"I know all about the effects of the EU on the UK because I put tiles on a roof"

That is absolutely ridiculous. Identity politics at its finest.

You're in your 50's, your entire working life has been one where the working class in the UK is getting more and more squeezed; the cost of living is perpetually on the rise, government institutions have faced cut after cut, small businesses operate perpetually close to their bottom line. Money is hoovered out of the country through tax avoidance and international ownership of what once were national assets. The Tories and Labour see it as the best of all possible worlds, and have lost all credibility as a result.

You've read news stories about immigration, and seen more European born people going about the country, and more European born people working in the UK than ever before. You've put two and two together, I don't blame you.

You know what would make your perspective have more value? Actually studying what you already claim privileged insights into.

The forum isn't Twitter, repeatedly spamming the thread with decontextualised single line posts gets them deleted.

I was definitely waving my hands.

At least you are tacitly admitting that there are billionaires on your side...not very nice ones at that. — Chester

There are billionaires on both sides. Screw Blair and Bojo. The UK is not going to get a better deal with the EU than the one it had while in it. The Tory government is putting in huge amounts of effort to maintain the benefits of international trade and finance flows to their moneyed interests. If you think them supporting Brexit makes them amazingly democratic, look at them bailing out all these companies that do fuck all for the people of Britain in response to the pandemic; no vote, no accountability, another huge wealth transfer. Them and their friends on the liberal left and populist right are doing absolutely fine.

Agreed, but what I was trying to quantify was connectedness, but in a manner which included urban sprawl (so hub distances or connectivity measures wouldn't quite capture it). Voronoi meshes will take into account the open spaces, but it will do so in a way which biases in favour of accounting for network links (roads and railway). A single road connecting two urban areas will double the number of meshes relative to the same area without a road. — Isaac

That makes sense. The UK population is very concentrated in its urban areas though. I mean, the population density and road density is not particularly even distributed over the landmass; averaging over the landmass is thus going to give a non-informative picture when relating it to coronavirus spread. The county I grew up in in Scotland has a population density of 24 people per km^2, only about twice that of Norway, whereas the metro area of Glasgow has a population density of 3365 per km^2.

There's also huge variance in the density of roads over the country:



Huge areas have virtually nothing in them. So I'm not so surprised that the UK is weird on a landscape fragmentation measure.

I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but I think the impact of a single road captures connectivity in a way which outweighs the bias toward open space. If it didn't, then France (good network but low population density) would come out lower than UK (higher population density but crap networks).

It might just be a case of the UK screwing with how the measure interacts with open space.

The measure's also very local; it's not going to measure international connectivity or commuting/travel intensity within or between countries.

Have you got any ideas as to how we might better capture the degree of connectedness? — Isaac

Something based on a population movement network, maybe?. The virus spreads along the interaction networks of people, so a decent connectivity measure for covid probably wants to track an interaction network rather than something that reflects land geometry. I can tell you my speculations of what would be a decent measure of population connectivity/percolation, but I don't know how useful they would be for quick comparisons. There's this cool database on UK travel/commuting that could be leveraged for it, I'd imagine other states keep similar data but can't say for certain. If I were Google I'd probably have a gigantic inter-and-intra national population flow database that spanned the globe and had second to second resolution. And I'd be keeping that quiet.

Aye. I didn't have that impression. I imagined you were imagining population density in populated areas. The measure @Isaac cited looks to care about the unpopulated areas too ,

Edit: so the overall story is that the average population density of a country doesn't seem as informative about infection rates in that country as the population density of its populated areas.

The average number of voronoi cells per 1000km2 would probably track the amount of unpopulated/uninhabited/unconnected areas too. Those areas would have huge cells in them, that would massively pull down the average over the landmass area compared to what it would be if constrained to population centers.



So the population density in population centers is likely to scale with the R0 in those areas.

Whereas population density over a country itself cares a lot more about uninhabited land, that the dynamics of the virus don't care about as much; infection rate cares about connectivity in population centers and connectivity between population centers, averaging population over land area or the voronoi cell thing gets really effected by uninhabited land.

My hand never has much of worth to say.

From @Frank Apisa, sorting out the thing merge does.

Yesterday, our governor signed an EO opening our parks and golf courses here in New Jersey. The day before, he had a meeting with Trump…and came out of the meeting saying good things about him. (I think Gov. Murphy had a sardonic smile on his face while making the comments, but that may just be me.)

Keep in mind that Trump does most of his summer golfing right here in New Jersey at the golf course he owns just a long drive and a three wood away from where I live. I am sure Trump is VERY happy that golf courses are now open in New Jersey.

The philosophy part of this issue involves the question: Does it make sense to butter-up (or ass-kiss) a guy like Trump in order to get a bit more consideration and flex for our state?

Ass-kissing, has always seemed to me to be rather questionable ethical conduct, but with the current situation, I seem to be back tracking on that.

My current rationalization goes: A kiss is just a little thing…and the ass being kissed is enormous.

Two questions arise: One…am I compromising my own ethics by taking that attitude?...

…and…Is ass-kissing on the part of our governor under these circumstances reasonably ethical? — Frank Apisa

Before and now seems infinite though encircled by gradual doubts
Of whatever came over us. Perhaps the old chic was less barren,
More something be looked forward to, than this
Morning in the orchards under an unclouded sky,
This painful freshness of each thing being exactly itself. — csalisbury

That's fucking brutal.

I see the EU as part of a process of tying up big politics with big business, it's becoming a form of soft fascism — Chester

I agree with that, except calling it fascism. I guess I don't understand what "big politics" means to you though. Something I really don't understand is why you people on the right think the EU is a leftist project; like, you guys see the EU as socialist; economically they act in the interest of finance capital all over Europe. Letting banks and shareholder interest set your politics is not a left thing.

. It is only a minority of the party who are true Brexiters. — Punshhh

I think you're probably right, I did overstate that.

But from 2015 when they won the election with a majority they have taken advantage of the Anti EU sentiment whipped up by the populists, as a mechanism to save the party from electoral oblivion, by piggybacking on the back of the anti EU sentiment in the EU referendum in 2016. — Punshhh

:up: Agree with that.

My reason for why the party was set for electoral oblivion was that following the financial crash of 2008, the Conservative party has gradually begun to nose dive, as the dream of financial and capitalist success which they stand for had failed and they were having to impose stringent austerity on the population. — Punshhh

I don't think this was a strictly Tory thing, my impression at the time was that faith in politicians and politics itself was being eroded. Labour was losing its heartlands too; Gordon Brown backing the banker bailouts hit really hard, and the recession effects in Scotland were countered in the political imagination by the hope of a better, independent Scotland. So the populist centre-left in Scotland (the SNP), branded themselves as an anti-establishment party and played the same class card as the right populists did in Brexit. While the source and target of the class narrative were different, the symbolic structure was not much different. It was portrayed as scottish working class vs London elites for the Scottish independence referendum, British working class vs Middle class and London elites in Brexit.

This trend can be seen in the demographic, the young who now distrust their capitalist dream and who are saddled with debt and can't buy a house, are overwhelmingly supporting Labour. — Punshhh

I guess I agree with you then, the political context was decided by a reaction to a crisis of capitalism, all the political parties offered more of the same, so populists on left and right filled the vacuum in public confidence (not that this has restored faith in politics in the UK). The thing is, the center really is failing, and it's not all hot air; there's even kernels of truth in what @Chester is saying for crying out loud. It's "socialism or barbarism" on the level of political narrative (though I'm sure if you asked Chester he'd say it's "nationalism or barbarism" and equate "barbarism" with "socialism" in his pie shaped head)..

@StreetlightX linked me this today:



It was fascinating. It puts the globalisation/immigration right narrative alongside the globalisation/finance capital narrative in a much richer context, very similar to the one @Punshhhand I have been talking about. (Also intimately tied up with issues in your recent chats with @Baden and @StreetlightX about neoliberalism).

And separating from the EU makes it easier for them to continue this trend? — frank

I don't really know if it will make it easier for them or not. It's a mixed bag I think. The Tories are in the unenviable position of having donors and policy shapers that are firmly globalist, but a good chunk of their voter base are suffering from the effects of globalisation and believe so. The Tories aren't really "anti-globalist", they're doing nothing to stop migrant labour from non-EU countries, and favour outsourcing labour internationally whenever it benefits the bottom line, and they're very happy with the UK's role in international finance.

I think maybe it's a concession of some sort, a misdirection; it's preferable for their policy shapers to blame immigration and the "centralisation of politics" than the alternative; recognizing the catastrophic role the financialisation of global capital has played, and the UK's role in it as launderers for these flows (which Brexit will likely not change). They agree with the EU's overall economic policies and the globalisation of labour markets; they're Thatcherites/Reaganites with anti-immigration rhetoric. I have no idea how this makes sense as a consistent ideology; it probably is not.

One can also factor globalisation into this. — Punshhh

Here, Johnson seems to be saying that he supports social programs, but that the UK is constrained by the need to compete with countries that have lower taxes: — frank

Is a response to Punshhh, but also relevant for @frank, I think. It's a bit of a rant because I can't be bothered sourcing everything I'm saying this time, and the "financialisation of global capital" is something you will find discussed only by the farthest left of journalists in mainstream media and far left alt media.

The financialisation of global capital's my go to bugbear for all this @Punshhh.

When the interests of an economy follow the interests of corporate shareholders, the concrete assets that keep the work being done are less important than shareholder returns. Those people who stand to gain materially from short term increases in corporate shares are overwhelmingly the very richest in society (like, making over £100k per year).

Bojo's wing and their associated media fought really hard during the recent election (2019 December) to discredit the necessity of investment in UK industry and construction, their renationalisation, and repealing the massive spending cuts to social care, social housing and the NHS that have been going on since Blair. Read: investing in creating "low skill" jobs on British soil with fair pay while providing "low skill" workers with highly employable skills in a situation of high unemployment for that demographic, for context in this discussion. They did not support measures that (1) the British public believes will address those issues when polled and (2) have compelling evidence that they would address those issues.

Your quote from Bojo is essentially the same narrative that was used in the 1970's with Thatcher, of whom he (and David Cameron's wing) are big fans; we need to be competitive in international markets, and we can't do that by propping up (allegedly) inefficient nationally owned business and services in the UK.

Bojo's party has implemented massive spending cuts in social programs and healthcare. Our government has overseen massive closures of UK clinics and social care homes (like, for abused kids). They've cut back a lot on the construction of affordable housing. They've made it more difficult for the unemployed to receive state benefits. If you trust their justification, this is because they do not believe that social programs are productive investments in reducing the national deficit.

The role the national deficit plays in UK politics from the conservative party (and the Blairite wing of the Labour party) is to cut public expenditures, Cameron made a famous argument comparing the UK economy to a credit card and the deficit being a negative balance. "We have to cut the things that make us go more negative and increase the things that make us go more positive" - leading to those cuts, and framing investment in the commons insofar as they are nationally owned (healthcare, social care, welfare programs, affordable housing) as bad for this end. It was an argument on the level of framing.

(They've also overseen a gigantic growth of the national deficit over those years...)

They also do things like quietly cut 20,000 nurse positions over the country in a bill, then reinstate 5000, and it gets reported as "5000 new positions for nurses in the NHS!" by Sky News, the Daily Express, the Sun, the Record and the Mirror (giving Bojo's wing supporting news coverage).

Simultaneously. the government has overseen the privatisation of these sectors. The Guardian is one of the few newspapers here that covers this trend. The rest of the newspapers report largely decontextualised information wondering why the NHS' performance metrics like accident and emergency waiting time are getting worse, and fit it in with the immigrant narrative @Chester 's adopted. They do not make the journalistic connection between "hospitals are being closed and nurses layed off" to "the waiting times are going to increase".

This gets put back into the narrative of "inefficient spending" to promote more cuts. It's a very well oiled machine, a symbiosis between major news media, the finance capitalist donors, and our government officials who receive money from those backers (in return for shaping policy!) and get employed in their corporations before/after being in power.

Thanks! I think I understand it a little better now. — frank

I should also say that David Cameron's policies were pretty libertarian lite too; the "Big Society" was his strategic spin on it. It is worthwhile remembering, for context, that the same measures the EU imposed on Greece during the financial crisis the UK government imposed, in a restricted form, on the UK; Bojo and Cameron were down with what happened to the Greeks, and probably would not have put it (austerity measures) to a referendum were the UK in Greece's place.

Thanks! I think I understand it a little better now. — frank

Glad to be of service! It makes obsessively reading the news worthwhile.

The "coup", if you want to put it like that, was by the anti-immigration "small government" wing of the Tory party (figurehead: Bojo) against the "free trade and movement is still good for us" wing of the Tory party (figurehead: David Cameron). They appear to agree on how to govern in almost all other matters. UK political discourse (not necessarily opinion) I think has shifted to that terrain too, and the place has become more hostile to UK nonwhites (evidenced by the surge of hatecrimes).

Edit: I should throw Windrush in there with the hostility to nonwhites in Brexit Britain.

So the EU represents a loss of identity and a loss of autonomy. — frank

That is what it represented to people with the politics of @Chester I think. People who identify as working class and losing from globalisation, people who feel like leaving the EU would give the UK more power to look after "its own".

The EU is legitimately blamed for some problems by workers and Euroskeptics, — frank

Yes, few of which were heavily relied upon in the "vote leave" narrative. The less educated poor (stereotyping) seem to blame it for the immiseration of the British working classes since 2008 , the wealthy Euroskeptics dislike it for more mixed reasons; you have the national sovereignty explicitly anti-immigration people like UKIP and the "small government" libertarian group like the Leave backing Tories - they have substantial overlap, and you see that in whether someone is "anti state welfare" like 70% (estimated) of Leave voters were.

while the advantages of being a member are obscure to most people.

I agree with that. The old stories of "the people of Earth are one people", "we're not having war any more with each other in Europe" and "we want a unified geopolitical bargaining unit for the administration of the world market" don't resonate as loudly now in the UK.

Couple that with legitimate concerns, like the EU imposing crippling austerity measures on the Greek populace in 2008 (another of Cumming's touchstones) despite a resounding "no" from their people's referendum on the matter.

It also didn't help Remain's case that people like @Chester got to make bold, memorable assertions; restatements of a narrative backed up by the Daily Express, the Mirror and the Sun and Sky News (this gave that narrative the dominant place in UK news media).

And unfortunately, people like me spent their time demanding an evidential basis for these people's claims, and "Give me the evidential basis for these claims" does not travel as far or as fast as "Take back control".

I'm not sure why you say this is more of the same from the establishment? — frank

The UK government's domestic policies are likely to be the same as they were before. The UK's new points system for immigration is still very flexible, allowing migrant labour in low skilled jobs (not well defined!) when there is a shortage (not well defined!) and will be essentially the same as the international immigration system we currently have for non-EU citizens:

Under the proposed immigration system, freedom of movement – by which EU citizens have since 1992 been able to move freely to the UK to live, work, or study – will end. In its place will be a system which treats EU citizens the same as those from the rest of the world.

and there are no current plans to start the mass deportation of EU migrants that don't fit the very vague new requirements set of them:

The government says employers of migrant workers who do not meet the skills or pay requirements will have to adjust, such as by investing in labour saving technologies like automation. It also points to the more than three million EU citizens already in the UK, many working in lower-skilled jobs, who will remain eligible to live and work in the UK.

and

Alternatively, employers might use strictly temporary, short-term visa schemes that do not have any skills or salary requirements. This includes the two-year Youth Mobility Scheme (Tier 5) visa – the ‘backpacker visa’ – which is currently open to eight countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and attracts around 20,000 people a year, but may in future be extended to EU countries. There will also be a dedicated work visa programme for seasonal agricultural workers.

There are no plans to "fill the gap" in hiring left by immigrants with British citizens. And they have left open the means by which immigrants allegedly crowd out low skilled jobs, just put in policies for acceptance that are expected to change immigration demographics and possibly rights upon arrival.

If you work in a sector where you feel like temporary foreign labour is a problem for you, it will still be a problem for you after Brexit.

But there have been effects on EU immigration (maybe) since the country voted leave:

“The overall story the data tell on EU migration is clear: Britain is not as attractive to EU migrants as it was a couple of years ago. That may be because of Brexit-related political uncertainty, the falling value of the pound making UK wages less attractive, or simply the fact that job opportunities have improved in other EU countries. EU net migration happened to be unusually high in the run-up to the referendum, so at least some of this decline would probably have happened anyway even without Brexit.”

Let me put this in a language you won't dismiss as being middle class, now that we're swearing at each other based on UK nationality.

You gravy bathing fuckwits in the English working class got so duped you're holding up a bimbo in a wig who became a Tory because he hated British miners as a champion of the English working class.

If I saw people around me telling me that their wages and costs of living are getting better, then I'd say that you might have a point ...but they are not and you don't. — Chester

Ok!

Other than things you have not provided evidence for and have been disconfirmed, what makes you think this is due to immigration specifically, rather than living through a recession since 2008 that was never recovered from, and an even longer program of austerity (and privitisation) putting massive strain on all UK public services?

You already have my words, you don't need to put ones I've not said in my mouth.

What evidence would it take for you to change your mind about anything you've said?

I said mass immigration puts downward pressure on wages...that is an obvious fact. — Chester

It isn't. Repeatedly asserting something doesn't justify it, evidence does. You have provided no evidence, and the evidence contradicts what you've said.

You then point out that wages have only dropped slightly and may level out over time... completely missing the fact that wages would have probably grown. — Chester

I didn't write that; the effect on average wages has been negligible. The effect on the lowest 10% has been negative, the effect on the lowest 25% has been negative. The differences to those percentages come out as "We're still fucked and need government aid for food and a roof over our heads" and "Mate, give me the small Americano over the tall one please this week, I'm trying to save money".

You have to be very careful with statistics and who is behind their interpretation when they are broadcast by biased media outlets. — Chester

...

Said about the Oxford Migration Observatory. Which briefs the current UK government. And fullfact.org, which is a fact checking charity independent of the press and government in the UK.

1) An over abundance of labour creates downward pressure on wages. There is no logical dispute on this. — Chester

The evidence disagrees with you, and says it depends upon demographics of the immigrant labourers, and that the effects regardless of what they are tend to average out over time.

Now you can link to some organisation's interpretation of the statistics but those two points I have made clear for you are obvious facts. — Chester

It's quite clear that something being obvious to you (or to anyone) does not provide evidence for it, or justify it. Why you would think you have special intuition into these matters when you can't even be bothered to fact check what you write I have no idea.

2) The increase in low paid EU workers puts a greater strain (in numbers) on the NHS. Many of these workers qualify for benefits (housing , tax credits etc) so do not contribute greatly towards the cost of the NHS. — Chester

I literally gave you numbers on that. The effects on NHS function from immigration are negligible and immigration is vital for staffing it.

What evidence would it take for you to change your mind about anything you've said? When direct, sourced counterarguments are dismissed immediately.

Ah, sorry about that.

Science uses concepts. A biologist will use concepts like organism, gene, structure and function. These concepts link up with predictions and experiments. Do you see any use of the concept of phusis by scientists in their theories or experiments? I don't, I've worked in universities, the only other person I've met in a scientific field that has any familiarity with Heidegger was a nurse studying prison populations and used phenomenology as a method from a subtle realist perspective. Scientists in general do not seem to think in those terms.

Here's a quote from Being and Time's first introduction, where Heidegger's talking about the importance of paying attention to exactly what you're asking questions about when you're asking questions about it:

Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided before- hand by what is sought. Inquiry is a cognizant seeking for an entity both with regard to the fact that it is and with regard to its Being as it is. This cognizant seeking can take the form of 'investigating' , in which one lays bare that which the question is about and ascertains its character. Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes] . But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei . . .]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes\ In investigative questions — that is, in questions which are specifically theo- retical — what is asked about is determined and conceptualized. Further-
more, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the asking [das Erfragte]; this is what is really intended: with this the inquiry reaches its goal. Inquiry itself is the behaviour of a questioner, and therefore of an entity, and as such has its own character of Being. When one
makes an inquiry one may do so 'just casually' or one may formulate the question explicitly. The latter case is peculiar in that the inquiry does not become transparent to itself until all these constitutive factors of the question have themselves become transparent.

That goes for something like analysing hammering, it should also go for understanding the scientific practice of connecting theory, prediction and experiment, no? In that regard, it is extremely strange that people see things about the existential analytic of Dasein in the practice of science, when scientists make no regular practical use of those concepts. Nevertheless, granting the above paragraph, they are asking questions, they know the meaning of the beingS they are investigating in some preparatory manner. So why take recourse to the existential analytic of Dasein over phenomenologising about what scientists actually do?

I think you get a much different metaphysical picture of nature if you take your imaginative background from scientific practice than if you take your cues from the existential analytic of Dasein. Why should Dasein in its average everydayness be the appropriate site for the question of the being of nature (physis) than the more restrictive and demarcated practice of scientists which have thematised nature in their questions already, rather than Dasein?

My perspective on it:

Brexit is actually more of the same from the establishment. If you read the report I mentioned, it speaks about the big variance explaining demographics of support being those who voted for leave being less educated lower income people who feel they've suffered from globalisisation and the distinct wealthy Euroskeptics vs middle class (middle income) more educated liberals.

"Wealthy Euroskeptic" describes the leave campaigners in the government. The people who support it are also for US style libertarian ideas, or making the UK more like that. IE; they're actually supporters of the "free market" and corporate globalism in disguise. Boris Johnson is the person that's sticking up for "free trade" in response to the coronavirus pandemic, for an indicator. That they managed to sell a national sovereignty argument is still somewhat astounding to me.

I imagine it was a difficult sell to get their corporate backers down with the idea, considering that Brexit fears produced immediate downturns in the value of the pound and UK company shares, but public support for those who wanted to Leave also means public support for the people who want to market-ise the UK's social and healthcare sectors and profit off international trade (not from the EU) in the agricultural and industrial machine production sectors more.

Either that, or they found backers that stand to gain better UK market penetration or share and avoid tarrifs (through promised trade deals) in those sectors.

Dear @Chester,

You wrote:

1) Freedom of movement led to the mass importation of labour, predominately low skilled cheap labour which obviously puts downward pressure on wages — Chester

That immigration puts downward pressure on wages. I responded with this, that shows the effects on wages of immigration in the years 1993-2017 have been negligible. It was sourced. You now assert:

Sometimes those costs are indirect so wont show on wages...eg, increase in taxes for roads, schools, hospital etc. — Chester

That it wasn't about the wages. It's actually about taxes. You can't keep your story straight.

But let's talk about taxes. In their report "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration", the Oxford Migration observatory estimates that the effects of immigration upon UK government resources have been negligible on the whole.

Studies examining the fiscal impact of migrants have produced different results, although in all cases, the impacts have been estimated at less than +/- 1% of GDP

It also notes that migrants from EU-15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden; payed more on average in taxes than UK natives. Furthermore it says of EEA nationals:

In the past few years, the government has started to publish data derived from HMRC and DWP records of amounts actually paid and received by foreign nationals. For example, HMRC data show that in FY2015/16, EEA nationals paid £15.5bn more in income tax and national insurance than they took out in tax credits and child benefit (HMRC, 2018).

Immigrants are net contributors by these statistics. As the paper notes, this isn't a magical property of immigrants, it's more to do with the demographics of immigrants being younger than the ageing UK population. You could come away from reading this study with the impression that the evidence is inconclusive; which means that there's no evidence that they (EU immigrants in general) improve the previously stated things or that they worsen the previously stated things. But:

If the UK's government deficit is something you care about, immigration reduces that too:

One of the key drivers behind these results is that incoming migrants are more likely to be of working age than the population in general and therefore more likely to be working and contributing to public finances.

Simply because they're more likely to do more work (and pay more taxes! And spend money on real stuff!) than the ageing UK population.

You might claim, as in the re-emerging right wing narrative, that immigrants are ruining our NHS. This is very wrong for two reasons. Firstly, the increased use of services from immigration has negligible effects on NHS functioning, and secondly that the NHS uses so much labour of EU nationals it would face devastating staff shortages without them:

Across the UK, EU immigrants make up 10% of registered doctors and 4% of registered nurses. Immigrants from outside the EU make up larger proportions. Restrictions on non-EU immigrants have affected NHS recruitment, suggesting that the same could happen if there were limits on EU immigration. However, these restrictions did not trigger a process of existing healthcare workers fleeing the UK

The immigration of EU nationals is vital for the functioning of the NHS. If you want that in a slogan, immigration keeps the NHS alive.

I'll repeat something from before, if you want to contextualise the strain on the NHS, think about it in terms of the austerity program the UK government has been following for years and years and the effect that cutting healthcare spending has on the basic functioning of the NHS. Though it is better to think of the NHS's strain as resulting from privatizing it ("it" link has more discussion of effects) and cutting spending on the public parts.

Note: if you want to justify the NHS spending cuts because they were needed to reduce the defecit, you should want immigrant labour too.

@frank

This looks like a good data driven breakdown of why the UK voted in Brexit the way it did.

Nonono, you introduced the topic:

1) Freedom of movement led to the mass importation of labour, predominately low skilled cheap labour which obviously puts downward pressure on wages and increased pressure on services (schooling ,housing, cultural differences etc etc). The numbers coming in were huge, far bigger than Tony Blair said. Middle class people quite liked it, their cleaners, plumbers, drivers and builders were cheaper. — Chester

You explicitly emphasized the economic impacts of "mass importation"/mass migration from EU countries to the UK on UK natives.

I gave you a sourced argument refuting that claim; there is no evidence of any substantial economic impact (either on lifestyle or employment) on UK natives from EU immigration through the years 1993-2017.

Are you willing to retract the claim? Are you willing to believe that EU migration has had negligible economic impacts on UK natives based on the evidence?

If you need a cliffnotes of my post:

There's no evidence that immigration has made a difference in the economic status of UK natives.

You're doing the thing where you don't want to respond to a bunch of sourced stuff, so you try and reframe the discussion to ground you're more comfortable on; stuff you don't have to research or fact check, you can just improvise.

Ah I see, you can't provide evidence for your opinions because you've got a life. I appreciate that you're busy and you have constraints on your time, I do not appreciate you equating baseless speculations with sourced statements. Do you even take time to check what you're saying is right?

Come on man. I went through the effort of citing everything I said. All you've done is speculate without evidence.

Punshhh and fdrake display a complete misconception of what motivated many people to decide that leaving the political institution was a good idea. They just regurgitate the same old racism crap...I'll give you a list that motivated me and probably many others... — Chester

Apologies about the previous post, I made an assumption somewhere in it that was extremely wrong, will retract it if you've already read it.

The Migration Observatory at Oxford university estimates that the effects of immigration on wages and unemployment of natives between the years 1993 and 2017 have been quite minor. The worst effects, which you are right in attributing to the poorest people, are still quite minor over this period.

The overall picture is that the effects depend upon the demographics of immigrants; if all the immigrants were Indian computer programmers for UK sponsored coding projects, you wouldn't expect there to be much effect on roofers' wages from that. The review I've linked suggests that effects of low skilled migrant work on wages paid for low skilled jobs is negative, but it's actually minor, the decreases being estimated at between about 5% over the 1993-2017 period for the 10th percentile of wages.

The MAC (2018) estimated that an increase in the number of EU migrants corresponding to 1% of the UK-born working-age population resulted in a 0.8% decrease in UK-born wages at the 5th and 10th percentiles (i.e. people in the bottom 5-10% of earners), and a 0.6% increase at the 90th percentile (i.e. high earners). In practice, this means that between 1993 and 2017, the total effect of EU migration on the wages of UK-born workers was estimated to be a 4.9% reduction in wages for those at the 10th earnings percentile, a 1.6% reduction at the 25th percentile, a 1.6% increase at the 50th percentile, and a 4.4% increase at the 90th percentile. The calculation of the total impact should be interpreted with caution, however, because the model estimates the short-run response to migration, which is expected to disappear over time (MAC, 2018: 32).

Let's be incautious with interpreting this, and say the effects calculated wouldn't average out over the years as the paper tells us they are expected to.

Currently, the 10th percentile of earners (the maximum stated effected group) make about £8160, which would mean they had £34 per monthly wage packet less than they would if there were absolutely no immigration from EU countries (holding all else fixed in the background, which is not a reasonable assumption). In this hypothetical, they would go from £680 to £646 per month.

In terms of lifestyle differences, people on both rates are still unable to afford rent, bills and food at the same time in most areas of Britain. They will struggle without government aid and extremely cheap social housing in both scenarios.

For people in the 25th percentile in this same hypothetical, they go from £15840 per year to £15650 per year, monthly difference of about £16, so just over a starbucks a week.

In terms of unemployment, the picture is similar.

For example, Dustmann et al. (2005) concluded that immigration had no effect on the overall employment outcomes of UK-born workers but did find adverse effects on the employment of UK-born workers with intermediate education and a positive impact on those with A-levels or university degrees. Lemos and Portes (2008) analysed the impact of labour immigration of EU-8 workers on claimant unemployment, finding little evidence of an adverse effect. Another study focusing on London, the region with the highest levels of migration over the past few decades, also found no negative effects (Fingleton et al, 2019).

MAC (2018) also produced new results, suggesting that immigration from EU countries during the 34-year period from 1983 to 2017 had reduced the employment rate of the UK-born working age population by around 2 percentage points and increased unemployment by 0.6 percentage points. However, it also noted that with employment rates at a historic high towards the end of this period, one should “be cautious in suggesting these outcomes could be much better than they already are.”

The effects of immigration on employment levels are negligible or inconclusive.

If what's happened so far is "mass migration", as the tabloids like to present it, the economic effects on the poor and those in low skilled jobs have been very minor; the fucked are still fucked, the minimum wage people would have to order a small rather than a tall at Starbucks to make up the difference.

It's much, much more the case that what news media you consume predicts both what you assume to be true and your overall opinion on immigration.

Interpret these intuitions you have about the squeeze on the British working class in the context of the 2008 recession and austerity programs. Britain has not been much better at recovering than Greece (also here), the British economy's been stagnant, the cost of living is increasing, and there are huge cuts on social care.

The immiseration that people are blaming on the EU and on immigration are much more adequately explained by living in a finance capital bubble since 2008 (which just burst catastrophically) with our real economy failing to recover much since then.

You thought it through much better than I did.

Compression on computers is often compression with loss, though. You can't get the uncompressed input from the compressed output with most image, video, audio file formats. Encryption is invertable, so distinct from compression.

There are a bunch of information concepts.

There's minimum description length: how precisely something can be stated in full . The digits of "1/3" in base 10 are fully specified by "One 0 and then 3's forever", whereas there's no way to specify all the digits of Pi shortly. The minimum description length for all of Pi's digits is just writing them out in order; so there's a relationship between that and the degree to which a string can be compressed. There's a further relationship between this lack of compressibility and randomness.

There's the Shannon one, which is (very roughly) a measure of how disorderly / undominated by patterns some (discrete) thing is. The Shannon entropy of something depends on how likely its elements are to occur (given some model of how likely they are to occur). If you're flipping a coin, and it's weighted on tails, it'll come up heads every time. That's dominated by the pattern than "it'll come up heads every time". The way for the coin flipping process to be least dominated by patterns of heads or tails would be for the flips to be independent of each other and for the coin to be fair. In that regard, the Shannon entropy can be considered a "distance from equiprobability". There's a relationship between this and compressibility; if no algorithm exists that could reliably guess the head/tail sequences from a particular coin, given data from it, then the head/tail flipping mechanism is both equiprobable over all sequences of heads/tails and incompressible.

Edit: just to be clear, the sequences generated from the flipping mechanism will be somewhat compressible in general, if you've already observed them. IE: "Heads, Tails, Heads" is a fully specified length three sequence, the probability of "what we just observed" being "heads, tails, heads" is one.

This isn't entirely directed at you, but it's directed at years of realising the limitations of Heidegger after finding reading him one of the most profound, worldview changing, experiences of my life.

(1) Let's say, with Heidegger, that analysing what people do with an unbiased eye for metaphysics or ontology allows you to ask profound metaphysical or ontological questions that unfold naturally from what people are doing.

(2) Let's further say, with Heidegger, that if you don't try and root things in what the practice does, and if you're not attentive to its nature, you will end up asking the wrong questions about it

(3) Now, imagine that you've developed a very general concept that you think applies to all domains of human practice; everything people do. Imagine that it's even deeper than this, in that you think it constraints the potentials of things; what people can do, how people must think if they are to know the true nature of the world. It's a transcendental structure. .

(4) In your later work, you make this transcendental structure historically and culturally dependent . That is even the transcendental seems to vary over the specifics of human behaviour.

(5) For years and years after, there is academic work seeing science through the lens of (3) and (4), in practice echoing the maxim "Science does not think".

Given (1), do you think it's appropriate to read off the "ontological basis" of science without considering how it's done on its own terms? I don't. That's using (3) irrespective of the way it was derived (a big Heidegger phenomenology methodological no-no).

Given (2), do you think that applying (3) without checking its adequacy from a phenomenology of the domain in question (science) first is fruitful at all for understanding it? I don't, that's using (3) and going against the explicit advice in (1) and (2).

Given (4), do you think it's sensible in general to transport transcendental structure from one practice to another? I don't, even within the assumptions of Heidegger's work, transcendental structure is culturally malleable.

I've had similar conversations on the forum before, usually a rejoinder is something like "while surface level transcendental structure is historically contingent, the deep structure of Dasein is not"; my thoughts on the matter are: why would the deepest structure of human being have much to say about a type of practice so alien to mankind it allegedly took, of all our history, until Descartes' work for it to be codified? And until much after for it to be commonplace?

I get frustrated with reasoning, or exploratory questions, that take the anti-reductive thought of Heidegger and reduce things to instances of it.

:clap:

Why are you here? — Pfhorrest

Habit. Enjoy talking about philosophy in a structured way. I learn a lot from other posters too. It's also quite nice to read what people write to get a reading of not just people's opinions on things but how people reason about things.

So Brexit reinforced racism? — frank

It promoted it, yes. It weaponised British identity stereotypes (white, working class) against the PEOPLE from some countries, and piggybacked off previous racist narratives that were prevalent; Syrians and nebulously defined middle-eastern threats, and the enduring narrative of the Polish, Pakistanis and Indians "coming here and taking our jobs".

Just a note: it doesn't have to hang together like a logical argument, it just has to resonate like a good story.

It's a new idea for me that exiting the EU may have taken the steam out of some toxic elements of UK politics. — frank

Eh, he frames it like the government being in a position to tighten borders and make immigration (only from the EU!) and migrant labour (only from the EU!) have more red tape is a favour to immigrants. The campaign also weaponised ideas of Britain protecting its sovereignty from Turkish and Greek "invaders". Vocal people on the right were quite happy thinking of asylum seekers as "parasites" during the campaign (a phrase featured in a major news outlet, despite asylum being a lot different from legal travel...) and the Turks and Kurds as "invaders", the EU countries were a "threat". It is no surprise that hate crimes soared afterwards, the far right and their racism-lite conservative allies like "I'm not racist I buy Chinese food sometimes" @Chester here were given so much breathing room by it, and energised to act upon it. He's a smart man, I think he knew what he was spinning.