Cheap Migrant Labour Stifles Productivity By Richard Miller (London)
This item is relevant to both us here in the UK, and perhaps even more so to Australia, with its insane mass immigration program. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that the UK capitalists’ use of cheap migrant labour has lowered the productivity of the UK; it has meant that local capitalists have not made the needed investments in productivity-enhancing technology, such as AI and robotics. She said: “productivity in Japan is pretty high. We went to this fascinating place when we were there, which was a factory making robots, but it was robots making robots. It was really quite something.
‘But that use of technology is quite exciting in countries like Japan, but I think we do have a lot to learn from it because our productivity growth has been very poor in Britain.
‘And actually, rising population growth from immigration has sometimes exacerbated the slow take-up of technology in the UK economy because you could hire workers pretty cheaply rather than invest in the expensive, but in the end productivity-enhancing, technology.
‘So I think there are real opportunities ahead to get some of that productivity growth through the use of technology.’”
The answer is zero net migration for both the UK and Australia, and force the capitalists to do what capitalism should be doing if it works well: using innovation to make profits rather than passing on the massive social destruction of immigration.
“Labour admitted yesterday that reliance on cheap migrant workers has stifled the UK’s productivity.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves suggested British companies had been slower than those in other countries to increase the use of robots and new technology.
Instead, she said the availability of migrant labour had encouraged companies to hire cheaply rather than invest in expensive, productivity-enhancing technology.
She told a fringe event at the Labour conference in Liverpool: ‘What policymakers and business leaders said to me in Japan was, well, necessity is the mother of all invention, because they needed the robots to make up for the lack of population growth.
‘But it does mean that productivity in Japan is pretty high. We went to this fascinating place when we were there, which was a factory making robots, but it was robots making robots. It was really quite something.
‘But that use of technology is quite exciting in countries like Japan, but I think we do have a lot to learn from it because our productivity growth has been very poor in Britain.
‘And actually, rising population growth from immigration has sometimes exacerbated the slow take-up of technology in the UK economy because you could hire workers pretty cheaply rather than invest in the expensive, but in the end productivity-enhancing, technology.
‘So I think there are real opportunities ahead to get some of that productivity growth through the use of technology.’
Labour has long refused to cap the number of legal immigrants entering the country, and Sir Keir Starmer was a vocal advocate of free movement.
The Party’s attitude towards migration was also outlined by shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock, who told a fringe event that voters would lose ‘compassion’ for migrants if a future Labour government fails to control the borders.
He said: ‘The two core principles for us - control and compassion - are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing.
‘If you start to give the sense to the British people that you’re losing control of your asylum or immigration system, you will very rapidly see the electoral compassion being eroded. Because people want a well-ordered system that is processing claims in an efficient and timely manner.
‘Where people whose claims are not successful are removed from the country back to the safe country from which they came. And those whose claims are successful are rapidly granted asylum so that they can start to work and get on with their lives and contribute to our economy and society as so many refugees do and have done for many, many decades in our country.’
Ms Reeves also insisted the UK was in a ‘dangerous’ position because it had not responded to the shift caused by Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which has used government subsidies to boost green businesses.
Labour has plans for up to £28 billion a year of borrowing to fund a green prosperity plan and Ms Reeves said: ‘Around the world, you have got governments that are trying to seize these opportunities and the response from British ministers earlier this year when that inflation Reduction Act came in was “this is dangerous”.
‘I’ll tell you what is dangerous, it’s sitting on the sidelines while others are in a global race for the for the jobs and industries of the future.’
She said that with the US act, the ‘game has changed and we’re just not in the race at the moment, and I think that’s a massive missed opportunity’.
Mr Biden’s legislation was in part an attempt to bring green industry to the US and end reliance on China for key products.”
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