Charge every would-be migrant £30k to settle in Britain', says Nobel Prize-winning economist
Britain could slash its immigration levels by charging every would-be migrant £30,000 to settle in the country, a Nobel prize-winning economist has said.
Visas should be sold off at a high enough price so that only the most ‘suitable’ and motivated migrants move to the UK, Professor Gary Becker has suggested.
The scheme would raise over £600 million a year if 12,000 paid the fee, more than off-setting the cost of allowing in new migrants, he argued in a report to be published today by the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank.
Source: Daily Wail
They should also make sure Asylum is wholly funded by Charity who would pay the 30 Grand rather than taxpayers!
Pooling
57 minutes ago
12 comments:
Well done, what puzzles me is why they think that 12,000 x £30,000 = £600 million; my calculator says £360 million.
MW - do you have a nobel prize winning calculator? No. Thought not.
Mark, that shows you are an accountant, not an economist.
MW
Perhaps they are including the savings made by not housing,feeding, clothing, imprisoning and enforcing new 'Laws' on the indigenous taxpayers.
I know a girl from Colombia who is a pro single Mum.
For her this would still have been quite a good deal.
By coming here she does not have to work from the ages of I think 26 until she stops having children +6.
So far that is about 14 years.
Of course she would need the capital but if she can get it - not a very good deal for us.
The Left would never agree to this - penniless immigrants provide a nice left-voting bloc. Well motivated immigrants who can raise £30K would be less likely to vote Labour.......
This could be used and I suspect will be to finance seasteading and orbital space settlements.
A floating equatorial city of 100,000 people would likely cost well under £3 billion
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2008/03/petrol-from-sea-water.html
I'll skip the Nobel and accept a 10% finders fee from Abu Dhabi or Bigelow.
Bollox Mark.
This is equivalent to a tariff on the free movement of labour, effectively protectionism and anti-free trade. Henry George will be turning in his grave.
I'm going to cheerfully ignore all your comments as this was not my post :-)
Anon @ 1935
If we were in a Georgist society, we would have LVT and Citizen's Dividend. If the CD was £10,000 a year and immigrants couldn't claim it for the first five years, then that's effectively charging them £50,000 for the privilege of coming to work here, without any "tariff on the free movement of labour".
This is basically the 19th century "head tax" idea which was used in the US and Canada to try and curb Chinese immigration. Check Wikipedia for its history and unintended consequences.
Personally I prefer the solution that Bayard outlined above to the imposition of a fee, since the fee can be gotten round by "people smuggling" whereas the costs of living in a LVT/CD society without being eligible for CD are pretty heavy and unavoidable.
Henry G was actually an opponent of free immigration (or at least Chinese immigration). See his article on the topic, so I don't think that there is too much turning going on either.
B, D, I in turn agree with you.
Under proper Georgism, the net income of legal residents doubles, as do rents. That sets a pretty high bar for new arrivals (legal or otherwise) and so the problem sorts itself out (we can argue over how long somebody has to be here legally to qualify for the Citizen's Income, I am open minded on that).
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