I always find this rather amusing. The one thing there absolutely is for homo sapiens, is a free lunch. We ride along on a wave of free energy and raw materials. All we have to do is dig it up. The only question is how we distribute what we get free.
The argument I have seen is that there is no net benefit to the UK economy of cheap labour coming here. The reality is that cheap labour comes with extra infrastructure costs and takes its money away with it eventually. Meanwhile the unemployed labour here still has to be fed and housed.
It is not a question even of whether it is moral to ensure that everyone in society has a certain minimum standard, but rather that all those enjoying a high standard benefit because the poor feel included in society and play along by the same rules as the rich. When they do not, we get what is called crime. People who do not see the rules of society benefiting them, naturally break them. We are clever apes and understand what benefits us.
No, individual employers reckon the easiest and most profitable way for them personally to run their companies is to use cheap foreign labour imported into the country. No one goes round checking whether this is also good for society. There are plenty of examples where it is not.
For example, the british chocolate indutry cadbury's just got bought up by Kraft. They instantly abandoned their pledges to keep production in this country and have transferred it elsewhere (where labour is cheaper). Cadbury's was perfectly profitable using expensive UK labour because it has a captive market and understands it. Because it was willing to use technology so that it had fewer employees and maintained overall productivity. But the easy option is to run to the cheap labour alternative. This is absolutely BAD for the UK. And funnily enough their chocolate has been rising steeply in price lately. They know they have a captive market who want their product. The example is all the more galling because cadburys was originally a quaker company, whose founders believed in the principle of paying their workers generously and the company had always been run on those lines.
THIS is what is bad for the UK economy. A company which was socially minded, even now, and has been bought out. Kraft will not continue this same principle of running the company mindful of the needs of society and the entire world will be poorer overall because of it.
Damn right. I do not believe in operating a 'race to the bottom'. The aim should be to push up living standards. The point is that we do not benefit from it. The person who accepts very low wages is not beneftting, the person who refuses low wages and is on state aid is not benefiting and society overall is not benefiting. If Canada is running well it is not because they have a policy of exploiting cheap labour. Perhaps because they have a policy of preventing over-exploitative banking. Which turns out to be the right policy.
There is someone willing to do the job because where they come from general living standards are so bad that it is better for them. We are not aiming to reduce our own living standards to that level. Or I assume we are not? Most people who have power to change society do not have any personal incentive to look out for the benefit of the bulk of society, and it inevitably conflicts with their own collection of wealth. Thats a fact. Either they have to believe it is morally right to spread wealth around or they have to be forced to do it anyway. That is what democracy is for.
What you are saying is that a lot of jobs are underpaid. Obviosuly so, if they are jobs which no one wants to do. How come the jobs people like get paid more than thoes people do not like. Thats very odd.
The UK by no means has the most socialist attitude to wealth of various nations. But some of us are horrified to look at the example of the wealth gaps and lack of care for society in certain other places. US health care is a scandal.