EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Self employed

Ah yeah, I'm dumb. It's exponential with a non-zero baseline is what I meant. Or accelerating. Or something.

Edit: specifically since 1970 which I arbitrarily selected for maximum outrage

Edit: what I really mean is second derivative of population is positive and second deriv. of total housing stock is negative.

Just about.

Though when I entered the UK 16 years ago working part time graphic design, I'd not make it in now.

Lfgss. Getting to the heart of the important issues.

Right, so everyone seems to think "fewer immigrants = higher wages"

How does this"supply and demand" really work?

Simple me would think increase minimum wage to 21K with strict rent controls, strict exploitation controls and lots of house building without the xenophobia works too.

No doubt that's as simple, and therefore wrong, as the "shut the door" ideas.

That would certainly reduce the demand for employees :)

Indeed :)

But that means immigration also reduces as jobs are filled locally and may fix the chronic low wage economy as well, right?

Cos too many immigrants = lower wages (is it?) why not up the wage then?

But you ruined the economy.

Overnight;
High unemployment (leading to…)
Less domestic demand
Increased costs (leading to…)
Less international demand

Sounds like Brexit the way it is going...

If a living wage ruins the economy overnight, doesn't that mean your whole model is actually not workable?

The care sector will have serious employment issues (that's not just a UK issue btw, wages are also low in Germany and the Netherlands) with the current system.

The UK anti immigration voters don't want the immigrants.
Ok no they can come for 20.5K which is over minimum wage...which local workers get.

See the problem right there?

The fuck you are.

Competitive?
I fucking am.

Small man syndrome

You could (instead of raising the minimum wage) make life less expensive? Make it less horrendous to live in the UK on (for example) 19k?

This is partly why I’m generally for universal benefits (free school meals, free buses, set-cost basic insurance, set-cost childcare, free WiFi, set-cost housing by councils etc). Along with infrastructure it usually also increases productivity quite a bit.

For the (hypothetical) government trying to lift living standards universally it becomes critical that tax-payers and voters have confidence immigration policy isn’t working against their interests and borders are somewhat controlled. Universal benefits are vulnerable politically if they’re perceived to be wasteful, abused or go to the ‘undeserving’. Nasty as that is, it seems to be human nature.

If a living wage ruins the economy overnight, doesn't that mean your whole model is actually not workable?

IKR

Long but interesting article on the LRB site: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n04/ferdinand-mount/apres-brexit

Points based systems lend themselves to abuse anyway-not hard to get into Aus or NZ if you have an HND in Joinery or Hairdressing as they have been classed 'in need' but if you get offered another job there's no real way of forcing you to do them once you have your visa and get offered another job.

When I used to work for NZ immigration there was a points system. People had to prove they had worked (iirc for two years) in their respective field to get a permanent or indefinite visa.

Not sure how it works in oz or how the UK will operate.

I've a friend working over there as a joiner on a temp visa (no experience prior) right now but as soon as he gets qualified (two years) he gets to apply for a permanent visa. Then he has no intention of continuing to do it as the pay is pretty shit-that's the kind of situation I mean really.

Seems you might fulfil short term need but will still probably get fairly low experience workers who are gaming the system. Short of paying people more to do these (actually highly skilled and tough) jobs I'm not sure what the solution is...

Depends on age, qualifications, potential income.

Your service provider and data controller is now Google LLC: Because the UK is leaving the EU, we’ve updated our Terms so that a United States based company, Google LLC, is now your service provider instead of Google Ireland Limited. Google LLC will also become the data controller responsible for your information and complying with applicable privacy laws. We’re making similar changes to the terms of service for YouTube, YouTube Paid Services, and Google Play. These changes to our Terms and Privacy Policy don’t affect your privacy settings or the way we treat your information (see the Privacy Policy for details). As a reminder, you can always visit your Google Account to review your privacy settings and manage how your data is used.

Well. At least it will unlock the US websites that block you because they are too stupid to deal with GDPR.

In terms of privacy etc who would you recommend changing email provider to?

Total pain in the arse but probably worth doing soon...

Protonmail are a privacy centric, switzerland based email provider that we use.

I tried to switch to them a year or so ago but gave up in the face of massive faff. I might try again soon

Cool thank you will look into them... It's stuff like preserving old emails, drive docs that I cannot be fucked going through but may need at some point in life that I loathe to imagine doing manually. If a competitor developed a seamless import would be amazing...

Protonmail here too.

There are import tools available to paid users but I haven't tried them.

Saying that, having email on my own domain seems a fair bit cheaper than the protonmail options. (Although I'm not sure how private that is.)