goldfish21
Veteran
Joined: 17 Feb 2013
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 22,612
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
26 Dec 2022, 1:16 pm
The_Walrus wrote:
Mikah wrote:
^ How did economies ever survive before the age of mass immigration? It's also no accident that mass immigration has coincided with a continual loss of purchasing power generation upon generation for those on the receiving end of it.
There is some truth about the turmoil that would be caused by turning off the migration spigot, but an analogy might be that the country is like a patient unnecessarily dependent on a drug - take them off it and there will be pain and upset , perhaps they may even need medical intervention - but no doctor would recommend a patient continue taking a drug because it will be painful to stop.
There is some truth about the turmoil that would be caused by turning off the migration spigot, but an analogy might be that the country is like a patient unnecessarily dependent on a drug - take them off it and there will be pain and upset , perhaps they may even need medical intervention - but no doctor would recommend a patient continue taking a drug because it will be painful to stop.
Before mass immigration, our economy stagnated for centuries. Following industrialisation, growth was sustained through high birth rates and lots of low-hanging fruit for innovation.
Now our birth rate is low and innovation is hard. We have to sustain our workforce somehow. There are already lots of jobs going unfilled.
Don’t agree at all about the loss of purchasing power. There is good where that rings true - housing. That’s because we don’t build enough. The cost of British labour has also risen, not sure whether it has kept up with inflation. Everything else, my purchasing power far outstrips what my parents or grandparents could buy. I can fly to Greece for less than £20, I can fly across the Atlantic for £150, less than 0.5% of my annual salary. If my grandparents wanted to make the same trip in the 70s it would have cost 100% of *her* annual salary as a schoolteacher - I don’t know exactly what *he* was earning as a real estate agent but it wasn’t enough to make air travel as affordable. I have a much larger wardrobe, my television is much better, we obviously don’t need to go over computers. I have fresh fruit and vegetables all year round. I can call and write to my brother in Australia for free as part of my Wi-Fi payment of £6 per month. I can get unlimited music for less than the (unadjusted!) cost of two LPs a month. Even cars, which are energy-intensive to manufacture, seem to be getting more affordable.
“Real wages” are nearly always growing, even before you factor in things like switching from vinyl to streaming. Our standard of living is higher today than for any previous generation. Sort out the housing crisis with some regulatory changes and we’re golden.
Not the same here in the new world. Fuel/travel is more expensive. Electronics are cheaper, but prices are rising now. Food is WAY more expensive. Vehicles cost 10x what they did in 1970 while wages/salaries haven't increased all that much. Housing is astronomically expensive. People aren't getting married, buying homes, having kids etc - if those are goals, many are relocating to achieve them.
Housing crisis issues are the single biggest issue. Bullshitters will say we haven't build enough, but actual units constructed vs. units required to house people = we've overbuilt.. they're simply sold to investors that never live in them nor rent them out. One big game of Monopoly. It's disgusting. Policy changes that help the working class and negatively impact the very rich are needed to solve it, but those are unlikely, so the absurdity continues.
Overall, my grandparents generation had it worst living through the Great Depression, my parents generation had it best with low cost housing and higher disposable income, and my generation and younger in general has a really tough time with incomes barely higher than our parents and costs of living/housing through the stratosphere. It now costs twice as much to rent a bedroom as my father paid in mortgage payments on a whole house.
Kinda wish Canadians weren't so passive and polite and were a little more like the French when it comes to protesting things and forcing change for the better when politicians aren't willing to do what's right for people.
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No
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
