To think 335,000 extra people coming to the UK in a year is too high

[jdoe8]

Where will they all live? What jobs will they all do? I know it may help GDP, but that is irrelevant as GDP per head is the important thing.

It does seem to be race to the bottom with more part time work , uber type work and the country is borrowing more and more and the national debt is 35k per head now.

So it's all a ponzi scheme - and that's the only option?
Essentially it is the only palatable one. You could force people to work past traditional retirement age/ remove all benefits etc. That is what happens in developing countries so they then produce larger numbers of children to support them. You could have a war/plague etc to lower the total population.

I am sure we could think of others but essentially in countries where people live beyond traditional retirement age you have to increase the overall population

Its a shame that after a working life of perhaps 50 years that a working person has not amassed enough wealth to live state free.
Pensions are another story though.

The 'we have more old people so we need more young people' is, I think, overstated sometimes. The increase in the ratio of old (ie post 65) to young (ie working age) is not new at all. That ratio has increased steadily and massively since 1918, and we have managed well (due to increases in productivity, mechanisation).

Though it does sound as though the imbalances in East Anglia referred to below are more of an issue - and housing may be one of the reasons for that. As a poster says, this is the kind of thing we will need to address.

Woodhill
Refugees or migrants are given no greater rights to housing than the indigenous population. Actually now with most councils applying residency tests they have less entitlement than people who lived in the area for so many years. Unfortunately that is also a barrier to internal migrants. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269035/131219_circular_for_pdf.pdf

Yes but they have been before so it's a little too late.

Ciutadella
The age profile issue is not overstated in my opinion.

"Things continued to improve in Britain in the early 20th century. In particular death in childhood became far less common and by the early 1930s life expectancy for a man at birth was about 60. By the 1950s it had risen to about 65. Things improved more slowly in the late 20th century but by 1971 life expectancy for a man in Britain was 68. For a woman it was 72. In 2015 life expectancy was 79 for a man in the UK and 83 for a woman." www.localhistories.org/life.html

At a total population level those people living an extra 11 years on average since 1971 is significant, as it is an an age where they are at unlikely to be economically active and also require services from working age people, even if they can afford to pay for them without reliance on the state (I am not criticising their existence- just explaining the issue.)

10 million people in the UK are over 65 years old. The latest projections are for 5½ million more elderly people in 20 years time and the number will have nearly doubled to around 19 million by 2050.
The ageing population: key issues for the 2010 Parliament - UK ...
www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key.../the-ageing-population/

Clearly it will be more of an issue in certain geographical areas but it si a large issue to consider

Japan has a massively ageing population, somehow they are doing ok without immigration. I know it's not perfect economy or prospects, but basically they are maintaining a very high standard of living (global comparisons). Wikipedia says Japan is 24th in the world GDP per capita, out of 184 countries.

The aging population/ low birth rate of Japan is one of the country's Prime Minister's stated major priorities as it caused economy to shrink

www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/japans-population-is-shrinking-what-does-it-mean-for-the-economy/

www.wsj.com/articles/japans-economy-contracts-in-4q-1455494532

No I agree there is projected to be a very steep increase in the old age dependency ratio in the future.

But my point is that that ratio has already been increasing, hugely, since 1918 (can't find the figures, which slightly weakens my argument!) - yet it has been possible to accommodate that so far. Largely because of productivity increases amongst those who are working. There is no particular reason to suppose we can't continue to accommodate an increasing oadr through increasing productivity, so the 'ponzi' is not the only alternative.

Though having said that I remember having had this discussion before and a pp made a good point that it is much more expensive, relatively, to care for and support older people now than in say the 1960s, because advances in healthcare mean more expensive treatment is available. So I realise it is not as simple as saying that we have managed to accommodate increasing oadr in the past, and therefore can continue to do so!

Very interesting about Japan. Would it matter if the economy contracts, provided per capita gdp remains the same or grows? I don't know. I see there is reference to a debt issue there, which may make a difference.

Ciutadella
But also the increased productivity issue only takes you so far when it comes to providing personal services to older people. We have an understandable distaste for "warehousing" of older./disabled people (by that I mean looking after them in larger and larger institutions with few staff) so unless we accept robotised personal care, we will still need more and more working age staff to care for them.

On a wider societal base, we may have increased productivity (i.e. driverless transport, increased AI) but we will need to work out how to retain the tax base to fund a society of higher numbers of economically inactive citizens.

Here you go, Caprianna - a nice British for you and your nice biased views

Agree justice, but at its simplest, greater productivity in other sectors releases people to work in care. Simplistic example obviously, but as retail productivity increases (due to horrible horrible self service checkouts which I can never make work!) fewer workers will be required in that sector, so they can retrain, to move into the care sector. Obviously I realise there are issues about transferable skills and so on, and it is never as easy as that.

I agree with you about the tax base - there will be a problem of distribution of income because it involves accepting that a lot of resources go into supporting the economically inactive population.

But in terms of having the wealth and the labour to do that, and retain current standards of living at the same time, I am not sure that we are heading for the disaster we are told we are. Nor that we will need to do the ponzi thing. After all we haven't done the ponzi thing so far - on the contrary, old age dependency ratio has increased steadily.

There is a separate question of unpopularity of care work at the moment, which would also have to be addressed.

Japan has a massively ageing population, somehow they are doing ok without immigration. I know it's not perfect economy or prospects, but basically they are maintaining a very high standard of living (global comparisons).

no they are not. They have had a declining standard of living for about a generation now, and it's only going to get worse.

We can have that too if we choose. it's either immigration or no pension. Take your pick.

It is not right that social housing is being allocated to them at the expense of the indigenous population

If that is Woodhill's experience of the system, I can imagine it must be galling.

Social housing ought to be provided for everyone who needs it, but there is simply not enough housing to go around. Uncontrolled immigration is contributing directly to this predicament, thereby fuelling resentment in a certain sector of society.

Our country can't sustain such an influx. In certain parts of the UK there are 50 times more families than social housing properties available. Schools are at breaking point, as well as our NHS. So the simple answer is no. We can't accommodate those sort of numbers.

In Japana I think women have trouble asserting rights, feminism is hard to push through and women end up looking after their husband's parents in old age.

Many peoplen ow choose to work tio older ages. My father worked full time until 77. My children's other grandfather part time to well into his 80s and brought out his first book at 87. I want to work until I die.

However it is certainly big big news as to how high the net immigration figures are, but not surprising to many Remainers that Romanians would rush to move to the UK whilst they still can. This might be their last chance.

You do know its all just a distraction technique to stop you talking about the real problems? And you fall for it so easily.

You're actually sitting there discussing about whether a homeless foreigner is paying tax on selling the Big Issue, while your government allows, nay encourages, countless businesses to evade billions in tax?

It's pathetic.

Businesses evading tax are not doing so illegally. If there are loopholes, legal ones, of course businesses are going to take advantage of them, whether they make hundreds, thousands or millions. Why wouldn't they?? A small company can lower their tax bills easily, with a good accountant, just as the big players can.

Ciutadella
However, part of the way we have mitigated for it since 1945 is by allowing for immigration to address labour shortages and increase productivity. For political (rather than economic) reasons this will be closed to us going forward, as the labour shortages will be in the less attractive "unskilled" (by perception rather than factually) areas of work like food production/haulage etc; and the political will is for a complete break on "unskilled" labour immigration.

Incidentally why are picking vegetables, labouring, food processing etc perceived as unskilled- have you tried them? To do them well and efficiently requires skills

Businesses evading tax are not doing so illegally.

avoiding

TBH I'm very fortunate not to need social housing but I've heard a lot of anecdotes over the years' but no wonder our own population is falling because housing is so expensive.

Just a few facts to check for yourselves if interested.
The original Womens Refuge, first place of safety fo women fleeing domestic violence is in West London. Almost all the places there are now filled by immigrants.

Crisis at Christmas the charity aiming at housing homeless people over the season was almost entirely occupied by immigrants for the last five Christmasses.

Our local luncheon club for the homeless is 80% used by people from Eastern Europe.

Is this what is meant the the free movement of people?

Scarriff, it's a ticking time bomb.

So really they shouldn't be here imo if they have no housing.