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Comment by airesQ | Hacker News Reader

To address the immigration point. The UK has fewer migrants than Spain, Norway, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Latvia and many others; [1].

Roughly the same percentage as Germany, France and Iceland.

Why are the other countries much less worried about (legal) migration?

I think it comes mostly down to housing. The UK build ~400 thousand houses in 1971, but last year built 'just' ~140 thousand [2]. There is a huge shortage of housing, and the migrants are blamed for this.

[1] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/7/7...

[2] - http://imgur.com/OEP7Sm2

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A relatively small island nation that is an extremely attractive destination to acquire work. Especially from the poorer countries in the EU.

Being paid in pounds, would net you even more than average (for the EU) for low skill requirement jobs.

Did you even read my post? The UK does not have all that many migrants. Switzerland has almost the double (in %).

And what matters what currency you are paid in? If you want to compare salaries you use exchange rates.

Well, to start, immigrants are not counted from within EU countries in most polls for EU countries. A lot of the immigrants England received and had no choice in the matter were from Czech, Poland etc.

(BTW Switzerland also had a referendum where they decided to no longer take migrants in 2014)

If you get paid €10 an hour and your neighbor makes £10 an hour. Who makes more money (and always has for the past 40 years)?

Regarding Switzerland, something like ~25% of the population is foreign born. While in the UK is ~13%.

Regarding the pound thing. Money does not work like that.

For example 1 ¥ (Japanese Yen) is worth £ 0.0071. Is the Yen worthless?

If you are getting paid 10¥ and your neighbor is making £10 then yes, the yen is comparatively worthless as a wage.

Money does work like that when you are talking about an actual comparable wage. The pound and euro are much more comparable because you could get the same job for the same number, just in a currency that is worth more so you can send some back to your home country.(like many Immigrants do in many host countries)

Switzerland is also a continental country, you can literally walk to it if you were so inclined from any of the EU nations (except the UK and Republic of Ireland) and not spend a penny to get there.

It is mainly common sense vs what people feel is right, really.

What force makes salaries tend to be the same number in the two different currencies?

Why do my neighbor and I happen to make the same numeric value per hour? I live in the US, so I drink a gallon of water a day. If I move to France, does that mean I should cut back to 1 liter per day?

While I, and probably who you are replying too, agree with you, it simply does not work that way. An easy way to see it is look at the price of computer components in USD and GBP or euro. You will see many with the same or very similar numerical values despite the fact that that the US is drastically cheaper considering the actual currency values

> same or very similar numerical values

Yeah, see my reply to your sibling comment. I was so distracted by the "same" that I didn't think about how prices of goods in other countries are often so high that the numbers do get close (i.e. a $100 widget will just happen to cost about £100 or 100€).

When I lived in Deutschland, I would almost always shop on Amazon.com in lieu of shopping at Amazon.de (Amazon.co.uk is even more heinous), because the numerical value is almost always the exact same with a different sign and my Euro paycheck would go much further. With prime, shipping was free albeit it would take longer to get to me.

Maybe that analogy will help.

Thanks, that analogy does help. I got caught up with your numbers being exactly the same, and inferred a misunderstanding on your part that you don't hold.

How did you do that? You have to pay customs if you order from germany at amazon.com and shipping is not free to germany, not even with Prime, it's rather expensive.

I am an American and so had a previously existing account with Amazon.com. I had it shipped to a friend at a military base in Frankfurt and I just popped down from Berlin to pick them up once I had a small stockpile.

> Why are the other countries much less worried about (legal) migration?

Don't generalise. Some of these countries are very worried as well. And if they are given the chance to vote, the results would be certainly similar - see the recent (EU unrelated) politic votes in those countries.

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