Someone Has To Win: UK General Election 2015

I think we understand the subtext. That justification can be used for a lot of different things and that is a pretty broad statement.

An interesting question would be if all of the Americas asked for open borders, do we think it would have a positive or negative affect on things listed in the USA and would they be happy with it.

I have no issue with immigration just uncontrolled open borders where anyone regardless can wander in. Just like I have no issue giving my front door key to family I certainly don’t leave it open for anyone to wander in yet that is what the UK has being part of the EU. I want us to pick and choose who can come in and why and if they shouldn’t be here just send them back not be told you have no choice.

I just find it hard to believe many countries not in the EU would be happy with the same. I suppose if this is true they are also all just racist and discriminatory as well.

It seems the rest of the EU is happy with this and only the UK is not. Why is this are we just racist and discriminatory when we are actually seen as one of the most forwards thinking countries on this topic.

So the question is why aren’t other countries adopting open border policies and is it wrong that they don’t do this.

You have a very weird framework of mind you are working from. You seem to take offense for things nobody has said.

Let me explain where I see things from:
[ul]
[li]Nobody is saying the UK is racist. I think policies to curtail immigration are either racist or classist (protective and interventionist economically). This is about the policies, not the country nor the people that support these policies. Saying that people from a country have the right to a better life than people from another country is racist, though, but I haven’t seen anybody defending this here.[/li][li]I believe curtailing immigration is opposite to the liberal economic ideals of free trade (which is what most Western societies posit as the economic ideal, and certainly what we have been profiting from for a long time now). It’s a contradiction that hurts workers and the middle class and benefits businesses.[/li][li]There is no evidence that legal immigrants tax welfare any more than full citizens. Illegal immigrants usually do tax the system, of course, since they don’t pay taxes. But if all immigration was legal this would not be an issue.[/li][li]While very few countries are willing to open immigration, this tends to be political rather than economic in its reasons (it wins votes, basically, because people tend to perceive causal relationships where there are none -statistically-). This is for opening legal immigration. You can not open your country to illegal immigration, by definition.[/li][li]Illegal immigration is a disaster for the working and middle class and the welfare of a society. They are paid very little (illegaly little frecuently, since emplying them is already illegal) and they don’t pay taxes (since payments to them are not registered). They are awesome for a country’s economy, though, (much more cost efficient for the companies, and GPD tends to rise with illegal immigration), and that’s why you see little real effort to stop illegal workers and make them legal taxpayers in any country (the US regularizations notwithstanding. I applaud those, even if the motive was again more political -winning Hispanic votes- than economic). That a country’s economy does well does not neccesarily imply that the country’s citizens and legal immigrants do well.[/li][li]Countries with governments opposing illegal immigration frecuently do nothing to curtail this illegal immigration, but instead use the law to curtail legal immigration, making it harder to for foreign people to work legally. Curtailing legal immigration tends to just move the legal immigration into illegal immigration, without reducing the percentage of immigration versus citizens at all. People tend to stay where they live even if the rules change under their feet. This actually taxes welfare more (less taxpayers, but not so much less beneficiaries, and higher impact to communities), but it is a boon for local companies that now can afford to pay almost nothing to their workers (assuming they are not the unlucky company hit by a real working inspection, which in overall catch so few illegal workers a year that they are a joke).[/li][li]Curtailing illegal immigration, even if you really wanted to is really, really hard. Other than putting them in vans and driving them out of the country (which is unpractical to an extent even suggesting it is ridiculous), I don’t know how you get rid of an estimated 5 million immigrants in the UK (the number might be wrong). You could try to stop new illegal immigration, but that’s just border policy, and it is extremely innefective in practice (it does work in hotspots, but does little statistically). The UK being an island has an easier time with this, but unless you are willing to sacrifice a lot of your tourism sector, it’s hard to reduce the flow beyond a certain number.[/li][li]If people are free to move between countries, imigration problems tend to equalize and balance themselves out (EU immigrants left Spain during the crisis -no jobs- as did Spanish citizens). However, if you make this transfer harder (by making a lot of your immigration illegal, and therefore less willing to be noticed by crossing a border), those people are more prone to stay put even if they have shitty or no jobs -the opportunity cost of moving is perceived as much higher-, thus really impacting the society they remain locked in. The best way to stop immigration into a country is to broadcast the message that there are no jobs left here. This is hard for politicians to do, alas (since it basically implies they are doing a crappy job), so it’s not heard often. Potential illegal immigrants tend to find out anyway, though, since the inward flows do vary wildly with unemployment.[/li][li]That is, statistically you generally have more illegal immigration the less unemployment you have. Immigration is not related to rising unemployment, but to falling unemplyment instead. The data in the article you listed fits this perfectly.[/li][li]While free transfer of people exists within the EU, there’s no free transfer of people from outside the EU to the EU. For me this is a huge problem and this is indeed a racist or classist policy all the EU has in place (including the country where I live). I don’t think the UK’s policies are more racist or classist than EU’s policies when talking about outside of the Union. However, within the EU free transfer of people and goods does approximate an ideal liberal economic model, and I support that and its expansion into no EU countries as long as they have the same corresponding policy.[/li][/ul]

I wasn’t confused about the subtext (does that even qualify as subtext? The message seemed to be right there on the surface), I was surprised that a leader of a supposed liberal democracy was openly saying that following the law isn’t enough to prevent prior restraint of free speech. That seemed pretty shocking to me. What’s the point of having laws if following them doesn’t keep you off the government shit-list?

Since it’s barely raised an eyebrow in the British press, though, I have to assume you all are used to it by now.

Pretty much my thoughts.

How’s the NSA blanket phone call recording program going (it’s done, finally)? Or how does it feel to need to have your eyes scanned at airports or go through that ‘naked’ x-ray machine thing? Or having a choice in a political system that only has two options, both that really mean the same thing (as they work for the same corporate interests), and that is very much our ‘Demcoracy’ in the usa and uk these days?

To quote a pretty decent band, ‘The land of the Free, whoever told you that is your enemy’. Freedom is a flexible term when you get right down to it. If you society forces you to work your whole life just to pay your bills over your lifetime is that freedom? If your country has laws that limit freedom of speech if that speech is likely to cause hate crimes or radicalize young muslim minds is that freedom from anarchy perhaps or just a way to more widely protect your society? Or the signs of a growing police state?

I’m not for any of it in truth, too many aspects that might be open to an interpretation, but certainly i do agree that the UK has become more a ‘police state’ over this last decade than at any other time previously, and does not look set to take a step back from that. I’m not sure what (as in whom) is actually driving this or why (It’s easy to make a connection between a bent politician and corporate donations), but it feels like somewhere at the top there is a growing fear off the rest of us, and these seem like steps to address that? And maybe they are right to be fearfull?

‘Tenant evictions reach six-year high amid rising rents and benefit cuts’:

The number of tenants evicted from their homes is at a six-year high, according to new figures, as rising rents and cuts to benefits make tenancies increasingly unaffordable.

County court bailiffs in England and Wales evicted more than 11,000 families in the first three months of 2015, an increase of 8% on the same period last year and 51% higher than five years ago.

The increase in the number of tenants losing their homes means 2015 is on course to break last year’s record levels. Nearly 42,000 families were evicted from rental accommodation in 2014, the highest number since records began in 2000.

Rental prices have soared in many UK cities, but wages failing to keep pace with rising costs and caps to benefits have left many poorer tenants unable to make payments.

Separate figures also published on Thursday showed almost 59,000 households have had their benefits capped in the past two years. Nearly half of those families were in London, where the the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home is £2,216.

Housing charities said the figures were a glaring reminder that many tenants were struggling to maintain a roof over their heads, and they called on the new government to do more to tackle a housing crisis in the UK.

The latest repossession statistics, published by the Ministry of Justice, reveal the highest number of evictions in a single quarter since 2009, when comparable records began, with nearly 126 families forced out every day.

Between January and March, a total of 11,307 tenants and their families were evicted by bailiffs, compared with a revised-up figure of 10,380 between October and December last year, and 10,482 in the first quarter of 2014.

As in-justice is heaped on the poor, they will re-act and it often isn’t pretty. This is a snap-shot of what life under the Tories last term has been like, and it’s set to get much, much worse.

Back in the IRA threat days, if you drove a van around central London financial district (as I did), police, who were quite clearly armed, would stop you at roadblocks and search your van.
People have short memories, the current reaction to the very real threat of Islamic terrorism isn’t so different to when the IRA were at their height.

Because the article is talking about causality, not correlation.

Correlation does not imply causality, but lack of it (even the opposite correlation, like in this case) puts causality really, really into question. Logical deduction 101. High school stuff.

See, if you say A->B and then you say !B, you are therefore implying !A. But if you get both !B and A as in this case, it implies the original causal relationship A->B is false. This is of course valid for spherical frictionless cows/arguments only, so it’s more nuanced than this. Still, if you are claiming A->B it’s convenient to show data for A and B or !A and !B if you want anybody to pay any attention. Or at least be cunning and don’t show conflicting data…

The correlation is not causality you are thinking of refers to the fact that if you posit A->B, and you get both A and B, you can’t neccesarily imply your original argument A->B is true, because it might be false and instead it’s C->B (because C is also true). Proving the truthfulness of a proposed causal relationship is therefore hard, but proving its un truthfulness, given the right data, it’s easier.

In the case of the article, the statement immigration causes lower employment and pushes salaries down is presented (A->B). But then data is presented for record immigration (A) but then also data for four years high salary rise and all time high employment (!B). So the original statement is blatantly not true (might have some components of truth, but it’s clearly not the dominating force in this issue, unemployment and salaries)…

Are we really discussing this?

Lack of data supporting an opinion (and having data that might contradict that opinion, on top of it) does not bring a lot of strength to an argument.

So its blatantly not true, but might have some components of truth?.. erm… ok

At least you can see that there is most likely an outside dominating force here (ie a stronger economy causes both immigration and wages to rise).

But the mere correlation you presented says nothing about the presence or lack of causality between the two variables in the presence of that outside force (ie wages might be even higher if immigration hadn’t risen too, simple supply and demand)

Yes, theres a lack of data in the article regarding the causality. But your correlation doesnt prove or disprove it either.

Careful, you are implying causation because of correlation here! The relationship could have the opposite direction (influx of labor and skills from immigration might help the economy to regain vigor).

Of course not, but it puts it into question, and given that no data is provided in the opposite direction, it’s more than enough to pay little attention to the argument until some supporting data is provided.

Hence why I used ‘ie’. Its an example, nothing more, just one of infinitely many cases where your logic fails.

What you disproved (or really, really called into question, PMSL I’ve got to try that one myself some time!) is that wages always go down if immigration goes up, regardless of other variables. Which is not what the governer of the Bank of England is saying in a complex multi-variate problem like this.

So you successfully demolished a straw man with your correlation, thats all.

It’s more that he failed to present his statement with data, which he is in a really good position to obtain. It’s true that his expertise carries weight, but the fact that he’s not a independent actor in this issue (he has stakes in his arguments being believed, specially with the current political climate) and thus his authority is countered in the absence of data. The argument therefore carries little weight (for me).

Academics arguing the same would be a different issue (authority with independence), but then when academics tackle this issue there’s little consensus.

Oh I agree about the weakness of the article.

But if you are going to respond to my single line response to your question with a page-long lecture starting with arrogant statements like ‘high school stuff’, ‘logical deduction 101’ etc

Then don’t be surprised if I jump on your own logical failures in that post ;)

Or more accurately, your failure to understand that you are applying your logic to a different problem to the one stated.

So, wages and employment is going up, along with immigration, but the loss of wages and depressed job market is caused by immigration. I’m confused.

You need to learn how the implication operator works ;).
B’s truthfulness has no bearing on A’s!

Of course it does.

If I shave my head then it’s bald.

If my head is not bald, then it is not the case that I could have shaved my head.

Of course it does.

If I shaved my head today then it would be bald.

If my head is not bald, then it is not the case that I could have shaved my head today.

My post is nonsense; That’s what you get for posting seconds before going for a train :) (Juan’s quote is the exact truth table I linked to)

Didn’t have to post it twice though, once was enough :'(