BS: Post Brexit life in the UK

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Iains
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 03:16 AM

"Ignore it, chaps."

I see the thread is graced with a festive clown!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 03:34 AM

Obviously...

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Raggytash
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 05:09 AM

I'm pretty sure you will not get a straight forward answer to your question DmcG, Nigel will probably fudge around the subject by questioning the precise figure as is his wont.

The fact that inflation outweighs any pay increase for the less well off matters not one iota to him.

The fact of the matter is the poor, once again, are being hit hardest.

You, like I, understand that if you are fortunate enough to have a surplus income then you can ride the increase in costs, if you are living on the breadline then you suffer.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Raggytash
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 05:20 AM

How can we expect our elected representatives to discuss Brexit properly if information is withheld from them. It would now seem that the Chancellor has had studies carried out and is withholding them from Parliament.


Studies Withheld

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 05:28 AM

I am fortunate enough to have a good salary. This Christmas/New Year I am visiting my sons and their families who live near London. As a result I am staying in a Premier Inn at a cost of £274.

As is a habit of mine I frequently convert expenditure into minimum hours equivalent. So that would a pretty solid week's work at minimum hours before tax. Which, for a just-about-managing, is simply unaffordable. That has costs in terms of family cohension and mutual support, not just financial and that is equally important in my way of thinking. But because it has no monitary value there are those who dont let it cross their minds.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 05:37 AM

DMcG, we are lumbered with a low wage economy, but we have been for years.
You can not blame Brexit for every British shortcoming.

A major factor influencing low wages is uncontrolled immigration which Brexit is intended to address.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 05:44 AM

Steve,
Careful, John. Nige is one of Keith's heroes wot never lies...

Not true Steve.
I certainly do not agree with what he said in BWM's link.
More lies and personal attack Steve.
When will you address something I really have actually said?

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 06:28 AM

(The wifi here is terrible- this is my third attempt to I will keep it short!)

Therw is an importanr difference between claiming Brexit is thw sole cause - which I don't - and that it is a contributing factor - which I do.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 06:29 AM

Typos that time were due to trying to get the message sent before the wifi dropped out again!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 07:39 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Iains - PM
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 03:16 AM

"Ignore it, chaps."

I see the thread is graced with a festive clown!


Guess who got a mirror for their xmas ?

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 11:47 AM

I'd like to know who all these immigrants are who are demanding low wages.

Even Heseltine thinks that a Corbyn government abandoning brexit would be less damaging than the Tories seeing brexit though. I agree!

Michael Heseltine, the Tory grandee and former deputy prime minister, has suggested a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn could be less damaging than Brexit.

The peer made the claim, which is remarkable for a senior Conservative, in an interview for the Limehouse podcast about liberal and EU politics, as he was pressed on how catastrophic he believes Brexit will be for the UK.

Heseltine, a longstanding pro-EU politician, signalled that he still views a Labour government as having a negative effect on the country, but said leaving the EU could be worse in the long term. He also suggested Labour would eventually turn against Brexit and the Conservatives would be ?left holding the baby?, as leaving the EU grows more unpopular.

Asked what could happen under five years of a Corbyn government, he said: "Well, we have survived Labour governments before. Their damage tends to be short-term and capable of rectification. Brexit is not short-term and is not easily capable of rectification. There will be those who question whether the short-term pain justifies the avoidance of the long-term disaster."

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 02:12 PM

And it's amusing to see Tory grandees, such as the abysmal Tebbit, getting uppity about Tarzan's exercising of his free speech!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Dec 17 - 02:20 PM

My last post but one should have said "seeing brexit through."

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 02:36 AM

In 49 years of work, much of it at senior management level, and involved in finance and recruitment, I never once experienced prospective employees offering to work for less pay than existing workers, nor expressing the opinion that the pay-rate on offer was too high. Almost always, the opposite situation prevailed, and higher rates were being sought by interviewees.

Now, BrexShitter-Bumpkins, repeat after me..."That immigration reduces pay-rates is one of the most malicious lies of the BrexShit campaign - employEES don't seek to REDUCE pay-rates, employERS do that".

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:11 AM

You may choose to believe that large scale immigration does not suppress wages, but it does.
It also puts pressure on services and housing.
There are also benefits to immigration, but the beneficiaries tend to be the better off while those at the bottom suffer most.

DMcG, there was a devaluation which most people ascribe to Brexit. That causes inflation for about a year and then things settle at the new level.
What else?

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:17 AM

"You may choose to believe that large scale immigration does not suppress wages, but it does."

How? Describe, precisely, the process by which is does that please, Professor.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:21 AM

"then things settle at a new level. What else?"
Nothing else is needed if the 'new level' has things more expensive relative to the wages.

Moreover, to mention other things would be taken as a chance to ignore this one. I am fairly sure you will even use this explanation to claim I couldn't suggest anything else.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:23 AM

Not my field.

Ed Miliband: “When millions of workers already have low pay and poor job security in Britain and we add high levels of low-skilled migration, mostly from within the EU, some benefit but some lose out. It isn’t prejudiced to believe that.”

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:33 AM

DMcG, devaluation has increased prices, but has also led to more employment.
Some dispute that the devaluation would not have happened anyway.

Brexit has yet to happen and there is little evidence of any other significant impact on living standards.

BWM,
"Mass migration is driving down the wages being offered to British jobseekers, a major report by the Bank of England has found.
Economists at the Bank found that increases in immigration have reduced the pay on offer to care workers, waiting staff, and cleaners, as the competition for these jobs has risen.
The Bank calculated that a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants would reduce the average pay received in these semi and unskilled service sector roles by 1.9 percent.

The report is the first to examine the impact of migration using up-to-date statistics.
Previous attempts to gauge the pressure migrants have put on so-called "native" wages have focused on data running up until the early 2000s, before countries including Poland, Hungary and Lithuania joined the bloc in 2004.
The Prime Minister in 2010 pledged that he would get net migration down to the “tens of thousands” by the 2015 election.
However, in recent years the number of foreigners entering the UK has soared.

The ONS estimated that net migration will run at 198,000 a year on average over the 25 years Photo: Alamy
It last week emerged that more than a million migrants who have come to the UK in recent years are unaccounted for.
Ministers have failed to release data which experts believe could show the true number of EU migrants coming to the UK, with experts warning that it means that the total number of foreigners coming to Britain could be hundreds of thousands higher than previously thought.
Official Government statistics in August showed that net migration rose 94,000 last year to an all-time high of 330,000.
According to the Bank of England report, some 0.5 per cent of the fall in wages is the result of the lower wages immigrants are paid, which has dragged down the average wage of low skilled workers.
Bank economists said that it was "striking" that this impact was so small compared with the overall effect.
This suggests that the "vast majority" of immigration's impact on overall earnings is felt by native workers, Bank economists said.
The study looked at 23 years of data, running up until last year.
Lord Green, the chairman of the Migration Watch think-tank, said: “For many years the immigration lobby have claimed that there is no evidence that immigration has any significant effect on the wages of British workers.
“This new research by the Bank of England blows their claims out of the water. It has found a significant negative impact on those in the lower skilled services sector in which six million UK born are working. This amounts to nearly a quarter of all British workers.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12063052/Mass-migration-driving-down-wages-offered-to-British-jobseekers.html

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:45 AM

Is it funny how experts are always so much more believable if they say things you thought already?

However, please provide a link to the actual report so I can read it. As you know, I have stated many times on these thread that it is important to know what was actually said than what several levels of interpretation claim it said.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:53 AM

DMcG, here is a BBC piece on our economy in 2017.
Brexit is not mentioned once as a cause of any of our problems.

Here are some cherry picked extracts,

Opening paragraph,
"It was the year the UK stock market broke through a price barrier it set back in 1999. The unemployment rate reached lows not seen for 42 years as record numbers of people found themselves in work. "

" since the economic crisis of 2008 but in 2017 a new grievance was added to the decade-long austerity fatigue. After a two-year period in which pay rises narrowly exceeded negligible inflation, prices started rising faster than pay - meaning on average people were getting a little poorer every day.

The main reason behind stagnant pay was, as every economist in the land told us throughout 2017, poor productivity. That is measured as the value of stuff made or services provided per worker, per hour. When it goes up, you can afford to pay workers more, their living standards improve and they pay a bit more tax for public services - everyone is happy. When productivity doesn't go up, none of those good things happens."

(One factor effecting productivity is that a pool of cheap labour discourages investment in automation)

"Let's end on a note of cheer. Thanks to the wealth destruction of the financial crisis, changes to UK tax policy lifting many lower earners out of income tax altogether and a higher national minimum wage, income inequality has actually declined in the UK in the past decade. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42399309

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:54 AM

So, you can't explain how it works. Typical cut-and-paste stuff. No explanations, just others' opinions, not your own. Typical.

I asked you to explain precisely the process by which immigrants lower UK wage rates. You have failed. I explained to you that employees don't set pay-rates, they are set by employers, therefore it is not immigrants who are reducing wage-levels, but unscrupulous employers who are seeking to undercut wage-rates by deliberately employing immigrants.

So, I ask again, please explain precisely the process by which immigrants 'suppress wage levels'. No cut-and-pastes of others' opinions - those are not an explanation, they're just opinions which you appear to blindly accept (no surprise, you accepted all the other BrexShit bollocks unquestioningly) - no made-up shit, no wriggling like a 'Strictly' dancer, no answering a question with a question, just an explanation of precisely how it works, in your own words.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:56 AM

Apologies for the underlining error - shitty HTML.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:58 AM

DMcG, intro to report with link to main body,
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2015/the-impact-of-immigration-on-occupational-wages-evidence-from-britain

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:59 AM

"Not my field".

From the one who claims to have all the answers!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 05:01 AM

BWM,
I asked you to explain precisely the process by which immigrants lower UK wage rates

I can not. It is not my field.
Ask Miliband or the Bank of England economists how they came to their conclusion, not me.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 05:02 AM

From the one who claims to have all the answers!

Now you lie about me. I would never make such a ludicrous claim.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 05:14 AM

Thanks for the link, Keith. I don't expect to have time to read it for about 8 hours so will comment then.

On the "productivity" problem I think Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" gives some strong clues because it distinguishes between different kinds of job only so of which produce wealth. The "Adam Smith Institute" has gone a long way from the original theories.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 05:48 AM

I asked for your explanation, I asked you not to wriggle, and there you go wriggling.

I gave you an explanation, based on my own many years in senior management in international companies, of how 'suppression of wage rates' is the result of unscrupulous practices by employers. All you've given us are copy-and-pastes of other people's opinions about a link between such suppressed wage-rates and immigration, but no explanation of the workings of that link. No attempt to discuss that which I proposed.

I quote your words from the 'Damian Green' thread - "So why can you not quote anything I have got wrong, or challenge anything I have actually posted?"

Thoroughly dishonest and disreputable tactics, Prof. You should hang your head in shame. Oh, I forgot - you have no shame!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 06:24 AM

I have now skim read the paper. Section 3 is a mathematical model and so cannot be properly appreciated on so quick a review. Nevertheless, I can report the entire paper is really about how equation 8 behaves so everything depends on how good a model that is.

What it does not do is give any sort of mechanism of the kind BMW is seeking.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 06:46 AM

I suggest that those who admit that economics is not their field refrain from commenting on it and stop posting snippets that simply show one side of the argument. I remember to this day my economics lecturer's comment very early in the economics modules of my business studies couse. If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still would not reach a conclusion. Very tongue in cheek of course but underlining the fact that economics is not an exact science with right and wrong answers.


DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 06:55 AM

You are right, Dave. Most people do not appreciate that any mathematical model has built in assumptions and they may go unrecognised. This was brought home to me when I was studying queuing theory as part of my masters. We had five students and two lecturers and each piece of coursework invariably got seven different answers.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:06 AM

BWM,
All you've given us are copy-and-pastes of other people's opinions about a link between such suppressed wage-rates and immigration,

Yes. Ed Miliband and the Bank of England economists who know at least as much about it as you do despite your "years in senior management."

Dave and DMcG, this is from the introduction of the Bank of England report.
"Our results also reveal that the biggest impact of immigration on wages is within the semi/unskilled services occupational group."

You choose to dismiss their findings for your own reasons, but they stand.
Please direct your objections to them. I expect they will immediately withdraw the whole thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:14 AM

I haven't dismissed their findings at all, Keith. But I do want to see what cautions and caveats they put on how the information is used, what assumptions can be drawn and what can't. They split they their findings down into three or four sections of the population. It would be surprising if one of these was not 'most affected' but it does not follow the difference between most and least affected is large. That's why we need to read the whole thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:18 AM

DmcG you may want to note that they talk about wages OFFERED, that would lead me to believe it was the employers who were driving down wages.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:19 AM

That's why we need to read the whole thing.

Not if you only want to know if they found that immigration depresses wages or not.
They found that it did, just as I stated in the post that started all this.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:23 AM

that would lead me to believe it was the employers who were driving down wages.

I believe that too Rag, and they always will if they can.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Iains
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 10:37 AM

""Our results also reveal that the biggest impact of immigration on wages is within the semi/unskilled services occupational group."

This is the same socio economic group that is unsurprisingly the most at risk of increasing automation shrinking their employment prospects.
This potentially is a far greater problem than immigration.
The lower the educational requirements, the more likely the job is to be automated: the risk of automation to jobs requiring GCSE-level education is 46 per cent; this falls to only around 12% for those with undergraduate degrees.
    These changes will have a far greater impact on society than Brexit

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 11:10 AM

I don't recall dismissing anything either, cousin McG. In fact by saying that there are no right of wrong answers we are showing acceptance of this argument as being part of the issue. But not all of it. One of the issues not addressed by this argument is the fact that while productivity increases, real wages continue to fall for all but the top earners. This will of course be dismissed in a tit for tat exchange that goes nowhere by those trying to convince us that all the UK's ills will be resolved when all those Polish plumbers are sent home ;-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 04:02 PM

Once again I post naming one specific person to whom my post was addressed.

Once again a troll interjects.

I rest my case.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Dec 17 - 08:21 PM

Heard on the NPR news this Ante-Meridian that the Brits will offer their non-Euro new UK Passport in a new blue color (which may be the old blue colour).

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 04:16 AM

A fine analogy :-)

:D tG

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 04:34 AM

Not if you only want to know if they found that immigration depresses wages or not.

If that is all you want to know, I agree. However, for any sensible discussion you also want to know how much and in the bit you posted you see they said a 10% change in the proportion of immigrant:native workers - which needs far more than a 10% change in the nunber of immigrant workers by the way - is estimated bt the model at 1.88% change in wages. In the context of around 14% devaluation.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 04:45 AM

I should say that even that last post of mine is a gross simplification of the report because that is only true for certain sectors. As always, I encourage people to read the original rather than rely on anyone else's interpretation - including mine!

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:07 AM

Rag,
Once again I post naming one specific person to whom my post was addressed.
Once again a troll interjects.
I rest my case.

Once again, on an open forum anyone can reply.
If you want to restrict the conversation use PMs.
There is no trolling here.
I rest my case.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:32 AM

DMcG
. In the context of around 14% devaluation.

The devaluation is old news and it is no longer causing inflation.

Guardian last month cherry picked,
"UK economy has been steadied by static inflation and rising exports as uncertainty of Brexit looms larger and larger"

"Households continue to feel the squeeze from inflation, prompted by the weak pound since the Brexit vote, but the rate at which prices rose in the UK stayed at 3% despite expectations of a further increase."

"Official figures appear to show England becoming a happier place in the year since the Brexit vote"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/28/the-brexit-economy-is-the-worst-of-the-2017-slowdown-over

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:36 AM

The devaluation is much newer than the report which is dated December 2015.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:38 AM

Professor, no-one here has denied the link between immigration and suppression of wage rates. However, those of us with experience in the field, and the ability to actually think for ourselves rather than just googling other people's ideas to copy-and-paste, understand that it is not immigration per se that suppresses wage-rates, but the behaviour of unscrupulous employers who take advantage of immigrants.

Your solution to the problem of suppressed wage-rates, rather than acting against the offenders, i.e. unscrupulous employers, appears to be to restrict immigration. That is called 'victim-blaming', and is precisely the same despicable thing as telling the rape-victim that she 'asked for it' because she wore a short skirt.

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:45 AM

DMcG, the 2015 report has not been superseded or invalidated.
BWM, can anyone prevent immigration making the poorly paid poorer, except by controlling immigration?
Or making housing more expensive for them, and more pressure on the services they rely on?

Until they can, the poor would like immigration controlled, and who are we to blame them?

Subject: RE: BS: Post Brexit life in the UK
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Dec 17 - 05:53 AM

Sigh. A mathematical model gets invalidated when its assumptions are no longer true. It does not involve some demigod declaring it invalid ex cathedra. No account was taken of the devaluation in the model. How, then, can you be certain it has not been invalidated? All you know is that it has not formally been withdrawn.

As usual, thwre comes a point wherw I think I have said enough on a subject and we have reached that on this report. There is no point discussing it unread.