How the British Broke Their Own Economy (theatlantic.com) 119
Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, now suffers from its opposite: profound energy shortages and deep affordability crises [non-paywalled link]. A new report titled "Foundations" identifies the root cause -- "it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere" in the UK.
Housing exemplifies this malaise. Since the 1990s, homeownership among young British workers has halved while housing prices doubled. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act effectively nationalized development rights, requiring special permission for new construction and establishing restrictive "green belts." Despite Margaret Thatcher's market reforms, British house-building never recovered.
This constrictive policy has stymied potential growth beyond housing, Atlantic reports. Cambridge remains a small city despite biotech breakthroughs that might have transformed it into a major hub. Transit infrastructure languishes -- Leeds is Europe's largest city without a metro system. Energy production has collapsed, with per capita electricity generation now roughly one-third of America's.
Britain faces a self-imposed scarcity crisis. Environmental regulations, while beneficial, created a one-way system where lawsuits easily block development. As co-author Sam Bowman summarized: "Europe has an energy problem; the Anglosphere has a housing problem; Britain has both." The solution requires comprehensive reform-- overhauling the planning system, reducing anti-growth litigation, and encouraging energy production to unlock what the private sector "already wants to do."
Housing exemplifies this malaise. Since the 1990s, homeownership among young British workers has halved while housing prices doubled. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act effectively nationalized development rights, requiring special permission for new construction and establishing restrictive "green belts." Despite Margaret Thatcher's market reforms, British house-building never recovered.
This constrictive policy has stymied potential growth beyond housing, Atlantic reports. Cambridge remains a small city despite biotech breakthroughs that might have transformed it into a major hub. Transit infrastructure languishes -- Leeds is Europe's largest city without a metro system. Energy production has collapsed, with per capita electricity generation now roughly one-third of America's.
Britain faces a self-imposed scarcity crisis. Environmental regulations, while beneficial, created a one-way system where lawsuits easily block development. As co-author Sam Bowman summarized: "Europe has an energy problem; the Anglosphere has a housing problem; Britain has both." The solution requires comprehensive reform-- overhauling the planning system, reducing anti-growth litigation, and encouraging energy production to unlock what the private sector "already wants to do."
Guessing ... (Score:5, Informative)
Brexit? Which, apparently, more and more people think was a mistake.
In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the European Union? [statista.com]
As of January 2025, 55 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 30 percent who thought it was the right decision.
How do Britons feel about Brexit five years on? [yougov.co.uk]
On 31 January 2020, Britain officially left the European Union, putting into action the 52% to 48% vote to ‘Leave’ the EU at the 2016 referendum. Now, five years on, how do Britons feel that Brexit has gone and what do they want our future relationship with Europe to look like?
Just three in ten Britons (30%) now say that it was right for the UK to vote to leave the EU, compared to 55% who say it was wrong for the country to vote for Brexit in 2016. This is the lowest proportion of the public saying that Britain was right to vote to leave since YouGov began asking this question in the aftermath of the referendum.
Re:Guessing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guessing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is we have plenty of space for everyone. We're doing pretty well:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
problem is most of the space is owned by wealthy people leaving no room for everyone else. This is not a problem of supply, it's a problem of wealth concentration.
We are NOT going to solve the housing crisis by letting rich people further shit on the environment by concreting over green belt land at knock down prices.
Re: Guessing ... (Score:2)
What I do not understand is why this isn't getting that much attention. If we could drop the cost for rent by 50% no one would be complaining that eggs are too expensiv
London-centric Focus (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK is the only western democracy that I'm aware of that, to first order, has no regional governments, other than the Scottish parliament, with any real power. If you look at where the Brexit voters were they we all outside London, South-east and Scotland i.e. the regions where the governments with power don't care about.
If you want to know why Leeds has no metro it's not because of planning restrictions it's because of a lack of regional government powerful enough to get the money needed to build it. HS2 was going to help improve tranit links to Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield but now it is stopping in Birmingham. The Transpennine express upgrade seems to be going nowhere fast etc. Meanwhile London looks like it is getting Cross Rail 2 and everyone in the country is expected to help fund it.
It's true that London is a hub and does need more transit that other UK cities but focussing entirely on London to exclusion of everywhere else in the UK is leading to rising resentment and, if it is not addressed, is going to break the UK at some point - it's already severely hurt it with the Brexit "protest" vote. The UK desperately needs strong regional governments like the Scottish parliament - larger than the old counties with more power than the new "mayors". However, no government in Westminster is willing to do that because it means giving up power and creating something that can challenge their authority.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to know why Leeds has no metro it's not because of planning restrictions it's because of a lack of regional government powerful enough to get the money needed to build it.
Also because the conservatives who have historically had an outsized share of power hate anyone who doesn't drive, and frankly Labour isn't far behind. Cars in this country are regarded as the absolute prime form of transport and other forms of transport are ignored at best and demonised at worst.
Meanwhile London looks like it
Re: (Score:3)
This sounds suspiciously like anti-London shite to me.
It's not meant to be anti-London, it's meant to be pointing out that there is a significantly growing divide between London and the rest of the UK. I don't blame Londoners for this - everyone should be advocating for their regions needs since they know them best. I blame the UK government that keeps all power to itself and, being based in London, is only really aware of London's needs.
Maybe London should pay for London stuff and everyone else would should pay for their own stuff.
That would work great if everyone had been treated roughly equally for the past several decades but they have not. The UK
Re: (Score:2)
I love the Who Live at Leeds album ( the expanded whole concert version)...and I believe there are some other landmark albums recorded there live from the classic rock era.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Brexit was it was never defined what it meant or what the plan was but was pitched as the cure to all these problems we blamed on the EU but were entirely our own doing. Bendy bananas all the way down or something.
Well Brexit was famously defined in three simple words: "Brexit means Brexit" [bbc.com] which is funny if only because it is an infinite recursion. Having said that, the UK will reap nothing but benefits from marinating in the consequences of Brexit for a generation or two. The British have had the idea of Brexit buzzing around in their heads since the 1st of January 1973 and they should be given plenty of time to fully explore every conceivable facet of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Brexit was an additional anvil on the pony's back, but the basic problems were not rebuilding the heavy industrial economy into a high-tech industrial economy (the US hasn't been totally successful at this but has done much better than England*) and transferring most of their wealth into the financialization center of the City. The latter is the most devastating long-term: whatever financialization and investment capital run by the 0.5% touches it destroys. And it touched most of England.
[*] yes, I do mean
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, they don't blame Brexit. They blame land use policy for a lack of private investment.
De-industrialization (Score:2)
Basically the last 40 or 50 years everything related to manufacturing has either been outsourced or automated, most of it automated honestly. So tens of millions of factory jobs that had good union pay just went away. And there wasn't anything that could replace it for the vast majority of people. Because we reality means we're not all going to be doing cutting-edge medical breakthroughs s
Re: (Score:2)
Brexit? Which, apparently, more and more people think was a mistake.
Play stupid games ...
They have not yet realized how bad that mistake actually was. Maybe with Trump openly going over to Russia and Europe needing to get things working better, the UK will get a chance to rejoin though.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no such thing as "overregulation" in terms of "there is some numerical amount of regulations that make it overregulation", it's just self-actualizing talking points.
Everybody has regulations they agree with (Easy one, I think we all agree our water supplies should be tested for lead and bacteria and the law should say they are not acceptable in the potable water supply) and we can all come up with some we don't (for me that is a lot of these that clamp down on housing expansion, minimum parking req
United Kingdom is top 10 (Score:5, Informative)
They're having plenty of problems. Yeah, they've shrunk a bit in the past decade, and Brexit was a "gouge out my own eye" decision. But their economy is STILL nearly twice the size of Russias. Sure, China's economy is 5 times bigger, but China also has about a hundred times the land, 100 times the natural resources, and like 15 times the population.
Give them some credit.
Re: (Score:2)
Twice the size of Russia at half the population. So factor four.
Not too shabby. On the other hand, isn't it better to pull bad trends into the light, BEFORE all the good vanishes?
Re: (Score:2)
But only up to a point. I'm not trying to shut the other guy up. But, just as they're free to publish a doom-scrolling article, I'm free to point out a few of the nuances. There are a LOT of people that are trying to discredit the western model of governance. Either for their own gain or just because they're feeling grumpy about life in general.
Re: (Score:2)
I am amused aboit you calling "the other guy" a they ;D.
People wallowing in s!lf-loathing is always a problem. It's hard to find individuals who are able to take a balanced look at themselves, especially under public scrutiny. It's next to impossible to find a whole group of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The "overpopulation is the problem" types tend to gloss over the fact that the entire human population could fit into Texas. It would be a supercity, but it would be very livable.
Re: United Kingdom is top 10 (Score:2)
Unfortunately each one of those people requires acres of farmland to feed plus somewhere to live and reservoirs to supply their water. You cant bulldoze the entire natural enviroment for that or the whole ecosystem collapses. Britain might have a lot of countryside but almost none of it is unused. Even the mountains have sheep farming.
Oh and texas is pretty bloody big.
That's only because of London (Score:2)
On the upside... (Score:5, Funny)
No one wants to admit overpopulation causes this. (Score:5, Informative)
At some point you hit the point at which building more homes closer together reduces quality of life for everyone. (the British are here)
Striving for ever expanding economies and population is a fool's fallacy that economists love to ignore. Perhaps they are one of trhe countries already suffering population decline, at that point it's time to stop striving for constant expansion because you can't count on more people working to cover existing debts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you built houses in those areas noone employed would want to live there because they'd face a long and difficult commute into london every day.
There are lots of empty/cheap houses in undesirable locations already. The demand for housing is primarily centered around london, and housing costs decrease as you get further away and would have to suffer more commuting time.
If you spread things out more and encouraged remote working, things would balance out and housing pressure around london would massively de
Canada (Score:3)
Everyone in England lives in the south. Besides the Manchester-Liverpool rust belt, most of the rest of the country is empty.
Yeah right. Yorkshire and Humberside - part of the country you consider empty - contains just under 10% of the UK's population. Now compare that to Alberta, and you'll find that the population of Alberta is 20% less spread over an area ~120 times greater - indeed 2.5 times greater than the entire of the UK and half of that population lives in just two cities. If you want to see empty countryside come to Canada - our population density is about two orders of magnitude lower than what you consider "empty" ar
Re: (Score:2)
Besides the Manchester-Liverpool rust belt, most of the rest of the country is empty. .
This just isn't true and can easily be verified by anyone looking at Google Earth. Outside of the cities and mountains, almost the entire island is covered in farms and ranches. There is almost no empty land that is not being used for agriculture. Just hop into google earth, zoom in to a mid-level and scroll around. Every large patch of "empty land" is nearly 100% covered with agriculture. The difference in "empty land" between the UK and Canada/USA is shocking. It's a small country with 10,000 years+ of ci
Re:No one wants to admit overpopulation causes thi (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because broadly speaking it's not the problem.
We have too few houses for the population. Worse than most of Europe. But we also have a higher bedroom to population ratio than most of Europe. We're building plenty of stuff, more than enough, but it's more space for rich people, rather than affordable homes for everyone.
Green belts aren't the problem. Overpopulation is not the problem. The problem is wealth concentration.
Everything else is a distraction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's worth also pointing out that one of the authors is a former executive director of the Adam Smith Institute and another works at the Centre for Policy Studies, both of which are conservative "think tanks" and might therefore be somewhat biased towards the form of "free market" that externalises the awkward costs of simple-minded policies for others to pick up.
Re: (Score:3)
Less than 10% of the land in the UK is developed. IIRC, their housing problem is artificial: largely because of land use laws that prioritize a few flowerbeds over trillions of dollars of needed homes built close to cities. I'm all for nature and conservation, but UK cities are artificially boxed in because of a few cow pastures.
Re: (Score:2)
It's mostly because media and politicians who refuse to even acknowledge the concept of urban containment and it's universality, from the smallest village to the largest city ... if it isn't unincorporated, expansion is almost impossible.
The boomers living on the edges in houses they bought half a century ago would scream if urban containment was eliminated, but that's easy enough to ignore. No one is made conscious of how land use restrictions and refusal to expand services are destroying their chances of
Re: No one wants to admit overpopulation causes th (Score:2)
We've got green activists to thank for that. For some people a niche frogs are more important than houses for thousands. Kids these days...
Re: (Score:2)
No one wants to admit that turning housing into an investment causes this.
Overregulation certainly didn't help. And an increase in population didn't either.
Re: (Score:2)
True, we are in something of a trap where we need to increase housing density but that would in turn drive down home prices and existing homeowners are not going to vote for people or support policies that will drive their "investments" down, especially for people who purchased homes during higher market peaks and a loss in value would put them upside down. They have a personal incentive to keep housing stock limited even though for the communities as a whole it's a degradation.
My personal feeling is to ge
Re: (Score:2)
This is an interesting paper on BTL house prices in particular:
https://www.bankofengland.co.u... [bankofengland.co.uk]
There's a pretty depressing diagram illustrating the relationship BTL has on the wider economy in "6: How do pressures on the BTL sector matter for financial stability?" that shows pretty much any attempt to use policy to lower prices will amplify economic downturns. We're hooked on housing, essentially.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the build quality is better, tower blocks will be seen as squalid and inconvenient - because they are.
And carrying a baby and the shopping up eleven flights of stairs because the lifts don't work from Friday to Monday is no fun - I speak from experience here.
Re: (Score:2)
And further increase congestion in the cities...
You already have roads which are gridlocked with cars at peak times, and everyone's solution is to cram those people onto trains instead... Only those trains are physically full already at peak times to the extent that you can't physically enter, and if you do manage to get onboard you're packed in so tight that you're physically touching the other passengers.
Re: (Score:3)
If a couple are both have low paid and unstable income, then if one loses a job, they get no benefits so long as they live together, and the one that is in a job probably does not earn enough to pay the cost of housing. As a result, it is better for couples to split up so the unemployed one can get benefits, In Victorian times, several generations of a family woul
I don't know what world you live in (Score:2)
I'm not sure why you would say something that 20 seconds on Google could disprove. It's not that I necessarily disagree with you on the concept of unlimited growth and good old line go up. But you're trending into malt
NIMBYism and scapegoating (Score:5, Insightful)
US MAGAs are making similar mistakes. NIMBYism is the main cause of difficulty in building new housing*, but slimy politicians blame immigrants and "socialists". NIMBYism is simply local democracy in action: locals don't want crowding and get local gov't to invent ways to stop it.
Brexit also hurt the UK economy: labor got more expensive as migration was shut down, and trade got more expensive as the EU membership trade discounts are gone.
Trump's anti-migrant policies and trade-wars will do very similar.
Naive voters fucked themselves. Morons are getting what they deserve, but unfortunately pull the rest of us with them.
* Too bad we can't find a way to distribute population instead of try to stuff everybody and their dog into a few favorite cities. It's a Catch-22 in that the jobs are where the people are, and people go where the jobs are.
Re: (Score:3)
US MAGAs are making similar mistakes. NIMBYism is the main cause of difficulty in building new housing*, but slimy politicians blame immigrants and "socialists". NIMBYism is simply local democracy in action: locals don't want crowding and get local gov't to invent ways to stop it.
The problem isn't building new housing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
We have a pretty good ratio of bedrooms to people. Problem is the rich people have all the rooms. Building more of the same is not going to help much at all. E
Re: NIMBYism and scapegoating (Score:3)
Re:NIMBYism and scapegoating (Score:5, Informative)
Such a tax system doesn't accommodate the fact that rent can advance without limit, whereas ability to build capital has fundamental limitations, so eventually the construction of capital (housing) will slow down but rent will just keep advancing until it becomes more profitable to collect rent than to collect profit on development. In the end leaving only the rent-collectors, who are rich, and the rent-payers, who are enslaved.
The solution is Georgist politics to redistribute rents while encouraging capital formation. There have been waves of Georgism, including strong pushes by Winston Churchill who was an avowed Georgist, but it doesn't seem to have caught on in the 20th century and the results are absolutely as predicted by Georgism itself.
https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/churchill-winston_mother-of-all-monopolies-1909.htm#:~:text=of%20all%20Monopolies-,Winston,Churchill&text=It%20is%20quite%20true%20that,all%20other%20forms%20of%20monopoly.
It's nothing that hasn't happened before, even in the UK's own history...the subjugation of the Irish was essentially done by the same mechanism. The Irish had plenty of high-quality land, and a relatively low population, so they should have lived in abundance. But the land was owned by absentee landowners and the law gave them alone the ability to charge rent, so the Irish themselves could not benefit from the value of the land. Furthermore laws of the time gave all property improvements to the landowner, no matter who constructed them, making the Irish economy effectively hyper-anti-Georgist: Not only could the Irish not benefit from the rent of their land, they couldn't even accumulate capital besides, because it would be confiscated either indirectly (by raising their rent) or directly (by their improvements literally becoming property of the landowners).
Re: (Score:2)
Hell yeah Land Value Tax [wikipedia.org] supporters rise up
The article (Score:2)
reads like there is no practical limits on land expansion. Just keep on taking more, who cares about leaving room for nature. And makes it sound like energy efficiency as a bad thing! It's scary head-in-the-sand stuff.
Clarkson's Farm (Score:2)
I have no idea how accurate that show was... but if it was even remotely accurate.... oh boy...
First (Score:2)
The real "austerity" (Score:2)
Self inflected scarcity: the real austerity suffered by the non-rich.
Clarkson's Farm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I think reality TV is about the worst place to go to learn about reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Also Clarkson is a well known cranky-conservative so I expect all that to get played up on the show, not that it doesn't exist as a problem but we shouldn't accept it as a fair narrative on it's face.
Oh look: an idiot with an agenda. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read "energy use per unit of GDP is the lowest in the G7"
So the UK is the most energy-efficient economy in the G7 AND THAT'S A BAD THING ?!
I gave up there.
Re: (Score:2)
Only if you consider it a problem that millions of people have to choose between heat and food.
But since you sound like a greenie, you probably think that's OK.
Blaming Thatcher for Urban Containment? (Score:4, Interesting)
Urban containment has been a left/right double asskicking of the lower classes.
Britain is nothing special, it's hitting Netherlands and Belgium even harder ... with a nice dose of "just die" NOx emission and surface water quality laws from the EU to make it worse. Electricity cost is worse too.
Re: (Score:2)
As I read it, it blamed Thatcher for being a hypocrite: touting the removal of regulations in general, but leaving them in place for housing because the rich, her base, didn't want crowding. AKA: NIMBYism.
Green belts? (Score:5, Insightful)
The housing problems have little to do with post-war "green belts". There are plenty of derelict industrial estates within London proper that could be rehabbed into housing. The problem is the real-estate and banking industry itself, just like it is in the US. We have no shortage of housing, we just don't have affordable housing.
A house used to cost 2 years wages for the average worker (1970's) Now the lowest priced houses cost 10-20 times that amount, and the average worker's pay has not increased. It's not a shortage of housing, it's artificial scarcity. It's because people buying up affordable housing not to live there, but to flip for a profit in a year while the market gets hotter. The flippers, real-estate agents, private equity and people who look to suck as much profit out of everything are the problem. There should be rules about buying houses as investment vehicles, especially in middle-class areas. Let the investors buy up the multi-million dollar mansions and industrial properties and make a profit on them. Stay out of the middle-class housing market.
https://www.derelictlondon.com... [derelictlondon.com]
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't mind seeing a 'you have to live in it to own it' rule. Imagine if apartment building owners had to live in one of the units... they might have themselves a nice penthouse, but they'd be plenty motivated to ensure the entire building was well kept. Corporations wouldn't be able to own multiple properties, because a corporation is incorporeal.
The West is Functionally bankrupt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The West is Functionally bankrupt (Score:2)
Report? (Score:2)
I'm looking at what seem to me like a single article self published blog. Why should I take this seriously?
Re: (Score:2)
So the report authors asked him to write a review of it and then they hyped the review to get people to look at their shitty report.
And it worked, because we read it.
Wankers.
ahh yes the atlantic (Score:2)
From the great minds who broughhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/03/182255/how-the-british-broke-their-own-economy#t us "It’s Weird That Eggs Were Ever Cheap" and "Inflation Is Your Fault"
Blaming it on regulations? (Score:2)
All results of austerity (Score:2)
It's truly embarrassing.
This article is poorly informed. (Score:2)
> Cambridge remains a small city despite biotech breakthroughs that might have transformed it into a major hub.
This is just complete rubbish. I happen to have lived there on and off for 35 years.
The periphery of the city is absolutely TEEMING with new construction - from the massive expansion of Addenbrooke's hospital, to the science centre in the northwest of the city, and huge business projects throughout. I was there last week, and saw a lot of the new developments myself.
This is being done in a bette
Re: (Score:2)
Yeeeahhhh, that's bait.
Re: Putin Laughed at Brexit and Cheered Trump (Score:2)
It's only half true anyway. Putin advertised brexit. He did more than laugh.
Re: (Score:3)
So is everyone happy now with fewer brown people?
There aren't fewer brown people, there are more and more all the time. Vast amounts of money are sucked into dealing with them, and if they earn anything themselves a lot of the earnings are sent back to where they came from.
Re: (Score:2)
So its just like the USA where the companies who exploit illegal workers are not punished.
Re: Brexit (Score:2, Insightful)
They pay more in taxes than it costs to support them.
Don't let facts trip you up only way to making a Roman salute though
Re: (Score:2)
Keep telling yourself that. They are remarkably self-sufficient I'll grant you but most of that is about not being sent home and not paying taxes.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
I'm not telling myself, this is what the feds told me.
If you disagree, feel free to provide a citation. If you want one, I'll give you one when I'm at my desktop. Or more likely, I'll give you several.
Re: Brexit (Score:2, Insightful)
California declared itself a sanctuary state where none of that is happening at all, yet the problems you're talking about particularly pronounced here. Housing, unemployment, you name it.
But don't let me stand in the way of you deciding who is a Nazi as if you're Himmler or something.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
"California declared itself a sanctuary state where none of that is happening at all"
That's not what a sanctuary state is.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
So what is your assertion? California is kicking out illegals? California is rounding them up into concentration camps? Do tell.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
Do tell why you're telling lies about refugees and migrants. Wait, don't bother, we all already know.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not what a sanctuary state is.
You forgot to define it. That would be helpful when trying to refute someone else's assertion. This [ca.gov] site is an example of what California means when it declares itself a "sanctuary state". In short, California "prohibits local law enforcement agencies from using resources to investigate, detain, report or arrest people for immigration violations.". The site can give additional details if you'd like to click through their website.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean if you're a right wing German party and you put out propaganda posters like this https://www.thetimes.com/world... [thetimes.com]
And when someone who is known to sig heil also shills for said party.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
Germany is a country with a long, long history of tipping the pendulum too far in every direction and then only superficially accepting responsibility for the consequences. Nor is it relevant.
Re: Brexit (Score:2)
I'm not disagreeing with any of this, all I'm doing is debunking that idiot's attempt at drawing a negative correlation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Brexit (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously kicking illegals out is going to cause inflation. All the jobs they do are going to get much more expensive, and those costs get passed on to you.
So we need to keep people here so we can exploit them for cheap labor? Why not allow the market to define what the job is worth, then pay employees what they're due rather than artificially keeping wages lower? If costs rise, fine. It makes more sense to pay an employee what their time is worth rather than exploit a person based on their citizenship status.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously kicking illegals out is going to cause inflation. All the jobs they do are going to get much more expensive, and those costs get passed on to you.
So we need to keep people here so we can exploit them for cheap labor? Why not allow the market to define what the job is worth, then pay employees what they're due rather than artificially keeping wages lower? If costs rise, fine. It makes more sense to pay an employee what their time is worth rather than exploit a person based on their citizenship status.
I'm not in disagreement, but do keep in mind these are jobs most people don't want so the cost increase is going to be substantial. As long as everyone knows to expect this it is all good, but I suspect many people do not.
Re: (Score:2)
Well that's fantastically simple and naive.
Here's what really happens, backed by a real-world example: a few years back, my state passed a law saying that farms must pay minimum wage if the worker doesn't at least make minimum wage through piecework (weight of fruit picked) - I think that's something that we ideally would like to see. However, the actual result of this policy is that there are no more large strawberry growers in the state, which used to be a plentiful and active segment of agriculture, be
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why not allow the market to define what the job is worth
For the same reason your barista can't make ends meet. Not only does the market not give a shit about people, but you don't either and you prioritise cheap goods above all else.
Just look at the election issue inflation became.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously kicking illegals out is going to cause inflation. All the jobs they do are going to get much more expensive, and those costs get passed on to you.
This is the same argument that Democratic corporate farmers use in the US. Illegal aaliens work for peanuts and don't go complaining to OSHA abut working conditions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So if all of the promised results don't occur within 42 days the whole thing was a bad idea?
Re: (Score:3)
Considering that was always the standard applied to Biden, why not?
If it wasn't instantaneous progress and solutions, then it was his fault. Why aren't we applying the same thinking here?
Re: (Score:2)
No - most of whom are doing categories of work that are considered degrading in British culture,
Certain subsets are unemployable due to inability to read/write, or even Speak English, and lack of numeracy prevents them from understanding that the tax and benefits rules result in having more than two children leading to almost certain poverty.
The native British are well aware of this, and have less than 2.1 children per female.
Re: As an American I'm happy for them. (Score:5, Informative)
That would make sense except we have exactly the same problem here: housing as an investment vehicle for non residents. And of course problem #2, Airbnb and other unlicensed hotel schemes. Both of these things need to be stopped or this problem will continue to worsen.
Re: (Score:2)
They do say "Ï do not want to live in an Islamic country because religion sucks and Islam sucks more than most. That's why these people left their shitty Islamic countries to go to Britain in the first place."
Or do you think the British people actually want women to be second-class citizens, dressed in tents?
Re: Question is - who are the new houses FOR? (Score:2)
Go live in india for a month then tell them you're a native and see how well it goes down.
You fucking naive idiot, just like all the rest.