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The UK votes to leave the European Union |OUT2| Mayday, Mayday, I've lost an ARM
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SporeCrawler
Member
What makes you think germany will be soft on freedom of movement?
He got a token few years on a sliding scale, I'm talking permanently.
So basically different to every economy it's competing with on the planet?
I'd be interested in your ideas on how that works?
German cars need to be sold somewhere....
Royal_Phalanx
Member
Nope, Cameron's deal made sense. Pay tax for x years, earn entitlement to benefits. I'm of the mind that everyone living and working in your country should eventually be able to get an equal deal to citizens. They are taxpayers too. I don't see why Germany would fuck over the interests of their citizens and be soft on free movement either. Though the UK government doesn't give a shit about preserving our rights to live and work in Europe because a slim majority doesn't value it for some stupid reason.
KonradLaw
Member
They still will be sold in UK. You don't need UK to be in singlemarket. They will simply be a bit more expensive, but a bit smaller sales aren't enough to completely screw EU over and risk destroying it.
Ragnar Blackmane
Member
The people usually buying Mercedes, BMW and Audi outside of Germany will probably be able to afford to do so in the future anyway, even if they have to pay more. Which leaves Volkswagen which won't have enough influence by itself.
Goddamn experts
Phantast2k
Member
New UKIP Leader Diane James: My Political Heroes? Thatcher, Churchill - and Putin | Huffington Post
Are there any heads of a fringe political parties in Europe who don't mastrubate to Putin? Heil (Tovarich) Putin!
Since the Swiss ref. on immigration has been brought up a lot in this discussion:
Swiss MPs to ignore voters on migrant curb | World | The Times & The Sunday Times
Are there any heads of a fringe political parties in Europe who don't mastrubate to Putin? Heil (Tovarich) Putin!
Since the Swiss ref. on immigration has been brought up a lot in this discussion:
Swiss MPs to ignore voters on migrant curb | World | The Times & The Sunday Times
More: Slovakia says Europe will make Brexit very painful for UK - FT.com
All of those companies have varying price ranges for cars, many of which people in the "lower middle class" bracket can afford to buy. I doubt a price increase is negligible for them.
Actually, I'm not sure about the UK, maybe those makes are less prevalent for that price bracket there.
Germany has a demographic crisis (so does the UK, it's a bit more pronounced in Germany), you need to import workforce to maintain output or improve productivity. I wouldn't say Germany has fully wrapped their heads around that, but the UK certainly hasn't.
Out of work benefits yes, the in work benefits are open season.
As long as you can "prove," you have work you can claim relatively generous work benefits as well as having equal rights to social housing benefits, say if you have kids, you get the same shove up the ladder as the indigenous.
This is where most of the resentment comes from amongst the lower social classes. People who have been waiting for years for housing see others arrive who get bumped in front of them in the queue.
I'm not sure if I can see the benefits to the economy that this can happen.
In which case foreign immigrants shouldn't pay taxes either if they can't claim those.
RedSparrows
Member
Taxpayers shouldn't be able to benefit from things taxpayers benefit from?
Yes they should. They should pay taxes for a few years at least until they are made available. Coming here and claiming immediately without banking some taxes definitely does not add anything to the economy.
You know like every other country on the planet.
If UK inhabitants can immediately claim them and immigrants can't, then no. You are saying it is okay to pay them badly, tax them and deny them benefits they would have right to if they were British.
They wouldn't come here for bad pay without subsidies which in turn makes the low skilled labour pool smaller which in turn causes upwards pressure on prices which as prices rise further lowers supply of lower paid labour to the point wages are at a point we can bring in immigrants who are paid at level we don't have to pay subsidies.
You are saying immigrants shouldn't be allowed to claim in-work benefits immediately while the British can.
Then I say they shouldn't be forced to pay taxes. Or maybe young British workers should be refused those benefits as well until they have paid back the benefits they have gotten when they were young.
If you don't treat your tax payers the same because of their origin, that is racism.
See above. That's exactly what I am saying only those who want suppressed wages so be cheerleading the status quo.
You are saying immigrants should be stopped because your country sucks at social laws. Again, not the immigrants and not the EUs problem.
And that is also implying that these people are taking jobs from the British, which isn't the case, meaning there would simply be no one doing those jobs.
Which social laws? We do not currently set many of our social laws as EU members.
Stuff like minimum wages and stopping zero hour contracts are still a country's responsibility. Social laws are still largely set in the countries themselves.
And to proof that you still set them: the EU has complained about the UK zero hour contracts. The laws still exist.
Also, the EU has never to my knowledge complained about laws that offer citizens better protections than the EU law.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I think his point is that: by and large, the British state exists to serve the British electorate. That's what national self-determination is about. Insofar as the British electorate have moral duties to others, the British state does too, but only as a function of the people voting for it. Right now, if I am a lowly paid British worker, it is quite possible for someone from Eastern Europe to migrate into the UK and end up with a job I might otherwise have had. More abstractly, lowly paid British workers become more lowly paid as Eastern European workers migrate in and induce more competition.
Part of the reason that Eastern European workers migrate in is because even if they could earn in terms of pay the exact same amount in their country of origin as they could in the UK, the UK will top up their pay more in terms of in-work benefits. So these migrants aren't filling a gap in the labour market. They're not moving to the UK because firms in the UK are willing to pay more than firms in their country of origin, indicating a greater demand in the UK that can be helpfully fulled. Rather, demands might be equal in both countries, meaning at least some of the reason Eastern European workers are migrating is because there are more in-work benefits available. If those in-work benefits paid out exceed taxation paid in (probable at very low levels of income); then British workers doubly haven't benefited, because the state's revenue is now being spread more thinly as well.
Immigration ideally serves the needs of the British population, plus whatever more they're willing to extend to for moral reasons. They're not being served well when an immigrant ends up getting more than they put in. One way around this is to say: if you're not a British worker, you don't receive in-work benefits. This means that Eastern European workers are not going to migrate if they'd get the same pay (from the firm) because they were going to get more from the state. It means that if they move to the UK to seek work, it has to be because they're confident that they won't need in-work benefits - that is, are confident that on net they're contributing to the British state.
Now, I think you'd have to grandfather this in. It would be unfair to subject people who moved to the UK because of this provision to suddenly snatch it away. I also think you still need some in-work provision for Eastern European workers who do come, because, as mentioned, the state does have some moral duties derived from its constituents and most British people aren't complete arseholes. Even most 'kippers would balk at what some of the big companies would do to Eastern European labour if they thought they could get away with it. So the solution would probably be: foreign nations get offered the same in-work benefits as their country of origin. That equalizes the problem: you don't lose out by moving from Poland to the UK. But you don't advantage either, unless at the same time you are advantaging the UK. It becomes something of mutual benefit.
I mean, this is a technical aside. In general, I think in-work benefits were a tiny problem; most of the research carried out showed this. Immigration was, on net, still far more beneficial to the UK than not. But I do think that more effort should have been made to even stamp down on the small technical things like this. It's a pretty common truth of human history that when things get tough, people get scared, they get insular, they look for a boogeyman to blame, and immigrants are a great boogeyman for the far-right to use. I think even the smaller avenues for the far-right to say "look, immigrants are abusing the system" should really have been dealt with. We might not have been in this problem if they had, and this is one small issue it would have been nice for the EU to be a little faster on. Note that the EU is actually moving roughly in this direction, just... very, very slowly.
Our minimum wage is one of the highest in the EU and zero hours contracts even existing is a classic sign of over supply in the market. If low skilled labour hadn't become a disposable commodity and was harder to obtain they would simply disappear.
Not sure to understand the point you're trying to make here, given there are at least half a dozen EU countries having higher minimum wages than UK.
France being one of them, the only complaint I can remember hearing here about this situation is that EU workers working outside of their home country should get their minimum wage and salary taxes adjusted to those of their host country, to prevent unfair competition with local workers.
More like the sign of a government favoring employers to workers' condition, if you ask me.
Lower than Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium so for the peers of the UK it is quite low. You could compare to other countries but they have a lower standard of living. As for the correlation with supply they are quite popular in the health care sector despite a lack of workers.
We are all much of a muchness when it comes to minimum wage give or take a euro or so. The vast majority of employers are SMEs, ie not rich. A government can't just force a 30% pay rise on the lowest paid and not expect big problems from it.
I don't think minimum wage should be adjusted, that would heavily skew the market, just government subsidies shouldn't be available for the first say 4-5 years to new arrivals.
Theonik
Member
If the problem is that foreign workers are putting pressure on the job market or any overabundance of workers really that is exactly the purpose of increasing minimum wage. On your standard we shouldn't have it at all.
PdotMichael
Banned
So can I have some data and facts how hard Eastern Europeans are a burden to the British welfare system?
Right now it appears that the discussion is about that non British people should be treating worse than the British folk because totally not xenophobic reasons.
Right now it appears that the discussion is about that non British people should be treating worse than the British folk because totally not xenophobic reasons.
So foreign workers aren't impacting these wages and it shouldn't matter that foreign workers get these jobs?
If these wages are so low because the companies can't pay more, than immigrants aren't pushing them down.
Not sure why you're focusing on subsidies, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking - just to take a very obvious example - about people who are living in Latvia, being paid 370€ per month there, and being sent working for 6 months in Belgium, where the minimum wage is >1500€ / month.
How is that not already heavily skewing the market, by making Belgian workers totally uncompetitive in their own country?
That's what some French businesses are mostly complaining about (with tax rates, but that's another matter).
For them, employing a French, Belgian or Latvian citizen doesn't change anything, since the French rules will still apply regarding wages and taxes.
And since theses taxes will be the same whichever the citizenship of the employee, I think it's perfectly fair and natural that they get access to the same level of state provided services.
What you seem to be asking for is some kind of double standard, one for nationals and another one for foreigners.
It just sounds terrible.
That's not quite how it works.
It only takes one company to take advantage of the over supply of labour and lower prices to gain a competitive edge and all the rest have to do it to compete.
Every other non EU country seems to manage perfectly fine.
I didn't know freedom of movement for workers was a thing outside of EU.
You have to decide what you are arguing. You are on one side claiming you can't raise the minimum wage because that would hurt business, and on the other hand that the minimum wage is only paid because of immigrants and over supply meaning it is not because of business not being able to pay more.
To be clear, this still usually involves social fraud in the Belgian case, like in the case of truck drivers where it is fine as long as they actually really work in Latvia. And on the same side, there are more than enough job vacancies in Belgium for unemployed Belgians, like for instance mailmen.
flintstryker
Banned
Joke post?
PdotMichael
Banned
The joke is that countries like the UK competing with other Western EU countries about the work force from Eastern Europe.
Provide shitty conditions for those people and you will just into a shortage of skilled workers - damaging your industry and welfare system.
Provide shitty conditions for those people and you will just into a shortage of skilled workers - damaging your industry and welfare system.
SporeCrawler
Member
Every european country can veto any decision that requires memberstates or the council to agree
SporeCrawler
Member
So UK is the only market for german cars?
Also while german car makers would suffer from restricted trade between UK and EU the german financial sector will love it
The German car maker argument is the argument that Brexit'ers give as to why Germany will give the United Kingdom the bestest deal. People are joking about it.
Yes. United Kingdom newspapers and politicians however like to pretend that only Germany and France actually decide things. So all these tier-3 countries will cave for Germany and their car makers.
Not sure if there's something going on between Belgian and Latvian truck drivers, but my example was not meant to be a real one.
I just picked these two countries randomly to show the differences that could exist regarding minimum wages, and their possible consequences.
More like a sarcasm.
Unless I've missed all these other parts of the world where you can freely work from one country to another without any visa.
kitch9's answer is interesting anyway, because even if the EU rules are far from being perfect, every EU country but UK seems to manage perfectly fine with them.
flintstryker
Banned
ever heard of Caricom?
The EU provides a general right to move and work anywhere in the EU.
How is Caricom supposed to compare to that?
flintstryker
Banned
Because Caricom pretty much has the same thing, granted since the countries in Caricom aren't connected by land like in Europe its much harder to go from country to country to work.
There is the issue that people are 'employed' in their original Eastern European country while exclusively working in a Western European country claiming they pay taxes in the Eastern European country to provide lower cost labor. It is basically employers using these employees in a social fraud cases. That is how the market is being skewed.
"pretty much"?
Oh look, it sounds like a visa.https://foreign.gov.tt/services/csme/ said:
Phantast2k
Member
@YouGov 47% of Leave voters think a trade deal with Australia is the highest priority - just 23% EU
From the second comment (tweet):
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From the second comment (tweet):
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