70 million

[joe-90]

Have your wages matched house price inflation? Flooding the labour market with immigrants will always depress wages. Always has - and always will.

There's a recession just around the corner, that's when the trouble will really start.

 

[tim west]

I think he means in monetary value. ie cost of livings gone up out of proportion.

 

[Thermo]

it will only depresses wages in the sectors that it effects. You cannot say a blanket statement that immigration will always depress wages. In ceratin sectors it has raised wages. it is subject to the economic law of supply and demand.

House price inflation has nothing to do with immigration. please explain how it effects it

 

[joe-90]

I thought your wife was an accountant?

Flooding a market with cheap labour will mean that existing workers can no-longer demand the wage rises that they would have had or they price themselves out of a job.

As far as house prices go - well isn't it obvious that a million or more immigrants must live somewhere and lead to a housing shortage thus higher prices?

 

[Thermo]

she is, except accountancy has little to do with economics.

yes there is more labour but in certain sectors. if the price of labour is priced down in certain sectors it leads to teh ability of businesses to use the freed up money in different ways. Also many businesses take on additional labour to the workforce they have already got. Also additional labour creates additional subsiduary work, ie admin etc. The economy in this country is still growing which means more jobs are being created, which are being filled by all sectors of the workforce not just the immigrants.

The housing boom in this country is not being fuelled by immigrants. Most immigrants are not even on the bottom rung of the property ladder, they are living in rented accomodation. There is a shortage of housing in this country, but that is fuelled by this nations obseesion with owning property. It has been further fuelled by teh fact that many in this country see it as a sound investment, meaning that many of the lower value properties that had previously been converted into low rent flats etc are now being bought up by speculators turned into family houses and sold off. SO to blame immigrants for this one is pretty wide of the mark, i think you need to look closer to home to apportion blame on that one.

By the way sold the house your doing up yet joe?

I do agree that immigration in this country is extremly badly controlled and it does cause lots of problems, but to make sweeping statements with nothing to back it up is a bit wide of the mark

 

[joe-90]

While ever migrants live in rented accommodation then property prices will increase.

As for the net use to the country read this by a Cambridge Professor of economics.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/nimmigcom121.xml

 

[Shutpa]

While ever migrants live in rented accommodation then property prices will increase.

As for the net use to the country read this by a Cambridge Professor of economics.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/nimmigcom121.xml[/QUOTE]

Interesting! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I cant help feeling that you are against willy nilly immigration. Join the club.

 

[joe-90]

To fuel a housing boom all that needs to be done is for millions of immigrants to occupy houses that would normally have been occupied by British families.

This creates a shortage of housing for the rest of the population. A shortage of any commodity will cause the price of that commodity to rise. Couple that with the buy-to-let market who buy houses to let to migrants and you get an even bigger shortage. It's not rocket science.

 

[Thermo]

ah so its not all immigrants causing the housing boom. thank you

 

[joe-90]

Thermo. Is immigration fueling the housing boom or not?

 

[Thermo]

not in the main, you are implying its the sole reason for it.

 

[megawatt]

Joe-90: Have you actually read the Telegraph article you have quoted?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/nimmigcom121.xml

The reason I ask is because the eminent professor's synopsis lays no blame at the door of immigrants ...

Depending how it is measured, the net contribution of immigrants in taxes lies between minus 1.2 per cent to plus 0.6 per cent of government expenditure. Whether the contribution of immigration turns out to be positive or negative, the figures suggest its effect on government finances is very small. Immigrants, as a group, have not been, and are probably not going to be, a fiscal burden on the rest of society — but then neither are they going to provide a significant surplus for the rest of us. Their fiscal impact is largely neutral. Britain is not unique in this respect: the same result has been found in many other countries which have experienced migration on the same scale as we have done in the past decade.

And ...

None of this shows that immigration is necessarily a bad thing — and, for the record, I do not believe that it is. There are plenty of arguments in favour of immigration which have nothing whatever to do with the mythical economic benefits for the rest of us. One of them is that immigration, whether or not it improves the lives of everyone else, does usually improve the lives of immigrants. There is a strong case for believing that we have a duty to share the benefits of our society with the impoverished people from the developing world, who sometimes risk their lives to get here, or from Eastern Europe.

Agree 100% ... It's called humanity.

Which aspects of your views on this issue are you using this article to re-enforce as it seems to invalidate your position rather than support it?

MW

 

[joe-90]

The point that I've always made is that allowing wholesale immigration does nothing but fill the country with people that we don't need. It pushes house prices up - and forces wages down (in relative terms). Towns get busier, roads get busier, schools are filled with non english speaking children, we simply don't need that sort of chaos when the benefits are zero.

Which part of that don't you understand?

 

[joe-90]

not in the main, you are implying its the sole reason for it.

Would you like to show me where I said the sole reason for house price inflation is immigration?

 

[billyo]

Thermo. wages migth have gone up but not in line with house prices NO need for all the house building maybe we should build more motorways we only have two thats longer than 80 miles we could start with the M65 making a loop finishing at jt 6 M6 north linking Leeds Bradford,Skipton, to the lakes and Scotland it would ease manchester's burden