Knowing and Making

David Cameron claims in a speech today that the 2.2 million total of net immigrants from 1997-2009 is "the largest influx of people Britain has ever had". But I was unsure, so I thought I'd check the data. 15 minutes of searching and downloading some national statistics data proved him wrong. In fact, in the same length of period from 1946 to 1958, a net total of 2.8 million people arrived in Britain - none of whom could speak English, or had any assets, none of whom knew or followed our cultural norms, and none of whom got a job or started a business for at least a decade after arriving. Indeed the total arrivals in this period were 9.4 million, with 6.6 million people departing. And yet nobody at the time had any problem with them - we fed, educated and housed them, and indeed they were one of the major reasons for the creation of the NHS. Today, those who are still here (nearly all of them) make an overwhelming contribution to our economy, creating much of the ...

An article from Rob Atkinson at The Atlantic (which, by the way, has been producing some really good commentary recently). I wholly agree with him. About the crash in stockmarket prices (and retirement fund values etc): So did this wealth actually disappear? Of course not. My house is still here. The companies in which my mutual funds own stock are still there. And if the asset owners have lost, who benefits? Their children: ...if the collapse in stock prices means that more people now in their 50s and 60s (including me) have to work an extra few years before retiring, it is all to the good. It is grossly irresponsible for the baby boom generation to expect Generations X and Y to be saddled with our national debt, our trade debt, and our infrastructure debt -- and the retirement debt created by baby boomers enjoying long retirements supported by future tax increases on their children. Of course it might be easier for me, at the age of 33, to agree with this than for my parents. But if...