Monday 8 February 2010

Its different for the rich

Most of us have spent the last few months shivering our way through the coldest winter in years. In Britain and much of Europe it has been the coldest for forty years, whilst, as I write, America is experiencing the heaviest snowfall in over ninety years.

Yet, despite the weather, we have no option but to carry on. Day after day we struggle to work on icy roads and in gridlocked traffic jams, or we stand on freezing railway stations waiting for trains so packed that, when travelling in then, we have no option other than to share intimate bodily contact with total strangers, grateful only for the few months respite from the sweltering heat which will make the carriages even less bearable in that humid sticky time called summer.

At the end of our journey, we will spend eight, nine, ten or even more working in a job we dislike at a wage we know is far below what we are worth, but which we must cling to because there is no alternative.

The endless day complete, we struggle home again through the same gridlocked traffic and in the same crowded carriages, maybe stopping en route to queue in overcrowded supermarkets and pay surly third world shop assistants for overpriced food, which we take home and eat in front of the propaganda which now passes for television entertainment.

Meanwhile, our media regales us with the joys of diversity and how lucky we are to live in this overcrowded, crime ridden, polluted and bankrupt multicultural hell hole. Then we go to bed and dream of something better before we have to start another day,

It is not like this for everyone though, as we stand shivering on West Ruislip station waiting for the next humanity crammed sardine can mascaraing as a railway carriage, others are sunning themselves on multi-million pound yachts, moored in Caribbean lagoons, off Pacific islands or close to the snow white sands of Indian Ocean beaches.

Others still lounge on extensive verandas overlooking private beaches, checking the stock prices online whilst a servant attends to their pedicure.

Those, prepared to brave the cooler climes of Monaco or Aspen dine on truffles, champaign and the finest sturgeon eggs in five star restaurants before taking their beautiful, if surgically enhanced, trophy wives or toy boys for a spin in their three hundred thousand dollar sport cars, planning their next skiing holidays of cruse around the Fiji islands.

Whilst these lucky few enjoy their privileged lifestyles, I am sure they sometimes raise a glass of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, or maybe two, to the immigration policies imposed by the tame politicians back home, which have contributed so much to their “luck”. For without those policies many of the super rich just might have to cut back on a few of the sports cars, gigolos and sea view enriched Monegasque apartments.

One of the main features of mass third world and Eastern European immigration into once rich Western Nations is that it keeps wages artificially low, and there is one group who benefits massively from artificially low wages. That group are those who have to pay the wages.

There is no benefit to the average citizen, who effectively looses a considerable sum of money as a result of his wages being kept unnaturally low, whilst paying out huge amounts to support an over stretched infrastructure. However, the rich do benefit, and for the super rich the benefits can be massive.

A recent survey of American immigration estimated that by pushing down wages immigration triggers a substantial redistribution of income from native-born workers to native-born owners of capital. It was calculated that this redistribution amounts to about 2 percent of GDP, or a whopping $250 billion annually at current levels. And it is the native elites who gain this sum at the expense of native workers.

A similar figure will certainly apply to Europe, where mass immigration is also forcing down wages, and given the numbers of immigrant workers there are in the UK, it is not too much of a stretch to extrapolate that Britain's super-rich benefit by many tens of billions at the expensive of the native British worker.

On the other hand the disadvantages of employing cheap immigrant labour are minimal, the costs of employing a foreign worker and a native worker are roughly the same in most cases, whereas the savings can be significant. Additionally, of course, when did you last see a company prosecuted for not employing a representative quota of native Britons?

Mass immigration also means that those native Britons who do have jobs dare not complain ,knowing how easily they can be replaced and thrown into a market where there are not enough jobs to go around.

For the non-domiciled, tax avoiding, elite it is a win win situation.

Immigration, of course does not keep down the wages of those at the top of society, judges and top civil servants for instance, who's wages are paid by the tax payer, neither does it penalise television executives, £1,000 an hour Human Rights lawyers or fat cat bank executives, who's £600,000 bonuses mean they can afford homes in leafy glades still protected from the ravages of mass migration, with an overseas bolt hole they can run to when the Cruddas finally hits the fan.

They do not have to suffer the results of the invasion overwhelming great swathes of our nation. For them multiculturalism is still some warm and brightly coloured fantasy which they can condescendingly applaud, but which they don't have to live with. Hence they can loftily attribute labels such as “racist” or “bigot” to those of us who are forced to live amongst it, and don't like it.

It is the same but even more so for the super rich, for whom the huge wage savings made through immigration mean they can live in those marina frilled sanctuaries, where the only ethnics they have to confront, Asian and Arab plutocrats aside, are the ones filling their drinks or sweeping the cigar butts off their private beach.

These are the benefits of immigration, and it is only a tiny few who see them.

As a nation Britain gains nothing from immigration, but loses much. The average Briton pays hugely in terms of lower wages and higher taxes. It is only for a small privileged elite that immigration is a gravy train. When that train eventually hits the buffers and our economy collapses, as it inevitably will, that privileged elite will get on their yachts and sale away.

The next time a politician or commentator starts talking of the “great benefits of immigration” just remember what those benefits are and who is getting them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great article Sarah. If it hadn't been for white native anti- immigrant sentiments in the late 19th and early 20th century the US business elites would have turned the USA into Brazil long before now.