Great article Eric, as always.

<< It is more surprising that the average Australian, who will be worse off with high immigration and a fast growing population, hasn’t been angrier about successive government’s high population policies. >>

Yes. I've often wondered why there is such apathy to such an enormously important issue.

Over the years I have spoken to many hundreds of people in urban areas, intensive agricultural areas and way out in the backblocks on grazing properties. The opinion expressed to me is almost entirely one of great concern and disillusionment about never-ending rapid population growth.

So maybe there isn't apathy afterall. Maybe the average person just feels powerless to do anything about it, within an economic and political regime that is so strongly growth-oriented.

Eric Claus is alledging that the rich and greedy want more population to make themselves richer, thereby implying that, by not wanting more population, he is poor and cranky - as well as being on the side of angels.
Well being poor and cranky does not necessarily mean you are on the side of angels. The self-proclaimed underdog still has to prove his case and, as with most of the anti-pops material, this article is long on generalisations and short on specifics.
Some proof in favour of immigration is cited and then dismissed as part of the conspiracy of the rich. When confronted with this sort of reasoning, measured responses are a waste of time. This article should just be ignored

I liked the passion in Eric's argument. This is new territory for the anti-pops although it has been alluded to before.

Eric has taken a Marxist tack which is curious. It's going to come as a hell of a shock to the Socialists and Communists that Eric and the SPA now want to attack the upper class by reducing the total population.

I mean it's not an argument that would find much sympathy with Lenin, standing on his tank in St Petersberg. 'Hey Vladimir, how about we cut the population of Russia?' 'That's not my job. Ask Stalin.'

Eric has segued the class fight in to the anti-people fight. The anti-pops are effectively anti-technology (bloody cars! bloody factories! bloody people are better off than me!) and anti-capitalism.

I don't want to give a helping hand to the anti-human league but they might find a more compelling argument attacking the alienating effects of technology and globalisation.

GDP is just one measure of the health of an economy. It's a complex calculation which often appears contra-indicated by the man and woman on the street. You're hardly going to say 'whoppee' if you're on the dole yet GDP hits 8 percent.

Economics is our paradigm. Find your own. It's best the anti-people league don't use economics as they get in to a hell of a mess.

It was the elephant in the room. Barons of property, industry and finance, lording it over the rest of us and seeking to dictate policy, pulling the levers by proxy, with lapdog politicians as proxies.

Slower growth of incomes means to me......... increase labour supply and reduce labour cost growth in real terms. If anything becomes abundantly oversupplied, its market price will fall, and fall rapidly it will if there are assymetries in the market.

Here we go. Immigration means more borrowers, more consumers, property prices going up, and cheaper labour.

Curmudgeon,

Eric could have quoted more from the Productivity Commission report:

"The effect of a 50 per cent increase in the level of skilled migration on productivityand living standards has been simulated. Compared with the base case:
– population is higher by 3.3 per cent by 2024-25
– the size of the economy (GDP) is 4.6 per cent larger by 2024-25
– national income (GNP) increases by 4.0 per cent by 2024-25
– income per capita is higher by about 0.71 per cent or $383 by 2024-25
– average hours worked per capita are higher by 1.18 per cent by 2024-25.
• The distribution of these benefits varies across the population, with gains mostly
accrued to the skilled migrants and capital owners. The incomes of existing resident
workers grows more slowly than would otherwise be the case."

Note that they are only able to show increasing average income per capita by assuming that hours worked are increasing even faster, i.e. average income per hour worked is falling in this case.

Prof. George Borjas (Economics, Harvard) has done a lot of work in the US on how immigration depresses the wages of native-born workers in competition with migrants

http://www.borjas.com/

Good points, Divergence.

Notice how the growth cultists never want to comment on such matters? Instead, they only seem interested in racist, and now Marxist, straw man arguments.

I would suggest that the repeated failure of growth cultists to respond to the sensible points that you and others advance is evidence of their acceptance of them. What else can be made of someone who responds to a good argument by attacking a bad one?