richc Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Right, so when a British nurse gets a visa to work in an Australian hospital, that person isn't pushing down wages for Australian nurses? Of course they are. Dorkins, if you're such the expert on this matter, why don't you address the difference between complementary and substitutive labour? The migration scheme in Australia (and Canada) has been specifically designed to attract complementary skills, unlike the UK which attracts a large amount of cheap low-wage labour from abroad to substitute for domestic low-skill labour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 She'll be getting the same wage, not more and not less. She will be going on a work visa in a profession that their nation has listed as a needed skill. She'll be getting a wage that was negotiated between the Australian nurses (or their unions) and Australian hospitals in the context of there being a ready supply of immigrant nurses willing to work for less that can be imported when needed. The fact that the Australian government is attempting to import more nurses via a skilled worker visa programme is a sign that the Australian government does not want to protect the wages of Australian nurses, probably because having cheaper healthcare will win them more votes than higher wages for nurses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richc Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Someone's sensitive! I was referring to the poster you've been replying to. Sorry but the "troll" term is only slightly less overused these days than "bully" and it gets on my nerves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Dorkins, if you're such the expert on this matter, why don't you address the difference between complementary and substitutive labour? The migration scheme in Australia (and Canada) has been specifically designed to attract complementary skills, unlike the UK which attracts a large amount of cheap low-wage labour from abroad to substitute for domestic low-skill labour. If you import an unskilled worker, unskilled wages go down. If you import a skilled worker, wages for people with that skill go down. Skilled immigrants are not invisible to the labour market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corruption Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 She'll be getting a wage that was negotiated between the Australian nurses (or their unions) and Australian hospitals in the context of there being a ready supply of immigrant nurses willing to work for less that can be imported when needed. The fact that the Australian government is attempting to import more nurses via a skilled worker visa programme is a sign that the Australian government does not want to protect the wages of Australian nurses, probably because having cheaper healthcare will win them more votes than higher wages for nurses. Im sure the unions you mention would love cheaper immigrant workers coming in and undercutting their members. Why not just be grown up and admit you are wrong, instead of making yourself look more stupid? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corruption Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 If you import an unskilled worker, unskilled wages go down. If you import a skilled worker, wages for people with that skill go down. Skilled immigrants are not invisible to the labour market. Or society will be better off as people can afford to pay for healthcare. Youd have nurses working 24 hours a day as sooner import more as immigrant workers would lower their wage, this is effectively what your previous idiotic statement is implying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Im sure the unions you mention would love cheaper immigrant workers coming in and undercutting their members. I'm sure Australian nursing unions would love to have higher wages for nurses, but the Australian government which runs the visa programme would prefer to reduce nursing wages through immigration in order to supply cheaper healthcare to Australian voters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Youd have nurses working 24 hours a day as sooner import more as immigrant workers would lower their wage Or the Australian government could provide more nursing training places, but of course it's cheaper to import pre-trained ones from overseas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corruption Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 If you import an unskilled worker, unskilled wages go down. If you import a skilled worker, wages for people with that skill go down. Skilled immigrants are not invisible to the labour market. There is an equilibrium, when you have unlimited immigration that balance is destroyed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corruption Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Or the Australian government could provide more nursing training places, but of course it's cheaper to import pre-trained ones from overseas. Quite clearly they should also not let immigrants into the booming oil and gas industry aswell as they could also train people up for this. Australia is a new and growing nation with vast swathes of land with an enormous amount minerals that the world is needing. There immigration needs are very different to that of Britains. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Quite clearly they should also not let immigrants into the booming oil and gas industry aswell as they could also train people up for this. Australia is a new and growing nation with vast swathes of land with an enormous amount minerals that the world is needing. There immigration needs are very different to that of Britains. I'm not that bothered about Australia's immigration policy, all I'm saying is if you import skilled workers, skilled wages go down. Anyway, international wage equilibration will be a good thing in the long run. It will price UK workers back into the global labour market and bring life back to the UK's former industrial cities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R K Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Sorry, but this post bugs me so much that I have to reply to it twice. There is nothing "magical" about the UK other than that it's a geographic area where a shared culture allows the existence of a national government capable of the making the types of long-term investments required to build a high-level quality of life. Without a shared culture and sense of nationhood, the government would be too corrupt or simply too expensive in terms of transaction costs to allow for long-term economic success. The UK enjoys a high standard of living because previous generations have made enormous investments in physical and social infrastructure, and they've done so in the context of the nation state. This is not complicated, but most places in the world do not enjoy these conditions and have the poor quality of life to show for it. The idea that people in Britain are prepared to throw all this in the waste bin because they think patriotism is just uncool is sad, much in the same way as it's sad to watch a middle class adolescent take up heroin because they think it's "cool". Often the French, Spanish, germans, Japanese, Americans and increasingly Chinese actually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogbog Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 So Dorkins is quite prepared for UK workers living standards to decline for ideological reasons. Equilibrium with very poor East European states. His living standards, no doubt, are not under threat. Dorkins is in a very small minority - the majority will have their say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R K Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 There is an equilibrium, when you have unlimited immigration that balance is destroyed. 1. 500 million EU citizens are free to work move to the UK. They havent and wont. 2. We have a minimum wage. Its going up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geezer466 Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 1. 500 million EU citizens are free to work move to the UK. They havent and wont. 2. We have a minimum wage. Its going up. It only goes up because the Government says it has to go up... The system is rigged it is not allowed to find a free float level and for pretty obvious reasons. Ask yourself what would happen if Osborne came out tomorrow and said the Minimum wage will now be £15 hour..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogbog Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Why do R K and Dorkins want UK labour to be on minimum wage ? Meanwhile East Europeans have a big multiplier on cash sent home. I cannot understand why those supposedly on the left wish to improvish UK workers. Please explain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 (edited) So Dorkins is quite prepared for UK workers living standards to decline for ideological reasons. Equilibrium with very poor East European states. His living standards, no doubt, are not under threat. Dorkins is in a very small minority - the majority will have their say. UK workers' living standards have already declined significantly and will continue to do so under the current set of policies. Like many on this site, my own living standards are far below those that my 1950s-born parents enjoyed at the same age: I live in a privately rented 1 bedroom flat costing over 40% of my take-home pay and have no realistic prospect of securing stable housing tenure in the UK, particularly if I want something large enough to raise children in. I work in the private sector for a company that makes actual things in a factory and in an industry where there is intense global competition for our products. I am under no illusion at all that nobody with political power is trying to protect my job, my wage level or my cost of living. Quite the opposite in fact: the UK political class loves pumping up house prices because it wins them more votes from homeowners than they lose from people who would like to own a home. I don't believe that UK politicians can protect UK wage levels, either through immigration controls or any other set of policies. Nigel Farage cannot change the fact that the Chinese industrial revolution happened (and is still happening), he cannot change the fact that Communism fell in Eastern Europe and these countries are now open to global trade, and he will not be able to prevent the Indian, Indonesian, Brazilian, South African, Nigerian etc working and middle classes from joining the global labour market. We live in a competitive world, and any politician who tells you he can protect UK workers from global labour market competition by any method other than closing the borders to both immigration and imports is lying. The UK needs to think how it can deal with the reality of global wage equilibration which is already well underway and which will continue. My opinion is that the only way to make this bearable for UK workers is to aggressively drive down the cost of living in the UK so that UK workers can maintain a good standard of living while earning internationally competitive wages. The good news is that there is plenty of scope for doing this: the cost of living in the UK is completely absurd, particularly housing. UK wages are set by global wage competition, they are currently high relative to equivalent labour elsewhere in the world which is why UK wages are falling and are going to continue to fall. That is not my ideologically driven desire, that is the reality of economic and historical change. Nobody owes the UK a living, we have to earn it by being smart and competitive. We can either deal with reality and put appropriate measures in place, or we can pretend it is not happening and suffer a lot of pain. Edited November 9, 2014 by Dorkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R K Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Why do R K and Dorkins want UK labour to be on minimum wage ? Meanwhile East Europeans have a big multiplier on cash sent home. I cannot understand why those supposedly on the left wish to improvish UK workers. Please explain. I dont. I argue for higher rewards to labour all the time (too much for some posters Im sure!). The problem in UK aint EU citizen migration. Its lack of investment in infrastructure, better redistribution of incomes and wealth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogbog Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 There is a higher reward to East European migration labour - there is a big multiplier for cash sent home, enabling the employer to pay them less. Why do you support Capital over Labour ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 There is a higher reward to East European migration labour - there is a big multiplier for cash sent home, enabling the employer to pay them less. Why do you support Capital over Labour ? If the UK had eastern European living costs that multiplier for cash sent home would disappear. The main difference in living costs between the UK and eastern Europe is the cost of housing. The UK should be thinking how we can get the cost of an average house down to £50k so that we can be competitive with the rest of the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macbeth79 Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 If the UK had eastern European living costs that multiplier for cash sent home would disappear. The main difference in living costs between the UK and eastern Europe is the cost of housing. The UK should be thinking how we can get the cost of an average house down to £50k so that we can be competitive with the rest of the world. If you could get the standard of living to eastern european standards everybody would leave the country, are you sure this would be a good idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 If you could get the standard of living to eastern european standards everybody would leave the country, are you sure this would be a good idea. I'm talking about living costs, not living standards. If the UK had equal living costs but higher productivity per worker due to having more productive capital then living standards would be higher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogbog Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Then there would still be a multiplier in this case. Opening up the labour market will cause a living standards equalisation - UK down, East Europe up. Until the next poor country is allowed in - Ukraine ? Turkey ? Other ex-Soviet states ? Forcing living standards down further - for UK workers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R K Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 There is a higher reward to East European migration labour - there is a big multiplier for cash sent home, enabling the employer to pay them less. Why do you support Capital over Labour ? how many people are you talking about? What industries are you talking about? What wage rate are you talking about? Since its a net benefit to the UK economy its +ve. Compared to the free movement of capital around the globe it is inconsequential. I dont see Farage arguing for capital controls - which would logically make more sense but harm his friends interests. Its Chinese/Asian labour that has caused the big dislocation (plus tech & ageing pops) not a few Europeans citizens moving around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubble & Squeak Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Did they bring in an Ideology like Islam? Liverpool is not britain...its a small corner of the country, doesnt constitute being swamped as assimilation can take place elsewhere and at a later date. Thats increasingly impossible in the UK today, as Islam increases its foothold everywhere. People were superstitious back then...Even in the 1940s my Grandmothers family ostracized her for marrying a protestant...it wasnt a Jew vs the world thing. It was every group vs every group. Islam however, manages to make enemies wherever it goes. they brought catholicism, which was dispised more than islam is today Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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