They have a number of options, none of which will benefit the good citizens of Rugeley...

They can relocate to the Irish Republic, or Calais maybe, heh, where they can make full use of migrant workers and still distribute to the UK easily.

But more likely they can automate, which is what will happen to these jobs in 20 years' time (maximum) anyway. Increased labour costs just give them an incentive to do it sooner..

Also, Cityboy, who do you imagine occupies the supervisory positions at Amazon's UK warehouse (you know, the better paid jobs)?

Romanian immigrants who are only there for a month or two? Or some Brits perhaps?

So what? It will happen, industrial action by soon-to-be-replaced Luddites notwithstanding.

German Rail aims for driver-less trains in 5 years"

Well yeah, sure they would, but they're neither capable nor qualified.

If someone who *was* capable and qualified was willing to be the CRO of a tier 1 bank for £30,000 a year, they'd let him. After all, aren't these banks the most unscrupulous, profiteering, morally corrupt institutions ever?

Everyone is qualified to be a tube driver just like everyone is qualified to scrub a toilet for a living.

That's why the Tube unions restrict applications from outsiders (and of course, immigrants and essentially non-UK EU citizens by default) to artificially inflate the price of their labour. In a free market they'd earn about 20k like a bus driver.

Your letting your bias show. If you think the vast majority of people in the UK's banking sector aren't relatively well-paid but really perfectly ordinary working people then that's on you.

Put it this way, I certainly don't feel a trace of guilt given that you're fully in support of tube drivers extracting as much as they can out of the general public because they wear a high-vis rather than a suit & tie (particularly as the function of risk management is basically to be Mr Popular and torpedo deals left right and centre)

Hm. Interesting.

Cheapening the cost of labour through automation will go as far as to put people out of a job, but cheapening the cost of labour by importing people willing to work for less will have no effect at all!

Look. Lets take a step back here; for anyone with an unbiased view the debate that we've had was over a while ago.

So my question is (for many of you), why do you still persist with your already disproven claims? Is your ideology so fragile that even admitting the existence of some negative effects of migration at a certain level is fatal to it?

I'm not arguing to kick 'aat all 'dem forinners. I benefit hugely from migration and value it's contribution to the economy. I should actually like to expand our range of migration beyond the EU if possible (although as I say, I'm going to vote with my wallet and stay in as I don't want property prices to drop.)

But nevertheless, surely we morally ought to address the issue of people left behind from globalisation?

Can I ask if you're British or German? Because you're massively underestimating the power of the unions and the extent to which they've got the Labour party under their thumb.

Fortunately its unlikely Labour will ever form a government on a national level ever again; but the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has already broken his first promise on freezing tube fares. We all know where that'll go...

The tubes will still be driven by drivers in 10 years or so.

British. And I agree with your assertion.

I've never claimed, nor would I do so, that migrant workers or full-time immigrants are wholly beneficial. There are cultural, social, infrastructure and economic issues that have to be addressed. Undoubtedly there are challenges posed.

I believe that the benefits outweigh the downside and that isolationism isn't the answer.

The issue of people 'left behind' by globalisation is probably outside the scope of this thread.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

Here is the graph. It clearly shows in 2011, EU-10 immigrants dipped below the threshold where they contribute more than they receive. So while the authors correctly claim that immigrants who arrived since 2000 have made a net contribution, in recent years this has evaporated and we now pay them to be here.

Meanwhile, immigrants from EU-15 countries are a massive net benefit - presumably because these are skilled/qualified workers that we actually need, and therefore earn good salaries and take little in benefits.

However, even their contribution has more than halved in 2011 compared to 2007.

How has it halved? 1.4 is not half of 1.9 or am I looking at it wrong?

Its also worth noting that after natives immigration from non EU are the biggest fiscal burden.

You've sold yourself short taking £12 ph for someone with such huge responsibilities (maybe you are exaggerating though).

You're aspiring to be a pen pusher ffs and you're really up yourself with the last sentence.

It's a revenue/expenditure ratio. So for example, previously the contributing migrant paid £1900 in tax, while the claiming migrant claimed £1000, the contributing migrant now only pays £1400 compared with the £1000 of the claiming migrant.

The report says of the non-EU immigration disparity:

Which sounds pretty flimsy to me, but their view is no doubt more informed than mine.

What reasons do you have for this assertion? There are plenty of clever people in the EU who could probably do your job at least as well as you, which according to you would bring down your wages consequentially to market levels as it would for tube drivers.

That would be a huge net win for the UK.

What most people in the City do isn't rocket science, though they like to pretend it is. Most are non-academics and in my experience are distinctly unimpressive (yes, I have and do work in the City )

Well yeah...but...they are competing for my job. Walk around Bishops Square and there's Italians, French and Germans everywhere (OK granted Soc Gen are there - but RBS is full of them too)

The salary still is what it is.

Those people aren't competing for tube driver jobs as they're not allowed to thanks to the greedy-ass unions.

Interesting, what do you do?

I don't want to go into details but I work for people who try (probably in vain) to prevent people like you from bankrupting the country again.

New poll shows majority of Brits favor leaving EU

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014...n_5409319.html

I am fairly sure this is one of the articles I posted at city boy before he got banned and has to start over again.

There is no point debating whether migration lowers wages, it probably doesn't and if it does its only by a small amount that is wholly offset by lowering inflation.

Eye test would tell me that out would win, the only thing that has made me doubt that is the betting odds and poll data, but that is coming round.

Remain camp have also been totally totally ****.

this is basically all there is to it. you can imagine stories about competition among bathroom cleaners lowering wages and you can imagine immigrants complementing native workers raising their wages (tho somehow the xenophobes only have the imagination to come up with the first kind). so we have to look at it and when we do we find that it doesnt matter much and might be slightly more likely to raise wages a bit.

If that is true ( low wages for low class native workers) now the damage is done. Wages will stay the same if UK leaves. Some companies will leave too; will not support raising wages.

GL with that. (companies paying out of the blue the double for half the effective work).

If they do it... inflation will take care of that. Will export at double the price, etc. We are on global market... not like 40y ago.

Kinda silly think that if migrants go away, UK ppl will all win tons of money ( ... ).

But of course neither of you can answer the key question can you?

If no British people were willing to work as cleaners for £7.20 per hour, then what would happen if (for whatever reason) there were no immigrants willing to do the job for that price either?

Would the credit risk managers at the bank all have to clean the toilets and wipe the tables themselves?

Would the bank go out of business because it couldn't afford to pay £8.55 per hour (or whatever price it took to get people to be cleaners)

Or would the bank simply cough up the £8.55 per hour necessary to hire cleaners?

This is not an argument that we should restrict immigration; this isn't even an argument that its bad for the economy. All I'm saying is that there are certain people who, just like the tube drivers who prevent immigrants from applying for their jobs, would benefit from less competition and thus, leaving the EU.

Ha, nice. PRA or FSA then?

I actually agree 100% with all of the above.