US Presidential Election 2016

[feral chile]

see, lied to:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/05/telegraph-mail-headline-migrants-cost-contribution

So which set of calculations helps to answer the question “do immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems?”, which the study’s authors say they set out to answer.

Dustman and Frattini say it is misleading to use the £118bn figure as the Telegraph and Mail have done. As they point out, this is based on the cost of all immigrants living in Britain between 1995 and 2011. This isn’t migrants who arrived in Britain in the late 1990s and 2000s but all the non-UK born people living in Britain at that time. More than 90% of them will have arrived in Britain long before 1995, including Britain’s large long-settled Asian and Caribbean communities who were born abroad.

The authors say that, for example, the calculation will include people who came to Britain in 1950 but only what they paid into the state and took out in benefits and public services after 1995.

The authors say this doesn’t tell us anything about how much these people have cost Britain in net terms because it ignores their contribution during the first 45 years of their residence.

“In fact, as they are now older, they are likely to have higher rates of welfare dependency and low labour force participation that does not reflect their overall contributions,” say the authors.

As 90% of these migrants will have been living in Britain for many years, possibly decades, before 1995, it is difficult to see how Labour’s immigration policy in government between 1997 and 2010 can be held responsible for them.

The authors say they have only reported these figures “for completeness” and such figures are “difficult to interpret” which is why they believe the discussion should focus on the positive contribution made by migrants who have arrived in Britain since 2000. It also tells us far more about what our attitude should be towards migrants now coming to Britain.

The study firmly concludes that those coming now, and particularly those arriving from within the EU, are making an increasingly positive contribution to UK finances. And they are not doing so at the expense of the British-born labour force who are enjoying near record levels of employment.

Edited November 14, 2016 by feral chile

[eFestivals]

16 minutes ago, feral chile said:

I can't bring myself to argue that they should cater to immigration fears, though.

You're accepting immigration as a good thing in all circumstances.

Care to tell me why it is, and why it would be OK for 50M new people to move to the UK tomorrow....?

[feral chile]

2 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

You're accepting immigration as a good thing in all circumstances.

Care to tell me why it is, and why it would be OK for 50M new people to move to the UK tomorrow....?

see above.

[eFestivals]

28 minutes ago, feral chile said:

see, lied to:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/05/telegraph-mail-headline-migrants-cost-contribution

So which set of calculations helps to answer the question “do immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems?”, which the study’s authors say they set out to answer.

Dustman and Frattini say it is misleading to use the £118bn figure as the Telegraph and Mail have done. As they point out, this is based on the cost of all immigrants living in Britain between 1995 and 2011. This isn’t migrants who arrived in Britain in the late 1990s and 2000s but all the non-UK born people living in Britain at that time. More than 90% of them will have arrived in Britain long before 1995, including Britain’s large long-settled Asian and Caribbean communities who were born abroad.

The authors say that, for example, the calculation will include people who came to Britain in 1950 but only what they paid into the state and took out in benefits and public services after 1995.

The authors say this doesn’t tell us anything about how much these people have cost Britain in net terms because it ignores their contribution during the first 45 years of their residence.

“In fact, as they are now older, they are likely to have higher rates of welfare dependency and low labour force participation that does not reflect their overall contributions,” say the authors.

As 90% of these migrants will have been living in Britain for many years, possibly decades, before 1995, it is difficult to see how Labour’s immigration policy in government between 1997 and 2010 can be held responsible for them.

The authors say they have only reported these figures “for completeness” and such figures are “difficult to interpret” which is why they believe the discussion should focus on the positive contribution made by migrants who have arrived in Britain since 2000. It also tells us far more about what our attitude should be towards migrants now coming to Britain.

The study firmly concludes that those coming now, and particularly those arriving from within the EU, are making an increasingly positive contribution to UK finances. And they are not doing so at the expense of the British-born labour force who are enjoying near record levels of employment.

I suggest you take the trouble to read the report, and not a regurgitated press release of the authors bigging themselves up. If you can't spot the holes - cos they're glaring - the subject is beyond you.

But as the authors do say themselves, the figures are “difficult to interpret”. The very fact that they're interpreted should be screaming something at you.

And just read the last line of what you've quoted again, and add "zero hours contracts" into the wording, and then ask yourself whether you remain as confident in that sentence's assertion as you did before the addition of that phrase.

And then ask yourself how a person might reconcile the claimed increasing contribution of migrants with their own decreasing lifestyle.

I'm quite happy to accept that you see a different group to blame for what might be a person's reduced individual circumstances, but in both cases it's clear those groups are accessing resources that person might otherwise have. 

It's really not as clear cut as you want to see it, and there's not the research to back up any firm conclusion. Nor is there likely to be, as it's such a complex issue, where the impact of some things are near-impossible to measure (particularly the flow of cash out of the country, amusingly enough from both of those groups).

Whatever the truth might be, I don't think there's much good purpose in trying to wise anybody up to 'the truth' without first accepting where their thinking is and why - and without going with the idea that they've fallen for a lie.

I really do think a good starting point for anyone is is to start getting their own thoughts about immigration in order before they try and convince others to change their minds. Such as, for example, coming up with a ball-park number for where immigration does cease to be a good thing ... cos even you have a limit, too, surely? And why wouldn't that be you falling for a 'lie' if you have a limit...?

Edited November 14, 2016 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

23 minutes ago, feral chile said:

see above.

So where are the 50M who are coming tomorrow going to stay?  Round your gaffe? I hope you've got a big sofa.

Surely .... you can appreciate that if 50M new people turned up in the country tomorrow, that would be a bad thing and not a good thing?

 

[zahidf]

57 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

So where are the 50M who are coming tomorrow going to stay?  Round your gaffe? I hope you've got a big sofa.

Surely .... you can appreciate that if 50M new people turned up in the country tomorrow, that would be a bad thing and not a good thing?

 

what do you do with 50 million refugees from syria and global warming then? Send them back to die ? Let them drown in the sea? Lock them up in a camp? Or let them in like Germany and make it work?

Edited November 14, 2016 by zahidf

[eFestivals]

12 minutes ago, zahidf said:

what do you do with 50 million refugees from syria and global warming then? Send them back to die ? Let them drown in the sea? Lock them up in a camp? Or let them in like Germany and make it work?

Nothing of the discussion about immigration is about refugees. Chucking it in only shows you're trying to hide from something.

So I'm gonna ignore that.

I wasn't planning on getting into a ridiculous hypothetical argument, I simply used a big number to demonstrate that for *anyone* there becomes a point where the numbers would be considered too many.

If it was an overwhelming surge of genuine refugees then I'd like to hope we might step up to it (I know, I know). But if it was instead merely economic refugees I'm pretty damn sure even you'd be screaming about it.

Meanwhile, 50M of either group would be a bad thing for the country to have to try and deal with, to absorb without the infrastructure for them.

"Yes, I know, we can build the infrastructure, ... so ... where the fuck is it? Tories tories tories, yes, yes, but where the fuck is the infrastructure? Without it, we can't cope NOW."

I used an extreme number. Real life is about where real people draw that line.

Edited November 14, 2016 by eFestivals

[zahidf]

6 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Nothing of the discussion about immigration is about refugees. Chucking it in only shows you're trying to hide from something.

So I'm gonna ignore that.

I wasn't planning on getting into a ridiculous hypothetical argument, I simply used a big number to demonstrate that for *anyone* there becomes a point where the numbers would be considered too many.

If it was an overwhelming surge of genuine refugees then I'd like to hope we might step up to it (I know, I know). But if it was instead merely economic refugees I'm pretty damn sure even you'd be screaming about it.

The reality is though that Trump/Farage/the UK media equate refugees to being the same as economic migrants.

The demand on countries from refugees is going to only increase. Trump made his hatred of Syrian refugees very clear in his campaign  What do you think him and his supporters want to happen to the half a million syrian refugees or so?

Are u genuinely saying a protectionist, racist Trump administration will do anything other than let them die? And that they wont boast about this to wild applause from their voters?

 

Brexit Britain may be just as bad. W ere the US goes, we follow

[feral chile]

2 minutes ago, zahidf said:

The reality is though that Trump/Farage/the UK media equate refugees to being the same as economic migrants.

The demand on countries from refugees is going to only increase. Trump made his hatred of Syrian refugees very clear in his campaign  What do you think him and his supporters want to happen to the half a million syrian refugees or so?

Are u genuinely saying a protectionist, racist Trump administration will do anything other than let them die? And that they wont boast about this to wild applause from their voters?

 

Brexit Britain may be just as bad. W ere the US goes, we follow

A lot of the public equate all of them to illegal immigrants stealing our benefits. despite the fact that if they were illegal, they wouldn't get any benefits.

The language used has been very emotive, and we're now paying the price for all this mindless sharing of utter bollocks on social media.

[feral chile]

1 hour ago, eFestivals said:

So where are the 50M who are coming tomorrow going to stay?  Round your gaffe? I hope you've got a big sofa.

Surely .... you can appreciate that if 50M new people turned up in the country tomorrow, that would be a bad thing and not a good thing?

 

We're just focusing on economic migrants and refugees, are we?

[zahidf]

"Let's see how Trump does."

"He's hiring a white supremacist to an important position in the whitehouse"

"Let's see how he does after that. After all he cant be THAT racist, despite the evidence of his words and behaviour of the last 20 years"

Edited November 14, 2016 by zahidf

[eFestivals]

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

The reality is though that Trump/Farage/the UK media equate refugees to being the same as economic migrants.

to the sound of people like you screaming 'racist'.  It doesn't help.

To those who feel there's a legitimate debate to be had about immigration and who might like to have the difference between refugee and economic migrant explained to them, it only says you have nothing to say.

 

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

The demand on countries from refugees is going to only increase. Trump made his hatred of Syrian refugees very clear in his campaign  What do you think him and his supporters want to happen to the half a million syrian refugees or so?

Trump and his supporters intend to hugely reduce the refugee problem there, don't they....? I could be wrong, but I thought he wanted to stop supplying some of the protaganists with weapons and money, whilst lessening condemnation of Russia for seeing of 'the rebels'.

Now, i can see what i think are flaws in that plan, but it's still a plan, and one that has the possibility of bring about the best result for those refugees - peace.

I'm concerned by a number of Trump's foreign policy positions, yet at the same time I'm almost hopeful about trump with syria, because its at least different to the current deadlock.

 

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

Are u genuinely saying a protectionist, racist Trump administration will do anything other than let them die? And that they wont boast about this to wild applause from their voters?

Wow. I'm speechless.

You really think they'd be wild applause at the mass death of refugees?

That's off the scale. Trump's got nothing on you for hatefulness of undeserving humans.

Trump and his supporters might be happy to only admit a small number of refugees, but the rest? You've seriously lost it, you've got serious issues.

[eFestivals]

9 minutes ago, feral chile said:

We're just focusing on economic migrants and refugees, are we?

we're talking about immigration-by-choice.

Otherwise we'd have been having a conversation about refugees, would n't we? But we've no need, because no one at all is planning any changes there.

 

[feral chile]

7 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

we're talking about immigration-by-choice.

Otherwise we'd have been having a conversation about refugees, would n't we? But we've no need, because no one at all is planning any changes there.

 

So, do you understand people's anger when affluent EU members come to the UK, fill a skills shortage, and rent or buy a house?

[eFestivals]

5 minutes ago, feral chile said:

So, do you understand people's anger when affluent EU members come to the UK, fill a skills shortage, and rent or buy a house?

yep, I understand why some people object it it.

Just as I understand it similar anger about a non-affluent.

But it's not about the person who's migrating, it's about what it represents in its (perhaps presumed) effects.

Edited November 14, 2016 by eFestivals

[zahidf]

11 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

to the sound of people like you screaming 'racist'.  It doesn't help.

To those who feel there's a legitimate debate to be had about immigration and who might like to have the difference between refugee and economic migrant explained to them, it only says you have nothing to say.

 

Trump and his supporters intend to hugely reduce the refugee problem there, don't they....? I could be wrong, but I thought he wanted to stop supplying some of the protaganists with weapons and money, whilst lessening condemnation of Russia for seeing of 'the rebels'.

Now, i can see what i think are flaws in that plan, but it's still a plan, and one that has the possibility of bring about the best result for those refugees - peace.

I'm concerned by a number of Trump's foreign policy positions, yet at the same time I'm almost hopeful about trump with syria, because its at least different to the current deadlock.

 

Wow. I'm speechless.

You really think they'd be wild applause at the mass death of refugees?

That's off the scale. Trump's got nothing on you for hatefulness of undeserving humans.

Trump and his supporters might be happy to only admit a small number of refugees, but the rest? You've seriously lost it, you've got serious issues.

Dude, you know most of them chanted to execute Clinton and 'hang the bitch' was a best selling tshirt for Trump fans?

I hope im wrong, but the Trump rally attendees certainly have no compunctions about death to their enemies. I dont know about his other voters, but they were certainly ok with his 'Second amendment' solution to Clinton winning and to voting the same way as 'hang the bitch' t shirt wearers.

 

Let a few thousand syrian refugees (Who were probably terrorists anyway) die to MAGA? Perfectly plausible.

Trumps policy is letting Russia do whatever it wants. Considering the number of civiliam deaths caused by Russian forces and the fact a good number of refugees are running away from Asad's chemical attacks and Russian bombs, that is NOT a positive.

[zahidf]

17 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

we're talking about immigration-by-choice.

Otherwise we'd have been having a conversation about refugees, would n't we? But we've no need, because no one at all is planning any changes there.

 

Well except for Trump saying he will ban all refugees from Syria coming over because he says they are terrorists. Pretty big change.

 

 

 

[eFestivals]

Just now, zahidf said:

Dude, you know most of them chanted to execute Clinton and 'hang the bitch' was a best selling tshirt for Trump fans?

Do you think they meant it literally, or do you think, just perhaps, it was representative, and they didn't want to 'hang' her they wanted to 'hang' what they believe she represented?

FFS.

If they meant it literally, I'd have thought they'd already have been anti-trump protests from trumpers, protesting that he was wasn't going to hang her, that he wasn't even going to send her to jail.

3 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Trumps policy is letting Russia do whatever it wants. Considering the number of civiliam deaths caused by Russian forces and the fact a good number of refugees are running away from Asad's chemical attacks and Russian bombs, that is NOT a positive.

Someone has to win in Syria, and there's no good guys.
(or at least, not with the support to come out on top, not now)

Taking a dispassionate view, I can see worse outcomes than a perhaps swift victory for Assad, as dreadful as that might be.

A victory for someone means that people have to stop running away from chemicals and bombs.

[eFestivals]

5 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Well except for Trump saying he will ban all refugees from Syria coming over because he says they are terrorists. Pretty big change.

well, it's not good, but a sovereign state has sovereign power over its borders, for the supposed benefit of those inside those borders. It's not good, but it's a very long way from Hitler mk 2.

I hope other places that have been self-annointing themselves as the better person step forwards and take up the slack.

[feral chile]

21 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

yep, I understand why some people object it it.

Just as I understand it similar anger about a non-affluent.

But it's not about the person who's migrating, it's about what it represents in its (perhaps presumed) effects.

OK.

bear with me here. I just want you to appreciate what it's like if you're seen as the threat, and someone else your victim. Then think what it's like to be Muslim.

I warn you, you're likely to find this offensive. the first part especially so.

I found this when I was looking into Aberfan, that got me to the Free Wales Army, who protested on their behalf, and today's conversation got me thinking of Meibion Glyndwr, and reminded me of this.

The first 6 minutes is giving a potted history of Wales, from 6 minutes in it gets relevant to this debate, around housing and current attitudes.

This is what I grew up around, and this message still has the power to invoke tears of rage. despite my rationalisation, and knowledge of what it's trying to do.

 

Edited November 14, 2016 by feral chile

[zahidf]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Do you think they meant it literally, or do you think, just perhaps, it was representative, and they didn't want to 'hang' her they wanted to 'hang' what they believe she represented?

FFS.

If they meant it literally, I'd have thought they'd already have been anti-trump protests from trumpers, protesting that he was wasn't going to hang her, that he wasn't even going to send her to jail.

Someone has to win in Syria, and there's no good guys.
(or at least, not with the support to come out on top, not now)

Taking a dispassionate view, I can see worse outcomes than a perhaps swift victory for Assad, as dreadful as that might be.

A victory for someone means that people have to stop running away from chemicals and bombs.

Well, except for the pro democracy rebels and white hats who exposed Asad's war crimes. Theyll be executed as well as their villages as 'Isis' when  they more than likely arent.

So, 'Hang the bitch' isnt a misogynistic death threat for Clinton, but a metaphorical attack from the economically anxious on the elites Clinton represents?

Why didnt Bernie supporters chant and wear those tshirts then? 

I think trying to say someone wearing a 'Hang the bitch' isnt a violent misogynist to some degree is pushing it

[eFestivals]

1 minute ago, feral chile said:

bear with me here. I just want you to appreciate what it's like if you're seen as the threat, and someone else your victim. Then think what it's like to be Muslim.

I'm not defending Trump. Why might you think I am?

I'm pointing out that people are not goose-stepping down the streets and dressing up like Prince Harry.

 

[zahidf]

9 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

well, it's not good, but a sovereign state has sovereign power over its borders, for the supposed benefit of those inside those borders. It's not good, but it's a very long way from Hitler mk 2.

I hope other places that have been self-annointing themselves as the better person step forwards and take up the slack.

And if they take the lead of one of the most prosperous and influential countries in the world and also refuse to let in refugees?

Why would a much poorer country like Turkey let in refugees when rich countries wont?

If the USA leads on not letting in refugees, then other countries will follow and there will be more of them dying. Dont pretend otherwise.

[feral chile]

Just now, eFestivals said:

I'm not defending Trump. Why might you think I am?

I'm pointing out that people are not goose-stepping down the streets and dressing up like Prince Harry.

 

And neither are most people in Wales firebombing holiday homes.

granted, that's because they're too busy trying to get the immigrants out first, but who's next, eh?

[pink_triangle]

7 hours ago, pink_triangle said:

Why vote for a black man through gritted teeth, when they could have voted for a white man twice?

So you planning on tackling this one zahidf, or does it not fit your narrative?