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Something strikes me as odd in the EU's discussions about economic liberalisation, which is being resisted by France and Germany. In particular, this paragraph:
Critics - including Germany and France - believe liberalisation could result in companies shifting staff to cheaper bases in Eastern Europe, undercutting large EU economies and undermining social protections.There are also concerns about the number of workers from eastern European countries who will head west, exacerbating the already high unemployment levels in Germany.
Why would workers be flocking west if there are no jobs to be had there? Especially if the jobs were migrating east. It seems to me that the reason all those people are heading west is because there are jobs to be had, and if you liberalised then all those jobs would move east, to where the people are, and there would be no extra immigration and no further job losses.
Of course, this falls down if there is an incentive to move west even if you can't get a job: a welfare state that supports the unemployed is already iffy in my eyes, and even more iffy to people who have suddenly migrated thousands of miles to be unemployed. But all you have to do is enact some welfare reform to resolve that.
But maybe I'm just a naive, idealistic neo-con?
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Comments
edan
They also move for a better quality of life; I'm surprised Old Mr I-Grew-Up-In-A-Third-World-Country-Donchaknow doesn't get that. A Romanian friend of mine was amazed that all the lights in the park near our house worked, to which we all replied “Well of course they do”. -duh-
Thirdly, people don't always move places with a definite job in mind. Case in point: me :-) In the case of large-scale immigration I’d guess most people don’t.
Lastly, immigrants getting unemployment benefit is the fault of their bad planning / optimism / inappropriate skill set / lack of a clue etc. No one uproots themselves thousands of miles and leaves behind everything they know to sit on their ass in a mouldy council house and get given piddling handouts.
Seriously, where are getting these ideas? You are a naive idealistic neo-con.
Laurie
The reason behind the apparent paradox that unemployment is high in, for example, Germany is that there is only a shortage of jobs that Germans are willing to do. Service-industry jobs like waiters, cleaning staff, security guards et al. are filled in the majority by immigrants, in particular from Turkey. There is not a shortage of jobs: there is a shortage of *nice* jobs. Which is what makes the anti-immigration stance of many Germans (and equally if not more so the UK) so hypocritical: "we don't want a job mopping floors, but we don't want somebody to move here to mop our floors either."
What these people would like is for there to be a shortage of people willing to mop floors: this would result in higher wages for them, and then they would like to do the job. But it would also hurt the economy: you would earn more money mopping floors, but there would be fewer floors to mop.
I'm not disputing that people migrate for a better quality of life. What I'm saying is that if there really were no jobs around, and the government didn't give free handouts to people who didn't have jobs, then said better quality of life would not exist. It's a terrible situation where a government decides that through some accident of geography a bunch of lazy people in one country are entitled to a free ride when a bunch of lazy people in another country are not. The response of the UK has been "no people from other countries allowed", when in fact the response should be "no more free money for lazy people".
Immigration is a wonderful thing, and clearly beneficial to the economies of both the country receiving the immigrants (which benefits from lowered labour costs) and the country they leave (which benefits from remittances sent back to the family at home). Anything which imposes limits on immigration is bad for the economy of the country, and thus for everyone in it.
A welfare state that gives out money to people who are not looking for work distorts the market, driving up labour costs. That's not great. But what's really bad is that it gives incentive for non-economic migration: people who are coming for the free money. This creates resentment of immigration, which produces demand to limit immigration, and thus hurts the economy and thus the people that welfare state is supposed to be helping.
I obviously can't object to people who migrate with no clear idea of what job they will get: in 2000, this is exactly what I did. I am *supporting* liberalising immigration. I'm just saying that the welfare state is a big part of the cause of resentment of immigration.
Tom Williams
edan
“The reason behind the apparent paradox…”
Erm, and? What’s your point? This is part of what I meant by “"No jobs" for Germans might still be "Loads of jobs" for a Pole”, it depends on the contrasting skill set. However the idea that immigrant’s skill-set corresponds largely to floor-moppers is insulting, as is the idea that a native who needs the money won’t “stoop” to mopping a floor. I grew up on a council estate and in a state school. The cleaners were all pure-bred scots, just because there were more of them around, all of whom would rather work than sit on their asses. Natch and of course -duh-. Just because you or I wouldn’t do it (as things stand at the moment) doesn’t mean many others wouldn’t, and they have The Vote too.
Obviously, confining the idea to the dynamics of floor-moppers is itself bullshit. An obvious throw-away contrast to the this are the highly skilled doctors that have been coming out of the Indian subcontinent for decades now. Influx of Doctors is good. Nurses or teachers would be better I imagine, but Doctors good too. Floor-moppers, not so much. The idea that the cost of mopping floors will go down with more people to do it I would certainly dispute; there are always people that need the money, and besides I doubt they get more than minimum wage anyway. Link me to something that tells me that some place (after advertising) can’t the get staff in to mop their ferkin floor, or any other similarly unskilled job.
”I'm not disputing that people migrate for a better quality of life. What I'm saying is that if there really were no jobs around, and the government didn't give free handouts to people who didn't have jobs, then said better quality of life would not exist”.
But people with jobs would still have that improved quality of life, and the chance of attaining that would still be there, so the people would still come, see the previous example of actors in LA. The quality of life of being on the dole sucks already dude, that’s not the grand prize people are going for.
‘"no more free money for lazy people".‘
Or disabled people? Or the sick? Or students? Where are you going to draw the line? How are you going to differentiate? More to the point how are you going to administrate this differentiation, and prove which category people fall into? It’s not “Lazy fuck’s allowance” it’s “Jobseekers allowance”, I realise this is just a name, but it’s also a message of intent, and proving which is which is very difficult. You’re going on (and on and on) about these hypothetical bone idle people that apparently want nothing more than to sit on their ass all day with nothing to look forward to, Who are these people that don’t want to work? What are your sources? You have made no arguments to support this idea, though you restate it several times.
I know one person on the dole while he’s writing a book. Didn’t JKRowling do that as well in fact? There’s an argument for the welfare state right there. I’d say a bigger problem are those that work for cash-in-hand and then sign on for the dole too, but that doesn’t really fit in with your cut-and-dried naive ideological POV
Also the idea that nations shouldn’t protect a certain section of the population due to an “accident of geography” a.k.a. THEIR CITIZENS is just huge. Whoa, I’m not even going to get into that one, it goes all the way back to city states through to the World Wars and skips along to Guantanamo…
Immigration /is/ a wonderful thing (even though it might no be so good for the native German floor-mopper) in general spreading knowledge and diversity and creating rich multicultural societies like the one I live in is all good. But the end point of unlimited immigration and no welfare state is the Favelas of Rio De Janeiro, or the shantytowns of Lagos or Bombay. Do people living there move back to the country? Do they fuck. At the end of the day, I just don’t want abject poverty in my country.
M
1. That immigrants receive benefits automatically.
2. That individuals would migrate here purely to receive and live off the benefits that you assume in 1, are available to them.
For the record, and in a simplified form, individuals from the EU cannot claim unemployment benefit in the UK until they have lived here for 2 years and been in full employment for a continuous period of 12 months. The economically inactive – students, retired workers, lone parents, the disabled from other EU countries only have the right to reside in Britain if there are self sufficient and will not pose an unbearable burden on the state.
Besides the point, as outlined above, that benefits are not just handed out at Dover, are you seriously suggesting that individuals will uproot their whole life, leave their friends and family and everything they no behind to come and sit in a b&b in Britain and receive just about enough money to survive? I don't know what you think the levels of benefits are here but they do not equal the amount earned from having even a minimum wage job.
Resentment of immigration comes from fear and ignorance of the unknown. The myth that immigrants turn up and are handed benefits at Dover is one propagated by the right-wing press, notably the Daily Mail and is simply not true.
I agree that immigration is a wonderful thing and contrary to your assertions the UK does not have an anti-immigration policy, under this government worker immigration has increased. That is individuals coming to this country to work, paying UK taxes, contributing their skills to our economy and their background to our culture.
If only the government had the courage to stand up and make the positive and clear argument for immigration, the poisonous myths spread by the Daily Mail et al would cease to hold such sway over the public imagination.
Chez
Chez
Firstly, the hope of *some* benefits after two years (at least one of which in some arse-end of a job) and free social health care is going to be more appealing than.... nothing. Supporters of craddle-to-the-grave welfare states cannot deny that there are documented examples (i.e. individual situations, not indicative of the general situation) of immigrant familys suing local councils because their car isn't good enough or because they don't have Sky TV. We can blame the poor construction that is the Human Rights Act for msot of these examples.
Secondly, a lot of this stated problem is caused by the scope and time-scale of the thinking involved. Economic liberalising may lead to jobs going east *in the short term*. There may be a loss of jobs *initially* in countries such as Germany and France as companies relocate to areas which don't impose such high burdens on employers. However, in the medium to long term, this influx of jobs with improve the economies of the eastern countries, who will suddenly have money to spend, and want to buy goods - and we're not talking foodstuffs. We're talking the high tech fancy stuff places like Britain, France and Germany are very good at. So, there will be a (possibly considerable - on the order of several years) lag time, but this would be a good thing for the western european countries. They're just not looking past the next set of opinion polls.