From The Evening Standard (page 45):
Boris Johnson wants the rest of the country to "give London back its tax", but London already soaks up wealth from the rest of the country. The best-paid civil servants are based here; public sector workers receive London weighting; per capita spending on infrastructure is higher in London, and so on.
The biggest inwards transfer of all is because the financial services sector, which collects rent and interest from the rest of the country, is headquartered here. The value of all these payments to London far outweighs the payments going out.
This is quite clearly evidenced by the fact that London is the area least affected by the recession. As a result of all the internal migration to London, rents and house prices are on a rising trend even as they fall elsewhere. Higher rents in turn soak up most of the financial advantage of moving to London, so ultimately, the people who benefit most are those who own land and housing in London. It is from these people that Boris should be looking to claw back taxes, not the rest of the country.
Mark Wadsworth etc.
Forbidden Bible Verses — Exodus 21:12-21
1 hour ago
7 comments:
What he said
Good stuff.
Just one thing: internal migration to London is actually negative, i.e. more Brits move out of London than move into it. London gets bigger because it's where 1 in 3 immigrants end up living.
M, AKH, ta.
DS, let's not bicker over details. As a matter of fact, London has much the same population as a century ago, but take it from me, a disproportionate number of young people living and working there are from elsewhere in the UK. The people leaving again are the Baby Boomers who are trading in their two-bed flats for mansions in the M4 corridor and people who just can't hack it.
Excellent point and term coining on "Internal Migration"
Who cares if the migrants are from next door, next town, next county, next country, next continent.
The economic effects will be the same. General wages will fall, in proportion to rents and location values, due to the poorest paid workers competing the lowest wage further down. And the lowest wage determines all wages above it all the way up to the highly paid genuine earners.
But stopping immigration wont solve anything.
The words 'lead baloon' and 'go down like a' spring immediately to mind.
RS; "General wages will fall, in proportion to rents and location values, due to the poorest paid workers competing the lowest wage further down"
Not quite. Somebody worked out that average wages (in absolute terms) rise by 5% each time the population of a town doubles, the point is that rents will rise accordingly so that the people with easily transferable or replaceable skills are no better off in a large town (possibly a tad worse off) than in a small one. It's likely that very specialised workers end up a tad better off.
L, that's the general idea. I've given up the conciliatory approach.
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