On 24/06/14 11:25, Adrian wrote:

But that person has "taken" your job. They kinda need to live here for
that, so they're kinda by definition spending their money here - at
least, as far as the basic cost of living is concerned.

But they are not - they are living as cheaply as possible with the
intent to take the money home.

Anyway, why is what somebody else chooses to spend their pay on so
important to you?

Because it is leaving our economy.

It's not important to ME personally. There are a fair few eastern
european and other EU folk doing my type of work right where I work.

The difference between my colleagues and a highly mobile migrant worker
is they are all settled here and being paid the same as me - that I have
no problem with.

I'm still good enough at my work to compete with them on *equal* terms.


However, how does your average builder or plumber or sparky feel when he
is facing competition in UNEQUAL terms?

And worse than that, relatively little of the money they make
recirculates to other local businesses, unlike what I make which mostly
does, eventually.


Would you like it if your employer insisted on seeing a
record of your monthly expenditure, and based your pay on what they
thought you spent (according to their view) "wisely"?

Utterly irrelevant - addressed above.

without having to do more than the _absolute_ bare minimum to earn it?

Never said that...

It was certainly implied.

No it wasn't. You may have read that, but I did not intend it.

OK, so you're quite happy for rewards to be in proportion to the work
required, and for the free market to set the rate for those rewards?

No, wait. You want protectionism based on nationality.

Where the nationalities have highly disparate economies, yes.

Do you want an indian outsourcing firm to take your job? Even more
extreme example.

Why is the origin of the firm relevant?

Because it's the most common other example of loss of local work based
on an unlevel playing field. Not to mention the impact of service. Or do
you enjoy speaking to random far flung call centres about your mobile
phone, electricity, internet etc. I know I don't because I know I'm
dealing with a script jockey with no local knowledge. This has been
bourne out in my personal experience. I'd rather ring the RBS and speak
to a scottish bloke who actually has a connection with the bank, than
ring HSBCs bloody awful call centre.



In fact, come to that, when did India join the EU?

As the outsourcing firms do not need their employees to leave the home
country (for the most part) they can offer their trade as easily as an
EU member (with free travel conditions) can. This makes it a comparable
scenario.