You need to also ratio the the number of young people to old people for a sustainable population rise. The public spending resources allocated to pensioners requires a greater number of working people, qv Japan and its problems. So if expectancy rises and GDP on pension welfare grows from 4 per cent in the past to 5.1% approx now to 7.1% in 2060 you have to plan for a proportionate rise in working age people otherwise we are a zombie economy. Im tapping on a phone so difficult to set out the full complexity but you need to work out what we need to do to plan for those needs, and that's nit excessive growth. Malthus was disproved.
Yes it's the full complexity that is tricky even if not on a phone. Immigration is the theme underlying everything. It often becomes a sole focus of many posters and voters discontent but who researches it properly despite the ease with AI and google? I do not know how the electorate's obsession with this one trick pony can end? It has been going full blast since Brexit and the electorate seem to still be more interested in immigration than anything else? Let’s say (based on the trend shown by these local elections) that Reform get in at the 2029 General Election. Not what I want, given all the many Reform red flags I listed above. But let’s assume they get in, largely based on banging their their immigration drum.
What will happen? Reform can’t reduce immigration significantly because we depend on it, or can they? The Reform propaganda focuses on small boat crossings, but they, and all asylum seekers are a tiny fraction of total migration.The majority of migration remains via legal routes for work, study, and family. The reality = most high-income economies depend on immigration, without it, the workforce shrinks, the tax base is under pressure and as Hameth says we are a zombie economy.
Comparing us to some of the top 10 richest economies by GDP per capita. There is a pattern of rich countries being very reliant on immigration in order to be rich:
United States: weirdly despite Trump’s rhetoric there’s a huge, huge migrant workforce building wealth in tech, agriculture, and healthcare
Switzerland: about a quarter of the population is foreign-born , essential for their healthcare, finance and hospitality.
Australia: again immigration-led growth affecting all sectors
Canada: again immigration-led growth
Singapore: largely foreign workforce
Luxembourg: nearly 50% foreign nationals
Japan:traditionally low immigration, but now increasing it due to aging population
Us: The UK economy depends on migration in key sectors such as the NHS, social care, care homes, hospitality and agriculture, we just can’t function without migrant labour hence why we replaced EU people from countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and replaced them with higher non-EU migration particularly from India and Nigeria (healthcare), plus arrivals via Ukraine and Hong Kong.
So either:
Reform don’t reduce immigration, then what ? They will be ousted and replaced by the next party that promises zero immigration. OR
Reform do reduce immigration and our economy slips even further.
The conclusion that I am coming to especially after yesterday's elections , is that given the anti-immigration mindset we can’t win, its like Brexit, many leavers said they didn’t care if there was a financial impact. This is because many people have not shared in the wealth there is.. We used to be comfortably among the richest large European economies by income per person, but have started to slip down the rankings since Brexit, exacerbated by weak productivity and stagnant wage growth. Given Reform leaders are self serving, and just don’t care, the leaders can simply just position themselves to profit from the further decline. So if immigration is just so important to the electorate that it won't go away i.e. we just ‘don’t want any more foreign’ then the price for that is to lose our position as one of the wealthiest countries. Maybe that's que sera, sera? Depressing -sorry.