UK school funding crisis and immigration

IMO many people that end up being punished as criminals have low IQ, but unless they are profoundly so it does not get taken into account, and the US media totally ignores the issue. We've had cases of obviously limited women giving birth in toilets, killing the baby, sent to jail as criminals, in which the media's contribution is how horrible the whole thing is, etc etc with no attention at all to the obvious mental limitation issue.

It is very dangerous to import a lot of low IQ people with savage wartime experiences into a stable culture. The lower the IQ the less impulse control anyway, and when this is combined with seeing a lot of violence, just providing "therapy" to such people is not enough to reverse the effect--because of the low impulse control to begin with. People don't have to be geniuses to be good students or citizens, but you can't assume they will be when you have no idea what their earlier life experiences have been.

The IQ question has been a politically unpopular one so research has not been encouraged or made particularly accessible. Therefore the issue is not one that the general public understands well enough to realize how outrageously expensive and unrealistic such memes as "no student left behind" or how harmful the denigration of really helpful programs like WICK and Headstart are. In the US, Headstart is able to help many special needs preschool kids before they're even identified as such. It's a personality issue as much as a school readiness issue, so even if school scores drop when they're older that does not mean there has not been a strong positive influence.

What can be done educationally should be, as long as it's not at the expense of the rest of the students that will be doing most of society's work later in life. Unfortunately, the schools often become babysitters for individuals that are too damaged to be left to their own devices and that can be extremely disruptive or even dangerous to other students. Then society is expected to institutionalize them, which can be extremely costly.

 

The Education Policy Institute seems to have a very different opinion than you, so perhaps you should correct their paper.

 

If they are paying, I'll correct it for them.

What is it I said you feel they disagree with?
The proportional number of women in teaching, or who pays my Employers NI? or both?

The number of women I haven't checked. It is my opinion and should be taken as such.
Who pays my Employers NI? I expect to know a little more about my own wage packet than they do, whoever they are.
Given that I resigned over this very issue quite recently, it's a subject I'm intimately aware of.
It's also one I am actively seeking alternatives to.

 

I'm not sure about all the IQ stuff. But as an English language teacher working in Cambridge all those years ago. I would typically get sent students from all the warzones. Every war.
And they are much angrier as people. More aggressive in their demeanours. They don't integrate well with the peaceful norm here. Don't fit in so well.

Serbs and Croats in the same class. UG.
Israeli's. Oh please.

I get and sympathise why they are the way they are. But I can't empathise at all. Can't relate. And the causes for their anger, it's not here. Not us.

 

Yes, the in-work benefits system doesn't work with unlimited low income workers. There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza.

Yes, I only highlighted to illustrate a concern over what might constitute the "revenue contribution". I don't have anything concrete on migrants, nor do I necessarily suspect there is funny accounting going on in the UK.

Well lets not overstate the benefits, either. Is it really such a "dangerous demographic deficit", when automation is largely reducing the value of warm bodies? The world's youngest population is in Africa and SE Asia, the world's eldest is the wealthy West. China might be under demographic pressure but they are a labour powerhouse. Most of Western Europe's value is in intellectual property, which ripens with age, and in the value of having nice, safe democracies with contended workers (ie political stability) and the rule of law.
If our chase for demographic "balance" hinders political stability or the rule of law, that will present a far greater danger to the economy.

The latest findings estimate that recent immigrants from the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 (mainly eastern European) contributed £1.12 for every £1 received. Those from the rest of the EU put in £1.64 for every £1.
Long-term: EU immigrants living in the UK are thought to have contributed £1.05 for every £1 received and, for non-EU immigrants, 85 pence for every £1.

Note that the long-term EU migrants necessarily excludes the Eastern EU immigrants.

Now for some back-of the envelope back calculating:
Average EU 1.34, long term EU 1.05, recent Western EU 1.64
Average non-EU 1.02, long-term non-EU 0.85, indicates that recent Non EU is about 1.35
And Eastern EU, which is all recent, is 1.12, indicates average Eastern EU will be about 0.85 and long-term Eastern EU will be 0.6


Also, importantly for this thread topic:

Totally agree, that is chronically unhelpful.

 

This is something I had theorised and its interesting to hear your anecdotal evidence supporting.
In terms of comparing crisis relief by refugees v in-situ care, I pondered that there would be negative effects of releasing clearly traumatised people into our societies without the appropriate care. It would not be fair on either the refugee nor the rest of society.

 

I think so yes. Especially when considering the amount the state already spends on pensions, healthcare, social care and this is only going to increase - with lower tax income from a smaller workforce.

Possibly? We can hope, but this is merely speculation.

This is probably why China is at even more risk, they are reliant on being cheap labour, if that all dries up due to old age then they are screwed.

Sure but again, the costs of pensions and healthcare currently are set to spiral.

Sure, but these are bold claims that I don't think a fair analysis of the UK would really conclude are going to happen.

This is mainly why I specified recent migration, since most of the births now causing difficulty for school places will be from that post 2000 group. And yes that is very important for this thread topic, i.e. the 'uncontrolled' EU migration has posed little harm whatsoever, many Polish (as an example) workers come for a few years to earn a decent amount of money, then go back to buy a house, start a family etc, giving us taxes and workers, while not creating a demand for school places. Of course there are a fair few who are staying and having children too, but the nonEU group is generally more likely to settle forf a variety of reasons.

This all being added up, I am not sure what is holding together the thesis of immigration causing a school funding crisis. Since we are talking (supposedly) about recent migration that we agree is a net economic gain (certainly for now) and a recent struggle for school places/funding in the same time span. The money ought to be there then, to build them. I still maintain it is a failure of governance - the money is there but for misguided austerity policies and pet projects.

This added in with relatively low birthrates, that previous governments have been able to build schools at that rate for, I'm failing to see the blame lying with immigrants.

 

That's all we need - Muslim and Catholic 'fast breeders'?

 

Catholics in Spain and Italy have low birthrates. The idea that all Catholics are 'fast breeders' does not hold up in the face of reality.

 

Your assumption is that the state earns from personal tax revenue at the lowest tier. But this is slowly drifting off as global inequality deepens. One person earning 500k will pay more to the government than 5 people earning 20k, and will cost the government less to service. We need industries that are capital-centric. Flooding ourselves with cheap labour does nothing, and potentially diverts resources from building the industries we need. Africa has tons of young labourers. They are almost entirely economically worthless because Africa has so little capital.

Exactly, and they still have a younger demographic than we do. And they have about half the population density. How big will our population get in order to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in to reap enough tax revenue from cheap labour in order to pay for the social care of elderly we previously brought in?

Bringing in more immigrants will not reduce those costs. This is a revenue question.

Really? you don't think Brexit was much of an upheaval?

41% of non-EU "immigrants" are students (compared to 13% of EU migrants - why did you think students were not being excluded from the immigration statistics?), so I'm not too sure whether that assumption stacks up.

We also have a massive increase in EU immigration since the 2004 enlargement into FSU, so its really hard to say what the actual long-term pattern is there as we don't have a full set of data. Poles that immigrated in WWII stayed, but otherwise they would have returned to Communism so that's not such a good comparative.

Which is one reason why one might query the supportability of these statistics. The UK should be rolling in additional tax revenue.

Because immigrants (including Eastern EU) are having comparatively more children than the local populations are having.

 

My assumption is the stats that analyse tax revenue and government expenditure show that migration post-2000 has so far been a net contributor to the exchequer. We can both agree on this, no?

Global inequality has narrowed with the rise of China and the rise of India. Extreme poverty has halved in the past 20 years. In the past 10 years inequality is also lower within Britain. The fears over huge inequality are vastly overstated, aside from a spike in the top 1% at most. Even as someone who wants to reduce inequality, it is overblown compared to how things have been in the past.

Sure, it doesn't necessarily mean that someone on 20k is a burden though.

Not really. There is not a fixed pool of jobs or a fixed pool of workers, or a fixed pool of what people can create industries for.

Great, what does this have to do with the immigration the UK has seen and the cost of school places?

And? They will have much more of a problem due to money, lack of a safety net, savings and so on.

What is particularly the difference with bringing foreign people in to keep the demographics at a maintainable level? What difference economically is it to the native population simply having a higher birthrate? Particularly when the immigrant population have cost the state less (this even includes the ones that have lived here into old age and had kids). This is really one of the key points I have tried to make but haven't seen an answer for. Economically speaking, what is the difference? Unless you genuinely see a benefit to having a large demographic deficit? One that can't be handwaved away with 'but automation!' ?

It doesn't reduce costs, but it provides extra tax base to pay for them, otherwise you have a much smaller number of people to get that money from, leading to much higher tax rates, most likely leading to a less dynamic economy and a pissed off labour force.

Not one that is challenging the rule of law, no.

...Because they're included in the statistics? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

Sure, now has this recent migration created a strain on public services - namely school places? This is after all the point of the conversation.

It largely has been. Here is some data, that is not necessarily supportive of migration: http://www.migrationobservatory.ox....outcomes-of-migrants-in-the-uk-labour-market/

It is clear migrants generally come and work and pay taxes. The main 'problem' that I would point to would be Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, they drag the overall numbers down and are a legitimate 'burden'. The rest converge or possibly go slightly above the standard native, i.e. they contribute, add extra tax revenue and should be providing extra revenue in line with the native population. Note: they are also generally younger and some will go back to their homeland or possibly move to another country before they really 'drain' the state (through children or elderly care).

And we go back to the problem of a demographic deficit. Do you genuinely believe the UK can't support a 2.1 birthrate? That it would be better to have a German birthrate or a Spanish one?

You haven't really provided any evidence or cogent thoughts that show migrants are creating school place problems that couldn't be created through the extra tax revenue they provide. I'll repeat the points I think are key:

Migrants are shown to be no more of a drain on resources than the native population (at worst).
Migrants are having more children, but simply boosting them to historically normal levels. (You can think of this in a way that the poor natives had more children than the rich, is it a problem? Especially when migrants aren't even particularly poor).
The government takes in extra tax revenue, it can then also spend this effectively.


I can accept people may have cultural difficulties with immigrants and society and so on. But the economic arguments against migrants tend to be bunk. Whether it's 'they steal our jobs' (lump of labour fallacy), they drive down wages! (possibly true in a few sectors, but overall shown to be false) or they take all the benefits (again some may, but overall false as most work and often at a higher level than the native average). Since these economic argument are usually false (mass intake of refugees excluded) then it really will not follow that they provide more of a strain on public services. More being the key word, there may still be a strain but it will either be roughly equal or less than the native population on its own would provide.

 

I thought the school funding crisis started when i was a kid? (1970's)....is it more recent than that?
I'm sure i remember being a kid and hearing the news on the telly saying something about chronically underfunded schools.

In my view, a cohesive society has less to do with the % of immigrants and more to do with the % of stupid c##ts that live within it.
From my experience, being a stupid c##t is a personal choice and not one guided by skin colour, race, religion etc.

 

For me Brexit isn't an economic upheaval, it's a political one.
With a load of people trying to use economics as a political tool. But it isn't a good one.

One of the benefits of Western Europe and in particular the UK is stability. That which mankind has built, tends not to get destroyed.
So each generation has more than the last. Because the house is already pre-built. The School is already pre-built. The hospital is already pre-built. The harbour is already pre-built. The Bridge, the railway the airport and the road
In many cases by people who died before we were even born.
So wealth here keeps increasing with every generation. (Less so/diluted by, when we add to the populace).

Compare that to Syria where they can expect to last for 50 years before getting war destroyed, or Japan where they are expected to get earthquaked and Tsunamied.

So our stability is one of our key assets. Hence our global trust in the money lending department. We are stable. We pay our debts.
If you lend me money, I will pay it back. The house I built with it, will still be there.


This is a key advantage. Really works for us.
Pay it forward.

 

I'll accept the working assumption if you accept that the migration has not yet gone full cycle for the Eastern EU immigrants, and indications are that they will be worse than non-EU long-term.

Yes, sloppy language on my part, I'm looking specifically at the acceleration away of the global elite from the Western middle and working classes.

There is an opportunity cost of that person, though, if there is an overall desired limit to population density and therefore we must choose between our immigrants. If we deny someone who could be earning 500k to make space for a 20k earner, the net cost is -470k x tax rate before taking any account of service provision. Here I am thinking of the government's move to expel non-EU students after they graduate to keep the immigration numbers down.
TBC...

 

I wouldn't be surprised, and that would appear to chime directly with the OP. The government of the day had to drastically stem the Commonwealth immigration rights in 1972. Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech was in 1968.

Ah, I see you are a class snob.

 

We are subsidising low income jobs with in-work credits. Ostensibly, we pay for that by taxing successful businesses. There is definitely a fixed pool of what can be done there.

It illustrates the fallacy of the argument that merely flooding the market with cheap labour will create the economic growth that is required for pensionable retirements.

Yes, but again it illustrates the fallacy of the argument that having loads of cheap labour available will stimulate economic growth. The "demographic deficit" is actually a "savings deficit". That will not be cured by importing lots of cheap, worthless labour which we than have to look after when they have kids and get old.

Precisely, its just as bad.

Maintaining economic stability and social cohesion with a stagnant population is the challenge of our time.

The planet is 7.5 bln people now and will be 9.5 bln in 2050.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20160311-how-many-people-can-our-planet-really-support

Yes that is it. I see no genuine advantage to a balanced demography in the UK.

And transportation and free trade. We can import most of the stuff we need, it doesn't need to be manufactured here. Through free trade we can access younger demographies by investing our capital into them. We simply don't need to bring them over here to work.

TBC...

 

Yes I understand that argument. I am saying that it doesn't hold just by importing anyone, particularly when we already have to effectively subsidise employers just to take on the low-skilled workers we already have.
A complicating factor in all this is that we need to maintain a largely static population if we want to maintain the non-financial quality of life we all currently enjoy, like having a house to live in, a school place for our children and open spaces.

If the government does not honour the referendum result there will likely be such a challenge, and if there had not been a referendum then eventually we would have seen upheaval. I think I referred to Enoch Powell's 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech earlier, which was hugely derided and rightly so, but nonetheless the immigration law was substantially curtailed shortly after-ward in 1972.

Your assumption was that non-EU immigrants tend to stay and have children more so than EU migrants. I'm just not sure that's the case when 41% of non-EU migrants are students.

Yes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/migration-pressure-on-schools-revealed/
TBC...

 

That last assumption is not backed up by any data. I am an immigrant. I intended to go back after a few years. Then I met someone, had kids, they get into schools, the kids get their own social lives etc etc.. Moving countries when you are young and single is easy. But you don't stay young and single forever.

Lower-paid Eastern EU migrants are actually on track to be more of a burden than an asset in the full life-cycle, and possibly worse than the non-EU immigrants. I have illustrated this in respect to Eastern EU migrants (who are the source of the large influx of EU migrants) by inference from existing data. As we have not gone the full life-cycle we cannot properly tell.

Yes, and again it is a savings deficit not a demography deficit. The answer is not endless immigration of low-skilled workers. That becomes decreasingly effective the more it is implemented.

It is a cash crisis driven by the capital cost of new infrastructure. If the immigrants stayed for the entire time it is expensed (30 years) they would probably pay it off but then the UK would probably be paying for their old age as well as they do not earn enough to cure the savings deficit.

Only because the stats are bouyed by wealthier Western European immigrants and we haven't run the full cycle of Eastern European immigration. Your own data showed that lower-paid immigrants are a net burden over their entire life cycles.
We voted to become part of the EEC in 1975. That was Western Europe. We did not vote to join what we now call the EU.

The UK society, as most Western societies, have automatic social stabilisers on the total population. Immigrants also normalise to the native birthrate after some generations. SO I do not agree we are boosting them to normal levels. We may be boosting them to historic levels but then we must ask whether those historic levels were perpetually sustainable?

 

Well they must follow the 'safe periods' extremely closely then? I actually don't think you're right.

 

What?

Funnily enough, i'm quite a fan of Empire history - You used the word "class" which was slightly odd but also quite interesting.

I hate the class system - i lived in Australia for a couple of years in the 90's and was struck at the lack of a class system they had compared to the UK.

I'm not a snob mate, I'm a working class Bristol lad who grew up in a very multicultural and was born in the year of the "rivers of blood" speech.

Speaking purely from personal experience, being a stupid c##t has 0 to do with skin colour/religion/place of birth, but, like i said, that's just my own personal experience.

So, is it all foreign people you don't like or just foreign people with darker skin or is it those pesky Muslims?

You don't sound very old, were you alive in the 70's.

 

Ok. I misread your "stupid c###t" reference as a class reference, as we are talking about low-skill migrants.
So what do you mean by "stupid c###t"s?

I don't dislike any person. This isn't about liking or disliking people. If i were to define "stupid c###t", it would be people that go for ad hominem attacks instead of arguing issues logically with reference to facts.

 

It takes about 2 minutes to google and see the actual data, there's nothing to debate here. Italy (this is per woman, so 2 is required to maintain a stable population) has a rate of 1.39, Spain 1.27, Poland 1.29 and Portugal 1.21. The US is 1.86, Canada 1.61, the UK 1.83, Denmark 1.67 etc.

Really high birthrates from the Catholics, right? Oh uh, yeah no.

https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata...0&tend=1395360000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

 

I simply don't have time to respond adequately (or the will...), for which I apologise. But anyway it seems we're going round in circles and we won't ever come to an agreement, especially when we disagree on an issue so fundamental as the danger of a demographic deficit.

A few points to end with:

Going by the data, EU migrants won't be more of a drain than the native population, even in the long term on average. Of course this could be wrong, but there is no solid evidence to suggest otherwise. It is not suprising they aren't as good as Non-EU as there is more control there, but you will struggle to find an economist who will say it has been a drain on the UK.

The market hasn't simply been flooded with cheap labour. There has been plenty, but much of this is in jobs that are seasonal and Brits weren't wanting to do - think particularly farming in Lincolnshire, and then the strain on places like Boston. Added to this the BoE has estimated that the wages of the poorest are a whopping 1% lower than they would have been otherwise.

The idea that the labour imported is worthless again doesn't face up to the evidence, on average it has been a boost. We would have been in recession for longer without it for instance, and this even goes for those at the low end.

There is no great evidence that our planet won't support 9.5bil people, and that is likely to be the peak amount if you believe demographers (who else is there to believe?)

There aren't many avenues to boost free trade now, aside from more single market style bodies - which we are pulling out of. The gravity model of trade isn't going to suddenly go away.

The government has made it clear it will pull out of the EU, unless you have inside information on this then maybe you have a point.

We joined the EU as a representative democracy. People could vote for anti-EU parties for a few decades, they chose not to - that was in effect support of the EU.

Saying immigrants simply normalise to native levels seems to fly in the face of the thrust of the argument in this thread. I mean I agree...it's generally a short term boost, but the effect we have seen is a boost in the birthrate...compared to what it would have been anyway.

The telegraph piece is about a report that hadn't even been published, you can't take anything from that.

The bit about students is fair, when talking about non-EU I mainly try to mean non students. Though many nonEu students do also stay on, as stated before it's difficult to find detailed data that really distinguished, I wish the government would so it would be more easily available.

Congratulations on having moved here and settled down, but there are still fairly significant outflows of EU citizens from the UK, not as many as inflow (about 1/3) but look at figure 3 http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/eu-migration-to-and-from-the-uk/

Saying we subsidise employers with tax credits, but also tax successful business for them doesn't really follow. Tax credits are shown to be an effective cash transfer anyway, though I would probably support a freeze on them for workers coming here (or going to another country, if they are there) for an initial period.

And I'm done, we disagree and will go around in circles, I think I've highlighted the major stumbling blocks to a synthesis.

 

OK, thanks

Actually it was a very challenging discourse and I very much appreciate your patience and the time and effort you put in.

I think at the core there is disagreement about whether a demographic imbalance is necessarily bad for the economy. I reckon that we have a "savings deficit" rather than a "demographic deficit" and would suggest that if all that were needed is lots more low-skilled young people, Africa would be rolling in riches, which it isn't. Other than that, I think we have different opinions but appreciate where there is supporting data and where there is isn't.

The data remains poor on the length of stay, EU v non-EU. I saw that figure 3 you linked to but its not conclusive. If you retain any interest in the matter, I'd refer you to Figure 4 in this page: http://www.migrationobservatory.ox....rnational-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/ which might indicate that more non-EU's are returning home than EUs, but we can only infer from poor data, unfortunately.

(PS: Unlike the US, I don't think we are pulling out of free trade agreements. We are pulling out of one political union but hoping that free trade can be preserved, whilst intending to accelerate free trade agreements with other countries)

 

Good lad, i don't dislike anyone either......lots of people these days do seem to dislike lots of other people don't they.

As you may have gathered by my poster name, i do rather like the curly C word :0)