Cameron: UK won't pay £1.7bn EU bill

[madd0ct0r]

2) The arrival of the immigrants is depressing the cost of labor, which is causing serious problems for every UK citizen that isn't already a technical specialist. It's not "they take our jobs," it's "businesses can take advantage of arbitrage in the labor market as long as they pay more than an equivalent employer in Poland would pay." This is a basic, obvious result of large-scale immigration that anyone can predict from Economics 101. If you introduce a large, cheap supply of a commodity with acceptable quality, the market price of that commodity will go down. In this case, the commodity is "low skilled and semi-skilled labor."

The thing is, East Europeans, especially in construction, are a HUGE benefit to the industry. Since the Thatcher years and de-industrialization, the lack of social status (and money) given to engineers and technicians who have to work on a long apprenticeship (eg plumbers might need seven years from start to owning their own business). So we had a massive shortage of skilled people. East Europeans have depressed the wages in that sector, but from the point of view of the country they've massively increased the work done in that sector (and they often have pretty damning opinions of British workers, who for a long time only worked in construction becuase they were too useless to get a better job. Even now 50-60% of engineering graduates go to London to be quants in the banking industry)
Most of the Poles never wanted to stay, and the only guy I know who did, in construction, is a professional foreman and his wife is a primary school teacher. They're assets.

Germany has managed it's technical education much better for decades and remains a world leader in manufacturing. They didn't need the Poles. The UK, to an extent, did. When the recession came, a lot of them just went home. Unemployment in the UK Polish community tracked the European average, unemployment in the Brit community rose (although we did export a lot of people to Australia).



As for London...

Well, there's people who live in Birmingham who commute to London. 2hours each way. Well over a quarter of the country's area (and much more of the population) is in direct orbit around the city. There's a steady buildup of letters in New Civil Engineer calling for engineers and planners to engage with politics and basically put our feet down and say cramming more people into this area without sufficient land, water, hospitals, transport is a fucking stupid idea. Which it is.

[Thanas]

Uh... could you expand on that? It sounds like you're arguing the following:

"I concede that the EU is an unprofitable and unbeneficial waste of the UK's money, but the UK has no other choice!"

But that can't be what you're saying

Indeed I am not, only an idiot would do that.

[Simon_Jester]

The thing is, East Europeans, especially in construction, are a HUGE benefit to the industry. Since the Thatcher years and de-industrialization, the lack of social status (and money) given to engineers and technicians who have to work on a long apprenticeship (eg plumbers might need seven years from start to owning their own business). So we had a massive shortage of skilled people. East Europeans have depressed the wages in that sector, but from the point of view of the country they've massively increased the work done in that sector (and they often have pretty damning opinions of British workers, who for a long time only worked in construction becuase they were too useless to get a better job. Even now 50-60% of engineering graduates go to London to be quants in the banking industry)

Most of the Poles never wanted to stay, and the only guy I know who did, in construction, is a professional foreman and his wife is a primary school teacher. They're assets.

They are, but the argument is that the British government has had to methodically screw up for a long period of time to create a situation where competent plumbers and construction workers are so precious to the UK and so hard to find that they have to import them from Poland. And that perpetuating this situation is not to the long-term advantage of the UK. And that this tends to perpetuate the de-industrialization; why train or create an industrial workforce when you can just import whoever you need? With the result that the financial sector and other such services continue to be the only growth industries in the country... which contributes to the massive overcrowding of London.

Free immigration from Poland thus provides some temporary relief to one of the symptoms of bad governance in Britain, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. Or that immigration doesn't exaggerate the effects of other symptoms. Like depressed wages for twentysomethings trying to enter the workforce, or like overcrowded infrastructure because the total population of England is increased due to immigration.

The Polish workers are totally an asset, and they're good people, but it's still a legitimate question whether the UK government should have handled immigration the way it did, or more like the other European nations did.

Germany has managed it's technical education much better for decades and remains a world leader in manufacturing. They didn't need the Poles. The UK, to an extent, did. When the recession came, a lot of them just went home. Unemployment in the UK Polish community tracked the European average, unemployment in the Brit community rose (although we did export a lot of people to Australia).

From the point of view of a British citizen who wants his own government to do the right things to make life good for British citizens, this is not reassuring. And ties into the charge of mismanagement.

As for London...

Well, there's people who live in Birmingham who commute to London. 2hours each way. Well over a quarter of the country's area (and much more of the population) is in direct orbit around the city. There's a steady buildup of letters in New Civil Engineer calling for engineers and planners to engage with politics and basically put our feet down and say cramming more people into this area without sufficient land, water, hospitals, transport is a fucking stupid idea. Which it is.

Agreed, and this ties into the 'mismanagement' issue. If the government has been methodically cultivating London at the expense of all other parts of the country for thirty or forty years, that is irresponsible and predictably leads to a crisis of overpopulation in London and stagnation elsewhere.

Uh... could you expand on that? It sounds like you're arguing the following:

"I concede that the EU is an unprofitable and unbeneficial waste of the UK's money, but the UK has no other choice!"

But that can't be what you're saying

Indeed I am not, only an idiot would do that.

Exactly. So what is the thing you're saying? Because that 'idiot' interpretation is what I got when I looked at your words and attempted to derive their literal meaning. I knew I must be misinterpreting you, but I couldn't figure out how, so I assumed you must have left something out of your response.

I do this a lot when people are, in my reading of their words, unclear.

[madd0ct0r]

well, the uk strategy has been to specialise into finace. there is no comparable finance center in europe. Could they have specialised into high end industry? yes. Could the UK and Germany both specialised in that and succeeded? possibly not.

[Simon_Jester]

Fair enough- but that doesn't render the British government immune to being criticized on the grounds that their decision to specialize into finance was a bad move. It's ensured high GDP in Britain and fueled a prolonged boom in London. But it's also helped increase the class divide in Britain while allowing basically all parts of the country that aren't London to stagnate. Combine that with the decision to rely on cheap foreign labor for unskilled and semiskilled trades, and you have real economic problems in the UK that affect, if not the majority, at least a large share of the population.

So the charge of mismanagement is still applicable, even if it's not entirely clear that doing things differently would be an improvement.