An unsurprising stat

A letter to ponder sent to The Guardian by Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey professor emeritus of economics, University of Cambridge:-

Your lead story, about a finding by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that young workers in the UK’s private sector are among the biggest victims of falling living standards, should not surprise anyone familiar with an old economic finding that real wages don’t rise in a sector facing an unlimited supply of labour.

In recent months, those of us who worry greatly about the unbalanced economic growth that government policies here have given rise to, have been told repeatedly on the pages of The Guardian that unrestricted immigration from within the EU to the lower rungs of the service industry imposes no cost to our economy. To question it has been deemed a “right-wing” position. The caricature serves the interest of the wealthy because we like our lattes to be served by energetic workers from the EU, employed at rock-bottom wages.

But a systematic policy of pampering the wealthy, be they domestic or foreign, allied to a callous disregard of the interest of our own young, has led to the economic polarisation we see today. No amount of “Left” versus “Right” rhetoric should allow us to duck the question of whether we care about our young and their futures.