Australia's Immigration Problem

[Cognisant]

Graphs taken from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The Australian birthrate per woman has been below a population sustaining level since about 1980, except for a brief peak in the 2010s, however keep in mind this doesn't account for infant mortality and other such factors, to actually sustain a population you need a birthrate of something like 2.1

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Contrary to this completely stagnant population growth Australia's population increased from 14.7 million in 1980 to approximately 26.4 million as of the last census. This population growth has been entirely due to immigration.

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As of the the 2010s the immigration rate has increased significantly, you can see the impact of this as a noticeable increase in population growth on the graph above.

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Building Activity report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

We're currently facing a critical housing crisis and it's not because new dwellings aren't being built, as per the report above construction of 45,489 dwellings commenced in just the last reported quarter, there's an enormous amount of construction going on but it just can't keep up with the wildly out of control population growth, and again that growth is entirely due to immigration.

Now you might wonder why policy makers have allowed this to happen and for this I have two theories:

1. Flooding the labor market with young qualified people suppresses wages growth.
2. Our politicians all have portfolios of investment properties and thus a vested interest in ensuring the already massively over-inflated property market cannot correct itself, the housing deficit isn't a policy mistake, it's by design.

 

[Cognisant]

To clarify I don't think immigration is inherently a bad thing, I'm not saying we shouldn't be immigrating people at all, just that the rate of immigration is unsustainable and likely the result of politicians with vested interests not acting in the best interests of the nation.

There are economic benefits to immigrating young workers, I have discussed this before, and if the birthrate is below replacement it is necessary to import people to prevent a demographic crisis. However this is not a long term solution to that problem, it's an easy and cheap means by which every developed nation is putting off addressing the problem and with more nations becoming "developed" its only a matter of time until the demand for young workers outstrips supply.

When that happens those over inflated real estate markets built on decades of artificial scarcity are going to collapse, at the same time that developed nations around the world will be facing an unprecedented demographic crisis.

 

[onesteptwostep]

It sounds more like a housing crisis due to a massive immigration policy. Housing crisis's aren't really a problem, the more pressing and difficult problem is economic collaspe due to a non-reversable birth rate (like what South Korea and Japan are on the verge of). While you're correct that immigration will have its limits in the future, for now, it's one way to patch up the demographic issues that threaten the current economic structures that most developed nations have. Like, it would be ludicrous to have the same level of immigration for 5, 10, 15 years straight on. There obviously going to be a backlash and a shift of political power or policy if something like that keeps persisting.

 

[dr froyd]

japan has had a sub-replacement fertility rate since WWII yet it's always somehow on the brink of a demographic disaster. For the past 30 years it's been dealing with chronic deflation with suggests an oversupplied labor market.

i haven't studied this issue in detail, but im always wondering what the real issue is in terms of economy considering that importing large amounts of unskilled labor is almost invariably a net cost, plus the fact that the need for unskilled labor is constantly decreasing due to automation.

either way, it should stand to reason that importing humans is a pretty idiotic solution to a demographics problem. It's not a solution - it's merely treating the symptom of an underlying issue. If the issue is the structure of the society and economy itself, then no matter how many people you import you will always end up with a sub-replacement fertility rate, and always incur the economical drag of importing unskilled workers.

and we have the same problem btw - Oslo has sky-high housing prices to the level where it's simply not affordable to normal workers like teachers and nurses. Yet if you subtract immigration, the net flow of people to Oslo is negative.

 

[~~~]

Jay Wright Forrester

 

[Cognisant]

I don't think policy makers fail to understand the implications of their policies, I've never done a degree on economics or politics or sociology, I'm not a professional in this space, these people are, these policy makers are career politicians who have been debating these issues for decades.

I suspect there may be a lack of care, a lot of these politicians are in their 50s, the long term future of the country doesn't really matter to them, at least not as much as their own investments.

 

[scorpiomover]

To clarify I don't think immigration is inherently a bad thing, I'm not saying we shouldn't be immigrating people at all, just that the rate of immigration is unsustainable

I had been aware that most Western nations had been suffering a negative birth rate for decades. However, I was not aware that Australia had the same issue, as it seemed to not suffer the problems of most Western countries. So it seems to me that this indicates that the issue is a global problem.

and likely the result of politicians with vested interests not acting in the best interests of the nation.

There are economic benefits to immigrating young workers, I have discussed this before, and if the birthrate is below replacement it is necessary to import people to prevent a demographic crisis. However this is not a long term solution to that problem, it's an easy and cheap means by which every developed nation is putting off addressing the problem

Australia's political leaders seem to be considered to be vastly more competent and far less corrupt than the vast majority of political leaders.

I suspect that most politicians seem to not know how to solve the issues, as it's a global problem.

So they likely would feel like they would have to change the entire world to solve the problem, when they at most would have the ability to affect only 1 country out of hundreds.

and with more nations becoming "developed" its only a matter of time until the demand for young workers outstrips supply.

When that happens those over inflated real estate markets built on decades of artificial scarcity are going to collapse, at the same time that developed nations around the world will be facing an unprecedented demographic crisis.

It's not just developed nations that stand to suffer. Most developing nations seek to develop themselves by using the technological advances that developed nations have used, and which they fund by making money off of rich developed nations. So once the developed nations fall, the developing nations will lose their development funding and sources of income to compensate for any poverty and economic disadvantages in their own countries.

This is because the issue you speak of is a global issue. So when it hits, it affects the global world, and thus becomes like a global pandemic.

 

[Black Rose]

Even if half the western population is lost by 2080 that is still twice what it was in the 1920s.

No, I do not see this as a problem. Why should it be? The population will never go to Zero. The reason we have the problem is that neoliberalism says everyone must work. Why? Money. Why must we have cities? BS jobs. It is all about paper pushers and data entry. When the population decreases wages will rise and people will have MORE kids because they can afford to. The cities will crumble but then people will become healthier. Robots will take the jobs we don't want. The elderly population will stabilize. Kids will be taken care of and appreciated more. everything will shift. What is the problem?

 

[Hadoblado]

Our housing market is broken and government protected. It won't change short of something truly drastic imo, as in revolution or recession drastic.

Basically, every person who has any sway in government owns property (anyone with any type of power owns property here). Negative gearing is just too generous. Nobody will ever let that investment be threatened.

I don't know if immigration policy will fix it, but if you're right and it will fix it, then it's not happening. Buy property or die broke.

 

[Cognisant]

How can I get the word out? I want people to know about this.

I think everyone would want to know why we've got a housing crisis, a healthcare crisis, why crime and homelessness are going up.

Sure the politicians are against lowering immigration but I'll bet most Australians, when they understand the implications of excessive immigration and the problems its causing, they won't be.

I almost got banned from r/Brisbane for discussing this, for being "off topic" in a thread discussing the housing crisis.

 

[Cognisant]

I had been aware that most Western nations had been suffering a negative birth rate for decades. However, I was not aware that Australia had the same issue, as it seemed to not suffer the problems of most Western countries. So it seems to me that this indicates that the issue is a global problem.

It's simply the nature of the capitalist system, people prepare for retirement by acquiring capital rather than having children, what's worse is that this system is spreading to every nation so demand for young people to import is eventually going to outstrip supply.

Australia's political leaders seem to be considered to be vastly more competent and far less corrupt than the vast majority of political leaders.

Australia is easy mode for national management, the country is rich with natural resources and has several other important advantages, that we're having problems at all just goes to show how wildly corrupt and incompetent our politicians are.

 

[dr froyd]

I almost got banned from r/Brisbane for discussing this, for being "off topic" in a thread discussing the housing crisis.

problem is that in the multicultural/international-liberalism age, the topic of immigration has acquired a social-justice dimension, with anyone opposing it easily becoming subject to being called racist, nazi etc. So then one ends up with

1: the political left who support it on ideological grounds
2: the politician class, who are all international-liberalists supporting anything that has a smell of progressivism and globalism
3: the middle class who don't care because they already have assets, skilled-labor jobs, and houses in nice neighborhoods.
4: rich capitalists who always support bigger supply of workers because that means cheap labor

which only leaves conservative working-class people - these can always be brushed off as "rednecks", "hicks", "uneducated" etc.

here in norway the issue of housing prices crops up all the time, and it's usually blamed on "speculators" - the classic default culprit. Tragically, the people who suffer due to these misguided policies actually believe that and keep voting for the very people who keep fucking them over.