BeermatMycroft.. the ‘leftists’ are to blame for racist attacks? Do you know how messed-up that is? Are they also to blame for global warming, the death of David Bowie and the poor quality of Star Wars episodes one to three?
When we snap out of this DM-led ‘find ways of blaming foreigners and lefties for bad stuff’ thing it’s gonna be a shock for some how ugly we have become.
BeermatThe economic left is still with us. You can’t kill an idea, no matter how hard that very elite (that we are told, by them, that the left is serving) try. A lot of it is popping up, in incompletely thought through and naive form, in the proclalimations of the new right. After all, what is anti-elitism?
All that it would take would be for enough people to read a bit of Marx etc, and start joining the dots.
The concept of an out-of-touch liberal elite is not new. Look up ‘bourgeoisie’.
The concept of ‘overlooked ordinary hard working people’ is not new. Look up proletariat.
The language has changed, and it has had the same stupefying effect as newspeak (RpR, look that up too).
BeermatNo, I’m arguing against doing jobs that are not financially beneficial to the country just for the hell of it, or for the personal benefit of a tiny minority. If it’s costing more to UK plc for them to be done than not, then stop.
Yes, that’s what anti-capitalists have been saying for years! Just not limiting it to foreigners. What’s different about them that makes this a valid argument for anti-immigrationists but not – when expressed in exactly the same way – for ‘leftists’?
..and people don’t do jobs ‘just for the hell of it’.
The political left and right have become hopelessly confused lately.
In your mind, maybe. In truth they – the ‘wings’ – haven’t. The confusion comes from so many of us getting our political education about what they stand for from the tabloids. Remaining in Europe is not a ‘left wing’ policy, and never was. Immigration is not a ‘leftist’ thing any more than it’s a ‘rightist’ thing. Racism is not an invention of the political right, and neither is isolationism.
BeermatI wasn’t arguing against borders – but sidetrack aside you have just argued the potential value of ignoring them for a greater political good. A federally-imposed minimum wage would be a massive imposition on democratically-elected governments and their populi. But this sort of thing is ok for ‘them’.. and yet not ‘us’, and is the reason ‘we’ voted to leave the EU.
Funny old world, isn’t it?
BeermatRight on, Comrade!
But ‘across the EU’? What about the borders?
BeermatYou still don’t get it. It’s doesn’t even matter whether a UK citizen takes that minimum wage job or not, the costs of having extra minimum wage labourers in the country outweighs the benefit of the job even being done. The gross revenue (tax + NI) paid by the average A8 migrant is £4000/year less than that for the UK average income. The disparity in net amount is higher still, then if we add indirect taxes paid on purchases the difference grows further. That is the true per year per migrant cost £4000++/per year per A8 migrant….
Interesting. You are arguing against a free capitalist system that creates hardworking but relatively poor people.. but it’s ‘leftists’ who are getting it wrong?
Bigots my backside. More like we have some leftist imbeciles who are too bloody stupid to actually see what’s happening.
It’s amusing – or would be if it wasn’t such a sad reflection on our education – that all the things the New British Right are banging on about – exerting state controls to level playing fields, limiting freedom of choice for the greater good, ensuring all are paid enough to avoid wage deflation and a shortfall in tax take – are all ingrained tennets of the British Left – while the one thing they accuse the Left of – support for the growth of European Federalism – was never on the agenda for home-grown lefties.
..then they came for the erudites (F off back to Erudia)
BeermatNo, but we need to look at why people cross borders, and understand that they are not some horde bent on the destruction of all we hold dear just because the come from the other side of one. I’d level the playing field by both taxation and the level of state support they would receive in the origin country on an equivalent income (simple currency conversion, not weighted in any way). Progressive taxation being the norm this would make a sub-minimum wage less attractive. Interestingly it would make little difference to welfare in most cases to introduce state support equivalence, but it would keep the ignorant ‘only here for the NHS’ lobby quiet.
Level the playing field, not fence off a small part of it and demand our own ball.
BeermatWhat did I suggest? You read my post and heard something else in your head.
How on earth is natural diversity evidence of borders, natural or otherwise? In evolutionary terms it is sometimes, in the very special case of divergeant evolution, evidence of geographical seperation, or proof of isolation. Not of a sea urchain checking a line on a map before breeding or getting eaten.
Where you draw a border is up to you, and the ‘right’ place for it shifts. Sounds pedantic unless you consider the crucial difference. The Channel is a prime example. You deem it a barrier – that is your perception of it, and it has served as such in time of war, granted. However, our ancestors saw it as a highway, much like any body of water. A Cornishman of 55BC would see a Breton as ‘us’ and an Essex man as very much ‘them’. It’s all subjective, and a lot of it has to do with transport and communication technology. A longer view helps make sense of it.
BeermatSo, how do you explain different cultures, languages, skin colours etc? Not everything that exists and is necessary is visible to the naked eye, as the oxygen you’re currently breathing in will attest 😉
Whether you need such differences explaining or not, the lines drawn are a construct to help us deal with our differences, not a cause of them. Humans did not draw the lines first and diversify afterwards.
Consequently, where we choose to ‘draw the line’ both literally and figuratively when it comes to difference is up to us. It is not pre-ordained.
BeermatHow is a nation state an “artificially closed system”? .
Ask anyone who has been up there. The odd thing about the earth from space is that those lines we put on maps don’t exist.
What I am getting at is first principles. We define our nations’ boundaries. If you say that economically Europe works as one nation, then from a local (English) point of view one set of conditions – including available workforce and its cost – will pertain. Draw your boundary differently – ie England as an economic entity, not all of Europe, then a different set of conditions (higher wages, fewer willing or available to take on low-paid jobs) will pertain. A different equilibrium. But both are equilibria for the system.
It’s about perspective – geographical and historical. Its where you want to draw boundaries for any particular human activity – like work. Just wanted to highlight that, I am not saying one is right and one is wrong. But why is it right for English northerners to get on their bikes and look for work, but not alright for Poles? Is it because one is ‘us’ and one is ‘them’? What else is there?
BeermatThe market has found equilibrium. All you do when you put up barriers to sub-divide into artificially closed systems is make your equilibrium localised, keep the poorer end out. I’m alright Jack. But yes, I agree with what you say – that’s what happens.
BeermatNo. Your last point first – yes, that should be addessed before complaining about them ‘taking our jobs’. Cart-before-horse. If commensurate tax were paid, then it would become an unattractive busines model to employ 100 Lithuanuans to pick your sprouts rather than buy a machine or use the land for cereal crops. It would also make it less attractive to hire a Polish au-pair. Which brings me to your first point. It is equally unattractive to employ 100 Brits, as we don’t put up with wage-slavery. We walk, because we have somewhere to walk to. It is not like-for like.
State burdens are the elderly first and foremost. Healthy young people working full-time are pretty close to the bottom of the list (and by the way I know specifically of one old-folks home that would not be able to afford even minimum standards of care if it wasn’t for the underpaid immigrants on its books).
Let me put it another way. Employment in the UK has risen by almost exactly the same amount as employment of foreign nationals. Unemployment has not – no-one ‘took our jobs’. Do you see armies of indigenous veg-pickers and au-pairs marching on parliament from Cambridgeshire and Hampstead? Take away those foreign nationals, what will happen? Well, for one the Tories will have to find yet another way to measure ‘success’, as employment in the UK will drop. Unemployment.. I doubt it.
Not predicting doom, as I say the overall effect is probably near zero, much as the impact of this immigrant labour has been to date (in economic terms. Socially it has been massive as the bigots crawl from the woodwork). All it has realy done is give the Government some ’employment growth’ statistics.
BeermatPretty neutral, I’d say. And why does WHO is doing the job, whatever its tax or overheads effect, make any difference? It’s all ‘cart before the horse’.
BeermatIn that case.. sorry for the ‘bum steer’, folks.
BeermatThe background looks a lot like how i remember the view across the inlet from the Eastern side of RAF Walney Island. I am searching for another image to back me up on this!
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