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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   25123 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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There's an arctotherium essay on this: Mortmain Migration https://substack.com/home/post/p-215548598

Sure, there is the example of Pakistani migrants being brought in for labour in UK textile mills that you're bringing up... But it didn't work, UK textiles went downhill anyway. Bringing in the Mirpuris didn't make the UK richer or more productive, it didn't even save the industry it was supposed to save. The only way to get richer on a national level is to improve industrial organization or to mechanize.

There's no such thing as a labour market need, only an employer desire to reduce labour costs. If wages are high, that's not necessarily a bad thing for a country. It would help sustain the middle class.

I guess it depends on how one defines economic reasons.

I don’t disagree, I’m not saying the action was successful. Clearly the studies that exist on lifetime contribution show huge net losses for third world immigration. But that wasn’t the question when they were imported, or are imported, which was ‘we need cheap care workers’ or ‘we need cheap factory laborers’.

There's no such thing as a labour market need

To build on this, the term 'labour shortage' is basically an impossibility. Workers consume, thereby increasing demand for goods and services, which increases demand for labour. Filling labour shortages creates labour shortages. The term is basically just an excuse by politicians and business leaders who want to suppress wages in a particular sector (for the UK, the clear example is the massive influx of 'care workers' during the Boriswave).

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