Are these people next to you , or below you ? I am only concerned about below , and potentially above <| sep |> If you ' re unskilled , it ' s not impossible to get a skill , yet it appears to me that a huge number of people just plain don ' t . If we had more british plumbers , nurses etc then we wouldn ' t need the immigrants to do those jobs would weWhat works for the individual will not work collectively for a larger population . So there are 3 million unemployed out there 10 million economically inactive who for all intents and purposes are unemployed . So what happens if all 3 million train to be plumbers ? The price of plumbers falls considerably . Think about reading and writing . 150 years ago it was a rare skill and those who could do it were paid a lot . Today everybody can read and write it is considered to be the base line standard of individuals . The premium and more money in your pocket for being able to read and write is now nil .