The end of evidence-based centrism

One of centrists’ great conceits is that they are rational and moderate whist the left are fanatical ideologues. New Labour for example championed “evidence-based policy-making”; Chris Leslie claimed (pdf) that they favour “evidence not ideology”: and Steven Pinker has a BBC radio show telling us how to think better. Two recent interventions remind us that all this is self-serving nonsense.

One came from David Blunkett, who told the Today programme (2"57' in) that if we let in a few refugees, “Nigel Farage might end up being Prime Minister”. That of course is mere speculation. What is evidence is that the UK does not get many asylum applications. There were only 29,456 in 2020, compared to 102,525 in Germany, 37,860 in Greece, 86,380 in Spain and 81,735 France. Lord Kerr is right: “we are not the preferred destination in Europe” for refugees. And given that the labour market impact of migration is tiny, we could easily accommodate more. The only “migrant crisis” is that of the migrants themselves: from the UK’s point of view, there is no crisis - only maladministration and cruel racism.

The other intervention came from Tony Blair. He claims that Labour “is seen as being for everyone other than the hard-working families who feel their taxes aren’t spent on their priorities.”

Seen by whom? Not by hard-working families themselves. As Ben Walker has pointed out, in the 2019 general election Labour out-polled the Tories among working-age voters living in households with annual incomes below £100,000. Labour’s problem is not with working people; it is with the retired.

Blair’s detachment from the evidence does not stop there. He goes on to claim that Labour must “push the far left back to the margins” and reject “the old-fashioned statist view of the left”. This misses the fact that the “far left” is rejecting old-fashioned statism. It is fighting against the Tories assault upon civil liberties. And the “defund the police” slogan of Black Lives Matters, whatever its merits or not, is a profoundly anti-statist sentiment.

Of course, there is an authoritarian statist tradition on the left. But it is one of which Blair himself was a big part: New Labour created over 3000 new criminal offences and greatly increased the prison population, trends which the “far left” deplore.

There’s another odd thing about Blair’s comments. In attributing statism to the left, he omits to point out that its is the Tories who are increasing the size of the state: the OBR forecasts the tax burden rising to its highest level since the early 50s.

This increase will happen because of weak GDP growth, so public services must be financed by taxes rather than economic growth.

Blair, however, makes no mention of this long-term economic stagnation. Which is no idiosyncratic omission, but rather a consistent theme of centrists. Leslie made little reference to the financial crisis and its aftermath in his Centre Ground pamphlet, and the Independent Group/CUK omitted mention of it in its launch statement.

This blindspot matters enormously. Economic stagnation is a major cause of the current state of our politics. As Ben Friedman showed in 2006, hard economic times fuel reactionary politics – hence Brexit and anti-migrant bigotry. If Blair is sincere in wanting “liberal, tolerant” politics, he needs some way of kickstarting growth.

Here, though, it is the left that is evidence-based whilst the centre is trapped by outmoded ideology. Blair says Labour needs “a new future-oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing.” But this is just what Corbynite economic policies offered. They were based upon the recognition that the world has changed since the 90s, being characterised by stagnant productivity, negative real interest rates and the concentration of wealth and power among the 1%. By all means, argue with their remedies, but I don’t think you can charge the left with not seeing that the world is changing.

Which brings me to a curious phenomenon. Mainstream economists acknowledge the need to kickstart productivity; the role of fiscal policy in fighting stagnation; and the fact that immigration in economically benign. Blunkett and Blair seem much less alive to these facts. The political centre is now very different from the economic centre. And it is the left, more than some centrists, that is evidence-based.

Comments

[Phil]

I think there's a distinct possibility that people like Blair and Leslie simply haven't changed their minds about anything since the 1990s, or possibly the 1980s. The detail that sticks in my mind from the ChUK debacle was when a spox solemnly announced that the party favoured a "mixed economy", just like the SDP - presumably overlooking the fact that creating a mixed economy in this year of our Lord 2021 would require extensive nationalisation.

[Phil]

(Or indeed in 2019! Oops.)

[Blissex]

«And given that the labour market impact of migration is tiny»

Careful about the claims here: the literature supports the claim that migration does not reduce the average wage by much (if at all), which is *very* different from the claim that “the labour market impact" is tiny, as that is obviously wrong, for example in resulting in a significantly different distribution of jobs; see all the complaints about sectoral "labour shortages" that would be "fixed" by more immigration.

«the fact that immigration in economically benign»

On average it moderately is indeed benign, too bad about the redistributive effects for the losers (who then vote against it at referendum time).

[SimonB]

The shortfall in HGV drivers and the difficulty some sectors are having with recruitment and retention suggest Blissex is right: now wages aren’t being undercut by cheaper foreign labour we see exactly how migrant labour was used to keep wages low.

Economic arguments about the pros and cons of refugees allow the xenophobes to frame the debate. We could all be refugees with a few changes in circumstance.

[Gerry Mulligan]

In my experience the centralists listen to and understand the economics, but as politicians also understand what plays through to the electorate, to confuse comments about one with the other is rather loose thinking and then to wrap it up as a denunciation of the centralists and a vindication of the further left is weak logic Q non D

[LJC]

Blunkett was never a centrist. He was always an authoritarian, as his stint at the Home Office showed.

[rsm]

《public services must be financed by taxes rather than economic growth.》

Why not use financial growth? Can Treasury sell new govies faster at higher prices than they redeem old bonds? Especially with the Bank of England as value buyer?

《Economic stagnation is a major cause of the current state of our politics. As Ben Friedman showed in 2006, hard economic times fuel reactionary politics – hence Brexit and anti-migrant bigotry.》

Is our blogger confusing cherry-picking with "evidence-based"? Why did Black Lives Matter arise at the same time as Brexit, given equally "hard times" in the US and UK? Is our blogger spinning a fanciful tale about ancient old economic assumptions requiring ergodicity, happily cherry-picking, blithely calling himself "evidence-based" while in the next breath citing something ("Black Lives Matter") that itself provides a blatant counterexample to the piece of Ben Friedman logic, itself of course relying on cherry-picked data, that he just finished extolling?

《kickstarting growth.》

Is growth a silly objective because it ignores finance, where 90% of the money is?

[Blissex]

«The shortfall in HGV drivers and the difficulty some sectors are having with recruitment and retention suggest Blissex is right: now wages aren’t being undercut by cheaper foreign labour»

The labour "shortages" are happening also in the USA, Vietnam, etc, such is the enormous damage of brexit! :-)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/vietnam-factories-struggle-to-bring-back-workers-after-covid-shutdowns

That is, most of the "shortages" are caused by fear of the epidemic, and among native workers, even if in the UK:

* Between 2016 and 2020 net immigration boomed because even if EU immigration fell a lot, third-world immigration increased by even more than that (obviously thanks to a deliberate relaxation of government policy to keep tory employers and landlords happy).

* In 2021 a substantial number of EU workers returned to their source countries because of the epidemic.

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/the-2020s-disruption-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
“Change over year in RTI payroll employees by 'NINo' nationality"

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/the-2020s-disruption-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
“Change over year in RTI payroll employees by 'NINo' nationality"

[Blissex]

As to the main topic of this post, "centrists" as a rule choose policy-based evidence (for example the cleverly worded narrow claims that fast workforce growth does not affect much the *average* of wages), because "centrism" is neoliberal policies plus identity politics, as they are reckoned the best options to both boost elite class interests and divide opposing class interests into isolated identity-based groups.

[ltr]

Blair says Labour needs “a new future-oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing.” But this is just what Corbynite economic policies offered....

[ Perfect, and awfully saddening. ]

[Blissex]

«Blair says Labour needs “a new future-oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing.” But this is just what Corbynite economic policies offered....
[ Perfect, and awfully saddening. ]»

What Blair probably meant is that the policy agenda should be oriented towards massive cuts in wages and social insurance and pensions to ensure that english workers be competitive with indian, chinese, ethiopian, indonesian, etc. workers, as per "Britannia Unchained".

That is really quite different from corbynism, which can only be ultimately based on either protectionism or a large devaluation plus massive reduction in the living costs of workers, primarily housing costs, that would need to shrink to at least 1/2 and probably 1/3 of the current level to allow english workers to take reduced wages to be somewhat competitive with third-world workers without massive living standards cuts. The UK is in a situation quite similar to the "Corn Laws" period, with housing costs instead of food costs as the issue.

But not quite the same: in the 19th century Great Britain had a near monopoly of cheap energy and of the industries fueled by it, but no more; E. Wrigley, "Energy and the english industrial revolution":

“Approximately two-thirds of the European production of cotton textiles took place in the UK. The comparable percentages for iron production and coal production were 64 and 76 per cent. [...] The total of installed steam engine horsepower was far larger than on the continent. In 1840, 75 per cent of the combined total capacity of stationary steam engines in Britain, France, Prussia and Belgium was in Britain alone (the other three countries accounted for the great bulk of installed capacity on the continent.”

[Nanikore]

"The only “migrant crisis” is that of the migrants themselves: from the UK’s point of view, there is no crisis - only maladministration and cruel racism."

You are conflating humanitarian immigration (refugees) and capitalist led sourcing of cheap labour. Something Jonathan Portes and New Labour apologists often do.

Polls show people are sympathetic to refugees. But they have more of a problem with imported cheap labour (see link below for the RES society on the relationship to Brexit).

6 million people have applied for settled and pre-settled status. Given these are largely relatively recent arrivals following Eastern European enlargement, which makes it an even more staggering figure. Unsurprisingly there was a political fallout. Of this were one million Poles and 1 million Romanians. Polish is now the second most spoken language in the UK. Before 2000 people of Polish background barely numbered in the 10s of 1000s.

But absolutely, our refugee intake is pitifully low. Compared to European levels, but especially compared to overall migrant numbers it is a drop in the ocean.

Merkel showed you can have high intake of refugees if the case is properly made to the general public on humanitarian, not economic grounds, and it is well managed.

res.org.uk/resources-page/on-the-causes-of-brexit--how-migration-from-eastern-europe-contributed-to-the-rise-of-uk-euroscepticism.html

[Blissex]

«massive cuts in wages and social insurance and pensions to ensure that english workers be competitive [...] based on either protectionism or a large devaluation plus massive reduction in the living costs of workers, primarily housing costs [...] similar to the "Corn Laws" period, with housing costs instead of food costs as the issue.»

These issues are usually debated with the "... wages, ... costs" terminology:

* The third world countries have a "low wages, low costs" model.
* Places like Germany have a "middle wages, middle costs" model (overall), plus a degree of protectionism for wages.
* Places like the UK have a "middle wages, high costs" mode. plus a degree of protectionism for costs, and aim to switch to a "low wages, high costs" model.

[Nanikore]

According to the link above, the main channel by which EU expansion led to Brexit was by empowering UKIP. This led to the referendum being called:

"The study exploits the 2004 EU enlargement to Eastern Europe as a natural experiment providing variation in the exposure of local authority districts to EU migration. The findings suggest that the anti-EU party UKIP gained considerable support in areas that received a lot of migrants from Eastern Europe.

"Voters shifted away from pro-European parties towards anti-EU parties. The rise of UKIP in the European Parliament also gave the party more influence in domestic politics and put the two-party political system in the UK under strain. The challenge arising from UKIP is seen as having contributed to David Cameron being pushed by his own Conservative Party to call for a referendum in the first place."

[Blissex]

«6 million people have applied for settled and pre-settled status»

That is much higher than permanent residents, because any EU citizens that stayed for a bit in the UK for work can and did apply, just-in-case, even if they no longer live in the UK.

Probably of the 3.5 million that were actually resident in the UK at the beginning of 2020 around 0.5-1m went back to eastern Europe, see the “Change over year in RTI payroll employees by 'NINo' nationality" graph previously mentioned.

[Blissex]

«Merkel showed you can have high intake of refugees if the case is properly made to the general public on humanitarian, not economic grounds»

That's almost entirely a misunderstanding:

* In the 1960s-1970s German business made huge profits from very cheap middle eastern "guest workers", which powered good wages and good services for german voters.

* In the 1990s Germany was beginning a period of population collapse, which would have resulted in higher wages for scarcer german workers and lower prices for german assets like residential and commercial property.

* The german government therefore switched to a policy of mass immigration around 2000, to keep down low-end wages and keep up or pump up asset prices, planning mostly for immigration from eastern Europe.

* They prepared for that by pushing the "Hartz reforms" that cut brutally social insurance and pensions mostly for newcomers, largely protecting the vested entitlements of existing german workers.

* As to the middle eastern refugees, the press was encouraged to publish photos of columns bedraggled mothers with young children, but most refugees were young robust men to be supplied to german industry.

The result has been that Germany today has lots of young foreign people working for cheap delivery services, for cheap taxi services, in fast food places and in convenience stores and in construction or other temping and "mini-jobs", and they pile up in bunk beds in tiny shared flats, and sometimes in ghettos and even hostels for foreign workers.

This while middle aged and older germans keep their decently paid secure jobs and live in their spacious flats and houses with rent-controlled long term leases, younger germans, especially those with working-class background, have to compete with the young (and not so young) immigrants, but there are so few of them their electoral weight is modest.

Some commentators have described Germany as "Greater Switzerland", where a layer of older, sitting-pretty incumbent voters are enjoying their "golden years" with a declinist mindset, worrying about quality of life issues and pollution and risks, while being served by cheap young immigrants. Not quite as declinist as England, but going towards that.

«and it is well managed.»

Given the idea that the german industry needed more young workers with "mini-jobs" and low wages, the german government invested in accommodation, language lessons, etc., to turn the middle-eastern refugees into economic migrants like the eastern european ones.

But the german government focused only on the train-them-as-workforce side, and they did not invest in more housing for the new workers, with the result that the german housing market has become somewhat similar to the english one, and luxurious real estate (buying and letting) agent shops, often with english-language names, have been sprouting like mushrooms in german high streets, and both economic immigrants, refugees turned into economic immigrants, and native young people are sharing small cramped flats unlike middle aged and older citizens.

Incumbency has become in Germany a value almost as important as in England, where it is the supreme value.

[ltr]

What Blair probably meant is that the policy agenda should be oriented towards massive cuts in wages and social insurance and pensions...

That is really quite different from Corbynism, which can only be ultimately based on either protectionism or a large devaluation plus massive reduction in the living costs of workers...

[ There is no reason that high wage economies cannot trade with each other to mutual benefit, and China is orienting trade in just this manner now. China and Switzerland will soon have a free trade partnership. China and Israel have an innovation partnership. The intent of China is to trade high value goods and services.

China is dramatically increasing the value of traded goods internationally and domestically. ]

[ltr]

Blissex's comment on Germany is especially interesting. I am thinking this through carefully and grateful.

[ltr]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=piZ7

January 30, 2018

Real Residential Property Prices for United Kingdom, Germany and France, 2000-2021

(Indexed to 2000)

[Nanikore]

"Five years on, the integration of this population is impressive. By December 2018, there were 1.8 million people with a refugee background in Germany (including beneficiaries of international protection, asylum seekers, and those who had their request rejected). 75 percent are younger than 40, and most have higher levels of education than other migrants. Today, about half have found a job, paid training, or internship. On arrival, only about one percent declared having good or very good German language skills. By 2018, that figure had increased to 44 percent. Such contributions are badly needed within an aging German labor market, which is facing skill shortages and needs trained migrant labor."

Sure, capital benefited from this migration, but the fact they took in refugees - desperate people ( why would they walk 5000 miles from war ravaged countries - this is not the same as Polish immigration to the UK) was a generous, act. According to the above, only 9 per cent of Germans oppose the policy. (I read somewhere else that 55 per cent of Germans are involved in some way in helping the refugees - hosting them or teaching them German). I agree with the conclusion - it was a socially beneficial act.

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/five-years-later-one-million-refugees-are-thriving-germany

[Nanikore]

"Probably of the 3.5 million that were actually resident in the UK at the beginning of 2020 around 0.5-1m went back to eastern Europe, see the “Change over year in RTI payroll employees by 'NINo' nationality" graph previously mentioned."

That was most likely linked to Covid. Believe me, you would not go through the trouble of trying to get settled status if you did not have a serious intention to return. (I know, I had to go through the procedure for another EU country.) The tax and health care issues also become too complicated. The settled and pre-settled figures have been acknowledged as showing a huge underestimate by official figures of the actual size of Eastern European migration to the UK

[Nanikore]

Some commentators have described Germany as "Greater Switzerland", where a layer of older, sitting-pretty incumbent voters are enjoying their "golden years" with a declinist mindset, worrying about quality of life issues and pollution and risks, while being served by cheap young immigrants.

Sure, I have seen that in Switzerland. I have seen the effect on the bottom end of the less educated population. And it is very sad. People I have met who were really on the brink who will probably (and have probably already) ended up on drugs on the street.

And yes, this probably also happens in Germany. But I feel the Swiss system is more exploitative and takes less care of the vulnerable, despite the country's extraordinary wealth. Switzerland, even more than Britain, is a parasitic country that looks after the uber-rich.

Still the refugee intake by Merkel was a noble gesture. I don't believe this was about cheap labour. If that was the objective, there were other ways of doing it.

[rsm]

《People I have met who were really on the brink who will probably (and have probably already) ended up on drugs on the street.》

What if drugs were legal, and we got an inflation-proofed basic income? Would the incidence of drug use among financial traders decrease or just not be a problem you should worry about?

Why did the left turn authoritarian on drugs (anyone else remember Clinton's drug boot camps proposal?) as growth climbed in the 1990s? Were intolerant notions such as "super-predators" used to further criminalize drugs?

Is it any wonder there's an Easterlin paradox, given the frequent association of growth with further restrictions that Ben Friedman simply ignores?

Did Reagan scapegoat marijuana as a media distraction, while running up deficits because he knew they don't matter (and likely they juiced the GDP statistic)? Does our blogger excuse Reagan because he doesn't do drugs and so does not care about little people manditorily serving jail time for minimal possession? Ben Friedman doesn't consort with such riff-raff, right? So we don't exist?

[Blissex]

«Sure, capital benefited from this migration, but the fact they took in refugees - desperate people ( why would they walk 5000 miles from war ravaged countries»

Cynically put, a good way to ensure that those who get in are healthy, strong, young people, not the lame or the sick...

Also, along those same 2,000 miles (Aleppo to Munich) there were a number of safe and peaceful countries, but poor and with not-so-good job prospects. Why didn't the refugees stop there? ... Note: actually most refugees are in miserable turkish camps, especially the sick, lame, too young, too old to march on or to be employable; those accepted into Germany were the cream.

Consider the alternative: instead of spending more to set up accommodation and language lessons in expensive Germany to train cheap refugee workers for german industry, Germany could have used the money to create decent refugee villages in much cheaper Turkey, northern Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, perhaps near to offshored german factories. But this would not have made wages as cheaper and property as dearer in Germany.

«Still the refugee intake by Merkel was a noble gesture. I don't believe this was about cheap labour.»

Sure the *effect* was generous and the gesture, whatever the motivation, was noble, but the determinant motivation was cheap labour. Unless one wants to argue that the acceptance of millions of turkish "guest workers" in decades past was also noble, or that of millions of eastern europeans in the mid-2000s into Germany too.

With the middle east refugee wave it was *both* generously accepting refugees and opportunistically turning them into highly profitable economic migrants, but the second part was why Merkel took such a big political risk, to give a big gift to the "mittelstand" an older german voters; it also was a big noble gift to those refugees, but let's not have any illusion that the latter would have happened without the former.

«If that was the objective, there were other ways of doing it»

Again, the obvious alternative was to fund refugee villages and offshore factories much nearer to their source countries. And sure Merkel could have accepted "guest workers" from Africa instead, there is a pretty huge supply of them too, but accepting them from the middle east had better optics, and many more of them are well educated.

[Blissex]

«you would not go through the trouble of trying to get settled status»

I saw it done and it was both easy and cheap: just prove with payslips or bills that you have lived for 5 years in the UK, and pretty much free, and online. Compared to ordinary "permanent residence" much cheaper and easier. Pre-settled status even easier. All this because the EU Commission negotiators specifically made sure it would not be done in a "hostile environment" way.

«if you did not have a serious intention to return»

Having an option of permanent residence in the UK for nearly free and without too much difficulty is well worth it.

«(I know, I had to go through the procedure for another EU country.)»

That is completely different, it is the equivalent of the "permanent residence" process in the UK. The "settled" and "pre-settled" status were deliberately much easier and simpler, again thanks to the EU Commission negotiators.

«The tax and health care issues also become too complicated.»

Not really if one does not actually return, "settled" and "pre-settled" status are actually options. as to tax and health care and pensions there are side treaties that are not EU treaties among most european countries and the UK did not exit them.

«huge underestimate by official figures of the actual size of Eastern European migration to the UK»

There was an underestimate, but I suspect it was between 0.5-1m rather than 2-3m.
The figures given by registration were obviously too small (many EU migrants did not bother to register as such), but estimates based on surveys and payroll data were fairly reliable as to the *permanent* residents, instead of those coming and going.

[Blissex]

«Still the refugee intake by Merkel was a noble gesture. I don't believe this was about cheap labour.»

OK, consider the counterexample of a purely noble gesture: Merkel would accept 1m refugees selecting them from the rather miserable turkish camps, but only the most vulnerable (that is unemployable): the old, the sick, the children, the pregnant, the illiterate, the lame, to give them a decent home and welfare in Germany. The "mittelstand" and german voters would never have allowed that "waste" of german tax money, however noble.

Yes, the german government did not specifically use a "point system" to select only the most employable refugees, but the circumstances still helped select mostly those employable as cheap labour.

Again, the media photos of columns of sympathy-evoking mothers with children stopped by barbed wire barriers were highly selective PR, and not at all representative of the majority of the walking refugees.

Again, by far the best policy overall would not even have been to take into Germany the most vulnerable rather than the most employable, but to fund and supervise decent refugee villages in neighbouring countries and setup offshore factories near them. Good for the refugees, good for their host countries, good for the funding countries (except their employers and property owners).

[Blissex]

On the "refugees as cheap labor" story here is a quote from the BBC about the pre-WW2 period:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16942741
«When Natalie Huss-Smickler arrived in England in 1938 as a 26-year-old, she found her new job as a domestic servant something of a shock compared with her secretarial work back home in Vienna. "My first job in England was very, very hard," she says. "I had to work from 8am to 11pm with an hour's break, cleaning and scrubbing and looking after the house, with half a day off a week. "After a few weeks I complained, saying it's a bit too hard. The lady of the house said, 'If it's too much for you, I'll send you back to Hitler.'" [...]
Anthony Grenville, of the Association of Jewish Refugees, says the women who came over using the domestic service visas were mostly from well-to-do Viennese families and "completely unprepared psychologically" for their new lives. "The British government brought in a visa requirement for refugees seeking entry from Germany and Austria after the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich in March 1938. [...] Although they took them in great numbers, there was a very clear motive for the British having Jews over - not to save them, but to provide labour for middle and upper-middle class households. A small number of Jewish men also came as butlers or gardeners."»

Still it was very noble of the english government to save so many jews from oppression.

[Nanikore]

Many did stay in Turkey. Istanbul now has a large Syrian population. Turkey is a country deeply disliked by almost all its neighbours (with good reason; you see a lot of Greek ruins in 'Turkey', but where are the Greeks? Ask any Persian, Arab, Armenian, Bulgarian or Greek what they think of the Turks. It also has a very unpleasant nationalistic regime.

But back to the point. We saw the babies on beaches. We saw large numbers heading for Western Europe where they hoped to find a safe haven.

Germany saw an imminent humanitarian crisis; it decided to open the border, to which by then they had almost arrived.

The Eastern European states were not welcoming to refugees; and still aren't. One of many problems expansion of the EU has caused.

There were women and children amongst them. True there were many young men; they were more able sure; but many hoped to bring families later.

On the Gasterbeiter, well actually the Germans tried to pay them to return. They did not try to keep them on for cheap labour.

In the early 2000s, unlike Britain, Germany put up a barrier to eastern european labour. It could have had an open border to cheap labour. That's probably what capital and UK/US economists wanted: but it resisted.

Instead it later was made open to the people of Aleppo. And there were very good moral and practical reasons for why this was done, even if capital also gained from it. Perhaps if they did not have transition controls they would have had the same political fallout as Britain, and that gesture towards refugees, people in genuine need, would not have been possible on such a scale.

[Blissex]

«We saw the babies on beaches.»

Those and the photos of mothers and children stopped by the barbed wire those were staged PR.

«We saw large numbers heading for Western Europe where they hoped to find a safe haven.»

They could have found a safe haven in many countries along the route.

«The Eastern European states were not welcoming to refugees; and still aren't. One of many problems expansion of the EU has caused.»

Because of money and jobs, not because of the EU. Had Germany decided to pay for refugee villages and set up factories in the eastern european countries, this would have brought spending and jobs in those very poor countries, and they would have been delighted to be in the refugee hosting business, and would have helped "convergence" in the EU.

«In the early 2000s, unlike Britain, Germany put up a barrier to eastern european labour. It could have had an open border to cheap labour.»

They had not yet enacted the "Hartz reforms" of 2004, whose transparent purpose was to exclude future immigrants (and incidentally younger germans) from the social-democratic welfare system Germany had in previous decades. It is telling that now that the big immigration wave has happened, the SPD campaigned on partially reversing the "Hartz reforms", because young germans are voting Green or Linke (and some AfD) as they feel screwed by the system.

Regardless of the delayed opening to eastern Europe, gross immigration to Germany had been huge since 2000, see the graph "Immigration to Germany, 1991-2020" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Germany which obscures internal migration after unification.

Gross and net foreign immigration was allowed to explode only after the "Hartz reforms" were bedded in.

[Blissex]

«Had Germany decided to pay for refugee villages and set up factories in the eastern european countries, this would have brought spending and jobs in those very poor countries»

About the 2015 immigration surge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Germany
“The actual final number was 1.1 million; Germany spent about €16 billion (0.5% of GDP) on processing and housing refugees that year.”

That is about €15,000 per year per refugee, while the average factory worker wage in Bulgaria (or Romania) is €6,000 per year.

Moving refugees, both employable and unemployable, into newly built refugee villages and factories in eastern Europe would have probably cost 1/2-1/3 as in Germany, and would have boosted considerably the eastern european economy, as well as keeping german wages higher and rents lower

It looks like that the priority was to supply new tenants and cheap labour to german employers and landlords.

Policy-based evidence rules :-)

[Blissex]

«Moving refugees, both employable and unemployable, into newly built refugee villages and factories in eastern Europe»

This is part of my general argument that offshoring/FDI are much better for people from poor countries than (partial) opening immigration to rich countries, as the cases of Japan, Singapore, Korea-south, China-Taiwan show, and Germany, France, Italy earlier on. But the big difference is that immigration benefits rich country employers and property owners much more than offshoring/FDI.

[rsm]

《a system that can compile individual files on such persons of interest coming to Henan using 3,000 facial recognition cameras that connect to various national and regional databases. A 5 million yuan ($782,000) contract was awarded on Sept. 17 to Chinese tech company Neusoft (600718.SS), which was required to finish building the system within two months of signing [...]"

From "Chinese Province Targets Journalists, Foreign Students With Planned New Surveillance System" on today's slashdot.org site

ltr said:"China is dramatically increasing the value of traded goods internationally and domestically."

Are surveillance goods China's specialty?

[rsm]

Nanikore and Blissex: why isn't the solution to immigration basic income (inflation-proofed) and open borders? If you deposited dollars in migrants' CBDC accounts and they moved here anyway, could you not move to where they came from if you didn't like it? Would drug legalization end a lot of the reasons migrants feel the need to move, in the first place?

Instead of all this policy blah blah blah, why not just give ppl money and freedom, and teach them by your own example?

[rsm]

《According to The Wall Street Journal on Monday:

Disney launched its streaming service, Disney+, earlier in November in Hong Kong featuring an array of programming owned by the entertainment giant, including 32 seasons of the animated comedy series.

Yet one episode is missing from "The Simpsons" lineup: Titled "Goo Goo Gai Pan," the episode from season 16 centers on a trip to China by the show’s namesake family. Along the way they encounter a plaque at Tiananmen Square in Beijing that reads: "On this site, in 1989, nothing happened."》

[Nanikore]

"This is part of my general argument that offshoring/FDI are much better for people from poor countries than (partial) opening immigration to rich countries, as the cases of Japan, Singapore, Korea-south, China-Taiwan show, and Germany, France, Italy earlier on. But the big difference is that immigration benefits rich country employers and property owners much more than offshoring/FDI."

For eastern european immigration, absolutely. It would have made more sense and would have been more beneficial for both eastern and western Europe. This was in fact something Germany and France (but not the UK and the US) wanted.

But with refugees fleeing hopeless situations in Syria it is another matter. Countries en route, Turkey to Hungary, do not offer safe havens for refugees. Greeks faced pogroms in Turkey until the end of the last century. Today Istanbul (Constantinopolis, the former Byzantine Greek capital) now has just a few hundred Greeks. It is still the seat of the Greek Patriarch (the equivalent of the Pope), but the Hagia Sophia (once the equivalent of the Vatican) has recently been reconverted from a museum to a mosque (a symbolic act but which demonstrates what Turks think of Asia Minor's history and its pre-Turkish and other ethnic inhabitants). Syrians might be second class citizens in Germany (hopefully not - there are signs of remarkable success). But they would certainly be second class citizens in Turkey, and that is an even worse prospect. The plight of the original inhabitants of 'Turkey'- Greeks and Armenians, as well as Kurds, is a story of genocides and ethnic cleansing.

Interestingly China built a wall to keep out Mongolic tribes to which the Turks(originally from central Asia) are related. Perhaps it was not such a bad investment?

On the numbers of Eastern European migrants to the UK, whether it was 3 million, 4, or at the upper end as I suspect it is - 5 or 6, these are in any case staggering numbers when converted into rates over time. Most of it is accounted for by migration related to EU expansion. Refugee intake, or historical pre- 2000 migration rates are a drop in the ocean compared with these types of numbers. 'Mass migration' is not an inappropriate term. And as the RES study showed, there was an inevitable political fallout.

But I agree low skilled, low income or no income, native Swiss, and perhaps Germans, who have fallen through the cracks have paid a price for economic migration. Attention must be made on focussing on improving their situation, rather than not accepting refugees.

[Blissex]

«Countries en route, Turkey to Hungary, do not offer safe havens for refugees.»

I guess that my argument about paying those governments a cheap but reasonable amount to be in the refugee hospitality business (and checking quality of service...) plus offshoring is completely worthless then, so the only alternatives are very expensive immigration to Germany and the UK to the benefit of german and english employers and landlords, or vicious refugee treatment in nasty intermediate countries like Turkey, France, etc.

«who have fallen through the cracks have paid a price for economic migration. Attention must be made on focussing on improving their situation»

But to make them pay that price is the very *purpose* of accepting economic migration for landlords and employers: to replace "lazy, uppity, unaffordable" resident workers with them with cheaper, harder working, more docile ones from abroad.

[ltr]

Thank you for this exchange on migration-immigration. I learned a great deal.

[ltr]

What is important to keep in mind is that the UK, Germany and Switzerland each has a high employment-population ratio, far higher than America has:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nPEt

January 15, 2018

United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France Employment-Population Ratios, * 2007-2018

* Employment age 25-54

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=JmTN

January 4, 2017

Switzerland and United States Employment-Population Ratios, * 2000-2020

* Employment age 25-54

[ltr]

November 29, 2021

Death by government policy, assisted by the Brexit press

There is an underlying truth about the 27 deaths of people trying to get to the UK across the English Channel. It is a truth you are very unlikely to hear in the acres of coverage this issue gets in the media. The truth is that this is a problem created by a government determined not to give refuge to asylum seekers. It is unspoken because of a political system where the opposition calculates it is not in their interest to mention it either, and a media that thinks that because politicians don't talk about it that makes it not worth mentioning.

People are risking their lives to cross the Channel because the government has largely cut off any other safe roots for people to claim asylum here....

-- Simon Wren-Lewis

[ltr]

Simon Wren-Lewis writes at "mainly macro," but the reference link will not post. This article shows just how much the campaign against Europe in Britain or Brexit has turned immigration policy generally hostile even when the economics of specific immigration is in no way competitive to ordinary workers.

Not just Tories but Starmer-Labour have no regard for immigrants.