Migrants Can Walk on Water and Turn Unemployment into Jobs By James Reed

     According to The Australian, July17, 2017, p. 1, demographer Peter McDonald has argued at the Economic and Social Outlook Conference that migrants are not taking jobs away from the Australian-born population.  Between 2011 and 2016, employment grew by 730,000 people, and 600,000 of this was migrants who came in the same period. The migrants, mainly young are not in the same labour market as the unemployed, because the unemployed are unskilled, but the migrants, mainly Asians are skilled.

     On the contrary, what this means is that positions that could have gone to an Australian-born unemployed, through retraining, will just go to a migrant. We should live in a country where Australian-born get the cream of the jobs, not the crumbs falling from the migrants’ tables. The Australian population is thus becoming deskilled, with migration being taken as a magic solution for the  capitalists to get short-term profits, at the expense of nation building. In other words, while McDonald may be from one perspective technically correct, his entire approach begs the question in favour of migration.

     We can put all of this to a test though. Let us replace academic economists and demographers with young Asians who will work for a fraction of a professorial salary.  Pass a new law, such that these academics’ super not paid by them, goes into a fund to help refugees and poor African people get clean drinking water.  If migration is the answer, then let’s go all the way and apply it to the universities, who now champion this ideology.  A professor gets up to $ 200,709 per annum, an utterly shocking waste of money for all academics outside of medicine and the other STEM fields.  Thinking like an economic rationalist, we could eliminate all of these positions and replace them with Asians who have higher IQs who will happily work for a fraction of the cost.  Australia would be much better off when they are gone. Economic rationalism demands it, so let’s do it!
     You academics love migration; time to put your money where your mouth is, literally.

 

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Thursday, 28 March 2024

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