I was digging trenches for the building trade when the news broke that Hong Kong was going to change hands to China. I met a builder who was spending 1mill $$Aus per year for an HongKongese Rice im/exporter.You read it right 1million aussie dollars per year!!
What happened to those dollars you may well ask? Well that builder was at a lot of auctions with a fat purse outbidding most young starters/first home buyers,with the result of buying and providing a house for a lot of hongkongese who could stay in the house whilst the builder would build a house in the back. (dual occupancy as we know it)
When the new house was built the people from the front went to the back to live and the old house was sold or rented out to the next hongkongese family.So it went on and on,understand what a million can do per year to the firsthome buyer market? If you bid on a house which at that time would have been worth (the land) 150.000 and you bid 210.000 it would increase the overall price wouldn't it? To the hardworking ozzies it must look like this country is being raped and bled dry and yes ..I am also suffering from the same fate. It almost pays to be racist.

Graham,

You keep saying that there is a shortage of workers, but where is the evidence for it? We all know that the unemployment figures are fudged, just like the CPI. People who work one hour a week count as employed. There was a report in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year claiming that real unemployment is close to 17%, including the underemployed, involuntary early retirees, etc., and welfare dependency figures are well up from times of genuine full employment. If an employer refuses to train he cannot then howl that there are no skilled workers available.

Pericles also cites fudged immigration figures. When the figures are calculated refugees don't count, even those we invite. New Zealanders don't count, nor do people from third countries who use New Zealand as a stepping stone to get to Australia. Foreign students who study approved courses in Australia can get their student visas changed to permanent resident at completion, without ever entering any migrant quota. There are people on so-called 4 year temporary visas that are routinely renewed. I think he will find that the real numbers are closer to 200,000 than 100,000. We have a 1.3% population growth rate, giving us a population doubling time of 53 years.

I think you both need to consider whether the corporate glove-puppets we laughingly call our politicians are boosting population, not because of some nebulous benefits to the country, but because it benefits the rich people who "donate" to their re-election campaigns.

Graham, you wrote:

"With respect to the car accident example, most of the GDP benefit from the accident is from remediation. All objects wear out, and someone has to fix them. Accidents are part of the process of wearing out in some cases, and I can't see why you should take objection to the income that is earned fixing or replacing them being included in the GDP."

That is precisely the point!

If cars were to be built that could last twice as long before requiring repairs, then logically we would be better off, but the GDP measure would show us as being worse off. (Of course should find other ways to gainfully employ the mechanics that would then be surplus to our needs, but that is another matter.)

It was not myself who first raised the GDP measure in this discussion. As I wrote earlier:

"Until we (come up with a better measure of prosperity than the GDP), we should stick with the facts, and with measures which do have some bearing on the questions at hand, ..."

Graham, you wrote:

"Daggett, you've never had a post arbitrarily removed, although it might have been without 'warning' if it breached the rules, if you don't think that posting clear rules on the site doesn't constitute a warning."

Here is the e-mail you posted me on 7 February 2006:

"We have deleted two of your posts. They were deleted because they appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the rule which allows for only two posts on any one thread in a day and 5 across the entire site. ...

"By posting your first part on one thread and then posting another two in the series on another thread not only did you try to circumvent the rule, but you also put material on another thread that wasn't on topic.

"Could you please refrain from doing this in future? I'm not going to apply a penalty this time."

Note I had not breached any actual rule, other than having allegedly made an off-topic post onto one thread. On that thread I was directly responding to a point made by another contributor. My post had links to a continuation onto another thread where my post was directly relevant, where I had hoped further discussion would continue.

What is wrong that?

In any case, why wasn't it possible for you to have simply first raised your concerns with me and made any warnings you felt necessary, instead of making assumptions abaout what my intentions were and then, with no warning, deleted the posts I had taken a lot of care to write? Do you really think that if you had insisted that what I had done was counter to OLO policy, I would have done so again?

We are still left with the problem of how those of us who would like to put argmuments which are lengthy and involved can do so, where the implied or actual OLO rules don't allow this.

How do you suggest this be done?

(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5493): "But that doesn't mean that France doesn't have an immigration policy, or receive immigrants. It does - and the scheme looks remarkably similar to Australia's. They had around 100,000 new entries in 2001, and they actively look for highly skilled professionals, just like we do."

You are comparing peaches with pineapples. The 100,000 figure you would have referred to would be mostly temporary visa holders. They also would have to obtain a separate work visa.

A friend of mine, who is a fluent French speaker and who has lived in France, tells me it would be practically impossible for him to stay there permanently, unless he married a French national. Not nice from his point of view, but quite understandable from the perspective of most French citizens who don't want the many good characteristics of France, including still affordable housing, being ruined by a huge influx of foreigners as is now happening in Australia.

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billie (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5491), where would these gluts of housing stock be right now? I know that for while, back in 2004 people who had invested in high rise apartments in Melbourne lost value in their investments for a while, but I also recall on "Australia Talks Back" in May 2004 an economist from the Real Estate Industry talking of how a further increase in immigration would fix the problems that their 'industry' was having at the time (as I have mentioned already at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#53462).

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eftfnc(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5501), thanks for this information. The scams entailed in property speculation and 'skills migration' these days are breathtaking and completely belie the 'warm inner glow' hogwash behind which population growth advocates hide.

As I said Daggett, you weren't removed arbitrarily or without warning. In fact, you got several well-reasoned paragraphs explaining why you had breached the rules.

But reason doesn't really seem to be something you're too concerned about. Your argument on GDP proceeds on the basis of anecdotal evidence, authority from someone's honours thesis and non-sequitur.

The 100,000 figure was gathered from here http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/immigration.htm and looks to me like it is referring to genuine immigrants, despite your anecdotal friend who "proves" it can't be.

The reason for the OLO limits is to ensure that as much as possible as many people can participate and that they think hard before making their comments so as to meet the word limit. I think it generally works well. Certainly better than the original free-for-all where the site was quickly being swamped by those who had time on their hands.