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‘Two-tier’: UK treats far-right attacks less harshly than Islamist violence, says thinktank
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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UK Politics
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The idea that the unions would legitimately oppose immigration is nonsense. Economic analysis of the actual impact of immigration has consistently shown that immigration has little-to-no negative impact on the incomes of native workers - immigrants don't undercut the wages of native workers so the unions shouldn't be worried about them.
A large part of that is because of the 'lump of labour' fallacy. Unthoughtful people assume there's a fixed number of jobs to be filled, but the reality is that immigrants don't just fill jobs but also create jobs through their own demand for goods and services. But there are other factors too like entrepreneurialism and business start ups - immigrants, as evidenced by them being part of the small subset of people who are prepared to pack up their lives and move to another country, tend to be more entrepreneurial than the general population in either their home or host countries. Some of our biggest high street names like Tesco and M&S have immigrant origins.
The small caveat to this is that immigration in recent decades has been shown to have a tiny negative impact on the incomes of the lowest paid 20% of the population (of about -0.5%) but this is dwarfed by the positive impact it has on those further up the income spectrum (e.g. +1.7% for the richest 10%). Obviously +1.7% of a very rich person's income is a lot more than -0.5% of a poor person's income. So if the unions are rational and actually want to improve the lot of the poorest in society then they should be campaigning for a lot more immigration and a very small increase in taxes on the richest to fund redistribution of this income, which will more than compensate the poorest for the fraction of a percentage point of lost income from over two decades worth of immigration.
And?
Its not entirely clear, but I think you are agreeing with me.
Just because they are wrong, doesn't mean that people can't have an opinion regarding immigration that isn't based on racism which is what I read in your comment.
The grandparent post is the typical idiot who shuts down every conversation with "but racism", which prevents any education on the matter. When you have complete fucking bellends who do that then those people who held positions that could have been reasoned with will get angrier at their perceived injustice. Good luck working with them at that point.
I was disagreeing with you perpetuating the lump of labour fallacy that one can be anti-immigrant for pro-worker reasons.
When nativists use this argument, it's usually shit-stirrers deliberately trying to pit people against each other. They rely on the fact that the average person probably hasn't taken the time to conduct a literature review of the economic studies of immigration, but might be able to be seduced by a superficially easy argument that all their ills can be blamed on some minority and drawing on some cherry-picked anecdotes.
The reality of immigration bears little relation to the skewed narrative the nativists are trying to sell. Irregular migration represents only a tiny fraction of UK immigration. Immigrants are no more likely to commit crime than natives. Immigration grows the economy and has little or no effect on jobs and wages. Immigrants are net contributors to the NHS and public services. Once you knock away all the far-right's factual lies, it's hard to find the nugget of a 'legitimate' reason why people might consider immigration to be one of the major 'problems' facing this country that doesn't start and end with xenophobia.
Okay, but now you are arguing a completely different point to the one I was making. I am not against immigration, so you don't need to convince me.
I would disagree, not everyone is as well read as yourself and there will be some folks that will be already swayed by that argument in to thinking that immigration can suppress wages. If so, then there will logically be some people who have fallen for this, and legitimately believe that immigration has a negative side effect with regards to employment without it being because they have dark skin.
If you shut down the conversation as "that's what racists would say", then you prevent the entire rest of your comment from being communicated and helping them understand that they are wrong.
You spend a lot of time trying to convince me that migration is not a net bad, rather than trying to argue why its beneficial to shut down any ignorant "legitimate concerns" as "sounds like Hitler".