Greg Boyles

It is entirely plausible given that the central doctrine of economic theory is that population growth is required to maintain a stable economy! Oh brother! Once again I don't have a problem with per capita immigration per se. But I do have a problem with the way it is being used in this debate, about population growth/immigration, to determine the sustainability of population growth/immigration. The reasoning has been that because the USA's population is larger, and therefore a relatively low per capita immigration, that 1 million immigrants plus per year is more sustainable than Australia's smaller immigration intake but larger per capita immigration duw to our smaller population. And once again the size of the existing population is not the only determinant of the size of the immigration intake that a country can sustain indefinitely. Water availability, rainfall, soil ferility and resource base etc are not considered in per capita immigration. "If it was wealthy".....per capita immigration gives no indication of the wealth of Naru. Therefore, as I have repeated time and time again, in and of itself per capita immigration is not a determinant of whether a nations immigration intake is sustainable. "net positive immigration are those with the resources to sustain them" People do not necessarily immigrate to a country based on the reality of its economic status or the reality of its ability to sustain them in the life style they are expecting. They are just as likely to immigrate based upon their perception of its economic status or their perception of its ability to sustain them in the lifestyle they are expecting. Perceptions and reality can be quite far apart. And like economists, immigrants also do not consider the ecological status of the country, and the long term effect for their decendants in their chosen country, of their immigration to that country along with a million or so others with similar misconcpetions. It is a common refrain from recent immigrants to Australia that we should let their extended families in to the country and allow our population to grow to 100 million because the centre of our continent is largely unoccupied. But many, but not all, aus citizens know better. Water availability is the major limiting factor. You can't sustain large regional population and urban centres without a reliable water source. And most of central Australia simply does not have a reliable water source. If Australia did attain a population of 100 million then we would be much like the many dysfuncational or failed states in Africa.

Sorry but perceive this tone in some of Captain Panic's posts. I don't feel that Captain has been considering my criticisms over the way he has been using per capita immigration, mereley dismissing them as invalid. Perhaps we both need to take bex and have a lie down before continuing the debate.

Well that reads rather like what I have been arguing for some time. As long as there is a surplus of of resources and everyone is able to get what they believe they are entitled to, then multiculturalism works well and brings signficant social benefits. But if you push immigration to far to the point where you start to get deprivation and income inequality then multiculuralism becomes the weak point. The society will tend to fracture along ethnic and religious lines. Could you please elaborate on this.

Well laid out reasons based upon their interpretations of contemporary economic theory that not all economists agree with, i.e. that population growth, through immigration or fertility, always leads to net economic gain. Therefore any hypothesis that population growth does not necessarily lead to net economic gain is flawed and not worth considering further. The same sorts of arguments used by the faithful to discount instances where science reveals their faith to be absurd. I also think that Captain Panic's assumptions about what you can reasonably assume from comparisons of per capita immigration is simply wrong. As he or some one elses stated, it is a kind of average. And we all know that averages are or can be of limited value in determining the real world state of the thing being measured. Average wage of a nation is fairly meaningless. But number of people in a series of income brackets gives you a far more useful indication of the economic well being of the populous. But even that can be misleading. John Howard probably looked at that sort of data when he made his proclamation that "Australians have never been better off" when he saw that the number of people in the higher wage brackets was greater than 10 years ago, or what ever, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that his unstated policy of population growth had improved the wages of a great many Australians. But to his surprise, I am sure, he found himself at the end of derision from many quarters. Perhaps to get an even more accurate picture you could include the average mortgage repayment and transport costs in each income bracket. Perhaps John Howard would not then have made his foolish proclamation that eventually lost him an election (out of touch with the electorate). Statistics are often 'spun' and misused. And I posit that Captain Panic is misusing per capita immigration by taking it out of context of other relevant information. The only thing that I perhaps admitted is that I had not fully enunciated the reasoning behind my hypothesis. I had assumed that you have some sort of formal quals due to the general tone of your criticism swansont. I have my doubts about Captain Panic, and one or two others, perhaps. We might disagree but I do feel that I can more calmly debate the issues with you. Less so with Captain Panic.

I don't mind being criticised at all. But I do take exception to individuals who claim scientific superiority over me if they are not formally qualified and practicing scientists. I very carefully and deliberately put it forward as an unproven hypothesis. I did not state that it is a proven fact that high immigration and large populations absolutely causes high debt and economic problems. I don't object to anyone without relevant qualifications puting forward hypotheses out side their area of expertise. Or to them respectfully questioning any of mine. But that has not been the tone of a few critics regarding my hypothesis has it? The tone has been that they are experts and that I am a fool. Therefore I would like them to disclose their formal academic quals so we might determine the validity of their proclaimed expertise.

OK Captain, let's get scientific about then. Population of USA: 320 million or there abouts Humanitarian intake: 1 million or there abouts (so I have heard quoted) Per capita intake: 1/320 *1000= 3.125 immigrants per 1000 head. Let's double the USA's population Population of USA: 640 million or there abouts Humanitarian intake: 2 million Per capita intake: 2/640 *1000= 3.125 immigrants per 1000 head. Let's multiply it by 10 Population of USA: 3,200 million Humanitarian intake: 10 million Per capita intake: 10/320 *1000= 3.125 immigrants per 1000 head. So according to your logic Captain the capacity of the USA to absorb immigrants has no limit as long as there are enough 1000 heads of population to support them. Now if you can't see that this 'logic' is absurd then you need to go back to school matey I REPEAT......... In and of itself, per capita immigration does not determine the sustainability or wisdom (environmentally or economically speaking) of a country's immigration intake. What about Naru with a population of about 10,000. Let's see.....if they had an immigration intake of 30 per year their per capita immigration would be 3. Ignoring births, in 30 years their population would grow to almost 11,000. Then they could take 33-24 immigrants per year and their per capita immigration would remain at about 3, lower than that of the USA. Is their enough economic activity on Naru to provide the additional 900 people with jobs? Is there enough land on which they can build a house? Is there enough funds to import the additional food they will eat or enough fertile land to grow it? Again, in and of itself per capita immigration is not deterministic of the sustainability of immigration.

If you don't have a science degree and are directly familiar with the scientific process then it is unreasonable to claim the status of gate keeper of scientific rigour. In that circumstance it would be more appropriate to word your doubt in these terms......."in my opinion your hypothesis is flawed" rather than "your hypothesis is invalid". For that matter, on the issue of national debt and immigration, who of my fiercest critics have an economic degree? Myself BSc University of Melbourne, Graduate Diploma in Computer Science Latrobe University. That's why I carefully put forward my opinion about a link between debt/economic problems and immigration as a hypothesis. Questioning immigration and population can be rather uncomfortable for anthropocentrists and the debates can get rather like the climate change debate......... Many 'experts' claiming to be the gate keepers of valid climate science but few of them with any qualifications what so ever.

Nor is it as simple as number of units of 1,000 head of population determining how many immigrants the country can successfully absorb. By this definition a population of billion can easily absorb hundreds of millions of immigrants (or births) with no detrimental economic, political or social consequences. Hell a population of a trillion can successfully absorb even more immigrants. When taken to its logical conclusions Captain, your argument is ludicrous. If you argument is valid then India and China would not have major problems with poverty.

Per capita immigration is only misleading in so far as the way you are trying to use it as evidence against my hypothesis. In and of itself it proves nothing either way and must be viewed in context with other relevant data. What's that saying........Lies, damned lies and statistics. Statistics in general is a very useful mathematical tool. But it can be, and often is, used decptively to push an agenda or argue against policy that is contrary to the interests or biases of the deceiver. Arizona's resource base, that can generate local economic activity, and ecolgical productive capacity etc is not necessarily the same size as other states and hence its capacity to absorb immigrants, without causing economic side effects, may be smaller. Similar to the difference between the USA and Australia. Australia has overwhelmingly poor soils and very sporadic rainfall and hence our ecological productive capacity (for food and wood production) is far lower than the USA overall. But we do have rather a lot of iron ore and coal etc. But water availability is the clincher and restricts all forms of economic activity. Therefore our capacity to absorb immigrants is lower than the USA despite our large unoccupied land area (which is mostly desert or semi arid)

Of my harshest critics, with all your talk of scientific rigour etc, which of you have formal science qualifications? I would just like to be assured that I am not facing off with a Bernard Salt type - self appointed and unqualified demographer.

Xenophobia is fear or mistrust of outsiders. It may be directed against 'groups'. But it can just as easily be directed at your own kind that are not members of your clan or family. Racism is extreme case of xenophobia that is exclusively directed at a different ethnic group to your own and based on the belief that the other ethnic group is biologically inferior. So you are either confused about the definitions of these terms or you are making a veiled accusation that I am a racist. I could undoubtedly demonstrate that you Capatain have xenophobic tendancies yourself, providing you are willing to answer some questions honestly. But then I have a feeling we would end up in a debate about the Oxford dictionary definition of xenophobia. Yeah well, Captain Panic has directly referred to me in this thread and directed some accusations at me. I think I have the right of reply. If Captain had made his point without directly referring to me with his view that I am 'xenophobic against groups', then I probably would have let it slide. As far as I am concerned I regard this comment as a veiled accusation of racism which I deny. Do you or the moderator really wish me to start a new thread for this purpose?

The problem is that those who subscribe to article of economic faith where population growth ALWAYS results in net national economic gains are unlikely to regard the reasoning behind my suggestion that mass immigration in the US is contributing to their debt and economic problems as sound.

OK fair enough. But a few more points. 1) Population density is really little better than per capita immigration as it assumes that the ecology and resource base of the two nations you are comparing are identical. 2) Populations are never evenly spread across all of a nation's land area and often concentrated in major urban centres which creates problems with cost of living pressures and reliance on government handouts etc. When you get land prices spiralling up it becomes very expensive to provide additional infrastructure since land buy outs are inevitably necessary. It very expensive to adequately police large urban centres compared to smaller ones. Crime in large urban centres tend to be much larger than in smaller ones. Is everyone familiar with the inverse square law of light intensity (I -> 1/r x r)? I put it to you that the total cost of 'managing' (policing, roads, water, electrcity,......) and the size of the urban centre has something like the following relationship C -> r x r) 3) We also need to consider the ecological nature of the nation, its resource base and average consumption of goods and government services. As I have said before, but not necessarily in here yet..........an over populated nation is not necessarily densely populated and a densely populated nation is not necessarily over populated. Perhaps we simply don't have an appropriate metric to apply to this in order to discern precisely the contribution high immigration makes to debt and economic problems. We certainly do not have a metric that accurately describes the economic prospects of the majority of citizens hence the criticism of politicians when they come out with comments like "Australian's have never been better off" by John Howard.

May I enquire as to the logical fallacy that I have perpetrated. A logical fallacy is based upon universally (or almost so) agreed facts such that all men are mortal.......I am a man therfore I am mortal. But where facts are not in universal agreement then you cannot use the concept of logical fallacy to trump the debate. And many aspects of economic theory are not universally agreed to, including among economists themselves, e.g. that population growth always brings net economic gains. Or that multiculturalism always brings social gains.

Once again and for the record, I do not stand against immigration or multiculturalism per se. I merely stand against economic imperatives entirely determining the magnitude of the annual immigration intake with no consideration of ecological sustainability and short term social stability. And the presumption that the populous should and will always accept large influxes of immigrants, that can and do cause short term social instability, that are deemed to be required by economists and the big business community.

Perhaps.....as long as politicians re prevented from continuing their agenda of population growth through immigration. And as long as previous immigration driven poplation growth does not push countries over the edge from which it will be difficult for them to recover fully.........as what may be happening in the USA and Britain. There is also another issue that complicates all this - social cohesion. Those populations that are highly multicultural tend to be poltically and socially unstable when economic conditions are poor with disparate ethnic, tribal and religious groups fighting over limited resources and wealth - Somalia, Rwanda, Britain, France, USA,....... Populations that are ethnically uniform tend to be more resilient to such shocks due to their higher level of social cohesion - Japan. Xenophobia is like a coin. On one side is the fear, mistrust or resentment of outsiders but on the other is strong affiliation with your own ethnic, tribal or family group. Without some level of xenophobia I postulate that cohesive societies would be impossible. 'Outsiders' can and do earn the trust of the local community and are integrated into it over time to form a cohesive hybrid community. The Italian and Greek communities are a demonstration of that in Australia. But the crucual issue here is time. It takes time for this to happen. Which brings us back to the issue of bringing in too many immigrants too fast. I am not only interested in the USA, or only Britain or only Australia. I am interested in the effect of high immigration on economic conditions and debt across the board. You asked me to provide supporting data that immigrants incur net economic costs and Mark O'Connor is one of them.

I suggest that you don't understand the difference between xenophobia and racism CP. Or between criticism and racism. I think I have already provided adequate evidence that criticism of the baviour or collective effect of foreign nationals living in Australia is NOT regarded as racism under the Race Discimination Act. It may be xenophobic but then there are no laws against xenophobia any where in the world! Unless you believe you know better than our law makers. And I think I have made it clear that any criticisms I have of foreign nationals living in Australia are not restricted to those with other than white skin. If Australia had to endure mass immigration of white americans then I would have some similar citicisms of the effect that that might have on Australian society, apart from the issue of ecological sustainability which is blind to skin colour. And I might point out that a great deal of contemporary economic theory that we are discussing in my thread is not always evidence based anyway. There mere fact the contemporary economics dictates that economies must perpetually grow in order to remain stable flies in the face of science that details our finite planet, resources and productive ecological capacity. Economics is a cross between faith and SOME scientific methods. So please don't be so crass as to presume that you don't need to provide evidence of your assertions but that I do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecenters87d3 http://eye-on-immigration.blogspot.com/2009/02/immigration-policy-and-health-care.html http://immigration.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000788

John it is far to early to say that climate change is definitely increasing the number of sever weather events and its is similarly far to early for you to conclude that climate change is having no effect at all. And as for town use of water reducing pollutants........ What about the paint residues, detergents, heavy metals, dioxins,....... that are added to the tap water before it runs into the sewerage system and then back into the river system further down stream????????? What about the excess fertiliser and animal manure that gets added to the mains water that then runs back into the rivers? Septic tanks? Forgotten about all those have you? Not all towns, citiies and regions have or can afford first class sewerage treatment systems. Many just do the primary treatment and then dump it in the local water ways.. And I believe that Sydney, or was it Brisbane, came very close to running out of water but was saved at the eleventh hour when the drought broke. A near miss is not evidence of incompetence John. Merely evidence of luck on the part of those who where the subject of the prediction.

I know exactly what swansont meant and I agree with him, regardless of his sarcasm. British have degraded this continent both in terms of ecology and biodiversity and in terms of our capitalist consumerism. I repeat. There is no sense in bringing in ever more immigrants, indocrinated with capitalist consumerism, and degrade our ecosystems and the prospects of aborigines still further. At least my motto has you full attention. Please refer to post #46 - supporting facts and figures for the USA other than per capita immigration. These figure are at odds with what the others are saying about per capita immigration figures not showing a correlation between high immigration and debt and economic problems.

Here are some interesting facts and figures regarding illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA: http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html Here is an interesting point. Immigration, legal or illegal, is lorded as increasing GDP and the tax base. But if wages decline then income taxes decline along with the tax base, while infrastructure and service costs for the government rise. If average income declines then average spending declines or personal debt increases while GST takes for the government decline.

I did not say that economic problems and national debt are caused entirely by immigrants and immigration. I said that economic problems and national debt are caused by over large populations and population growth, to which immigration is a major contributor in Australia, Britain and the USA. OK I will accept the label of xenophobic. But big deal. 99.9% of the human ace is xenophobic, including Indians and Chinese etc Xenophobia is ubiquitous in all societies and within ethnic groups. I will cite examples of the latter if I must, but surely at least some of you recognize it. Xenophobia is not only racially or culturally based. But my xenophobia is not only reserved for those with other than white skin. In some cases I have criticisms of immigrants with white skin also. I would agree with aborigines on that. In which case there is no sense in us continuing the downward trend by us inviting hordes more immigrants.

Then I suggest that you don't really understand what the definition of 'racism' really is! According to the Australia's Race Discrimination Act (Miller vs Wertheim) criticism of the attitude or behaviour of an ethnic or religious group is NOT regarded as 'racism' under the act. Criticism of the ethnicity, physical traits, intelligence or religion IS regarded as racism. I am criticising the behaviour of a range of nationalities regarding business ethics. Not all the former nationals of any given country will be of the same ethnicity. Therefore by law my comments are not racist! Again you are just rolling out the racist slur in an attempt to veto any questioning of immigration. And your slur does not intimidate me! If you are a non-Anglo and have a problem with my criticism of the business ethics of a range of non-Anglo immigrants, then prove me wrong. What ever. But my criticism of using per capita immigration still stands. You need more information than simply per capita immigration to properly examine my hypothesis.

Per capita immigration intake assumes that: 1) All 1,000 head of population entirely support the specified number of immigrants and that they are not drawing on social welfare themselves. 2) It assumes that each 1,000 head of population are equally productive in each country regardless of ecological and cultural restraints etc. I suggest we need to do the same with determining what role total immigration intake has played in countries building of national debt.

If they do get hired then it is on far lower wages than the locals in which case it is worth the tradies while to give them simple mundane jobs that don't require a great deal of communication. There is a bit of an issue with exploitation of immigrants who are rarely in a position to complain. Often the exploitation seems to be perpetrated by other fomer immigrants who are better english speakers and more savy about what they can get away with as far as breaching emplyment regulations. They pay them well below award wages or don't pay them at all for weeks on end, they don't pay them over time, they don't make their complusory employer supperannuation contributions and they sack them if they complain to the government regulators. Unacceptible degradation of Australian society and the price of letting to many immigants in too fast. These sorts of employment rorts were not an issue in the 80s and early 90s when the immigration intake was much smaller, of the order of 80,000 per year I think it was.