This morning the British Chancellor George Osborne announced that every British household would be £4,300 “worse off” if the country leaves the European Union on June 23rd –– by 2030.
His figures, part of a ‘Project Fear’ strategy supported by tax payer funded civil servants, amount to just 21 pence per hour, per Briton, in exchange for our national sovereignty and border control back. It’s a figure that – even if true – many Brits would be happy to pay.
There are 26.7 million households in Britain, constituted of 2.3 people on average. The Treasury figure of £4,300 per year per household is therefore equivalent to around 21p per hour, per person.
The figures are skewed by the fact that Mr. Osborne’s analysis fails to take into account that wages in the UK have stagnated because of Britain’s membership of the European Union. Even Britain’s central bank, the Bank of England, has admitted that the high level of immigration that Britain is currently experiencing does in fact lead to lower wages, with those hurt most by the policy being on the semi-skilled or unskilled end of the country’s workforce: almost 1 in 4 Britons.
And Britain’s population is set to grow by a further 7.2 million by 2030 – with a remarkable 83 per cent of this coming from immigration.
In fact today’s Treasury document admits: “no additional effect from net migration has been assumed in the modelling” – meaning that civil servants are wilfully ignoring the effect of immigration on the figures they have stated today.
Without membership of the EU, Britain could reduce its immigration burden – which is now known to place enormous strain on national infrastructure, schools, housing, and indeed the country’s National Health Service (NHS). The increase in the cost of the NHS, the push on house prices, and the fact that the government is increasing our national debt by £5,170 per second in order to keep up with this demand renders the government’s arguments today moot.
The Bank of England concluded in a report entitled ‘The impact of immigration on occupational wages: evidence from Britain’:
This paper asks whether immigration has any impact on wages. It answers this question by considering the variation of wages and immigration across regions, occupations, and time. Occupations turn out to be a relatively important dimension. Once the occupational breakdown is incorporated into a regional analysis of immigration, the immigrant-native ratio has a significant small impact on the average occupational wage rates of that region. Closer examination reveals that the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay. Where immigrants come from — EU or non-EU — appears to have no impact on our economy wide results; with the impact within the semi/unskilled services sector being small. These findings accord well with intuition and anecdotal evidence, but do not seem to have been recorded previously in the empirical literature.
“Put simply: over many years, are you better off or worse off if we leave the EU? The answer is: Britain world be worse off, permanently so,” Mr. Osborne insists.
But even the worst case scenario, as pushed by HM Treasury, is not compelling evidence when broken down.
Indeed a report by the New World Wealth group says the average UK citizen could be $30,000 (£21,000) better off by 2020 if Britain voted to leave the EU.
The wealth intelligence group estimated that the average wealth per person would rise from $147,000 to $180,000 by 2020 if a Brexit went ahead.
NWW’s founder and head of research Andrew Amolis explained: “High immigration levels bring down average wages due to demand and supply dynamic, which in turn brings down average wealth per person. Uncontrolled immigration can also put pressure on healthcare and social security systems.”
“Over the longer term, a Brexit will result in greater ties with former English speaking colonies such as Canada, USA, Australia, India and New Zealand, all of which have much stronger economies than EU countries. The UK is the only English speaking country in the region, which is a major advantage when dealing with these countries,” he said.
The report makes the direct link: Australia’s restrictive immigration policy has led to the average wealth per person rising by 250 per cent from $59,000 in 2000 to $204,000 in 2015. Over the same period, the average UK person’s wealth has gone up by only 58 per cent from $93,000 in 2000 to $147,000 in 2015.
“It is our view that a Brexit will benefit individual wealth creation in the UK,” Amolis said.
“Even if the government’s calculations are correct – which they are not – many would argue this is a ‘price’ worth paying”, Andy Wigmore of the Leave.EU campaign told Breitbart London today.
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