’d count the cost of public transport in there as well, since they’re supposed to be public, but wouldn’t get far with that…
Any crime? Does their access to resources when deported factor into the decision? What about their family? At what point does that migrant stop being a migrant and become a citizen? How many generations do we go back?
Either way it’s a humanitarian disaster of a suggestion. Sounds straightforward, before you think about the actual implications of such a policy. You might as well be in favour of dumping criminals into the sea.
What are you talking about? The people making the poor poorer aren’t other poor people. Get a grip!
All of your arguments hinge on the notion that migrants are of less value. Stop seeing them as migrants or some kind of investment, they’re just people. Do you also advocate the same policies for cross-country borders?
Regardless, without what you infer as sponging migrants (anyone who earns less than £40k) my business would struggle to operate - conversely reducing my income and my contribution to society, as well as my British-born employees. What you seem to forget is that the value added (which isn’t just financial anyway, by the way) isn’t restricted to what they pay in taxes. When someone makes a contribution to society it can have far-reaching effects. I’ve worked for companies where my modest salary has netted them several hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit, all taxable. So a £30k p/a employee could potentially be feeding £500,000 of money into the governments pockets every year. How do you account for that in your calculations?
I see no human rights issue. They can take their families with them. There’s no human rights issue is there in families being uprooted from one country to go an live in another.
All of your arguments hinge on the notion that migrants are of less value
Will you read what I’ve written and not put your own imagination on to it.
Let me ask the question again, and see if you can answer it.
Abu Hamzah
Abromovitch.
Are both of equal value to the UK? Are you advocating that we get Abu Hamzah back to the UK. He’s cost well over a million quid in legal bills and welfare.
Now I can think of plenty of citizens in the UK who deserve that money more than Abu Hamzah. He should never have been allowed to claim benefits because he shouldn’t have been allowed in or allowed to stay.
Abromivitch on the other hand is bring his wealth to the UK and spend it here. That’s to the benefit of the UK. It increase inequality, but what the heck, it good for the public finances and hence for poor people.
o a £30k p/a employee could potentially be feeding £500,000 of money into the governments pockets every year. How do you account for that in your calculations?
Hence if you read back, I said that if they didn’t make the 11.5K tax threshold, they or their company had the option to top it up to 11.5K.
Lets see, pay 6K extra and keep 494,000 pounds of profit? Now as a business man, would you pay the 6K or would you give up the 494,000 pounds. Hmmm difficult one that.
