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Plasmon comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: David_Gerard 26 July 2014 11:26AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 27 July 2014 01:38:54AM 7 points [-]

Just wondering, why not do it the other way round? Make the immigrants pay higher taxes. (Only the first generation; because their children are already born in this country.) For the immigrants, it is presumably still a big improvement over living in their country of origin. For the local people, it removes the "but we would have to pay higher taxes" argument.

Comment author: Plasmon 27 July 2014 12:37:34PM 5 points [-]
Comment author: Jiro 28 July 2014 04:30:43AM 5 points [-]

The biggest problem with the headline is that it assumes "immigrants" are a homogenous group. There could be some groups that are good for the country and some which are not, in which case you could still justify keeping the second group out. If you read the article it even says "However the report highlights that not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution to the UK and in some cases migrants can represent a burden for public finances."

Also, this doesn't count losses in utility that happen to locals because of immigrants but don't involve collecting benefits, such as increases in crime rates or unemployment rates.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 27 July 2014 02:34:43PM 1 point [-]

That's quite interesting, and does refute a lot of the people who argue against all immigration. But the UK does have some forms of boarder control.