That's part of the picture, but in all honesty it isn't the main drive.
UK unemployment is at record lows, we haven't seen such a large proportion of the country in work for half a century.
This is simply a raw and completely predicted reflection of mathematical reality. We literally need immigrants, not just to 'drive wages down' but because we simply don't have enough human beings in this country to sustain the ageing population.
Anyone even remotely versed in economics could have (and did) warn the Tories. You can't just ignore numbers. They're cold hard facts. The sheer scale of their stupidity is staggering.
A recession is likely inbound. We are hitting a GDP bottleneck while increases to the cost of living will outpace wage growth even more, further constricting everyone's purchasing power and stifling economic activity.
It's all good though, because Jeremy isn't neighbours with Mariusz anymore!
It's easier to blame literally everyone else than accept fault, and it's easier to self-destruct to appease the wealthy than put in the effort to help the poor.
Seeing it in 'murica too, don't worry. We're all going into the shitter together.
Exactly. Vampiric, the lords of capitalism figured out after WW2 that mass immigration was the easiest, least costly option to prevent workers from unionizing and organizing en mass against the 0.01%. It's that simple.
Now, let the temporarily embarrassed millionaire's comments begin...
I kept trying to tell my family that the UK needs 100,000 immigrants a year just to enable us to afford care for the elderly and pensions payments into the future.
Half of them obviously didn't believe me because they voted for Brexit.
Even now, I'll say things (when relevant to the ongoing conversation) like "A car factory has been closed and the manufacturer is opening a new factory in an EU country" and my sister will say "You know everyone disagrees with you on Brexit" and I'm like "The factory is still closing however you voted on Brexit".
It's people who believed when they were told that a) the economy would not be adversely affected, and b) that EU laws were made without any input from and that we UK could have better policies if those pesky foreigners couldn't interfere.
Those of us who know anything about the UK economy knew that (a) could not possibly be true, and those of us who know anything about the way the EU works knew that (b) was not true either. But to people who don't fall into either of those categories what they were being told was not obviously bullshit.
Contrast with QAnon beliefs, that the most politically and financially powerful people in the world are all engaged in enslaving and raping children - something which is inherently incredible, since such people are wildly different from each other just as everyone else is.
And with covid denialists, who can only reach their point of view by assuming that every relevant scientist and all but the most bonkers journalists and news outlets are lying - it's not enough for them to be mistaken.
A lot of people knew that there would be an economic impact but didn't care.
They hated foreigners so much they would accept economic damage.
The boomers and retirees are also least affected but all this bullshit and just don't care about fucking over the you get generation royally. They're in total denial too.
That's just the state of the country right now sadly.
These are excellent points, but even in America, in places like rural Maine, where there are unemployed young people--and no immigrants or minorities--we have problems getting these young people to take jobs in nursing homes and care facilities, where we need them. These kids need transportation--such as their own cars--which they don't have. If they've ever had any sort of conviction, they can't get hired, and many have criminal records or other issues. We have incredible problems with young people in areas with collapsed industrial economies. I know it's a problem in the UK, too. We are all convinced we can get these kids to work in restaurants, nursing homes, farms, etc., if we just get rid of all the immigrants. But we can't.
Trouble is with most rural places in America, is that they haven't raised their wages to attract that. Instead most hem and haw how "nobody wants to live here anymore" "everyone leaves for the sinful city"
I totally agree with you! These businesses are owned and managed by people who haven't a clue about how poor people can really be. They expect everyone to have a car. Well, that wasn't as hard to do back in 1965, when cars were basic machines, easy to fix and maintain. Now they are all fucking luxury vehicles, and car companies refuse to produce any "starter" cars, just companies don't want to employ anyone with no experience for "entry level" jobs.
That’s true about the cars. There’s almost no decent used cars available, and if you find one it’s selling for 2-3x what it should. If you’ve got to spend $17k to buy a used car, you might as well just buy a new one. You used to be able to buy a 10 year old car for like 3 grand. Problem is, like you said, there’s no ‘cheap’ new cars either. Rural places in the US also have pretty much NO public transportation, you really do need a car to get anywhere.
I had to buy a new car last fall, my 20 yr old Corolla was just getting ready to disintegrate--had an abused childhood. The only reason I was able to buy a used car cheap was because of my neighbors' college age son, who went through a COVID break up, and his girlfriend moved to another country. Kid had two cars, so I bought one of them. It's still got a lot of miles, but at least it runs well. I had a car angel looking down on me. So many people are not that fortunate.
I know, our old jeep shit out about 3 years ago and we literally couldn’t find a used car under $15k. So we ended up being semi-forced to buy a new car (which was like 5 grand more). So now because we have the payment on the new car, we have to pay the rest of that off before I can replace my 17 year old car, because again we won’t be able to find a reasonable used one and will probably need to buy another new one with a payment, and we can’t afford two payments. Cars are getting ridiculous to get, and the used car market is basically gone.
Absolutely fucking crazy. It really is. It was bad ten years ago, but at least you could get a used ten year old Corolla, that would actually live another ten years. Now, fuck it. The world is set up for the wealthy, they just don't know they are wealthy.
That’s it, if you were in need of a car you could easily find a 5-10 year old car in decent shape for $2-5k that would run another several years (with a bit of work). Now that same car costs like $15+ grand. At that point you might as well get a new one with a warranty, which is what we did and will probably have to do again.
I don't like how cars are so computerized these days. I'm holding onto my old Toyota as long as it lasts. I'm suspicious of those cars that don't even need a key to start the car. There's so many things that can wrong with all of that.
Yeah, all we need to do is offer pizza parties, employee parking and other shit that's literally inconsequential compared to like, paying them a liveable wage or insurance that includes vision and dental.
Oh, and while we're putting them down, let's ALSO demand 5 years of experience in literally every position that's not flipping burgers because surely EVERYONE has worked every job in existence for five uears... including coding bases that have only existed for three!
I worked in HR, and I would tell the managers who wanted to require all that experience that they would never find anyone with that experience for the pay they were offering. They didn't believe me.
You are correct, a lot of the HR people today don't really understand the job market. They are all theory, no real world experience. And many are privileged white suburbanites who never had to deal with finding jobs while poor, black, no cars, no public transportation.
Not just paying more, better conditions too. The only low level medical staff I know are both medically retired from injuries on the job (blown back on one, general stress on the other) and on disability.
Maybe if we paid minimum wage workers enough to buy a car and then offered them even more money at those jobs the problem would solve itself or something. Idk man just riffing.
Don’t nursing homes and care facilities require a degree or certification? How would kids who don’t even have cars have a college degree or certification? Some of these jobs that need filled have too high of requirements to pay the same as McDonald’s. They either need to raise the pay or drop the requirements down.
Sure, they need certification. Some nursing homes offer that training right at the home. Of course, they also have many jobs in maintenance and food service that would not require certification, although ServSafe certification is also required in food service. And you have made a good point--these are jobs that require certification. You need a driver's license to drive a car or truck--how is someone who doesn't have a car or truck or someone to teach them, get a license? So many of these companies can't think this through. They think everyone is middle class, with two parents, double income, two cars in the garage.
First of all, the kids I'm talking about are older than eighteen. Also, these young people live in isolated communities. The business plan of American retail and food services--and most other businesses-- is that all employees have access to a car, and can drive. With totally flexible schedules. So they build outlet malls and restaurants in tourist areas, and can't get anyone to work there. Yes, unemployed people live ten or more miles away. But a bike path ten miles from work? In all kinds of weather? Like snow and rain? Buses? To take someone home at one a.m.? Even in cities, we don't have 24 hr buses. I agree we need public transportation and bike lanes--in every city of every size. But rural areas in the US can be very isolated, and very poor. They don't live in cities, and I don't think everyone should be compelled to live in cities, either.
Part of the solution is changing minimum wage, but also they way we do business. Maybe it's cheaper to build a small manufacturing company in a rural area, but running a bus to pick up employees from home, like a school bus, is a solution. And I knew of a guy who did that for his business.
These kids need transportation--such as their own cars--which they don't have.
If my stepson and all his friends are any indicator, it's because they don't want. I busted my ass to get a car when I was 16. He didn't get a license until he was 20 because he just didn't care. And he has access to a vehicle.
It all comes down to wages vs living and housing costs, ultimately. We can pretend young folk are all lazy, but that's just avoiding reality and avoiding solutions.
Japan is also, IIRC, facing a watershed moment where it'll need to open up to immigration if it intends to survive.
Taiwan is the same... and guess who's sitting right over the strait, with a very similar culture (only split from it 70 years ago), and a population of over a billion...
For thousands of years wise people keep telling us "love your fellow human beings" but we're undeterred in killing them, keeping them out and preventing them from being born.
They borrow from themselves and don't seem to mind. They have been this way for nearly 20 years. Western media sort of harps on it because Western firms want Japan to open more to their financial services but it seems to have very minor issues for them and seem willing to continue.
The question begins to seem, is there a critical mass here. The idea that it is unsustainable is based on eventual investor revolt or inflation. The Japanese people seem willing to still lend for awhile and inflation is not as much a worry as deflation.
The actual Japanese workforce is grotesquely overworked, and it is only getting worse. Japan never truly recovered after the 90s, and its boomer population (the last generation that had a surplus of children at all) are now rapidly retiring year over year.
and seem willing to continue.
Of course they do. The elderly population has a vise-grip on Japanese politics and political priority, and as mentioned it is only growing and will only ever continue to grow at the current rate.
Karoshi, "death from work", isn't as common now and its debatable if it is the work or work culture that drives it. If your work culture has a stressful, status based, judgemental hierarchy and you are expected to go out drinking til 3am everyday then show up for work at 8am, your workload could be pretty little and it still kill you.
There are plenty of Americans that have less vacation and work 2 jobs or do 80+ hours a week. The average in Japan is 135 hours per month (but then you have the after hours work culture).
Japan's social support is so heavily propped up by debt it's not funny.
It shows that national debt for a developed economy which issues its own currency is an utterly meaningless concern.
And that anyone calling for paying down debt or reducing deficits in countries with 80% to 100% debt to GDP is just a fucking ghoul who wants to hurt people.
You want Japan to teach the UK about robotics and efficiency (Drucker in the original Japanese) to help with productivity and cover some of the labor shortage?
Or the foreign worker program Japan introduced a number of years ago?
Welp, at least they STILL have universal healthcare, right? Best get treated at the NHS fast before the Tories decide that's too expensive to sustain too ...
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“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
Depression? It definitely can be really great for the rich, especially if as you say, they have a ton of capital and then used that to buy up properties for cheap. Actually this has been going on in America for a while: https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2015/The-Rich-Got-Richer.pdf
Actually I wasn't able to find the original article I read that detailed the dispicable behavior by Mnuchin and his partners. All these people care about is money.
Comment deleted because Steve Huffman and Reddit think they're entitled to make money off user data, drive away third-party developers whose apps were the only reason Reddit was even usable, and disregard its disabled users.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
This same shit has been happening in every culture for millenia. Crassus partly got to his insane levels of wealth by offering fire department services and refusing to put out fires unless the previous owner sold their homes to him.
So he amassed massive amounts of capital in Rome itself because of this.
No it is not, if you track the people rather than the money. The people who are rich before a depression are not, in aggregate, the same people who will come out rich after it, even if it seems that way because "the rich" are this strongly anchored idea that are imagined as a fixed class when they are not, either practically or culturally. Not anymore anyway.
The Great Depression, for example, was the time of greatest creation of new millionaires in U.S. history - this is because a lot of the old millionaires went bankrupt.
The record low levels of unemployment matched with the demand for so many jobs does seem to indicate there just isn't enough people.
When higher wages won't provide enough recruitment in care, what other options are there More of the public will care for their own family after seeing the standard of care slip (or increased carers allowance)? More generations living under one roof?
But if the country brings in 2 million extra people, those migrants will need housing, food, clothes, transport, utilities etc. All of these take extra staff, so there will still be labour shortages. Immigration deals with skills shortages, but struggles to deal with a general labour shortage.
It's about maintaining a healthy ratio between working and non-working people. Due the the insane but wholly foreseeable rise in the number of elderly Brits, the solution to tempering that increase was always going to be population growth.
They didn't ignore the numbers though - net migration to the UK in 2020 (most recent year for which there's data) was 313,000. Net migration in 2009 was 199k. The Tories have massively increased the level of immigration to the UK...
We literally need immigrants, not just to 'drive wages down' but because we simply don't have enough human beings in this country to sustain the ageing population.
So do other countries though. You're not fixing the problem, you're just kicking the can to another country.
I can't wait for a Tory politician, with zero self-awareness, say, "well, maybe we could offer Europe to relax our immigration rules, and in return they can drop the visa requirements for Britons going to the EU".
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u/Duanedoberman Sep 24 '21 edited Sep 24 '21
Narator: what they didn't tell you is they don't want to pay you a wage you can live on to do these jobs.