7 ms·

> I think Remainers' persistent refusal to acknowledge this played right in to the hands of the pro-Brexit lot. Except we already have the powers to stop this

by fao_ 9y ago

> I think Remainers' persistent refusal to acknowledge this played right in to the hands of the pro-Brexit lot. Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. The EU allows member countries full ability to protect their borders from these immigrants, we just choose not to. Look at France, Germany, etc. for countries that properly enforce their borders. In addition, if a proper living wage were enacted for all residents of the UK, including recent migrants, then companies would not be able to pay migrants less for their labour, and companies would no longer favour economic migrants. Although to be fair, the sort of work that economic migrants do is usually considered to be below the capacity of the average British person. > Brexit supporters were largely just angry with the status quo and were essentially casting a protest vote. Indeed. But you cannot say that there was no warning at all. The London School of Economics and many others openly stated that leaving the EU would be disastrous. Instead, these people decided to listen to the likes of... Boris Johnson. Someone who has a long history for making openly racist towards other countries.

crdoconnor 9y ago
>Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. I know. Nonetheless, nobody who runs a media outlet actually wants to acknowledge this and elites on both sides Brexit campaign didn't either, so it was always going to remain largely unknown to the general public. >In addition, if a proper living wage were enacted for all residents of the UK, including recent migrants, then companies would not be able to pay migrants less for their labour Yep, but that would savage profits. Elites on the pro-Brexit side didn't want this, elites on the anti-Brexit side didn't want this. Tories don't want it and centrists in the Labour party didn't want it. The only person with any power who actually wants this is Corbyn and in 2015 almost nobody paid him any attention. >Indeed. But you cannot say that there was no warning at all. The London School of Economics and many others openly stated that leaving the EU would be disastrous. Pretty much anybody who claimed to know the effect of Brexit prior to the referendum was lying. Nobody knew. The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. It was shocking the number of economists who came out with actual numbers. Monumentally stupid and played right into the Brexiteers' hands. sigh... It's not at all irrational to disbelieve out of touch elites when they tell you that things that they believe will be bad for them are actually bad for you. The number of times we've been condescendingly told by lying elites that jacking up the minimum wage will only trigger mass unemployment is a testament to that.
- fao_ 9y ago
  > It's not entirely irrational to disbelieve out of touch elites when they tell you that things that are bad for them are bad for you. Except the groups I referred to were university establishments and thinktanks. Much of the outroar came not from the 'elites', so much as middle and lower class professors... > Pretty much anybody who claimed to know the effect of Brexit prior to the referendum was lying. Nobody knew. The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. No. The main facts that were known before the referendum were: We do not have enough legal staff in the government to handle such a large negotiation. Thus we would have to borrow or outsource much of the more backbreaking legal work to other countries. The implication of leaving the EU implies that we must renegotiate a trade deal with every single country that we are parting with, something that took the EU as a collective _decades_ to do. Britain would be put on the back-foot in any future negotiations, given that other countries are not at risk from completely and utterly losing trade with most of the world given a failed deal, but we are. Strategically it makes sense to not put yourself in such a position. Britian would have to adopt the regulations that many claimed were harmful, if it wanted to trade with the EU, just like every other country that has trade with the EU. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is not a beneficial position to be in as a country. > The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. The deal still hasn't been made, but we can still predict that the outcome of this will be negative based on facts that are clearer to us now, but were present before the referendum took place. The fact that a large proportion of people admitted that in retrospect they did not know what they were voting for, should have been the point at which we started backpedalling and figuring out where we are.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >Except the groups I referred to were university establishments and thinktanks. The official response from the establishments of elite universities and the output of think tanks is almost the definition of "out of touch elites", no? >Much of the outroar came not from the 'elites', so much as middle and lower class professors... Not in the media read by people in Lincolnshire. They don't hear the outroar coming from those middle and lower class professors going on strike either. I appreciate that you might have had mates who were postdocs who had legitimate reason to be worried about science funding (so do I!), but not everybody does. >It doesn't take a genius to see that this is not a beneficial position to be in as a country. What you described above was the effect of hard Brexit. Hard Brexit wasn't even on the cards until some time after the vote, and is still not confirmed even now. >The deal still hasn't been made, but we can still predict that the outcome of this will be negative It's entirely possible to extract some good from this process even if it was better that it was never started. However, paying little attention to the actual shape of the deal, which is highly mutable, and simply re-iterating that any kind of Brexit is the worst possible thing that could ever be happening to us isn't going to do that. One way or the other it's happening. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.
vilmosi 9y ago
> Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. The EU allows member countries full ability to protect their borders from these immigrants, we just choose not to. How can that be? Doesn't freedom of movement imply freedom to live and work wherever you want?
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  The EU provides limited freedom of movement. What you ordinarilly get is an automatic 3 month via to find work. There are lots of limits on it, which are up to the member states to enforce if they want to. If you move to some EU countries and try to live on benefits then you get deported for visa violations. In the UK it seems the government felt it was cheaper to lay off the border control officers and let people do what they want, but then complain that they are doing whatever they want.
  - vilmosi 9y ago
    I'm sorry but we're not talking about unemployed people on benefits, we're talking about low skilled workers who pay taxes and are exercising their right to free movement. Emphasis on "right". Baring a few exceptional cases such as criminal activity, I am not aware of any limitations the UK can implement to control this (for now).
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      I'm struggling to find the reference I wanted to share, but here is the right to control migration from a new member country, which presumably are the lowest wage areas[0]. Britain chose not to exercise this right in the first place, so it seems fallacious to suggest that the government would exercise further restrictions if it could. It was explained to me by an economist (Roger Martin-Fagg) as a deliberate policy (and why the UK lobbied the EU so hard to move east, the irony) to add more young people to the UK workforce because of low productivity and most particularly the pension crisis. You are correct of course that extra people coming into a profession could cause stagnation of wages, but it is usually far more complicated than that. In the UK, despite all of this immigration we have rather low rates of unemployment, marginally lower than before the 2004 expansion of the EU. This seems counterintuitive if wage growth is an over-supply problem. It is also not true to say that an industry will just keep paying more and more to attract workers from other sectors. This soon hits the point in the modern globalised world that the industry just becomes uncompetetive and closes down, outsources, invests in labour reducing machinery, or moves. Wage stagnation is very real in Britain however, and for pointers to the cause you might want to look at why non wage inflation has been so low for so long, putting aside the last 18 months of FX driven inflation caused by comparatively weak sterling post Brexit vote (This adds around 15% to most imported goods). [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union#Transitional_provisions_in_new_member_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...
nwellnhof 9y ago
> Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. The EU allows member countries full ability to protect their borders from these immigrants, we just choose not to. That's plain wrong. Every EU country must allow freedom of movement for workers from other EU states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker... > Look at France, Germany, etc. for countries that properly enforce their borders. Germany currently doesn't even enforce its borders for immigrants from outside of the EU. For immigrants from the EU, it is simply not allowed to just like every other EU country.
- fao_ 9y ago
  > That's plain wrong. Every EU country must allow freedom of movement for workers from other EU states. Much of what you just wrote is incorrect, please see jimnotjim's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16558745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16558745
  - nwellnhof 9y ago
    I don't see how jimnotjim's comment contradicts my statements. He only says the freedom of movement is limited to people seeking work. This is correct but as long as they find employment, workers still have unlimited freedom of movement. It's not within the powers of single member states to stop low-wage immigration as claimed in the comment I was replying to.

by fao_ 9y ago

crdoconnor 9y ago

>Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. I know. Nonetheless, nobody who runs a media outlet actually wants to acknowledge this and elites on both sides Brexit campaign didn't either, so it was always going to remain largely unknown to the general public. >In addition, if a proper living wage were enacted for all residents of the UK, including recent migrants, then companies would not be able to pay migrants less for their labour Yep, but that would savage profits. Elites on the pro-Brexit side didn't want this, elites on the anti-Brexit side didn't want this. Tories don't want it and centrists in the Labour party didn't want it. The only person with any power who actually wants this is Corbyn and in 2015 almost nobody paid him any attention. >Indeed. But you cannot say that there was no warning at all. The London School of Economics and many others openly stated that leaving the EU would be disastrous. Pretty much anybody who claimed to know the effect of Brexit prior to the referendum was lying. Nobody knew. The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. It was shocking the number of economists who came out with actual numbers. Monumentally stupid and played right into the Brexiteers' hands. sigh... It's not at all irrational to disbelieve out of touch elites when they tell you that things that they believe will be bad for them are actually bad for you. The number of times we've been condescendingly told by lying elites that jacking up the minimum wage will only trigger mass unemployment is a testament to that.

fao_ 9y ago
> It's not entirely irrational to disbelieve out of touch elites when they tell you that things that are bad for them are bad for you. Except the groups I referred to were university establishments and thinktanks. Much of the outroar came not from the 'elites', so much as middle and lower class professors... > Pretty much anybody who claimed to know the effect of Brexit prior to the referendum was lying. Nobody knew. The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. No. The main facts that were known before the referendum were: We do not have enough legal staff in the government to handle such a large negotiation. Thus we would have to borrow or outsource much of the more backbreaking legal work to other countries. The implication of leaving the EU implies that we must renegotiate a trade deal with every single country that we are parting with, something that took the EU as a collective _decades_ to do. Britain would be put on the back-foot in any future negotiations, given that other countries are not at risk from completely and utterly losing trade with most of the world given a failed deal, but we are. Strategically it makes sense to not put yourself in such a position. Britian would have to adopt the regulations that many claimed were harmful, if it wanted to trade with the EU, just like every other country that has trade with the EU. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is not a beneficial position to be in as a country. > The outcome would be dependent upon the shape of a deal that hadn't yet been made. The deal still hasn't been made, but we can still predict that the outcome of this will be negative based on facts that are clearer to us now, but were present before the referendum took place. The fact that a large proportion of people admitted that in retrospect they did not know what they were voting for, should have been the point at which we started backpedalling and figuring out where we are.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >Except the groups I referred to were university establishments and thinktanks. The official response from the establishments of elite universities and the output of think tanks is almost the definition of "out of touch elites", no? >Much of the outroar came not from the 'elites', so much as middle and lower class professors... Not in the media read by people in Lincolnshire. They don't hear the outroar coming from those middle and lower class professors going on strike either. I appreciate that you might have had mates who were postdocs who had legitimate reason to be worried about science funding (so do I!), but not everybody does. >It doesn't take a genius to see that this is not a beneficial position to be in as a country. What you described above was the effect of hard Brexit. Hard Brexit wasn't even on the cards until some time after the vote, and is still not confirmed even now. >The deal still hasn't been made, but we can still predict that the outcome of this will be negative It's entirely possible to extract some good from this process even if it was better that it was never started. However, paying little attention to the actual shape of the deal, which is highly mutable, and simply re-iterating that any kind of Brexit is the worst possible thing that could ever be happening to us isn't going to do that. One way or the other it's happening. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

vilmosi 9y ago

jimnotgym 9y ago
The EU provides limited freedom of movement. What you ordinarilly get is an automatic 3 month via to find work. There are lots of limits on it, which are up to the member states to enforce if they want to. If you move to some EU countries and try to live on benefits then you get deported for visa violations. In the UK it seems the government felt it was cheaper to lay off the border control officers and let people do what they want, but then complain that they are doing whatever they want.
- vilmosi 9y ago
  I'm sorry but we're not talking about unemployed people on benefits, we're talking about low skilled workers who pay taxes and are exercising their right to free movement. Emphasis on "right". Baring a few exceptional cases such as criminal activity, I am not aware of any limitations the UK can implement to control this (for now).
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    I'm struggling to find the reference I wanted to share, but here is the right to control migration from a new member country, which presumably are the lowest wage areas[0]. Britain chose not to exercise this right in the first place, so it seems fallacious to suggest that the government would exercise further restrictions if it could. It was explained to me by an economist (Roger Martin-Fagg) as a deliberate policy (and why the UK lobbied the EU so hard to move east, the irony) to add more young people to the UK workforce because of low productivity and most particularly the pension crisis. You are correct of course that extra people coming into a profession could cause stagnation of wages, but it is usually far more complicated than that. In the UK, despite all of this immigration we have rather low rates of unemployment, marginally lower than before the 2004 expansion of the EU. This seems counterintuitive if wage growth is an over-supply problem. It is also not true to say that an industry will just keep paying more and more to attract workers from other sectors. This soon hits the point in the modern globalised world that the industry just becomes uncompetetive and closes down, outsources, invests in labour reducing machinery, or moves. Wage stagnation is very real in Britain however, and for pointers to the cause you might want to look at why non wage inflation has been so low for so long, putting aside the last 18 months of FX driven inflation caused by comparatively weak sterling post Brexit vote (This adds around 15% to most imported goods). [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union#Transitional_provisions_in_new_member_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...

nwellnhof 9y ago

> Except we already have the powers to stop this low-wage immigration. The EU allows member countries full ability to protect their borders from these immigrants, we just choose not to. That's plain wrong. Every EU country must allow freedom of movement for workers from other EU states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker... > Look at France, Germany, etc. for countries that properly enforce their borders. Germany currently doesn't even enforce its borders for immigrants from outside of the EU. For immigrants from the EU, it is simply not allowed to just like every other EU country.

fao_ 9y ago
> That's plain wrong. Every EU country must allow freedom of movement for workers from other EU states. Much of what you just wrote is incorrect, please see jimnotjim's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16558745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16558745
- nwellnhof 9y ago
  I don't see how jimnotjim's comment contradicts my statements. He only says the freedom of movement is limited to people seeking work. This is correct but as long as they find employment, workers still have unlimited freedom of movement. It's not within the powers of single member states to stop low-wage immigration as claimed in the comment I was replying to.