Canuckistani

What I took from your previous comment, is that it is the economic activity brought about by immigration that brings prosperity. So surely it would make sense to subsidize the settlement of people up north, whether immigrants or native, since the govt would get it back in increased tax revenues. So we should be bringing in many more immigrants than we are right now. The fact that there are no jobs up north shouldn't worry us, since you seem to be saying that immigrants generate more than one job per immigrant.

By that measure we could just settle immigrants up north and we'd be just as well off, since all this building would go on up there too. And there's way more room up there - we could double or triple our immigration and have an even higher standard of living.

If you divide that growth among more people, nobody has a different standard of life, possibly a lower one. If you are filling the country with low wage earners who take more in govt services than they pay in taxes, nobody can pay less taxes. It's just economic churning for the sake of churning. Europe took off economically after the black plague killed off a quarter of it's population. No more periodic famines, labor became valuable and higher paid, innovation flourished. Same with current regions that experience famines - too many people trying to make a living off land that just won't support that population density. As for your last paragraph, that's exactly the problem. We have economies based on grow or die. Everybody recognizes that there are limits to growth, that the more people we have on the planet the sooner we will run into those limits. Yet everybody moans about the coming demographic drop off, and sets their hair on fire because population growth may come to an end at some point. We'd better find a way to deal with that before we're forced to deal with it. Same applies to Canada. If we could generate growth in the remote regions of the country, I couldn't really argue against high immigration. (Except from an ecological viewpoint). Be we don't - we stuff the immigrants into the same three regions..

I have to back up the flight to suburbia? I live in Vancouver, nobody here would ask me to back up that statement, they'd would just accept it as given. House prices in Vancouver are insane, so people move further and further out making for a longer commute. Same is true in Toronto. As for our economic growth slipping, I can't find a link right now, but it has been periodically reported in the papers. After the crash I believe we were number one for a while, but that's long over. And again, economic growth doesn't mean higher incomes for the average person. You make a good point, that immigration hasn't turned Canada into some sort of hellhole. I'm not claiming it has, but I am claiming that a reduction in immigration and more focus on training Canadians for the jobs we need filled will make us a better place to live. To say that immigration hasn't destroyed the country, so we should keep it high, when I just don't see the cost benefit ratio being in our favor, I don't get that.

The game plan is to make government collapse under its own weight by reducing tax revenue but not spending. They're hoping that all the Joe the Plumbers out there will then support gutting the welfare state. They've been more successful in this in the US, there's still a lot of resistance to this in Canada. We'll see in the longer term whether the middle class here is going to drink the Kool-Ade and cause it's own demise. Certainly seems to be heading in that direction. Jim Jones had nothing on the neo-conservative movement.

Can you back any of this up? Also, you use standard of living and quality of life interchangeably. They're not. Standard of living is GDP/capita - it tells us nothing about income inequality, pollution, over crowding, or other factors. Actually we were not doing all that well compared to the OECD standard during the 90's. It's really only our strict banking regulations that saved us from the meltdown of other countries in 2008. And since then we have begun to slip back in OECD standings, and people are warning we may yet face a real estate bubble. Most studies show little economic benefits for Canadians already living here from immigration. But we have to pay for it with stresses on our infrastructure and govt services. I don't think it's worth it. To say nothing of immigrants driving down wages and increasing unemployment. Most people want to live near a larger urban center that has all the amenities. Very few of them actually want to live in high density areas - that's why we have the flight to suburbia. As far as I can see, none of your arguments have been about actual benefits of immigration, but that immigration can't be doing much harm. I think we would have been better off with less immigration, and certainly ejoyed a better quality of life in Vancouver. The quality of life in a small town with little immigration might not be affected at all.

How can you back up that last part - who's to say our standard of living, ie GDP/capita, didn't increase despite immigration? In fact the research of pro immigration people says just that - standard of living of Canadians is not affected much one way or another by immigration. But their quality of life certainly takes a negative hit from over crowding.

Are you talking unemployment since 1976? Have you got a link for that?

If 100,000 workers moving to Canada are responsible for the creating of 50,000 jobs, how is it a fallacy to say we would be further behind in that situation. Not counting immigration, Canada needs to create 300,000 jobs a year to make a big dent in our current unemployment numbers. If we let in 500,000 immigrants and temp workers, say 400,000 of those are actually workers, how are we ahead with immigration vis employment figures?

So you're talking about the few poor people who are able to work but draw welfare? Not much driveway shoveling/house cleaning to be had there. Book now for one shoveling next in 2015. Most poor are working poor, or people unable to work - you want to force them to be your domestics too? Plus the people who currently do that work for you would get mighty upset if the government forced people to do that work at no charge for you and put them out of business.

Nope, I think your argument falls apart. Note the reduction in GDP per capita in 2010. We didn't take in less immigrants that year. Shows that GDP per capita is not tied to immigration, but other factors. But quality of life issues, which are not reflected by GDP are impacted by immigration, ie over crowding. Nor does GDP per capita show the extent of govt spending on social programs vs tax revenue. If immigrants are getting so much more in govt services than they pay in taxes, that's not sustainable, yet it doesn't affect GDP per capita one bit.

http://canadianimmigrationreform.blogspot.ca/2010/12/alleged-economic-benefits-of.html

Economic growth just for the sake of growth accomplishes nothing. As Argus says, if bringing in immigrants creates some jobs, but less jobs than we let in immigrants, we wind up with more joblessness. We need 300,000 jobs created a year to make a dent in our unemployment figures just within Canada. Since we allow in 250,000 immigrants and 250,000 temp workers, that puts us in a net deficit position right there. GDP possibly increased 1% from immigration. How much does it cost us to build the extra infrastructure required for those immigrants, the govt services they consume and the environmental degradation they cause? I don't think it adds up. How could it possibly make sense to let in the same number of immigrants every year, in good times and in bad, low unemployment and high unemployment? Shouldn't the numbers vary according to conditions? http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/how-immigrants-affect-the-economy-weighing-the-benefits-and-costs/article4106049/?service=mobile

Economic growth just for the sake of growth accomplishes nothing. As Argus says, if bringing in immigrants creates some jobs, but less jobs than we let in immigrants, we wind up with more joblessness. We need 300,000 jobs created a year to make a dent in our unemployment figures just within Canada. Since we allow in 250,000 immigrants and 250,000 temp workers, that puts us in a net deficit position right there. GDP possibly increased 1% from immigration. How much does it cost us to build the extra infrastructure required for those immigrants, the govt services they consume and the environmental degradation they cause? I don't think it adds up. How could it possibly make sense to let in the same number of immigrants every year, in good times and in bad, low unemployment and high unemployment? Shouldn't the numbers vary according to conditions?

Who are these people exactly?

No, I don't like your alternative. No developed country has a system anywhere near what you describe. And if I get cancer or need a heart operation? Could you afford to take that hit? What if those sniffles turn out to be the symptom of something serious? Personally I don't know anybody that runs to the doctor for a cold - who has the time.

What do you see as an alternative then?

How does that math work? We pay 1.6 (more actually since that ratio is based on GDP, and theirs is higher than ours) times more for care, but lower taxes will pay for it? Yes your taxes will go down as they no longer pay quite for quite as much healthcare. (The with medicare, medicaid and veterans care the US system is about 50% public anyway.) But now your employer faces a big whack to provide you with care that costs 1.6 times as much. What do you think will happen to your wages under that system? Also you will likely find that you have to kick in a good chunk of your wages every month towards your health care - I certainly did. Makes our health premiums look like peanuts and that's for poorer coverage than we have here (HMO). And, if you do use the insurance there's the co-pays.

No. And what work would the immigrants do there, they already have high unemployment?

Are you suggesting we adopt their healthcare system, that it's better than ours? How long will your wait be down there if your illness is deemed a pre-existing condition? If you go to the wrong hosptial in an emergency and your HMO tells you you're not covered in that hospital? If your co-pays bankrupt you or the insurance company tries every trick in the book to retroactively deny coverage and have you pay back what they paid out? If you lose your job and have no coverage what so ever? Assuming you're one of the few with Cadillac care and you are actually covered for your illness, are you willing to pay 1.6 times as much for that care as we do now? Where will that money come from?

You want to get blood from a stone? The family you describe, what taxes do you want to take from them, since all their money comes from other's taxes in the first place. Give them more tax money so they can pay some of it back as taxes? If you're not rich, then you're not paying all that much in taxes are you? You seem to have the idea that people should get some sort of special privilege according to their tax bill. Since you're not rich, you also would not be accorded that privilege. I guess we could have an ID card that showed our total tax contribution every year, and the person that paid the most would get the most privilege? Not sure what sort of benefits we would accord them? Forelock tugging? Stepping off the sidewalk to let them pass? Droit du signeur? What?

Is it your contention that the rich produced their wealth all on their own, not by taking a cut of the labor of others? Maybe the odd inventor did that and then just sold their idea, but that's not the norm for how people get rich. Even then, that inventor benefited from the structure of our society: his education, the fact that a system exists and is maintained that makes his invention valuable, etc etc. We don't exist in isolation, but in an interdependent society.

Killing in retribution of killing just brutalizes the state. And, for the few cases where we have absolute certainty of guilt (you wouldn't want to kill without that, would you?) and the crime is sufficiently heinous to merit killing it's not worth it to have a whole killing mechanism in place.

Apparently the US came very close to nationalizing the banks, but wouldn't take the final step because that just doesn't fly in the US. If they had taken direct control over the banks tho, seems to me we wouldn't have had the scandal of bankers still getting their fat bonuses after the bailout, and maybe more wealth would have been recovered. AFAIK, the US central bank system is similar to ours, yet lookt at the trouble they got into, and apparently we still may get into. Seems to me there are times when the govt needs to do more than just control the money supply and interest rates.

Balancing growth vs other considerations is made all the time. In Vancouver we have an agricultural land reserve even tho eliminating it would lower house prices and cause a construction boom. We balance the impact of a mine on the environment vs the economic activity it will bring. large in migration to Vancouver has caused all sorts of stressors, it needs to be balanced against any increase in economic growth that immigration might bring. More people might create some more jobs, but it's not nearly as straight forward as you are making out here - that more people always create enough jobs to give jobs to all those new people. Not at all. I'm certainly talking about holding our population growth down - so far it's gone nothing but up. From a global perspective, it's long past due that we decrease population - there's too many of us for the planet to bear. I'd rather do it in a thought out manner than having it done for us. As for Canada, we're an empty country - except for the places that people actually want to live. Those places are full. We need to find an economic model that isn't based on continual growth - there are limits. Either we impose them ourselves, or as I say, nature (including human nature) will do it for us.