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?

Immigration should be democratic or based on a lottery, not determined by politicians according to the needs of Capitalists.
It's also perfectly reasonable to attack the Empire by starving it of its most precious resource, skilled workers.
Skilled Immigrant workers also always side with the Empire, labour votes, an imported worker is an imported vote for his benefactors.
Skilled workers should be using their skills in their own countries,for the benefit and prosperity of their own people, where they're needed most.
Taking skilled workers from the Developing world in particular is a crime against humanity.

CHERYL

I would value your input on the 'Maurice Strong' thread as you seem to have some ideas which would be valuable for that discussion.

You said:

//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.//

You might know more than that comment suggests and I'd like to explore the depths a bit further in a more appropriate context (The other thread)

Loved your Lenin Stalin dialogue

HIGH POPULATION ..RIGHT LEFT POLITICS.

It seems that this topic (the thread) illustrates the Catch 22 and dilemna of modern politically polarized society.

1/ The Leftists want free immigration/no borders for 'human rights' reasons.
2/ The Capitalists want it for different reasons.. ie..cheap labor.

In the American situation.. it is freely admitted that the Democrats want more Latino's purely for political reasons. (support base)
The Republicans 'say' they want border protection, but scuttle any serious legislation to do just that. (BIGGG corporations need low labor costs)

It is also a 'given' that immigration is never about rights or compassion...except in a few uninformed minds. It is ALways about 'politics' and the chance to expand a parties voter base.
COALITION "Business" Migrants (Coalition Voters)
LABOR "Skills Migrants" (Labor voters)
GREENS "assylum seekers/open borders" "Green Voters"

So...ultimately it boils down to 'power' and the objective of increasing it.

One more point. The Capitalists (and the Left and Greens) also want a 'diverse' population.. but not for any reasons of human compassion or human rights.. it goes much deeper and further than that.

Ultimately.. the astute observe will find a convergence of interest between those calling themselves 'Capitalists' and those calling themselves 'Socialists'.

and yes..I do watch Glenn Beck :) see youtube I've recently promoted Beck to '4th member of the Trinity'

And I wonder who employs you? There is not one worker that's happy. Can you explain this.

TTM.

I actually find myself agreeing with Curmidgeon for once. Maybe he is not yet a lost cause.

As for the rest of the gobbledegook being spouted in this thread, I am beginning to think that none of your really know what you are talking about when you throw words like capitalist, socialist, left right, Marxist etc around. My advice, get a copy of the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought and actually look these things up. As for Cheryl saying that economics belongs to a particular faction, that is just plain ridiculous. I am always ready to look at economic analysis to support an argument, regardless of the view that is being put forth.

Why do I support immigration or more specifically skilled migration beyond my philosophical view that, as a nation of immigrants, it is hypocritical to deny others the opportunities that our forefathers have been given? Well, there is also the issue of our own brain drain. One need only look at the decline in enrolments for key skills such as medicine, engineering, IT and science to see that we are facing a serious problem in this country.

"it is hypocritical to deny others the opportunities that our forefathers have been given?"

My concern is that the problems of high immigration might deny many Australians opportunities that they might have otherwise had. Is this an ethical thing to do? Surely the objective of government should be to improve the lives of all, not the lives of some at the expense of others?

"One need only look at the decline in enrolments for key skills such as medicine, engineering, IT and science to see that we are facing a serious problem in this country."

My concern is that a country like Australia, with such wealth and privilege, should choose to pilfer skilled people from far less wealthy nations instead of training her own. What is the economic and social impact of having all these skilled people pilfered from countries where they are so desperately needed? What does it suggest about the ethics of a wealthy nation that has far more capacity to train her own citizens, yet chooses to pilfer them?

It concerns me that some will readily warn of the great calamity we face from a skills shortage, yet are apparently oblivious of the impact on countries from which they are acquired.

My view is that a wealthy nation like Australia has a moral obligation to maintain a positive skills balance (more skilled emigrants than immigrants), and should have some concern about the loss of skilled people from the developing world.

Everyone is flapping about all the problems of increasing population.

It won't happen !

To build the houses and infrastructure to support this theoretical
surge will need significantly increased energy.
We haven't got it. At present we are selling off to China and Japan
as much as we can dig up and get onto ships.
Oil production is now starting down the slippery slope.
Coal production world wide will peak within ten years. China however
may cause coal depletion earlier than expected.

In these circumstances, contraction is much more likely than growth.

If you want to have a worry, worry about the real problem.

Loxton - We will always be a nation of immigrants. If we always allow high immigration because we have had high immigration in the past, then we will grow forever. We can't grow forever, so when should we stop having high immigration? I say we should have net zero immigration now so that we can start becoming sustainable and give our children and grandchildren a chance to live in a world with a high standard of living like we have now and an end to poverty. Why couldn't our goal in Australia be to make the world a better place by curing cancer and diabetes and reducing poverty, rather than just trying to make the rich get richer.

Secondly I agree with Fester. We should be supplying skilled labour to the rest of the world, not stealing it to make ourselves richer. We could build hospitals and schools in developing countries and do more good for those countries than taking in 200,000 skilled workers that could be helping build those countries. After those skilled workers are gone the developing countries have to start all over again training new skilled workers. We should leave those workers there and help them with the training of even more skilled workers. There are over a billion people in the world that are illiterate. Over a billion who have no toilet. They have to go in the road or in a paddock. More people live in slums with no running water or sanitation in Dhaka, Mexico City and Cairo than live in Sydney. Why can't it be our goal to do a little to help them rather than do a lot to make rich property developers richer?

ericc

There seems to be an assumption coming through these pages that the migration flows only into Australia.

At any moment, close to 1 million Australians are living overseas. For a country grappling with skills shortage, having roughly 5% of the populace living and working overseas is a huge drain, particularly when we have shortages of doctors, nurses, engineers and so on. I don't disagree that we should be using our skills to make the world a better place, but I would argue that we are already doing this. A study by the Lowy institute found, as a group expatriate Australians are better qualified and well paid; 45% have a post-graduate degree compared to 9% of the Australian workforce back home.

So we are losing our best and brightest. It only makes sense that we should make up the shortfall with good people from other countries. The simple truth is that we are living in a globalised world where labour moves to where wages or rewards exist. This may make the rich richer, but it also means labour can also seek out the best deal.

Loxton –I think I sort of agree with you, but I have done a little more study on the numbers. I’m for net zero immigration not high immigration. If 60,000 leave then we should bring in 60,000. If all 60,000 have post graduate degrees then great. We are currently bringing in 300,000.

1. Have you got the percentage of immigrants last year that had post graduate degrees. There is a sense that you are arguing that with 300,000 immigrants last year that 135,000 of them (45%) had advanced degrees. Perhaps not.

2. How many of those 45% post graduate degrees are going to developing countries to help them develop. Not many.

We are not bringing in immigrants to replace PhD’s who have gone overseas to America or Britain to work in Research Facilities. We are bringing in semi-skilled migrants often with poor language skills to keep wages low and increase demand for housing and other consumables.

The over-riding concern though is: When does population growth stop? When do we start to get sustainable? When do we start to plan for our children’s future rather than just try to make the rich richer, today? When do we start stopping biodiversity loss rather than increasing it? When do we start allowing more water to stay in the rivers rather than less? Which year will we use less fossil fuels than the previous year?

The economic conditions for the average worker are slightly worse with high immigration and the environment is far worse with high immigration. That doesn't mean that you can't get a job in Australia if you are a highly qualified immigrant. It means that the number of immigrants should be limited to the number that migrate overseas.

Loxton, "At any moment, close to 1 million Australians are living overseas."

That comes as no surprise because the wily thing to do is get Australian citizenship for the education of the children and for the health and old age entitlements when needed.

Australia, Canada, NZ all wear their hearts on their sleeve and pretend not to know how their citizenship can easily be abused.