Various small cities in the US, including mine, run "serious games" to address eg. budgeting. Teams of citizens use the game format to make tradeoffs and get a deeper understanding of constraints and other realities. It's remarkably useful...and also tends to attract people with high civic interest and connections, many of whom are not very partisan and who also have a deep understanding of ground conditions. This ought to be encouraged.
Sounds interesting. Could you tell us more, such as where this is happening, so we could look into it?
One of our big problems in the US is that citizens feel so remote from the actual process of government. For instance, could there be citizens working side by side with their representatives or other experts? Otherwise they either just get to watch, or else pressure the government to do something.
How can we have a democratic society if people don't take a part in it, so they feel like they have skin in the game?
In my medium-sized suburban home town we had volunteer firehouses and ambulance service. Being of service was a badge of honor. Where are our badges of honor today?
Instead people compete for the biggest pickups and SUVS.
No matter what is done, the process will be messy. Like serving on a jury. But a well-done community effort could be ennobling, something we badly need. We can't survive if we become nothing but predators and consumers, worshipping unworthy things.
Can you say more about how a citizen's assembly actually gets to grips with the level of what-would-you-actually-do-and-how-would-that-actually-achieve-your-goal necessary to improve policymaking here, when the combination of the civil service and ministers is not?
Help out a layperson Mr. Davies or Mr. Harrowell. What is your objection to citizen's juries, or could you direct me toward some literature that is critical of them?
I think it's part of a broader shrinkage in people's understanding of how to make things happen, both in terms of retail politics and operating-the-machinery-of-government, and in wider society.
There's always been a tendency for that sort expertise to be undervalued and waved away. This is inevitable, and I don't think it's new. What's changed is that expertise has got much deeper and more siloed. To obtain a workable understanding of how any particular system works beyond the crudest black box level now requires half a career's worth of effort. Which renders their expertise hard to evaluate except by people some way down that path themselves. And thus much easier to undervalue and wave away.
In politics specifically, the hollowing out of journalism has been a part of the problem: outside of a few niches, there simply isn't the possibility of developing policy expertise that one can use to credibly challenge politicians, so all you can do is horse-race, he-said-she-said stuff, and leaks.
The variety of our systems has grown exponentially. The variety of our control systems has not.
«how a citizen's assembly actually gets to grips with the level of what-would-you-actually-do-and-how-would-that-actually-achieve-your-goal necessary to improve policymaking here, when the combination of the civil service and ministers is not?»
«how any particular system works beyond the crudest black box level now requires half a career's worth of effort. Which renders their expertise hard to evaluate»
Also I would be interested in knowing how a citizen's assembly or someone's expertise could decide whether a policy to achieve higher wages at the cost of lower profits or lower taxes thanks to lower spending on social insurance, etc. would be "right" or "wrong", "better" or "worse", ...
«The variety of our systems has grown exponentially. The variety of our control systems has not.»
Yet I have the simple minded view that for several decades the governments of "the west" have successfully ensured that some specific lobbies kept making lots more money at the expense of their lower classes, so it looks like *their* control systems have worked very well over long periods of time. POSIWID! If control systems were actually weak or then outcomes would be a lot random-ish varied than that.
I think that DD might have things precisely backwards, at least for the US Democratic Party at a national level. This party is overrun by overeducated politicians, who view policy as much more engaging than electoral politics. These people make fine staffers, but often poor politicians. Many of them have no qualitative concept of effective electoral politics, and too much respect for numbers. They are thus over-reliant on polls. But they are all-too-conversant on policy.
Interestingly, British politicians often are pretty good at electoral politics, it's just that these days this means "being active in the community" and acting as the complaints mechanism of last resort for public (or even private!) services which are failing their constituents. Since letters on House of Commons-headed paper are much more likely to be acted upon than complaints from regular members of the public, they are much sought-after, and an MP who provides this service is likely to be popular locally.
It just doesn't have much to do with the *other* things that only MPs can do: holding the government directly to account via committees, and passing legislation. Without doubt, some MPs do a good job on these. But many seem to lack either the time or the inclination, and so - in addition to outsourcing their understanding of the general public to pollsters - outsource their understanding of the government's actions to newspapers and of the legislative process to think-tanks.
«British politicians often are pretty good at electoral politics, it's just that these days this means "being active in the community" and acting as the complaints mechanism of last resort for public (or even private!) services which are failing their constituents.»
That's curious because the declared electoral theory and the clear practice of all the main english parties (New Labour, Conservatives, LibDems, Reform UK) is to pursue the vote of the median voters or more precisely of affluent property-owning "Middle England" voters and that is achieved by delivering to them large increases in property prices and rents entirely redistributed from the lower classes, plus ideally giving them lower taxes or at least lower tax increases by cutting the social services used by the lower classes (as Starmer and Reeves are currently keen to be seen doing).
New Labour: «Party sees identifying 50-year-old male home-owners as key to electoral success this archetypical voter as male, 50 years old, without a university degree but with a decent job in the private sector and, crucially, a homeowner with a mortgage.»
«“Hopefully we will get a little housing boom and everyone will be happy as property values go up,” George Osborne is said to have quipped at a Cabinet meeting earlier this year.»
«for the US Democratic Party at a national level. This party is overrun by overeducated politicians, who view policy as much more engaging than electoral politics. These people make fine staffers, but often poor politicians. Many of them have no qualitative concept of effective electoral politics, and too much respect for numbers.»
What is also interesting is that their passion for policy disregarding politics results in policies that always mean that the same political lobbies make more money. Must be a random and unintentional side-effect of being “overeducated” and of “too much respect for numbers”.
«issues that are universally recognised to be complex and multi-layered questions affecting all sorts of areas of society»
This is a revelation from the author of "Lying for money": I had the simplistic and naive impression that most voters, sponsors and politicians instead of thinking of politics as to which situations and policies make more money for themselves is something that makes them ponder “complex and multi-layered questions affecting all sorts of areas of society”.
«You’d have the same approach of providing a budget for technical advice and explaining the practical issues, and the same output of a considered consensus report for the ministerial decision makers to engage with. [...] if we did it a few times a year we might get better decision making in general.»
Now I understand that my overly simple-minded guess that politics and policy are mostly about conflicts of interests and outcomes in which winners win and losers lose instead it is all about getting “better decision making in general”, without any question as to "better for whom?".
I can now easily imagine assemblies of landlords and tenants, Starbucks executives and baristas, incumbent owners and first time buyers, PPI investors and taxpayers, etc. earnestly debating “complex and multi-layered questions” to produce some “considered consensus report for the ministerial decision makers to engage with”. I guess I may be learning to think like a "centrist"!
But I am still too simple minded so struggling to realize that several decades in which politics and policy have consistently made a lot of money for the same vested interests at the expense of many others were the result of a lack of “better decision making in general” due to focus groups “putting a potentially quite complicated issue through a really tiny information filter”.
My counterpoint would be that people often act for the benefit of others. Think of the rescuers at the Texas flood zone. Think volunteer firefighters (extremely dangerous job), mothers who raise children for no $$$$ at all. Even now, in these corrupt, cynical times!
There is a part in here about how the people of Boston came to the aid of their commercial rival, Halifax, NS, after a catastrophic explosion there. Makes you wonder if we have become morally weaker as our ways of life have gotten easier and more comfortable.
People typically act mostly for their own benefit, and some, act almost exclusively for their own benefit, BUT many people act nobly when called upon to.
I was in New York City the evening of 9-10-2001, and when I got back there a week later it was a different city. People would do anything to help, including the people who risked their own health (or more) to dig out the rubble. And prior to responding in the usual manner, they put up the absolutely stunning "Towers of Light" shining into the sky, showing what we can be at our best, not at our BEAST.
Sometimes cynicism can be mistaken for realism. It is real easy to do so right now, understandably. The ones who hold onto true realism the longest will prevail in the end. I would bet money.
Wonder what kind of post mortem reckoning is going on in Texas re flood alert systems and their cost...why people live so near such rivers...etc etc. How do people rationalize about these situations? What stories do we tell ourselves? Sounds like "normalization of deviance," as in: "Seems OK to fly these helicopter near the airport in DC; never had an accident..."
People live in Flood Basins for the same reason why people live in Tornado Belt, Wildfire Country, Sinkhole Plains, Mudslide Mountains, Hurricane Alley, Dustbowl Prairie, Toxic Dumps, etc. and it is land scamming in most cases:
* Locals know that certain areas are likely to have disasters every now and then so land in those areas is cheap to buy from the locals.
* Then the disaster area is developed and the subdivisions sold to out-of-area suckers who do not realize that every 10-20-30 a disaster strikes.
* Some of the buyers actually know that is likely to happen, they just hope to flip it to greater fools before the disaster strikes.
In a minority of cases instead the residents are too poor to move out of the disaster areas as they cannot afford to buy property in a safer area; sometimes these are the descendants of suckers, sometimes the descendants of people who moved into that area before it became disaster prone.
A quote that show how the scamming is entirely deliberate as in England the government charts high-risk flood basins and they still are popular with real-estate developers as there is a lot of money to be made:
“Richard Dawson, professor of earth systems engineering at Newcastle University and a member of the climate change adaptation committee, told the Guardian that every year new homes were being built in high flood risk areas at a constant rate. In 2020-21 and 2021-22, 7% of new properties were built on the highest-risk flood plain, known as zone 3, according to the Climate Change Committee’s most recent progress report.”
"But I am still too simple minded so struggling to realize that several decades in which politics and policy have consistently made a lot of money for the same vested interests at the expense of many others"
«My counterpoint would be that people often act for the benefit of others.»
Indeed on a personal level some people are driven by sentimentality or a sense of duty and do "act for the benefit of others" in some situations.
Then for several decades politics and policy have been largely shaped by altruism for improving the incomes and wealth of incumbent property and business owners (and incidentally of foreign workers whether immigrating or offshore) paid for by the lower classes, amounting to a transfer of a significant chunk of GDP and an even bigger chunk of wealth.
But this altruism has been driven not by those lower classes but by the incumbent property and business owners (and their "sponsored" politicians and intellectuals) so it does not seem to me to me that politics and policy have been much influenced by the desire to "act for the benefit of others".
Note: K-street which is very successful at influencing politics and policy is not a famous tool of altruistic corporations and business and property owners.
Can't really comment on the body of the post but; on return from a decade of living in Russia speaking International English and Russian I found my vocabulary had shrunk considerably. It took a while to return to colloquial English (leavened with swearing in Russian). I too was pointed to a research article covering the point which I can no longer find
Greetings from the IMISCOE conference in Paris, where a large group of researchers on immigration are frustrated that their hope that politicians and policy-makers might take account of decades of academic research on the realities of migration seems doomed to disappointment. Of course it isn't the only policy area where this is true, but politicians endlessly and competitively chase public "concern" about immigration as reflected in opinion polls, even though this concern is largely based on false beliefs. Equally, "serious" commentators and interviewers and the politicians they engage with simply proceed on the basis of a totally debunked but completely resilient picture of reality that no amount of academic investigation can put a dent in.
«a large group of researchers on immigration are frustrated that their hope that politicians and policy-makers might take account of decades of academic research on the realities of migration seems doomed to disappointment. [...] politicians endlessly and competitively chase public "concern" about immigration as reflected in opinion polls, even though this concern is largely based on false beliefs.»
Indeed it has been amply proven that the population surge thanks to mass immigration without expansions of capacity results in lower inflation of costs and robustly higher growth of incomes (specifically lower wage costs and higher property and business incomes).
Therefore most politicians in power throughout the UK and the EU have been determined to achieve large increases in immigration to address the "legitimate concerns" of middle-class voters about the high cost of cleaners, delivery drivers, nurses, carers, plumbers, etc. and the slow growth of house prices and rents.
“Last year 59% of new registrations in England had been trained by other countries, writes Prof Rachel Jenkins [...] The number of medical student training places in the UK needs to double. This should not be as expensive to Treasury as feared”
“He said the economic benefits of unprecedentedly large-scale 2004-07 free movement were seen as ‘axiomatic’ to employers, the economy and public finances. He categorised as ‘the one serious high-level discussion before the decision’ a meeting between Blair and King where Rogers took the minutes. ‘King pressed the case to open the labour market without transition on the grounds that it would help lower wage growth and inflation, address supply bottle necks in a fast-growing pre-financial crisis economy, and help keep interest rates low. He made the same case publicly in subsequent speeches, when the numbers arriving were vastly higher than had been forecast.’ Rogers underlined the changes in perception over the last 19 years. ‘This was an immigration and free movement policy driven by the desire to fuel UK growth, and by the belief that we were stealing a march on EU competitors and further consolidating the advantages of the UK model over that of a sclerotic Germany, which we were all characterising still in 2004 as the decade-long sick man of Europe.’
Various small cities in the US, including mine, run "serious games" to address eg. budgeting. Teams of citizens use the game format to make tradeoffs and get a deeper understanding of constraints and other realities. It's remarkably useful...and also tends to attract people with high civic interest and connections, many of whom are not very partisan and who also have a deep understanding of ground conditions. This ought to be encouraged.
Sounds interesting. Could you tell us more, such as where this is happening, so we could look into it?
One of our big problems in the US is that citizens feel so remote from the actual process of government. For instance, could there be citizens working side by side with their representatives or other experts? Otherwise they either just get to watch, or else pressure the government to do something.
How can we have a democratic society if people don't take a part in it, so they feel like they have skin in the game?
In my medium-sized suburban home town we had volunteer firehouses and ambulance service. Being of service was a badge of honor. Where are our badges of honor today?
Instead people compete for the biggest pickups and SUVS.
No matter what is done, the process will be messy. Like serving on a jury. But a well-done community effort could be ennobling, something we badly need. We can't survive if we become nothing but predators and consumers, worshipping unworthy things.
I think they’re referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting which I know they do in NYC to some degree
Dan, I thought you were clean! Not another one falling for citizens' juries!
but I like them for an idiosyncratic and annoying reason!
Can you say more about how a citizen's assembly actually gets to grips with the level of what-would-you-actually-do-and-how-would-that-actually-achieve-your-goal necessary to improve policymaking here, when the combination of the civil service and ministers is not?
Help out a layperson Mr. Davies or Mr. Harrowell. What is your objection to citizen's juries, or could you direct me toward some literature that is critical of them?
Honestly it's just that they're such a think-tank cliché and in any case just a rebranded focus group.
An actual jury is very different in that it wields actual power and is by design unaccountable or in other words sovereign.
I think it's part of a broader shrinkage in people's understanding of how to make things happen, both in terms of retail politics and operating-the-machinery-of-government, and in wider society.
There's always been a tendency for that sort expertise to be undervalued and waved away. This is inevitable, and I don't think it's new. What's changed is that expertise has got much deeper and more siloed. To obtain a workable understanding of how any particular system works beyond the crudest black box level now requires half a career's worth of effort. Which renders their expertise hard to evaluate except by people some way down that path themselves. And thus much easier to undervalue and wave away.
In politics specifically, the hollowing out of journalism has been a part of the problem: outside of a few niches, there simply isn't the possibility of developing policy expertise that one can use to credibly challenge politicians, so all you can do is horse-race, he-said-she-said stuff, and leaks.
The variety of our systems has grown exponentially. The variety of our control systems has not.
«how a citizen's assembly actually gets to grips with the level of what-would-you-actually-do-and-how-would-that-actually-achieve-your-goal necessary to improve policymaking here, when the combination of the civil service and ministers is not?»
«how any particular system works beyond the crudest black box level now requires half a career's worth of effort. Which renders their expertise hard to evaluate»
Also I would be interested in knowing how a citizen's assembly or someone's expertise could decide whether a policy to achieve higher wages at the cost of lower profits or lower taxes thanks to lower spending on social insurance, etc. would be "right" or "wrong", "better" or "worse", ...
«The variety of our systems has grown exponentially. The variety of our control systems has not.»
Yet I have the simple minded view that for several decades the governments of "the west" have successfully ensured that some specific lobbies kept making lots more money at the expense of their lower classes, so it looks like *their* control systems have worked very well over long periods of time. POSIWID! If control systems were actually weak or then outcomes would be a lot random-ish varied than that.
I think that DD might have things precisely backwards, at least for the US Democratic Party at a national level. This party is overrun by overeducated politicians, who view policy as much more engaging than electoral politics. These people make fine staffers, but often poor politicians. Many of them have no qualitative concept of effective electoral politics, and too much respect for numbers. They are thus over-reliant on polls. But they are all-too-conversant on policy.
Interestingly, British politicians often are pretty good at electoral politics, it's just that these days this means "being active in the community" and acting as the complaints mechanism of last resort for public (or even private!) services which are failing their constituents. Since letters on House of Commons-headed paper are much more likely to be acted upon than complaints from regular members of the public, they are much sought-after, and an MP who provides this service is likely to be popular locally.
It just doesn't have much to do with the *other* things that only MPs can do: holding the government directly to account via committees, and passing legislation. Without doubt, some MPs do a good job on these. But many seem to lack either the time or the inclination, and so - in addition to outsourcing their understanding of the general public to pollsters - outsource their understanding of the government's actions to newspapers and of the legislative process to think-tanks.
«British politicians often are pretty good at electoral politics, it's just that these days this means "being active in the community" and acting as the complaints mechanism of last resort for public (or even private!) services which are failing their constituents.»
That's curious because the declared electoral theory and the clear practice of all the main english parties (New Labour, Conservatives, LibDems, Reform UK) is to pursue the vote of the median voters or more precisely of affluent property-owning "Middle England" voters and that is achieved by delivering to them large increases in property prices and rents entirely redistributed from the lower classes, plus ideally giving them lower taxes or at least lower tax increases by cutting the social services used by the lower classes (as Starmer and Reeves are currently keen to be seen doing).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/22/labour-targets-new-swing-voter-middle-aged-mortgage-man
New Labour: «Party sees identifying 50-year-old male home-owners as key to electoral success this archetypical voter as male, 50 years old, without a university degree but with a decent job in the private sector and, crucially, a homeowner with a mortgage.»
http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/inside-westminster-george-osborne-s-housing-boom-will-echo-into-the-future-8869835.html
«“Hopefully we will get a little housing boom and everyone will be happy as property values go up,” George Osborne is said to have quipped at a Cabinet meeting earlier this year.»
Agreed. Wasn't it William Rees - Mogg, 60 odd years ago who pointed out that a successful MP was just a glorified local councillor
«for the US Democratic Party at a national level. This party is overrun by overeducated politicians, who view policy as much more engaging than electoral politics. These people make fine staffers, but often poor politicians. Many of them have no qualitative concept of effective electoral politics, and too much respect for numbers.»
What is also interesting is that their passion for policy disregarding politics results in policies that always mean that the same political lobbies make more money. Must be a random and unintentional side-effect of being “overeducated” and of “too much respect for numbers”.
«issues that are universally recognised to be complex and multi-layered questions affecting all sorts of areas of society»
This is a revelation from the author of "Lying for money": I had the simplistic and naive impression that most voters, sponsors and politicians instead of thinking of politics as to which situations and policies make more money for themselves is something that makes them ponder “complex and multi-layered questions affecting all sorts of areas of society”.
«You’d have the same approach of providing a budget for technical advice and explaining the practical issues, and the same output of a considered consensus report for the ministerial decision makers to engage with. [...] if we did it a few times a year we might get better decision making in general.»
Now I understand that my overly simple-minded guess that politics and policy are mostly about conflicts of interests and outcomes in which winners win and losers lose instead it is all about getting “better decision making in general”, without any question as to "better for whom?".
I can now easily imagine assemblies of landlords and tenants, Starbucks executives and baristas, incumbent owners and first time buyers, PPI investors and taxpayers, etc. earnestly debating “complex and multi-layered questions” to produce some “considered consensus report for the ministerial decision makers to engage with”. I guess I may be learning to think like a "centrist"!
But I am still too simple minded so struggling to realize that several decades in which politics and policy have consistently made a lot of money for the same vested interests at the expense of many others were the result of a lack of “better decision making in general” due to focus groups “putting a potentially quite complicated issue through a really tiny information filter”.
:-)
Well, if you put it like that! :-)
My counterpoint would be that people often act for the benefit of others. Think of the rescuers at the Texas flood zone. Think volunteer firefighters (extremely dangerous job), mothers who raise children for no $$$$ at all. Even now, in these corrupt, cynical times!
Have a go at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell
There is a part in here about how the people of Boston came to the aid of their commercial rival, Halifax, NS, after a catastrophic explosion there. Makes you wonder if we have become morally weaker as our ways of life have gotten easier and more comfortable.
People typically act mostly for their own benefit, and some, act almost exclusively for their own benefit, BUT many people act nobly when called upon to.
This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H1JHVI7kCo&t=922s
I was in New York City the evening of 9-10-2001, and when I got back there a week later it was a different city. People would do anything to help, including the people who risked their own health (or more) to dig out the rubble. And prior to responding in the usual manner, they put up the absolutely stunning "Towers of Light" shining into the sky, showing what we can be at our best, not at our BEAST.
Sometimes cynicism can be mistaken for realism. It is real easy to do so right now, understandably. The ones who hold onto true realism the longest will prevail in the end. I would bet money.
Wonder what kind of post mortem reckoning is going on in Texas re flood alert systems and their cost...why people live so near such rivers...etc etc. How do people rationalize about these situations? What stories do we tell ourselves? Sounds like "normalization of deviance," as in: "Seems OK to fly these helicopter near the airport in DC; never had an accident..."
BANG!
«why people live so near such rivers»
People live in Flood Basins for the same reason why people live in Tornado Belt, Wildfire Country, Sinkhole Plains, Mudslide Mountains, Hurricane Alley, Dustbowl Prairie, Toxic Dumps, etc. and it is land scamming in most cases:
* Locals know that certain areas are likely to have disasters every now and then so land in those areas is cheap to buy from the locals.
* Then the disaster area is developed and the subdivisions sold to out-of-area suckers who do not realize that every 10-20-30 a disaster strikes.
* Some of the buyers actually know that is likely to happen, they just hope to flip it to greater fools before the disaster strikes.
In a minority of cases instead the residents are too poor to move out of the disaster areas as they cannot afford to buy property in a safer area; sometimes these are the descendants of suckers, sometimes the descendants of people who moved into that area before it became disaster prone.
A quote that show how the scamming is entirely deliberate as in England the government charts high-risk flood basins and they still are popular with real-estate developers as there is a lot of money to be made:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/08/more-than-100000-homes-in-england-could-be-built-in-highest-risk-flood-zones$
“Richard Dawson, professor of earth systems engineering at Newcastle University and a member of the climate change adaptation committee, told the Guardian that every year new homes were being built in high flood risk areas at a constant rate. In 2020-21 and 2021-22, 7% of new properties were built on the highest-risk flood plain, known as zone 3, according to the Climate Change Committee’s most recent progress report.”
"But I am still too simple minded so struggling to realize that several decades in which politics and policy have consistently made a lot of money for the same vested interests at the expense of many others"
«My counterpoint would be that people often act for the benefit of others.»
Indeed on a personal level some people are driven by sentimentality or a sense of duty and do "act for the benefit of others" in some situations.
Then for several decades politics and policy have been largely shaped by altruism for improving the incomes and wealth of incumbent property and business owners (and incidentally of foreign workers whether immigrating or offshore) paid for by the lower classes, amounting to a transfer of a significant chunk of GDP and an even bigger chunk of wealth.
But this altruism has been driven not by those lower classes but by the incumbent property and business owners (and their "sponsored" politicians and intellectuals) so it does not seem to me to me that politics and policy have been much influenced by the desire to "act for the benefit of others".
Note: K-street which is very successful at influencing politics and policy is not a famous tool of altruistic corporations and business and property owners.
Can't really comment on the body of the post but; on return from a decade of living in Russia speaking International English and Russian I found my vocabulary had shrunk considerably. It took a while to return to colloquial English (leavened with swearing in Russian). I too was pointed to a research article covering the point which I can no longer find
Greetings from the IMISCOE conference in Paris, where a large group of researchers on immigration are frustrated that their hope that politicians and policy-makers might take account of decades of academic research on the realities of migration seems doomed to disappointment. Of course it isn't the only policy area where this is true, but politicians endlessly and competitively chase public "concern" about immigration as reflected in opinion polls, even though this concern is largely based on false beliefs. Equally, "serious" commentators and interviewers and the politicians they engage with simply proceed on the basis of a totally debunked but completely resilient picture of reality that no amount of academic investigation can put a dent in.
«a large group of researchers on immigration are frustrated that their hope that politicians and policy-makers might take account of decades of academic research on the realities of migration seems doomed to disappointment. [...] politicians endlessly and competitively chase public "concern" about immigration as reflected in opinion polls, even though this concern is largely based on false beliefs.»
Indeed it has been amply proven that the population surge thanks to mass immigration without expansions of capacity results in lower inflation of costs and robustly higher growth of incomes (specifically lower wage costs and higher property and business incomes).
Therefore most politicians in power throughout the UK and the EU have been determined to achieve large increases in immigration to address the "legitimate concerns" of middle-class voters about the high cost of cleaners, delivery drivers, nurses, carers, plumbers, etc. and the slow growth of house prices and rents.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/21/bring-back-boris
“On Treasury spreadsheets, immigrants go in one end and gdp comes out the other.”
T. Wrigley, "Energy and the english industrial revolution" (2010)
“However, when population growth exceeded 0.5 per cent annually, real wages plummeted”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/immigration/story/0,,1589275,00.html
“43.5% of nurses recruited by the NHS since 1999 come from outside the UK”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/09/britain-needs-to-double-the-number-of-doctors-it-trains
“Last year 59% of new registrations in England had been trained by other countries, writes Prof Rachel Jenkins [...] The number of medical student training places in the UK needs to double. This should not be as expensive to Treasury as feared”
https://www.omfif.org/2017/11/lawson-king-role-in-brexit/
“He said the economic benefits of unprecedentedly large-scale 2004-07 free movement were seen as ‘axiomatic’ to employers, the economy and public finances. He categorised as ‘the one serious high-level discussion before the decision’ a meeting between Blair and King where Rogers took the minutes. ‘King pressed the case to open the labour market without transition on the grounds that it would help lower wage growth and inflation, address supply bottle necks in a fast-growing pre-financial crisis economy, and help keep interest rates low. He made the same case publicly in subsequent speeches, when the numbers arriving were vastly higher than had been forecast.’ Rogers underlined the changes in perception over the last 19 years. ‘This was an immigration and free movement policy driven by the desire to fuel UK growth, and by the belief that we were stealing a march on EU competitors and further consolidating the advantages of the UK model over that of a sclerotic Germany, which we were all characterising still in 2004 as the decade-long sick man of Europe.’