Lower migration and the tax gap: raise taxes or ease restrictions?

FWIW, I think there needs to be a concerted effort to raise the perceived status of care workers. I find the constant references to bum wiping absolutely infuriating. If this is how we talk about our elderly and vulnerable then it's no wonder we're in the doldrums.

Not a Python fan then ?

Force NEETS to work in care homes and pick fruit or whatever low-skilled migrants do.

Not sure where you were working as a teenager!

Its hardly galloping ahead. In fact if there was an election tomorrow Labour would go from a historic super majority to a hung Parliament. That's the effect of two years of lunatic policies. Which seem only to be getting worse.

I don't disagree. Unfortunately, the electorate gets the quality of politicians that it deserves.

Aye.

"Well of course, we had it tough. We used to
have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at
night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had
half two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours
a day at the mill for sixpence every four years, and
when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a
bread knife."

Apologies to Monty Python.

FOUR YORKSHIREMEN Lyrics - MONTY PYTHON | eLyrics.net

According to the latest polls, Reform has fallen back and the Labour Party are back in the lead. For now, at least. So I guess Reform and the Tories are even more out of touch with public opinion, if that's how you're judging it?

If the economy "goes bankrupt", that may be partly because of government spending, but it will also be in large part because of the damage done to the economy by Brexit. Our spending is only "too high" now because the economy is smaller than it would have been.

Exactly. Such as the Gaza obsession of Labour.

Unfortunately, politics in this country is now trying to find out what policies are most popular with the public and then promising to do that thing to get elected. It's just endless focus groups.
Of course, public mood shifts erratically and can be easily manipulated in the internet age. We keep electing governments with massive majorities and then demanding another election when they're out of favour 6 months later.
It's a sorry state of affairs.

It will be out of anyone's hands soon enough when the country goes bankrupt due to out of control spending by the state.

I see Mahmood is backtracking on her immigration reforms now due to pressure from Rayner. Labour are remarkably out of touch with public opinion (according to all polls).

We all had to take low paying work when we were young and inexperienced.

You are probably right, but perhaps before "deciding", the public should at least be persuaded to consider the implications of their "decisions"?

After all, the public "decided" to leave the EU, and the majority of the electorate now recognise that this was a bad decision.

I wish we had politicians who were brave enough to front up about the likely consequences of the decisions that people are making.

I think the public have already "decided", that the loss to the treasury should be met with a scaling back of expenditure by the state. All political parties are now vying to outdo each other in the extremity of this position...so it's obviously polling well.
The argument now seems to be where the cuts are made and who will suffer most... pensioners, the unemployed, young people etc.
I think it's pointless trying to explain Keynesian economics at this point, the public are baying for 'blood'.

There may be 800,000 vacancies but how many will offer a decent enough wage that doesn’t need to be topped up with UC and how many are full time hours? The welfare bill will never go down as long as people are not being paid well enough or given enough hours.

Thank you for responding.

FWIW, I agree with you that inheritance should be taxed more. But inheritance tax is curiously unpopular for a tax that currently only affects around 4-5% of estates, so you're probably right that it won't happen. I would quite happily tax any and all inheritance as the people inheriting haven't "earned" any of it. But that's probably for another thread.

If you have credible evidence on the "true fiscal impact" of immigration, I would be interested in seeing it.

It was brought back into state control remember. Because of horrific crashes due to poor maintenance. The private companies would not spend.

You mentioned Sweden first. I just mentioned it replying to you.

Quote " ETA: back to OP's question - Sweden has very low immigration and they are doing just fine."

Lets look at the data. Pick 2025.

Total immigration to Sweden 90 k
Population of Sweden 10.64 million

Population divide by immigration Sweeden = 118

UK immigration 705k
Population of UK 68.75 million.

Population divide by immigration UK = 97.5.

Sweeden is lower in migrants per capita than UK in 2025 yes. But it's not massive. Lets guesstimate it at 15%. And I just done a snapshot, 2015. Not the whole picture.

It's not 40% or 60%.

Are the services 15% different ?

I won't include links sorry, because too many to quickly find that data.

Well, I understand that that's the theory. But it assumes that employers will suck up the higher costs and reduce profits accordingly. I'm not sure that the evidence supports this?

From what I've observed, most companies are passing on the higher costs to the consumer through higher prices. And frankly, having higher wages isn't that helpful if everything costs more.

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack

Less immigration at any cost would reflect my point of view fairly accurately. However, I don’t think there would be a cost because I think we vastly underestimate the true fiscal impact of immigration

But if we did have a shortfall, my tax rise of choice would be to tax inheritances as income, which would raise tens of billions. Would be hard to get past the electorate though, I admit.

Cost cutting I would go for the civil service. Too many managers, not enough admin. The ratio has become skewed.

My experience of friends and family applying for jobs over the last couple of years is you have to apply for 30 or 40 jobs just to get a minimum wage position with minimal hours. We don’t need more people competing for these jobs.

OK. So you mean that lots of people voted for Brexit because they believed that only big business benefits from immigration. But I presume you realise that this isn't actually evidence?

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim?

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack ’As to immigration only benefitting big business, what's your evidence for that exactly?’

Take Bricklayers for example. Thousands of EE bricklayers immigrated to the UK.
This immediately put a lid on any pay rises, and indeed wages went down. Building companies had no need to train people up, because they had unlimited cheap fully trained bricklayers available.
Profit for the building companies went up.
This scenario crosses all building, engineering, IT, driving, cooks etc.

Big business importing cheap labour that undercut British workers.

Sorry, what's the relevance of this point?

It was one of the main reasons for people voting Brexit. Certainly in the north.