The point is that the argument hinges on all immigrants being both unemployed and filling every available job at the same time. The simple truth is a lot of British people simply don't want to take low-paid jobs which are only marginally better than benefits, while a lot of immigrants coming from poor countries think £6 an hour is a pretty good deal and snap them up. There are so few of them around, relatively, that they don't make it significantly harder for a British person to get a job if he looks - but the likes of the BNP who are voted for by the lazy and terminally useless who couldn't compete with a Scouser for a job like to blame it on the 'bladdy forriners' rather than themselves.
That is true, and it is not true. It is true that there are always people who believe that some (many?) jobs are "below" them... it can as easily be an issue of status more that purely the pay. But it is equally true that so long as an activity is
necessary the pay, and possibly the status, will have to rise until there are takers. Allowing immigrants in, knowing that mostly they feel compelled (they're moving with the goal of making money, supposedly) to take any available jobs, and lack the organization, the social networking, to argue wages, inevitably dives the equilibrium value of these wages (the point where there are enough takers to fill the needs) down. Supply and demand, but with one
extremely important constraint: the immigrants are in a bad position to negotiate wages, and thus depress wages far more than an equal number of "natives" looking for jobs would do. And because immigrants get channeled mostly to those "undesirable jobs", the end result is to make such jobs even less desirable, leading to increased economic and social inequality.
And this can easily become a self-reinforcing cycle, for these now more "undesirable jobs" will require, according to the proponents of increased immigration, even more immigrants because the "natives"become even less willing to do them.
Same applies to labour: labour moves from where it isn't needed to where it is most profitable. It's an a priori argument as old as capitalism itself that anyway isn't aimed at, for example, leftists, protectionists or the anti-globalisation crowd; it is, however, an argument that right wingers ought to acknowledge. It's just bizarre that so many supposed free-market supporters don't believe that the labour market should be free, unfettered, and subject to competition from outsiders. Why should the government protect labour markets from globalisation? Why can't we allow the invisible hand to allocate labour efficiently? Why isn't labour a market that should be subject to competition from abroad? Those are the question I would pose to right wingers.
No one really
believes that crap about "economic laws" ruling society, not left wingers and not right wingers. Power matters. The people you know matter. Your connections, your ability to negotiate your position in the social scale, are far more complex that mere "supply and demand" regarding human beings as interchangeable parts.
The right wingers, typically the ruling classes, protect their own jobs, have their own networks and guard the gates carefully. So do left wingers, even in this time or weaker unions.
And no, there isn't "a finite supply of jobs". That's another fallacy that capitalism destroys - just look at every other population boom in history, from the industrial revolution to the 1950s. Rather than destory jobs, population growth leads to job growth, and GDP growth. Not necessarily GDP per capita growth - that's about productivity (GDP per capita is a measure of efficiency, whereas GDP is a measure of volume). But capitalism tells us that it isn't a zero sum game.
Bullcrap! Take the industrial revolution: would the 18th century displaced rural workers who were driven to the factories and coal mines have felt
happy about their predicament? Hey, GDP was growing! They were the human parts used to grow it but could barely get enough to survive, but they should be happy!
The bloody bastards eventually organized to actually demanded higher wages and fewer work hours, imagine that. The bastards! Back to the 12-hour day. Hell, the 16-hour day and factory dormitories. Clearly,
increased productivity means that we must all work
more!
"Capitalism" is a blind monster which tramples everything on the way of increased profit. It benefits the rentier class for some time, and in the end not even those, because left alone it must starve itself. Every place where it was allegedly made to "work", it worked because social democracy changed it to acknowledge that maximization of profit was not a socially acceptable goal, there are other goals more important to more people. That was the 1950s. Now it has moved back to rentier capitalism, and (unsurprising) it's falling apart.
Raising the retirement age so that it increases as life expectancy increases is basically a no brainer - it's the first thing that we should do, and it's the first step that most Western nations are taking.
Why? There is already an oversupply of goods, services, and labour. Advertisement (for pushing ever more good and services - "consuming is patriotic, it grows the GDP") and unemployment benefits cannot hide that. And you want people to
work for longer?
Reforming pensions so that they are primarily based on individuals' contributions, rather than paid from general taxation, makes pensions more sustainable, and reduces the dependency on population growth (i.e. tax revenue growth).
Cot the newspeak. "Reforming" here means "changing", use the proper words. Hell "reforming" has been used so often already that it's well on its way to becoming a hated word.
Now, having pensions based on individual's contributions... I thought that was already what just about every state does. So,
what exactly are you getting at? As if I didn't knew: the "private pension plans". Another financial tool to feed the rentier class which controls the bank assets. And when in their greed they suck the banks and insurance companies dry, the state will inevitably pick the tab, for the alternative would be to have all those old people starve to death.
(insert fitting Life of Brian quote)
