David Baxter-Edwards

Life is too short for boring socks.

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@bbctms He has incredibly fast hands and a great eye, but zero technique. The IPL is completely set up to suit his style of batting, but at international level he is going to have to learn that he can't just swing at everything and the pitches won't all be a batting paradise.

[Essex Cricket @EssexCricket]

😍 Middle-stump went flying!

🦅 #FlyLikeAnEagle

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@fesshole There's a pub named after him in Northampton.

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@anon_opin N+1. The optimum number is always one more than you currently have...

[Julia Willemyns @jujulemons]

I'm in the @NewStatesman arguing that “net migration” is a weird Westminster fetish. Because the number tells you almost nothing about whether Britain ends up richer or poorer.

Migration numbers are dropping. Some (incl @FraserNelson) think we’ll end up at “net zero migration”. Westminster will be pretty chuffed: control restored.

But the net number is a distraction. By 2029 the only question that matters is: are people in Britain better off or worse off?

Net zero could make Britain richer or poorer. The difference is one word: COMPOSITION.

Britain’s recent growth hasn’t come from big productivity gains. It’s come from adding workers.
So fewer arrivals usually means a smaller economy and lower headline GDP.

But living standards aren’t headline GDP. They’re better captured by GDP per capita. And GDP per capita depends on who arrives and who leaves:
– 1,000 working-age engineers ≠ 1,000 people who never enter the labour market
– High participation + high skills can lift productivity, innovation and pay
– A larger low-productivity population competing for the same housing, infrastructure and capital can drag living standards down

The risk now is the worst of both worlds: net migration falls because inflows drop and emigration rises, while Britain quietly becomes less attractive to high-productivity workers. That’s how you get a “better” headline and a worse economy.

Now the fiscal bit. People talk as if migration is automatically good or bad for the public purse. It isn’t. Again: composition.

What matters for the public finances isn’t the number of migrants. It’s who they are.
– Young, high-earning workers tend to be fiscal positives: they pay a lot in income tax and NICs for many years, while drawing relatively little in age-related spending. That strengthens the tax base and makes it easier to fund the NHS and fix crumbling public services.
– Low-wage migration is much more fiscally risky: low earnings mean low tax/NICs, while the state can still face big costs: housing support, benefits in some cases, GP and hospital care, schools if there are children, and eventually pensions and later-life healthcare.

We also kid ourselves with “savings” in public services. Importing labour on low wages can cut the pay bill today. But it doesn’t remove the long-term costs. People still age, use the NHS, build pension entitlements, and often have families who use schools and other services. Meanwhile, low pay reduces the pressure to invest in training, kit and better ways of working - so productivity stays stuck.

Public opinion actually aligns with the pro-high contribution / anti-low contribution framework. People distinguish between routes and roles.

But our institutions don’t help us stay honest here. The OBR’s modelling tends to treat the marginal migrant as roughly an average taxpayer, just a bit more working-age. That makes migration look like an easy way to create short-term “headroom” against the fiscal rules, without much focus on who is coming, who is leaving, and what the long-run costs are. This is really poor modelling.

What is true, though, is that if Britain wants fewer low-wage migrants without labour shortages, it can’t just tighten visa rules and hope. It has to do the hard domestic work: bring the nine million economically inactive working-age people back into work, train more, pay more, and raise productivity so higher wages buy better services.

So stop fetishising the net number.

Design the system around lifetime contribution.

Ask one plain question: who will contribute more over their lifetime than they take out?

Net zero can mean a more selective economy… or a stagnant country talented people stop choosing.

Full piece here: https://t.co/HdNZtrAv88

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@jamesbggurney @Coops19891 @HoratioFist @fesshole Really, really no. Viable means the way you died didn't impact the organs. They are taken as soon after death as possible so they stay viable.
The only organs where it is from a live doner is the kidney, as we have 2 so can choose to donate one while we are still alive.

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@MartinSLewis Any time after my young child is in bed is inappropriate. It's not always easy getting them to sleep and I don't want them woken up by a doorbell!

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@blufferthegreek I got a driver and 3 wood from eBay at good prices. It's worth a look.

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@petewg79 Haha

[Connor O’Brien @cojobrien]

There is a great retrospective in the WSJ today on how the UK's post-Brexit experiment with big increases in legal immigration went wrong.

Their mistakes yield some important policy lessons for supporters *and* critics of skilled immigration. Let's dive in:

(tl;dr: What was intended to be a skilled immigration surge made the catastrophic mistake of setting visa criteria based on college degrees and workers filling so-called "labor shortages," ultimately leading instead to a surge in low-skilled, rather than high-skilled, immigration.)

Post-pandemic Britain dramatically increased net migration, shifting away from the EU and towards migrants from outside Europe.

Visa issuance went up across the board: work visas, study visas, and particularly dependent visas.

The plan was initially supposed to be a limited, targeted, skilled immigration surge. The UK, post-Brexit, would be free to go out and attract top talent from anywhere. But things went wrong quickly. What constituted "skilled" work included roofers (!) alongside business executives.

The system was then blown apart by businesses claiming "labor shortages." Rather than raise pay, businesses appealed for special carve-outs in areas like construction. Basing their visa programs on filling so-called shortages invited this kind of lobbying. Nobody agrees on what a labor shortage actually means. The UK has a technocratic body meant to identify them, but it's ultimately just vibes and raw interest group battles all the way down.

Next, the UK rubber-stamped visas for students and their dependents regardless of the quality of the program or school in which they enrolled. There was a subsequent explosion in low-quality degree programs catering to foreign students (and their dependents) to take advantage of this option. From the article:

"While some students went to well-known universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, the number of students undertaking one-year master’s degrees from lesser known British universities shot up. And unlike pre-Brexit, many more stayed on in the U.K. after graduating.

The fruits of that recruitment drive are visible today. In east London sit two modern high-rises, the Import Building and the Export Building, which house three different universities’ London campuses stacked next to each other."

Designing student visa programs this way created an enormous incentive for both colleges and students to expand + take advantage of low-quality degree programs.

This is something Tory MP Neil O'Brien covered well in this 2023 Substack post, "The Deliveroo Visa Scandal":

https://t.co/G9tICrPEsB

The political backlash to all this is growing and, in my view, the UK will end with enormous, long-lasting cuts to immigration in part because of these mistakes (and not building housing, but that's another conversation...).

So what lessons does this have for how the US should design skilled immigration policy? Here are a few:

1. Skilled immigration programs need to be ruthlessly and narrowly focused on admitting the highest-paid applicants. High salaries are hard to game or fake. It's the most transparent criteria you can set.

2. Ignore appeals to "labor shortages." This is something that both many proponents and opponents of skilled immigration get wrong. There is no widespread agreement on what an industry or occupation-specific labor shortage actually means. Nor is there much reason to think that filling "shortages" is any better than simply trying to attract the most talented, well-paid people.

3. Do not outsource your immigration system to university admissions offices. Their incentives are not aligned with maximizing the long-term economic and fiscal benefits to the country. "Stapling green cards to diplomas," a longtime zombie proposal from my fellow pro-high-skilled immigration advocates, would create perverse incentives that would be difficult to combat.

These are many of the same lessons my colleagues and I wrote about in January in our report, Exceptional By Design, which laid out in detail a new vision for America's high-skilled immigration system. I'm biased, of course, but I think everything we've seen since reinforces what we wrote here. I highly encourage you to check it out:

https://t.co/oovumokLfx

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@SDP76842783 @John197210 @englandcricket There are plenty of examples of bowlers who have succeeded at the top level) without extreme pace (McGrath, Anderson, Shami, Vaas, Southee, Pollock etc.). I'd rather he gets a chance to prove himself, over yet another young, tall guy who can bowl 90+ but has no track record.

[Tom Jamieson @jamiesont]

Anytime this enters my timeline it HAS to be RT’d. Thems are the rules.

You know, I think it is

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@why_worrie @bbctms @BBCRadio4 @MichaelVaughan That is exactly my point. We shouldn't ignore them!

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@ProCyclingStats What you call it doesn't matter. People use that part of your site to see why riders are not racing (e.g. for fantasy games). Excluding illnesses just means the data is incomplete.

[Pod Save the UK @podsavetheuk]

🚨NEW POD SAVE THE UK🚨 @ElonMusk doesn't care about the safety of young women.

@MrNishKumar & @cocobyname on the new Pod Save the UK. Listen now: https://t.co/0G12rmurTr

#PodSaveTheUK

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@alid1973 @JerryTurin @TracyCyanne @kareem_carr Generally, where the 11+ isn't used it is just a pure application process and mostly depends on if you live close enough to the good schools. Which drives up house prices as parents want to live where the good schools are, so money still comes into it.

[David Baxter-Edwards @Dedders85]

@alid1973 @JerryTurin @TracyCyanne @kareem_carr It is far from every child. It varies by region, some have selective processes and some don't. I grew up in an area with the 11+, I now live where most don't know what it is.

Plus, it is hugely skewed by parents who can afford tutors for their kids, so it is not an IQ test.