You don’t think we’ve had enough immigration already then? Maybe you don’t see the problems from Portugal.
David
But do all immigrants help with paying off the national debt? I can’t imagine Abu Qatada helps – more the reverse I would guess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qatada
Deporting him would save money
Ian Bennett
Not necessarily immigration, surely; just some growth in population. (Actually, a growth in productive population, relative to parasitical.) A fertility rate of ~2.2 (depending on the debt to GDP ratio) and zero immigration would also suffice.
No, someone does not need to “pay the debt”. When govt liabilities (e.g. gilts) mature, it just replaces them with non-interest bearing liabilities, i.e. cash/reserves. Debit one account and credit another. Simples.
Furthermore, it should be obvious that after netting, govt liabilities are public wealth–if you really want to “pay the debt” you effectively want to destroy the private sector’s stock of net financial assets.
Serf
We could massively increase the productive population without any net immigration. Massively reduce the scope of government, fire all the surplus workers, don’t give any benefits to the work shy, and hey presto, the productive workforce has just jumped in size.
You don’t think we’ve had enough immigration already then? Maybe you don’t see the problems from Portugal.
But do all immigrants help with paying off the national debt? I can’t imagine Abu Qatada helps – more the reverse I would guess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qatada
Deporting him would save money
Not necessarily immigration, surely; just some growth in population. (Actually, a growth in productive population, relative to parasitical.) A fertility rate of ~2.2 (depending on the debt to GDP ratio) and zero immigration would also suffice.
As David points out, one needs the right sort of immigrants for this to work*.
Wealthy, innovative and productive migrants are fine. Dole scrounging welfare cases are not.
*Kindly note I do not subscribe to the BeanPea definition of “right”.
Then again, the same sort of argument could be applied to the native population.
Ooops! I think my thoughts are heading BeanPeawards.
No, someone does not need to “pay the debt”. When govt liabilities (e.g. gilts) mature, it just replaces them with non-interest bearing liabilities, i.e. cash/reserves. Debit one account and credit another. Simples.
Furthermore, it should be obvious that after netting, govt liabilities are public wealth–if you really want to “pay the debt” you effectively want to destroy the private sector’s stock of net financial assets.
We could massively increase the productive population without any net immigration. Massively reduce the scope of government, fire all the surplus workers, don’t give any benefits to the work shy, and hey presto, the productive workforce has just jumped in size.