UK votes to leave EU
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The EU in my eyes should aspire, to what the US has achieved already, being a large region, composed of quite a lot of different states, which are united, so that there are no arbitrary geographic borders limiting the freedom and the rights of the individual. This is not always easy, and it means, that the richer parts have to give to the poorer, but that is just basic humanity.
Especially I am sad for the young generation in the UK. A very large part (about 75%) voted to stay in Europe, and this future is taken from them. I would guess no small part of them will try to move to the remaining EU states.
UK was not part of Schengen. As such, it was always more difficult to go to/from the UK. Foreigners having a Schengen visa (work permit) still need an expensive Visa to go to UK.
Then there's the pound instead of having the Euro.
What was more easy is _permanently_ moving from UK to e.g. Spain (which happens a lot). Finding work in another EU country and being able to live there without too much hassle.
This is not true. You obviously haven't travelled many times from UK to other european countries (or viceversa)...
At the same time, crossing the Channel tunnel or taking the Eurostar means having to get through border control, handing out your passport and sometimes, if they feel like it, having to answer questions on what you're going to do in the UK.
Taking the Eurostar from Brussels to Lille (because it's sometimes cheaper than a regular TGV, or because the timing is better) is even more bothersome because they get double suspicious that you only want to go to France instead of all the way to London.
You have to embark and go through border checks 30 minutes before departure with Eurostar, that's a fact. Whether you will have to answer questions is very random and doesn't seem to depend on whether you give them a passport or just French ID. My wife has a Canadian passport and a French residency permit and this does make them ask more questions though.
Eurotunnel checks were lighter when I used to take it, but that was before the Calais crisis so I would guess it has become more bothersome lately.
In any case, you just can't say it's as easy as just hoping in your car and driving to Belgium and back to fetch your beer.
Schengen agreement mandates no border check, but the UK is not part of it, so of course they can have border check
I guess I misunderstood what was being talked about, but I was actually trying to make the point that movement between Shengen and the UK is different from movement within Shengen.
Specifically, I was answering to this exchange:
>> it was always more difficult to go to/from the UK
> This is not true.
by saying that it is actually more difficult to go to/from the UK. Which it is.
One simple example, when you come back from an international trip to your native country you still need to go through the border even though you have freedom of movement there
Because even though you have the right, some people don't. And they only know which is which after you present your documents.
I guess the only case in when they can refuse entry is if you are wanted by police or something (or maybe not even then)
Now try to enter LAX or JFK with your national ID and without a visa...
UK/Schengen and Schengen/Schengen are so close compared to EU/Rest of the world, that the differences are imperceptible.
But they are so much perceptible, when you live inside Shengen. Nobody says it is complicated (as an absolute) to go to the UK. But it is more complicated (as a comparison) than travelling within the EU. I don't even understand how that can even be in question.
Just saying that it very strongly depends on the person at border control at the airport and a lot of different circumstances, you can get pretty tight checks from EU to EU too.
If I go to Indonesia for which I need a Visa on arrival, they asked me zero questions, nor said anything. I handed them the money, they gave the visa (etc), done.
For many countries I don't need a Visa for. Saying EU is freedom of movement, but then narrowly defining this something else is moving goal posts.
I have various foreign colleagues (non EU). They need a Visa to go to the UK. UK being part of EU or not does not make that much of a difference for them at all.
The effect is whether you can easily work in another EU country. But that is just one part of "freedom of movement".
UK opting out of Schengen has nothing to do with it, EU citizens are visa-exempted and I as a European have traveled to the UK many times without a visa.
Please, after all the lies of the leave campaign, can we stop casually spreading utterly false information?
Ignorance is a terrible, terrible thing.
Having to show ID or getting inspected doesn't violate the notion of free movement in the way that this term is used.
It's just that it's not commonly done in most modes of transport between most borders, e.g. cars between the Netherlands and Germany. But the UK is not alone in this, take the eurolines like I have half a dozen times (a bus network commonly used by poorer people, including poor immigrants) from e.g. the Netherlands to France and you're guaranteed to run into checkpoints. And if you've got the right ID for which there is freedom of movement, you're free to move.
That is literally what i was saying.
The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself.
The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.
Napoleon III, the last French monarch, was captured during the Franco-Prussian war, and after his death, the French decided they'd had enough of monarchs and the third French republic lasted until WWII. It was replaced by the Germans with Vichy, and then after the war, the fourth and fifth republics.
It's highly unlikely that the French will ever accept another monarch. There are Bonapartist and a Orléanist (Bourbon) pretenders to the throne, but none hold any public office. If the government falls apart again like it did in 1958, it should be replaced with another republic as it was then. Nobody can really rule out a third French empire, but the trend of democracy worldwide has been towards devolution of power rather than centralization, France is more likely to break apart than it is to re-imperialize.
Unfortunately the EU sees differences as a disease which must be wiped out with always the same prescription: more EU. Literally so. They talk of voting as a "contagion".
And why would you insist on a deal being all or nothing, bad with the good? Because you know that's the only way to get the bad ideas through. Same reason Congress attaches riders to bills they know will be strongly supported, when those same riders got rejected earlier.
Also, to me an institution keeping the peace also trying to contain the "contagion" of instability makes perfect sense. It's what I want and I contacted all my representatives to that end.
A few that I personally think are bad:
- Recent VAT reforms
- Cookie law
- Treating low taxes as "state aid" (EU Commission will be setting tax rates across the EU soon, just wait)
- Having a Parliament that can't make its own laws
But if you asked others you might get an answer like "the euro".
The EU has no relevance to peace or war. The USA is a much more strongly federalised union than the EU and had a brutal civil war. Most wars today are civil wars. There is absolutely nothing that'd stop the EU having a civil war even if it was incredibly federalised and had become practically a single country, like the USA. What has kept the peace in Europe was avoiding a repeat of the Treaty of Versaille, nuclear weapons, NATO, and the fact that European countries are now all mature democracies (the latter is imo the most important).
This is the first objective of the Maastricht treaty:
"strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the institutions;"
That sounds like championing democracy to me?
I don't see how the EU has pushed or facilitated any kind of political homogeneization. Apart from the short rise of the liberal democrat party, it seems UK politics have been the same for centuries.
That said, let's not derail the conversation with irrelevant historical anecdotes that are out of time anyway.
I'm fairly certain that the US was already independent and had adopted the current Constitution by the time the French Revolution happened.
After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the French monarchy was restored. When the Second Republic was established after the revolution of 1848, Napoleon III quickly abused his uncle's popularity to establish another dictatorship within five years. This lasted until 1870.
The French Revolution was the event that kick-started the spread of democratic ideas and regimes throughout the Old World. It brought about the downfall of the medieval regimes, the abolition of serfdom and slavery, etc.
The American Revolution was more of a symbolic event at the time. On the other hand the fall of the French monarchy was a colossal event at the time: the new French Republic was continuously attacked by all its neighbors to prevent the dangerous ideas from spreading.
The elected official in question actually saw no problem with that. To make matters even "better", he is stuck to communist regime / fascist methodology of tightly controlling television and radio... in the age when everybody is on the Internet... awesome!
I know of another guy, over in Turkey, who works the same way... Ataturk would be turning over in his grave if he saw what that other guy is doing in the country he founded.
Anyway, when is Poland holding the referendum on leaving the european union?
Well Atatürk was not exactly a saint, for example I've just learnt the history of İzmir, which had a large Greek population who had been living there for generation and was relocated to Greece after the Greco-Turkish war.
Some of the events around the revolution and the subsequent foundation of the Turkish Republic would now be considered ethnic cleansing now. And the man is still worshipped in Turkey (at least in parts of the country that don't have an AKP majority). In İzmir there is even a Mount-Rushmore-like statue with his face.
This is not to say that Erdoǧan is better, far from it. But Turkey is a complicated country with a complicated history and talking about Kemalists vs Islamists as if they were good guys vs bad guys is a bit simplistic.
If you read Tocqueville, he actually clearly comment on the difference, and even impressed with American institution or people, he says that it only works because it was basically a blank slate, and does not believe it could work in Europe.
The American independence did not endanger that much the British Monarchy or British Empire (who happily went on to be the first world power in the XIXth century)
Clearly the American Revolution was far more than symbolic: it directly, entirely reshaped both North and South America.
Actually, Hugo Chavez was very popular and won all his elections by a wide margin. You could say a lot of things about him but he was not a dictator.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-15240081
Forget the excessive gerrymandering or his successful change to the Venezuelan constitution which allowed for him to be reelected indefinitely. He was indeed a lot of things, but his legacy will be mismanaging a country with enough natural resources to be one of the richest countries in the world. He was an authoritarian dictator. Faux democracy with fake votes and a press which is govt controlled and a leader that wants to run forever is a dictatorship no matter how you skin it.
> Except for the time he lost, and within two days a military coup of the democratically elected body put him back in power
LOL. The coup was done against him after being democratically elected in 2000 but it failed disastrously, making him some kind of a folk hero in most of Latin America. If you don't know this basic fact you really have no business talking about Venezuela, let along calling Chavez a dictator just because you didn't like the guy. Venezuela had many chances of getting rid of him democratically and they decided not to, we all can disagree about how wise a decision it was but that is different matter.
Let's not make nonsensical statements like US independence was completely inspired by the Lumières then.
Most notably, US independence was also inspired by the Glorious Revolution in England (the American Bill of Rights is even based on the English Bill of Rights), about a century earlier.
"The Lumières (literally in English: Enlighteners) was a cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual movement of the second half of the 18th century"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution
"The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688"
Your proposed timelines are a little off, old bean. ;-)
Here are two little instances I came across recently where the french copied their rhetoric and symbolism from America:
In 1787 Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants". Then in 1793 Bertrand Barère, in an influential speech to the national assembly advocating execution of the king, repeated "The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants" . In French sources the quote is often (incorrectly) attributed to Barère only.
Similarly, during the American revolution, Americans raised symbolic "liberty poles" in their towns. Directly inspired by this, during the french revolution most cities raised and decorated "Trees of Liberty" in their central squares. King Louis even stooped to visiting and honoring the one in Paris to appease revolutionaries (it didn't help).
(The French took the idea of "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" quite literally).
Why does HN pretend political revolutions are peaceful?
So HN is a single-minded entity? Just because a couple of people say something you don't like, you paint all of HN, with its 1000s of members, with that?
Basque is a language isolate spoken in parts of Spain and France. There's also Turkish - part of Turkey is in Europe, but not in the EU.
Which makes me want to put up some bilingual fake warnings with jokes written in Irish and innocent information written in English as if it were a translation from the text above.
It'll be fun to learn Irish from my daughter as she starts school in the next months.
> Etymology
> From Russian у́гры (úgry), the name of an indigenous people dwelling east of the Urals, + -ic.
From the indiginous peoples in Russia whose languages are thought to belong to the language family.
Latin languages are French, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian. That's it. All the others are not.
... even the English word "language" is itself derived from Latin!
English sits on Germanic/West Germanic/Anglo-Frisian branch of the language tree. The Germanic branched together with Romance, Slavic, Celtic, Baltic, Helenic from the Indo-European/European branch, but Latin belongs to Romance, not Germanic.
Multiple invasions of Britain by different ethnic groups have patched together so many language roots into English that the conjugation of the core existence verb "to be" is just an aggregation of the same verb from seven or eight different languages, pasted together in one etymological mishmash.
At some point, English started stealing vocabulary from any language used in international trade, and simply invented any new words that needed saying, using whatever etymological root that was convenient or marketable.
At some point, the Normans and Picards hammered enough French words into Middle English that there should be at least a second root extending into the Romance branch from English.
How else would you get "milk" from a "cow" (Germanic), but get "beef" from "cattle" (Norman), and refer to them all as "bovine" (Latin)?
Edit: But taking some vocabulary from language does not mean being descendant. Half of the world uses the term "e-mail", but they still are not English.
If we want to define language as a common value for the European Countries, then it might be some Indo-European proto-language (even then it's not clear where Basque comes from).
I agree that Latin had a huge influence in most of the European languages, but this mostly through the Roman Empire and later through the Catholic Church.
From philosophy, to mathematics, to physics, arts, and to democracy, we built everything based on each others past ideas.
Our foundations are really the same.
The foundations here are not all and only western though.
What culture does a hill billy from the Ozarks share with a Bostonian? (And no, it is not a function of social status only; it really are deep cultural differences.)
Anyway, exceptionalism isn't really a common bond.
TV.
From east to west to north to south everyone in the States has this common bond, television, and through this medium our "culture" is propagated.
Flip on the TV in Europe and not only will the language very likely vary from country to country, so to will the content, which is based on the cultural norms of that particular country (or language group from which the country evolved).
Also, given how new the country is, the "united" in United States is easily traced to the American Revolution and Civil War. In Europe there is no such common identity given the rich and varied history.
Holliwood movies, Game of thrones, Kommissar Rex, the borgias, eurovision song contest, european football championships, local versions of "the billionaire" or "big brother" etc.
Did you grow up in southern europe in the '80s? Then you probaly watched the same dubbed animes like "Captain Tsubasa". In eastern europe? Same, but this time it was Krtek. Are you a kid now? Then you are likely watching Masha & The Bear across the whole continent.
That list sounds more of a reason to being done with Europe rather than an argument for its shared culture.
You can avoid TV though, it's really quite simple to do.
Not really. At best you can avoid watching TV yourself -- but you can't easily avoid living in a city/country influenced by tv culture.
People do not only watch the "housewives of..." that's from their own part of the country.
I would go to the extend to say, I am culturally much closer to the Germans, than to other American nations, even if we share the language, Spanish.
And no offense or disrespect, but Spain has a history with Latin American countries that they don't have with the Germans. That cannot be ignored.
EU membership challenges that, because in the EU the UK is one country out of many - and not even the most important one.
Of all the countries in Europe the UK has been least able to deal with the loss of empire in the previous century, and hasn't yet worked out a way to look forward to the rest of the 21st century instead of back to the 19th.
This is unfortunate because there's a lot of talent of all kinds. But it's trapped in a political and financial wasteland which is built on a bizarre nostalgia for the glory days of the 19th century.
If the UK had been like this in the 18th century, the industrial revolution would never have happened here. We'd have been pining for the old pre-civil war monarchy instead of building a future.
'infested' is a bit of a strong term.
Said this... do you seriously think that UK is closer culturally to India than to Germany?
Eurovision?
Once you start meeting people from all those countries you realize even more how similar your cultures are. Some common sayings, some common tales, very similar political divisions, etc
There's a reason why Europe is many times referred as a whole. "They do it like this in Europe", "In Europe they prefer that" (and it's not always ignorance ;)).
These countries like their distinct identities. They like to visit other European countries but they really don't want a melting pot at home.
In addition, we as everyone else are capable of identifying with many things, and what is important at the moment depends on the context. When I speak to an American or Chinese, I'm European, when I speak to an Englishman I'm a Swede and if I speak to another Swede I'm from Stockholm.
In Spain, I identify as Catalan.
In Catalonia, I identify as someone from Barcelona.
In most world affairs, I identify as European.
It is human nature to look for your own identity; and sharing that with your neighbours substracts from your own personality. On the other hand, against external competition you would look for group membership.
What I'm saying is, the Brits are not special or different on their aspirations than their neighbours. Their main difference is who owns the media and the aspirations of those media moguls.
This is interesting to me. As an American, our national identity certainly looks similar; it's composed of favorite pastimes and products and shared political values.
But is that true in Europe? The cultures of European countries are much older, predating capitalism and the democratic governments they have today. Most of them are more or less homogenous, whereas the US has always been a nation of immigrants, and the whole "melting pot" idea has been around for most of our history, even if our behavior and policies sometimes clash with it.
Also, I'd argue some of the nation states in Europe are invented, like Italy and Germany, which each were basically just a bunch of city states that were more or less force ably amalgamated into one country. I don't know much about modern German or Italian nationalism, but I think that might have a negative impact on an overall European identity.
Granted, I'm speculating here. At the end of the day I'm an American who doesn't know what he's talking about. Though I do think it's telling that a good number of things you offered as components of a shared European identity were invented in America.
> There's a reason why Europe is many times referred as a whole. "They do it like this in Europe", "In Europe they prefer that" (and it's not always ignorance ;)).
Do actual Europeans say that? Sounds more like the typical American who just got back from a vacation in Europe.
For a lot of things, I see countries of the EU are _more_ unanimous on topics than the US is internally.
The death penalty is a prime example. It varies state to state in the US, but (AFAIK) is consistent across EU countries.
Gambling is another, I didn't realize it was actually illegal in some US states. I'm not aware of any individual countries in the EU that differ from the majority there.
Ah. I wasn't trying to say we as a country have univeral political positions, but rather shared beliefs and values. Americans certainly don't agree on the death penalty, gun ownership, the limits of free speech, or hell, even gambling, but most everyone believes in things like one man one vote and equality (once again, even if we behave differently sometimes for the latter).
Even some more homogeneous (apparently) countries are melting pots. Romania: Some regions speak only Hungarian (and they're not bordering Hungary) and some others speak also Ukrainian. Their borders have changed a lot in the last 150 years. Hungary itself is nothing like it used to be (and it was the same country / empire with Austria... go figure!). Let's also not start with disastrous examples like the former Yugoslavia...
The difference is that the US assumed and took advantage of the "melting pot" idea whereas nationalistic views in Europe have been making the world think we have some special character or culture (and each of us different than its neighbour). Two World Wars mostly based on nationalism haven't helped either.
In many European countries it is frowned upon to worship the national flag or at least it's considered potentially close to extreme right wing and racism. Why? Because as opposed to the US flag which represents a melting pot and freedom, European flags represent nationalistic ideas. Ask and Englishman about Saint George's cross or a Spaniard about their flag. In both cases they'll only wave the flag during sporting events like the current Eurocup. Outside that, the above applies.
> Though I do think it's telling that a good number of things you offered as components of a shared European identity were invented in America.
Globalisation. Also, America didn't just happen. America is a branch of older European cultures (British, Irish, Dutch, Spanish and French at least), so in a sense the American culture is child of European culture, hence why it's not difficult for us Europeans to make it our own too.
American ideas and ideals come from Europe and / or Christianity. Some of them even predate the idea of Europe, coming from the Romans or Greeks. This is a long heritage than you guys and us have shared for long time. Globalisation is just making the rest.
> Do actual Europeans say that? Sounds more like the typical American who just got back from a vacation in Europe.
Not unheard of, specially if we're talking to someone not European. A clear example is political views: In Europe we consider American elections a choice between right wing and righter wing ;) whereas some of our social democratic (or labour) parties might look communist to you guys.
Times change and this might not be true anymore in a few decades, but a majority of Europeans would always choose Democrats over Republicans (and Bernie over Hillary).
One major advantage the US has is a single main language. That is something that will in time possibly occur within the EU but language is a barrier that cannot be over estimated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
The UK abolished slavery, and even fought commonwealth territories that resisted. Maybe if parts of the US had still been in the commonwealth, slavery would have ended sooner there too.
If you look at the way Western Countries transitioned from one form of govt. to another its seems to have been very bloody. Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution, German Revolutions, Russian Revolution etc.
So regicide doesn't count as violence? Also, as mentioned down-thread, we had a pretty bloody civil war here, which replaced the monarchy with a 'Lord Protector' which ultimately amounted to the same thing by another name and so we decided the monarchy wasn't that bad, as long as parliament kept the worst excesses in check.
The conjunction of those two sentences is a bit hilarious, considering the wanton abuse of the death penalty during the Reign of Terror.
And I think that the lack of capital punishment is an indicator of one of the EU's problems: it's stunningly undemocratic. Polls (until recently?) have shown for decades strong popular support for capital punishment, and yet countries have been forced by the EU to ban it.
Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious.
(However, this is forbidden by EU.)
The death penalty is prohibited by protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights [1]. Ratifying the convention is a requirement for joining the EU, but it isn't the EU that is doing the banning. The ECHR is an instrument of the Council of Europe, which is not connected to (and pre-dates) the European Union.
[1] http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/hrpolicy/Others_is...
Without this external factor it's hard to find something to really feel the same about.
Would one of the states exiting the US be thinkable, were it not for the unity in waging wars against external (and some internal) enemies?
And yes. Leo Strauss was of that opinion and you will find a whole suite of argument that talk about how the middle east became the new enemy out of need rather than actual threat.
This was part of the PNAC (Project for New American Century) which identified the need for a new enemy after the fall of the wall.
Now whether they were actually successful is another discussion but it was part of the Bush administrations fundamental belief as several of it's key members where students under Strauss.
(Although there are millions of Americans who do not speak English, only the tiniest fraction of those have any influence on American culture.)
This is a somewhat funny thing to say, considering how many people were given the death penalty in the French revolution and its aftermath. Executions for "crimes against liberty" and whatever are estimated to have been between 16,000 and 40,000. [0]
It's actually worse than that though. The EU Parliament doesn't really deserve the name. It can't actually initiate legisliation, so it's meaningless for EUP parties to have any actual policies, so they don't, so there's no formal opposition either, so nobody cares about them and ... therefore ... (phew) turnout in European elections is extremely low. Most people can't even name their MEP, and why should they be able to? That MEP has no power to speak of.
The EU is not a choice between integration and chaos, despite what Brussels wants people to believe. European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.
No no no, the EU is an artefact of that integration. Just because it's grown a head and legs, and started to talk isn't an excuse to kill it though. Better off talking back. But when the quality of representative you send over is Nigel Farage you can't expect much of a conversation.
Definitely a frank discussion to be had about the behaviour of the EU (in particular the EC) and maybe such a discussion will be the good that arises from this ill wind.
So the UK sends Farage. He achieves nothing. Nobody cares, because nobody expected him to achieve anything anyway. No MEP could.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...
With VAT, you have to keep careful track of input VAT and sometimes later claim repayment from various governments.
There is a lot of obligatory registration and document submission.
The velocity of legislative change is high, especially when summed across member states.
Small entities have an incentive to underreport. Thus, a lot of enforcement activity is targeted at small entities.
But it's not EU, nor is Yugoslavia.
But the focus on Commission/Parliament is misguided: they are a just a smoke screen, as neither has much power. In the EU power is held by the European Council and The Council of the European Union [1]. These two institutions are composed, respectively, of the head of states (Merkel, Hollande, Renzi, Cameron, etc.) and the various ministers of each branch of government (economy, education, agriculture, etc.). The former controls the commission, and the latter holds most of the legislative power.
[1] Not sure I got the English name rights, as they are pretty confusing.
People seem to forget that the American government has been made "incompetent" by design. The Founding Fathers never wanted a strong government.
Inefficient government makes it harder to move against your own population without open military action.
Why do most societies resolve internal stress by communautarism, law of ancestry, blind and stupid racism. Why not by gathering and looking at what's wrong then fix it with wisdom.
Maybe I'm too sensitive on this topic, but ever since the Crimea debacle I've become much more worried about instabilities in Europe. I have only ~300km to the Ukrainian border. There are nights when I hear some weird aerial noises and I wonder if that's a missile, and if this is the day when my city turns into a CoD: MW map.
The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed by the Inner Six countries in 1951 and 1958 [..] The Maastricht Treaty established the European Union under its current name in 1993
If your position is that every major treaty establishes a new Union, then the EU is less than 10 years old (Treaty of Lisbon, 2009). Otherwise, the EU originated in 1951.
Also maybe you should consider the actual state of US : What's the percentage of english/spanish people speaking? What about Catholics/Jews/Muslim? Should we expect an USbreak ?
Saying that, I do not believe that we need a common enemy to be united. There is better values and challenges for all of us : environment, peace, love. Europe will stand strong, refine its vision to the current context. After a few years, UK we be back and we will all make love peacefully in a better environment.
Long live to Europe.
Here about 30% of export increase from Germany to Russia at Deutche Welle - http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-3.... I bet they did not exported beer. Its Siemens, Rheinmetall and alike.
Also look in Gardner Research. The World Machine-Tool Output & Consumption Survey
Military industries need to sell stuff. France, Belgium, the UK, and others do the same.
As for NI - for the sake of peace that would be a more drawn out process.
But the arguments at the time of the referendum didn't get stronger. The EU would require Scotland to join the Euro, join Schengen (means a border wall), and the primary argument for an independent Scotland was "we'll take all the oil money for ourselves". But now oil is cheap thanks to US fracking and the North Sea oil industry is going bust.
I think the future probably has more devolution in it. Which is fine.
Hadrian's wall and miles of rural waste should already be sufficient for these purposes.
Seems like it'd be easier to get illegally directly to England, than go through Scotland...
We've also had almost 2 years of Westminster failing to deliver any of the promised devolution. We get these things are slow to happen but there's been pitiful progress towards them so far. Lots of people voted No on the basis of more devolution.
So while the arguments haven't changed the alternative to independence has for the worse. I'm honestly struggling to see a future without an independent Scotland tbh.
Sinn Féin have called for an Ireland-wide referendum on unification because obviously they have. Even if you grant that they don't have the ulterior motive of being Irish Republicans and that they genuinely want Northern Ireland to remain part of the EU (and there's no reason both of these things can't be true), that's probably the only way to ensure that the six counties of Northern Ireland do remain part of the EU in some fashion. And, of course, if it did pass, you'd simply end up with a resurgence in sectarian violence as Unionist hardliners rebel.
The geographical state of Wales being birthed now never was a unified Kingdom though it was very briefly conquered by Gwynedd (Northern principality in Wales), only for so much time as it took the English crown to realise and quell the 'rebellion'.
For GB there are about another quarter million people who are subjects of Her Majesty who remain in overseas territories.
It is productive.
That was due to Labour's insane economic policies and the Tories failure to fix them. It wasn't until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister that the UK started to be well-run again.
I can see it clearly all around, including my family. my parents, and I love them with all my heart, have simplistic views on politics (although both have university degree). easily to be persuaded, missing bigger picture and view beyond couple of months/years. my grandparents, they are completely lost in this world. they mostly look only what would affect their pension payouts and medical care fees. it doesn't matter if a proper gangster would be handling small financial favors to them, they would go that way.
older people are more invested? nope - we young will live much more of our lives in system that is coming compared to them. We have much more motivation to live in system that is stable and working well in long run (>20 years). it's fair to have same voting rights, but how much do we expect from usual > 70 years old in terms of clever voting decisions? Zero, and politicians know this, hence campaigns are quite emotional to work with them.
In what way are they more invested? They have ~5-25 more years left and then it makes no difference to them. Furthermore, they're likely pretty settled in their life and already retired.
Young people are still building their lives, trying to establish their career. They're likely going to be denied the opportunity to live and work in 27 countries. I think it's pretty disgraceful that they've torpedoed our future based on their hazy rose-coloured memories of some supposedly-better past.
I'm also skeptical of your conclusion as to why people voted leave. In case you missed the poll, it wasn't just the 65+ age range that voted this way. Even down to the 25-49 group you're looking at a 45% leave vote. Age distribution isn't equal either - the majority of the UK falls in the 25-64 group band, which varies between voting leave or voting remain depending on which poll you look at.
Why is it sad? Do you think the vote of young people should weigh more than the vote of old people? That'd be discrimination.
It's not sad, to me (not the parent) that the voting power of each person is the same; it's sad - though expected - that older people seemingly looked to their own interests and not those of the people who will have to live through it more.
That's an assumption. You could even look at it another way and say it's the other way around where they've lived in the UK prior to being in the EU and know what the UK is capable of on it's own.
You're making assumptions there as to peoples' individual motivations. Just because someone voted in a way that you deem is not in the best interests of another group doesn't mean that they didn't have that group's best interest in mind.
I personally think this is a good thing for both young and old people. So in your mind, me voting to "leave" would actually be me not-voting in the interests of the young?
I suppose it's also possible there was a cadre of older people who felt the young would be better out of the EU - the same problems but no say in how to fix them and less cooperation, that's got to help /s - but who choose to keep silent about that position?
Think of that quote attributed to Churchill - not liberal at 20 has no heart, and not conservative at 40 has no brain.
Sure, why not? At a shareholders meeting, people with more shares get more say. Young people had much more at stake in this vote than old people.
This isn't like a normal election where there can be a course correction in a few years. In all likelihood this was a once in a generation decision, and the old folks voted to take away young peoples' right to live and work anywhere in Europe.
There are plenty of reasons why that would be unacceptable, and I'm sure that's why human right conventions prohibit this kind of discrimination.
> Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people.
Maybe not ordinary old guya. Many young people have a cosmopolitan attitude. They see themselves as Europeans first, and they like the freedom to live and work anywhere, not just within some postage stamp sized area like Slovenia.
I disagree that the dream is "dead"---in fact, Brexit might make it easier to integrate, since the biggest integration opponent is now gone
As long as the new biggest integration opponent is less opposing to integration than UK was, it will still be beneficial to integration efforts.
And I voted remain
I am as cosmopolitan as they get, but I also abhor central planning and elitism. And, unfortunately, this is what EU has become.
Also, it appears that for international consumer sales, the seller may now apply its own country's VAT instead of needing to know the VAT regulations of the buyer's country.
Yes it does, Russia.
EDIT: Maybe some minority circles in the Russian Federation want to make it an enemy of the EU or the rest of Europe, but most people, rich and poor, don't want to. The former because of trade opportunities and the latter because of shared cultural heritage.
Also, both US and Russia do more bullying on the economic level anyway.
Like you can kill 300000 people and everyone is okay as long as the territory is whole.
This is the most dumb thing I've read in this thread.
Friends you say? Oh, that's rich. Maybe when they give us back our national treasure, along with Basarabia and Northen Bukovina, which they took with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and apologize for crushing the national identity of those regions, for starving them to death and for the mass deportations and killings, maybe then we can be friends.
But that will never happen, especially given its leadership. So until hell freezes over, they can go fuck themselves.
Russians (there are exceptions certainly, but statistically) are proud for the oppression they did upon the neighbours and cherish it as their golden years and action plan ahead.
and old school means invading central European countries at whims (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, we have not forgotten), building iron curtain and so on. Or Ukraine now, exactly same approach. This is what world sees, so yes, Russia is the biggest threat to Europe, at least on par with current mass immigration.
trust me, people from central/east Europe feel very threatened by Russia's attacks on Ukraine. You haven't been through in past what we have been and obviously it's sometimes hard to learn from other's lessons...
People who try to argue that the cold war is still running don't get anywhere with me.
Interestingly, the survey conducted in 2013 in Crimea doesn't show any sign of Russian language discrimination at that time.
Which proves one more time that all Russian propaganda was just lie.
And you intentionally or unintentionally support Kremlin propaganda.
http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2013%20October%207%20...
Calling Ukraine "Europe" (again: in contrast with Russia) really just masks the power struggle that was going on before the annexation and the (Russia-supported) civil war. Ukraine was originally part of the "buffer zone" between Russia and the NATO. Both EU and NATO (i.e. US) were trying to change that (not that Ukrainians really complained or anything -- the prospect of EU membership was obviously exciting for many of them).
Does nobody remember the infamous "F### the EU" wiretap? It may have been published by Russia (though that was never confirmed AFAICT) but it was authentic.
Also it is much more Europe than Russia which is Asia by it's spirit and history despite has some European territories.
It annexed the Republic of Texas, which had been independent of Mexico since 1836, in 1846.
btw: it's Gerhard Schroder, not Kohl. ;o)
And to bypass your essentialized romantic patriotic history for a moment while utilizing your "common enemy" rhetoric, the EU has many common enemies and innumerable common and unique struggles. Consider immigration, the struggle for democracy, ecological responsibility, social justice, annexation by Russia. All issues individually more compelling than the rich coalescing their power to maintain control of the poor in a relatively isolated country with the population of Houston. The EU has so many good reasons to exist.
I think it sounds like populist grandstanding. We've been hearing that sort of thing for a year now. We (the US) seem to have a lot of people buying into it though. We get to see first hand how stepping back from globalization looks like before we vote for it ourselves come November.
Isn't the US a conglomerate of former English, French and Spanish colonies?
Somewhere like Illinois is littered with places named in French or Algonquin, but there is zero culture leftover.
Parts of Lousinana are all that's left from France.
I believe mentalities are changing slowly. My generation (generation "Erasmus") is the first that identifies itself more as an European citizen than a national citizen [1] but our parent's generation doesn't feel the same yet.
By the other hand I think the main reason for Brexit is economics and not identity: UK thinks that they are not having a positive ROI by staying in the EU. Puting it roughly: Germany "exchanges" money for leadership. Peripheral countries "exchange" leadership for money. And UK? The "exchange rate" doesn't seem favourable..
[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-bre...
I think this view of the US having a shared cultural identity at any point before the 20th century is very far-fetched.
Federalization, centralization and bureaucracy are the natural order of empires and America has been on a slow roll towards them since at least the early 1800's and the barons. Honestly probably since it's inception, Hamilton was a devout federalist and Modern America would be a realization of his dream. I think Jefferson and Franklin would be horrified to say the least.
With all that said, it always seemed to me that the EU wanted to be America 2.0 and modeled the empire and not the early confederation that got us here. America used to look like a coalition of distinct states where basic rights (albeit for only some at times), where guaranteed so that a citizen has a host of options to find a representative government. More and more the states look like cookie cutter copies of each other and more and more legislation gets pushed to the federal level because there is little distinction between them. This makes for an efficient business environment but it comes at the cost of a representative government for the people. From the outside it seemed to me that the EU tried to fast track this homogenization in the interest of being a competitive business environment.
In my view the EU took it one step further and fully embraced unrepresentative bureaucracies and set up, for the better part, a technocracy. The people of Britain felt that they had no reach into these un-elected representatives and therefore made the choice to exit as it was the only ripcord they had.
This is a completely inaccurate and hamfisted statement. By the time of the Civil War, California was already predominantly Anglo. The only Spanish speaking parts at that point were the southern part of the state, which was sparsely populated compared to the Bay Area.
Florida was already filled with Anglo settlers as well. Spain had a number of horrifically protectionist policies that doomed their outlying North American colonies to poverty and depopulation, making them extremely vulnerable to infiltration by settlers from the US, who ironically, were illegal immigrants.
Also you're right,I was completely wrong about Florida.
Not necessarily. There's no reason why the UK would have to be a vital part of that union. Quite the contrary, in fact: the UK has always been the biggest opponent of such a closer union. Without the UK, it's possible that the EU might actually be able to move ahead in that direction again.
If the other 20-something nations are ok with being basically ruled by Germany, that's fine. But no way in hell would Britain want to play second fiddle to Germany. Ever. They have always seen themselves as slightly more separate, more different, more "special" to the rest of the "the Continent".
But there's no way the UK was not a vital part of the union. 5th largest economy, a very strong military, still large sphere of influence outside of Europe. Losing Greece is one thing, but the UK...I don't know.
The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.
The EU itself is likely still very far from starting that war. China and its superiority complex seems much more likely if they can find someone willing to stand up to them. Or maybe Russia is going to overstep its boundaries for real sometime. Either way we're probably close to our 80 or so years of "Western" (relative) peace, certainly fear and populism are not helping to avoid that path.
Well, ok, so what is the US then? It may have a few centuries of a headstart, but it's the same thing, with 13 colonies invading the rest of the continent. You just overlay the Third Reich onto the new union.
If the other 20-something nations are ok with being basically ruled by Germany, that's fine. But no way in hell would Britain want to play second fiddle to Germany. Ever. They have always seen themselves as slightly more separate, more different, more "special" to the rest of the "the Continent".
The UK is as important as Germany. But they didn't want a closer union so they just stayed out there while Germany played a more active role. So did France, by the way, but they're looked upon as losers so that makes Germany the "ruler" in the eyes of people.
And yeah, UK was special over a century ago, maybe they need a few decades to realize they're not anymore.
But there's no way the UK was not a vital part of the union. 5th largest economy, a very strong military, still large sphere of influence outside of Europe. Losing Greece is one thing, but the UK...I don't know.
It was. Greece is too, but they can also leave if they want. It would just completely destroy them.
The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.
Always been like that.
Considering two world wars and a history of war before that, EU's common enemy is itself, divided.
FTFY. In all seriousness, this whole UK thing sounds like a good excuse for California and The Bay Area to attempt to secede from the union. I'm about sick of our broken consensus mechanisms here.
I think you speak of real challenges that the EU has; but to put it in context, other countries have similar challenges. Spend some time in the US, and you will see cultural and language differences among the states. You can also find the same differences in India and China.
Assuming you are American, like me, it's very easy to see the differences in European culture because each state is still a sovereign nation. Chinese and Indian states don't bring their separate flags to the Olympics, so we just assume it's one culture. We go out for "Indian" or "Chinese" food in restaurants that gloss over their internal differences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_sec...
Yes it did, that enemy was "world war".
Unfortunately, with euroskepticism strong also in countries like France, it seems improbable that we are going towards an U.S.E. any time soon. But if Britain were not in the EU in the first place, maybe we would have achieved it already...
You may think this is some form of conspiracy theory, but there's very strong evidence for it. I would recommend starting here...
Also, in general, whats wrong with multinationals having a strong influence in the present world? They are the modern day 'kings' replacing their medieval counterparts. Of course I am not arguing for blanket powers for them at all. We of course have checks and balances like regulators/auditors/politicians. Even take the example of #Brexit, it happened didn't it? If corporations had absolute power it would not have.
The point is what's good for society in the long term? Who knows best? No easy answers. But I am willing to err on the side of doers (with checks and balances of course) rather than pure career politicians.
People keep making this comparison, but they also keep forgetting two elements:
1. After the revolution, parts I and II, as part of the shared dream, they identified an even better external enemy, one which was not only weaker but could easily be vilified.
2. Then there was that whole civil war thing, which killed something like 2-2.5% of the population. (I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5%. Anyway, still...)
That's only a matter of timing. If the civil war was delayed 50 years and was fought with WWI tech, it probably would have killed way more people. Trench warfare, machine guns, etc, just ate up lives.
As always democracy proves itself very dangerous. If I'm ill I go to the doctor, I don't start asking around common people opinions.
A very sad European living in uk.
I don't think this is true. German, for example, had a very strong presence.
There are many treaties between Switzerland and EU, and after they slammed the door I just don't see EU countries accepting the same deals with UK.
50% of the UK is flat out opposed to freedom of movement. In fact I'd wager it's even less than that since freedom of movement wasn't the only talking point of Leave.
The other big issue was the money we pay to Europe which was exaggerated; has the falling pound wiped out that 'saving' yet?
Two and a half years is a long time, you may well find that enough people have sort of forgotten about EEA free movement of people requirements by the time it comes to actually leave EU and gain membership of EEA. Remember, 'enough people' is only about 500,000 or so, and that will be in the context of a general election.
And if they did decide to get both, they'd end up fairly close to the current situation, but without a vote in EU matters. It's possible the Leave campaign may have mislead the voters on this point.
I recently visited the swiss/french border region around Geneve. I can assure you that english was not really a good option for communicating there outside of airport.
Things that people used to call 'typically French/German/Italian/Spanish/Slovak/Greek' are increasingly seen as typically European. I can't back this statistically, but virtually all the people I met in my life who have lived in at least two EU countries think this way. I honestly can't think of a single person who I've known and thinks otherwise and I should know because this topic almost always comes in discussions when you get to know somebody.
Of course, there are some minor cultural differences, but these are not particularly larger than the ones found in the US, India, China, Brazil, or the Russian Federation for that matter.
The difference in culture between the UK and other Northern European countries is often exagurated. Many say that the UK is more like the US. In my experience this really isn't true.
Have you actually travelled in Europe? Germany is radically different from France; both are radically different from the UK, and let's not even start to talk about Eastern Europe.
The degree of deference to authority, the specifics of the rules of the road, the level of interference of governance - these things vary, but they're within a spectrum. Things go off the wall different outside Europe.
I think the problem with EU is primarily one of communication. The member states should do more to inform the public of what is going on in the EU, and EU should do more to avoid negotiations behind closed doors (because how can you ever trust a process like that?).
No, it's not mutually exclusive but the order matters. IMO American first see themselves as American while here a French guy will see him as French and then maybe European. That's the sentiment I'm referring to.
The EU is not the only way to get the good bits of European integration. It badly needs some competition. I wish the UK would create a competitor to the EU and start advertising the new union to EU member states.
There are also significant movement and trade freedoms with Switzerland, which isn't even a member of the EEA.
The UK really has put themselves in a bad situation here. The main reason people voted to leave was immigration and to "take back power Brussels" and because they were convinced by the campaign that they could still get all the benefits of EU if they left. How will these people feel when they realise that they're going to need to join EEA which will mean the same level of immigration and less political power?
Also, I thought the way immigration numbers were used in the debate was appalling. If I remember correctly:
- The UK deals with 300,000 immigrants per year, of which 50% from inside the EU.
- The immigration target set by the government was 20,000 per year.
- That means the UK government was already allowing 150,000 of non-EU migrants in the country. And for these migrants, the UK does have full control.
How come everyone in the UK accepted this rationale as a valid argument against the EU, instead of a failure of the UK government?
The free movement of EU persons (and their families) holds in the whole EEA, independent of the Schengen Agreement. There are also EU rules about where refugees are settled, but the UK already had an opt-out from those.
> if the UK has not been part of the Schengen Area, then what controls did the UK lack?
I really hope so. Right now most decisions are taken by the Commission and the ECB, which are neither directly nor indirectly elected by the people. A bit more democracy would help here.
Although I'm a firm believer that too much democracy is bad: see the topic of the day, where old and/or provincial people (fact) just voted hundreds of rights away from the younger generation and from urban people.
I'm sure our media will widely publicize any and all troubles brits will face in the coming months / years by not being part of our union and this will hopefully help reduce support for the most troublesome nationalist parties.
On the other hand, the UK never really played fair with the rest of us, what with keeping their own coin and having "tax haven" rates. So I'm not entirely sorry that they left. I'm sad for their younger people, of which I personally met a few in many occasions. This was a decision made against their will, which is never a good thing.
Most decisions were. Post-2009, legislation has to go through Parliament. The Commission remains the initial proposal engine, and makes executive decisions on some things, but in reality most of the urgent matters are dealt with by the Council, i.e. the elected heads of state. Commissioners these days are just people saying "wouldn't be nice if we did this and that?" and then elected MEPs hammer out details and eventually decide whether it looks sensible or not. A lot of Directives are actually fairly-generic guidelines anyway and can be "interpreted" at local level.
> and the ECB
Central bank independence is widely considered a pillar of economic stability. I have my problems with the ECB (mainly that they are fairly powerless in real terms), but not about being nominated vs elected.
So uhm, this trope that the EU is full of "unelected" people is not really up to date, although it was true in the past.
The ECB was modeled more or less after the German Central Bank who made the German Mark a huge success. There are good reasons to NOT make the central Bank "democratic" or a toy of politicians.
Are you talking about those too young to vote?
That's indeed really sad. Young Europeans have enjoyed a freedom to choose where to study, live and work that was unprecedented in Europe. What will come next, with the resurgence of nationalism and bigotry in Europe, is very difficult to say, but I see no good coming out of this.
It needs to show that it can provide solutions for the euro financial crisis and the refugee crisis. Solutions that are sound, long term and have popular backing.
It has shown that it cannot.
And thus we europeans are better of with a smaller, simpler european cooperation of independent nation states.
At least this should be the very real threat the EU politicians should operate under.
We need a better EU.
Make no mistake, if the EU had competently dealt with the issues with the euro the UK would not have left.
USA, Australia, Canada, Japan ... all had their challenges with immigration and fiscal/monetary issues and have been able to find suitable solutions without their federation/country falling apart.
They can only, by definition, find a worse solution than EU. The migrant crisis needs a solution at the scale of the continent. Individual nation state cannot deal with a crisis of this magnitude efficiently.
Without the EU, Greece, Italy, the Balkans would be left on their own to deal with the migrants. Northern and eastern nations would tell them to fuck off and keep their money. That's it.
EU is the primary channel for negotiating a long term solution. If it cannot find one, no one can.
They absolutely can! Britain is now able to say "no more migrants are allowed into the UK", and it will now happen! That is a working long term solution for Britain.
This doesn't help OTHER EU countries of course. But why should Britain care? Those countries got themselves into this mess, so they can solve it on their own.
Not sure I buy that assertion. It actually seems easier for the handful of small political units directly affected to decide and act on than a giant EU bureaucracy. Which in fact is true in many other instances as well.
The migrants NEED to solve their own problems where they live. All the western nations mucking around over there need to get out and let them sort their own stuff out and we would not have these problems in the first place.
>Without the EU, Greece, Italy, the Balkans would be left on their own to deal with the migrants. Northern and eastern nations would tell them to fuck off and keep their money. That's it.
And the better alternative is that they feed every person who decides to come their way and go broke? There is nothing wrong with a country defending its own border, just like there is nothing wrong with you locking your door at night
>EU is the primary channel for negotiating a long term solution. If it cannot find one, no one can.
The EU does not negotiate on some important topics. The EU vilifies anyone who brings reasonable arguments against welcoming massive amounts of people into their countries against the will of the inhabitants of those countries..
I think this is the most important misconception GB always had about the EU. It's a union which means, having a well tempered partnership should be the goal - not cherry-picking like the UK often did.
Or, to resemble a famous quote: Ask not, what the EU can do for you - ask what you can do for the EU!
We are not ready for further expansion of the EU project.
If this causes the EU to split in two parts: A smaller but stronger EU politcal/economical union and a broader but weak trade cooperation amogst european countries. Then Denmark will probably end up outside the political union.
We too had a number of referendums, more than one voting "no to EU" but always our representive polticians chose to negotiate a deal and create a new referendum which just scraped a yes.
The UK being out adds legitimacy to the "being out" case which EU opponents in Denmark and other places will use.
The dissatisfaction with the EU will much more visibile after this.
Getting out of the EU will not solve any of that. It could be that isolated countries will do better economicaly, and will be able to isolate themselves from the problems happening around them. It could be that you stay rich, or become richer, by closing your eyes and ears to the suffering happening around you, while the rest are left carrying the burden.
How sad.
The EU is the chance of Europe to be heard around the world, a great project being squandered by some right wingers opportunists.
That said, I'm certainly not that happy with the EU myself (also Dane), and really think it needs to shape up, but that is more related to the abundance of literally retarded regulations that they force down upon member countries.
Have you ever actually been to the US?
Maybe you'll visit some day and see what it's actually like!
If all the people living in the UK regardless of citizenship were asked the result would have been different.
I wasn't allowed to vote even though I've been living in the UK over 5 years since I'm not a British citizen for example.
Edit: if you're going to down-vote at least explain your reasoning.
All the obligation but I don't get a say on what my new home country should do? Does that seem right to you?
Being a citizen is more than being a tax payer or generating wealth.
At least you get access to a bunch of benefits thanks to the UK (used to) being part of EU. I'm a non EU citizen working in the UK and I don't get any of that if I lose my job. I don't have any problem with not being able to vote.
Although funny enough, my spouse is Australian, and being a commonwealth citizen, he can vote here
As it stands, the definition of citizenship from my own practical point of view is, "You've been a permanent resident for long enough, have picked up the language in the process, know a few history facts and the National Anthem, and are willing to give up your previous country's citizenship for us".
With all due respect, that's a lousy set of criteria for whether or not I get to vote in a country that I care about, whose people, policies and politics I follow closely, and that I consider a long-term home for at least a good portion of my life.
Being a citizen is definitely more than being a taxpayer. But then, look at what your criteria would be, and apply that same standard to born citizens. Being born in a certain place, or to a certain set of parents, is obviously a much better criterion to judge people and their connection to a country, is it not?
Obviously that's what people have decided on and continue to uphold. I just find it hard to follow that reasoning.
It appears to me that as an EU Citizen in Britain you are the equivalent of a PR.
I'm not sure why you feel that the franchise should be further extended to cover people who work in the UK, but are not citizens.
The EU is not a political union. It is an economic union. This has been the problem from the start. People want it both ways when it suits them.
and it actually makes sense, citizenship brings a lot of rights.
So some non British citizens were able to vote.
Just my opinion.
(For Euro countries things are big different, but still.)
Just for point of discussion since since you only mention living in the UK for over 5 years but if someone had resident for 6 years or over then they could apply to become a UK citizen. For most nationalities (but not US I seem to remember) you could become a joint citizen so wouldn't really have to give anything up in the process.
If becoming a UK citizen is not something someone aspires to then surely a point could be made that that person is not invested in the future of the UK.
If you've only been here for 5 years and want(ed) to become a citizen in the future then you have my sympathies.
For disclosure, I'm British, pro-immigration and voted to remain in the EU; I feel sad today.
If you view it as a single nation state or as group of cooperating partner nations.
My only option is to wait another year so in can prove it even though if they really wanted they could probably check their own records to see my immigration activity.
It's quite difficult to get citizenship I know someone who got a 10 page letter citing a lot of random legal clauses for why she got rejected.
Hell it looked almost like they were trying too hard and felt borderline racist to me but I could be imagining things.
I'm sure there are plenty of British citizens who are expats living all over Europe, and despite the possibility that they have been living outside the UK for a large proportion of their life they are still eligible to vote. Perhaps I am wrong and there is some rule against this, so please do correct me if that is the case. But if it's not, then how is this fair? Why do they get a say in the decisions a country is making without being a resident of that country?
I will most certainly be attempting to apply for citizenship. Unfortunately the prospect of being rejected, for something which will quite likely be very random and illogical (likely designed to catch as many people out as possible), makes me worried. From the (admittedly quick) research that I have performed to date, it seems that just the act of applying requires a significant sum of money (around a £1000?). If my application gets rejected, then will that money essentially be gone?
On top of all that, I am still a student, it's not easy to part with £1000 under these circumstances.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/british-expa...
Good luck with your citizenship application and don't be put off, if you've been here since 2005 I'm sure it will be OK.
Yes, UK European Union Referendum, 2016. Resident Irish and Commonwealth citizens were allowed to vote.
Scotland Independence Referendum 2014. Resident EU citizens also were allowed to vote.
I'm Irish and I voted, and my wife is from an Asian commonwealth country and she voted. Neither of us are British citizens
Can you share the source of this data? I'd be interested in investigating.
I agree with everything that you said. Taking a glimpse at the history of the EU starting from the 2nd WW, Bretton Woods, Nixon Shock brought us 2008 is very well documented in Varoufakis latest book[1].
I travelled lately from Greece to Bulgaria and to Turkey. Having border controls really feels like 1980 and I believe it adds NOTHING to security. It's just a sign of hostility towards the neighbour country. Ideally borders should be like the ones the Swiss have with Austria or Austrians with Czechs.
But unlike technology, society progresses in cycles... My hope is that brussels will get re-shaped in a more democratic way, stop abiding to stupid rules and start looking after the prosperity of the remaining members of the Eurozone. But doesn't look good :-(
[1] "And the week suffer what they must?", goodreads URL: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24886497-and-the-weak-su...
UK border controls, though, probably aren't going to change much. They never had open borders, although they did - and will probably continue to - have mutual agreements on somewhat less strict border formalities with most Schengen countries (eg. a national ID is enough to enter, no passport required, but you still have to go through passport control).
Bulgaria (which is 40k away from my town) had very lose controls. They had been tightened lately, I'm guessing because of the refugee crisis.
no passport required
A biometric passport of those countries gets you through the automated passport control gates, which makes the whole process significantly faster an much less painful.
If I recall correctly:
Minimum age requirements; kids are not allowed
A biometric passport
A passport from an eligable coutry. Essentially the EU, Island, Norway, Switzerland and potentially a few moreLet me stop you right there.
You seem to underestimate the language barrier. I once talked to a few British young people about which country they would like to move to and I recall they mentioned New Zealand and the US, none of them mentioned any country in continental Europe and when I asked why I got confirmation that language issues matter.
That's one reason among many why Europe can't quite work as a federation as the USA do.
The top emigration destinations for British people are nit in the EU - the US, China and Australia.
To be honest, it is not just a language barrier, how about cultural barrier and others.
But yeah, if they can't be bothered to learn another language...
Or never contemplate going somewhere else
[1]: http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/document.asp?reg_id=4&ref_id=1... (French)
This. But I will add that it is mainly the English that do not consider themselves part of Europe. You'll find much more European identity on the mainland, or north of Hadrian's wall.
If Britain has a problem with it, then goodbye Britain, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Things like this is what's pushing people to brexit. 20 year old sheltered college liberals who never saw life outside their rich parent private houses telling people what to think and what is best for them. People are tired of being called -ists and -phobes, and this vote result expresses the sentiment.
Just because some people think globalism is cool, doesn't mean everyone wants it. Globalism isn't some universal goal everyone should be moving to. There are tons and tons of people that don't want globalization, and they were silent for a long time, but their patience is running out. UK is not some kind of exception, same thing on the rise is in US and many other countries too.
Also, by that logic Israel is part of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA#Members
Though I guess Israel must be European if it's also in the Eurovision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_the_Eurov...
Upon closer inspection participation in the Eurovision Song Contest is restricted to countries that are members of the European Council or members of the European Broadcasting Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Broadcasting_Union#Me...
Here's an idea: a map of countries overlaid with membership in the various "EU" groups (i.e. including EC, EEA etc), membership in UEFA, membership in the EBU and participation in the Eurovision Song Contest (per year). That should answer the question of Europeanness of individual countries once and for all.
Now just add UEFA, EBU and Eurovision ;)
Correct. The way to refer to North and South American countries as a group is "the Americas".
Incidentally, the USA is the only country that has the word "America" as part of its official name.
Once a political unit gets too large things get weird. There exists an optimum complexity for political units for them to function effectively or you get fragmentation.
Borders exist so the concept of freedom of movement is not absolute. Now, maybe that's a bad thing and we should abolish all borders all around the World. I feel that would be unreasonable though, but it's probably debatable.
You don't have to be a fan of the bureaucratic EU but leaving was madness. They have now all the disadvantages and no advantage. The UK will likely have to pay MORE to the EU than before if they want to keep access to the EU market (see Norway who pays more per head already while not being a EU member).
"The City" will lose big time: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-03-16/london-co...
And the EU gets a chance to restructure. A good day for Europe and a bad day for the UK. Would be insane if Scotland and Northern Ireland now want to leave the UK.
Biggest Idiot of them all: Camerone. Wanting to leave the EU for years, then becoming an advocate of staying. He got what he asked for. At least he took the consequences. But all in all an idiot extraordinaire.
One of the larger vote swingers for Scotland staying part of the UK was that they would have had to renegotiate their membership with the EU from a weak position. Scotland overwhelmingly voted remain in the EU referendum last night, so arguably the SNP now have a valid mandate to hold another Scottish referendum on membership of the UK.
It's like they had a housemate they didn't really like, but who took them to all of the cool parties. Now they won't even get to go to the parties anymore, and I don't blame them for wanting to move out.
Arguably London is larger both in population and economy than Scotland and Wales combined, and also overwhelmingly voted remain. If there is a referendum on whether London should leave England, I know which way I'm voting..
As an aside, for me this is a sterling example of the dangers of "direct democracy", that many see as the solution of all evils that plague the political process.
The majority of UK lawmakers (democratically elected by the same people that voted the referendum) were in favor of staying in the Union: even a large number with conservative and traditionalist background (including the PM).
Yet the future of the UK (and EU) was decided by people (on both sides) that cannot possibly have an idea of what the implications of this decision will be, and that can be easily swayed my media and influenced by emotions.
Representative democracy has its faults and inefficiencies, but if the alternative is to have gut-reaction votes and petty nationalism decide the future of a country, count me out.
The leave voters I spoke to kept mentioning 'feeling in control' and concern about EU immigration and benefits. Also 'don't want them to ignore us'. Basically, bye election rhetoric. They bought the suggestion that 'a deal will be done' about England's access to European Economic Area as more or less certain.
I hope they are right about the last one :-)
But people forget, and when the jobs start going, ideas will change.
The more I look at the geographical/demographical distribution of voting, the more I see evidence of turkeys voting for Christmas.
All most strange. Enough for quite a few data analysis projects I think!
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-su...
People don't necessarily all use the same objective functions. I think many were disappointed by the EU as they perceive it as an economic-only enterprise, where not everyone wins. I think many could be OK with a lower GDP, and a slower and more local economy, etc. It's not so clear on the long run what will actually be the best for UK and its people.
In Switzerland, people vote on different issues about 12 times a year. Some of these issues are quite complex and technical (for instance, how should benefits of some state-dependent companies be handled, etc). Some are easy yet extremely consequential. Usually there is no particular tendency to fall for the easy stories based on gut feelings. In general I think that able to vote is more important (mostly for stability), even if it leaves a door open to populism.
I disagree. Sure it's possible to have a public educated enough to decide whether being in the EU is a good idea, (hi Switzerland), but the fact of the matter is that this doesn't apply to either the US or likely the UK.
It's possible to have a nation where direct democracy is effective, but I'd say it's more the exception to the rule.
I didn't - I said it's possible.
> the US and the UK public, in particular, are not?
To me this seems a self-apparent fact, but I admit it may not appear so to others. I'm not sure specifically where I'd lie my standard, but I'd say the public support for Donald Trump falls dramatically below wherever it would be.
Here in Germany, we have a strict representative democracy. But we have regional elections often enough, that the government gets to feel, if voters no longer agree with it. So it is a balance between short term popularity a long term considerations.
Funny you say that. If I remembered correctly it was the UK that blocked a lot of the banking reforms because it wanted to protect their financial industry... Not the way around.
"EU means a never ending future of joblessness"
Weird independent projections in this European country talks about new 140.000 jobs in a period of three years and we got horrific terrorist attacks in March which has a big negative economic impact.
Maybe with regards of new jobs it has also something to do with political choices ?
And global warming means some places actually get colder. You can't cherry pick things out of context.
wrt political choices, it'd be nice to choose for ourselves, which is one reason for the Brexit. Brussels doesn't exactly lead the way wrt good immigration policy.
Somebody eventually would, and in 2008 it was considered of paramount importance that it not be extreme left-wingers and communists. Stomp the Communists, get the Nazis.
I don't know, I'm pretty glad myself.
>The EU is not only about trade regulations, but about a continent who had a not very peaceful history finally growing together.
Only there is not much "growing together". Besides the bureaucracy there were certain large countries (and alliances) pissing all over smaller ones, in things from trade agreements to fiscal policies and other decisions.
A lot of people seem to value vague unity, but this was the opposite of democracy, where rampant groups with no official standing (the ad-hoc "Eurogroup" for one) and bodies no one voted for, where ruling a whole continent.
So, valuing this kind of faux unity is, for me, like saying "It was nice when the US, Canada, India, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland etc were united -- under British rule".
>so that there are no arbitrary geographic borders limiting the freedom and the rights of the individual
Borders in Europe are the opposite of arbitrary: they are based on culture, history, economy, popular revolutions, sovereignty, and lots of other factors.
(In a continent like Africa yes, a lot of borders are arbitrary, because they were decided and drawn on some map from colonial powers dividing their lands -- the will of the local people, culture, etc be damned).
And borders are not some plight on the "individual". They are a large-scale extension of their individuality -- ensuring the individuality and independence of their way of life at a larger scale.
There's a whole order of magnitude difference of 350 million people (most of which have different cultures and priorities, not to mention interests) voting for what happens in your country of 30 or 20 million. Even worse when the decision is left to some bureaucrats in the pockets of big business.
>In my eyes, the EU was very much about the same thing. It didn't matter in which part of the EU you lived or had your business. Being part of the EU granted you rights and equal access to the rest of Europe.
Well, if you could have that without the political power plays, coercion, disregard for democracy, and plundering of lesser countries, that would be great.
I'm not super familiar with the EU agreements, but the US Constitution was supposed to restrict federal power over the states. An unfortunate loophole was found through taxes. Citizens pay federal taxes, then some amount of those taxes flows back into state power. The federal laws I'm discussing don't have criminal or even civil penalties, but rather restrict or eliminate this flow of funds unless the will of the federal government is met. Sure, the states can technically do whatever they want, but these are very large funding streams that they will be missing out on. That's like saying I can technically choose to not work... It's true, but it's also a sure way to end up in a bad spot.
But in general, you're correct. Incidentally, this change is actually Constitutionally-valid in some sense, in that a Constitutional amendment needed to be passed (income tax) in order to give the Federal gov't the money to bully the states in the first place.
Farange reported the moves between offices that occurred twice a month and the lavish EU spending on administration. Both noted there was no way for the people to vote down laws or vote out these bureaucrats.
Statist bureaucrats too often spend the people's money with little regard for return on investment. They are the brightest people in the room - just ask them. They don't face the same restraining force as the business owner whose customers can go elsewhere if they don't think they are getting value for their money. As the Brexit folks framed the issue, this was about being responsive to the people, giving them the ability to vote out the whole lot and get others who will be responsive to the people paying the bill.
We have the same problem here in the US. There really is little difference between the establishment Democrats and Republicans. All are big government types who focus on policies that benefit their big donors. They are spending us into oblivion and devaluing all our assets by flooding the economy with more printed fiat currency. Our unfunded future liabilities are even worse. We need to do our own house cleaning.
So I say "Happy Independence Day" to the folks in the UK and hope my neighbors are looking closely enough at our own situation and will will band together to do our own house cleaning this November.
The undertones in this point imply that votes from the young generation is worth more than others.
Of course, it's not a dichotomy. I think we can both have reasonable welfare.
At which point should you switch from trying to shape your generation's future to trying to shape the next one's?
The EU is not a abstract entity that only lives of ideas. Its a concrete implementation of these ideas (and many others). This implementation I judge to be deficient. The issues are to many to list here, but I just wanted to state the principe.
Europe can achieve most of the things you want without the EU. Switzerland has many of those things with the EU states. You can easily have all these contracts as bilateral contracts that everybody signs. Then you can do the joining and leaving independently, creating much better incentives for both the people who create the contracts as for the participants in the contract.
Their are already tons of things like that, and their could be more. Look at ESA for example.
> This is not always easy, and it means, that the richer parts have to give to the poorer, but that is just basic humanity.
You totally falsely imply that the richer part "HAVE TO" to give the poorer parts money to achieve these goals. That is totally false. Only with a currency their is a real issue and that is solvable even if you want a common currency without massive redistribution.
What you are doing is deceptive, you are making a operational argument for a issue that relates to moral. If we choice this kind of redistribution, we should do it based on MORAL properties and not operational issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...
Switzerland also has more freedom to have other international agreements, both with states in and outside of the EU.
Switzerland and Norway can join the parts that they like and avoid many others. They have agree to pay certain amounts but they not immediately have to pay more if the EU sets up something new. They have much more control over their spending.
I am not against many of the things the money are spent on so the fact that we are paying, is not that relevant. It is relevant that we have control over it. In Switzerland I can get a bunch of people to sign something and the population will vote on the issue. That why we are not in the EU in the first place.
Norway has membership of the EEA council and they are able to affect the EU laws which affect them.
Obviously, you can't affect the laws in the EU which as an EFTA member you don't have to implement.
I don't know why people keep on saying that you don't have any representation...
Do I misunderstand?
Sure, as an EFTA member we have a veto, which we always never use because it always trigger repercussions or sours or relationship with the EU, on which market we're completely dependent.
Our former foreign minister paints a better picture than I do: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/27/norway...
That being said, I don't necessarily think Norway should be a member of the EU, as I think we'd be too small to make a significant difference. UK on the other hand, had a lot of sway within the union, and it's sad to see them leave this behind for a potential "Norwegian solution".
A trade agreement, where it's "stay, or you'll lose access to everything", and which can't be renegotiated, is horrible for the young people.
What if I want to vote to change it, even just slightly? No chance.
With the EU, I can vote for a different party in the EU Parliamentary elections, and they can easily change it to the better.
Trade agreements are less democracy than even the EU.
Why is everyone telling this damn lie?
As long as you are white. They fixed that later with a few amendments. If you served a prison sentence you may have lost a few as well.
Seems like this inalienable rights can be taken away arbitrarily is what I'm saying.
My conclusion is that current day democracy does not work at the scale of hundreds of millions of people. The US, the EU, Russia and China are all examples of that in different ways.
We need a new form of democracy which scales better than the one we have today. Only then can we try to build sustainable unions on this scale.
I have no answer to what that would look like though. I can only guess at some of the components.
On the other hand, democratic elections as we know them skip the basic-understanding part entirely and go straight to the debate, denounce & convince part. Having that would be fine if people actually had a solid base from which to judge these arguments.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if there were a test similar to driver's license tests, far less involved but still a bit of a hurdle, and the voter base shrinking to a much smaller but on average much better informed populace.
Again, this has to come with completely free, government-sponsored access to time, opportunity and information for any citizen, so that even the poorest homeless person has a reasonable chance to take and pass that test. In that sense, it's a fragile system that can (maybe too) easily be rigged against the poor and struggling by educated and potentially malicious actors.
I disagree. Facts can and do often get in the way or confuse people - and oversimplifying the facts for mass consumption has its own problems.
What if the facts are data/statistics? Depending how they get massaged you can have wildly different conclusions and both still be "right". Or voters not willing to investigate the data themselves (or lack the ability to perform statistical analysis) could be easily influenced by how the data is presented, if the data is presented in a manner meant to make drawing the "favored" solution easier.
What if the information presented is meant to mislead people with facts? Such as the old "ban dihydrogen monoxide" campaign.
I can't remember the city (state?), but they held a vote to ban Uber. The way the phrasing was to accept/decline the ordinance to outlaw Uber was so confusingly worded I read it several times and still wasn't sure if I was supposed to vote "yes" or "no" on the ordinance... was it saying "yes" to the new ordinance to overrule/replace the old ordinance or was it voting "yes" to keep the old ordinance? If I voted "yes" was I voting to outlaw Uber or allow Uber? I have a feeling it was intentionally made as confusing as possible.
That's what's different monetary-policy-wise. California, for instance get's like 10 cents on the dollar back from its federal tax burden. Those 90 cents are used to shore up economically (and perhaps other kinds of) backward states like Mississippi. Nothing like this happened in the EU. Germany keeps a lions share of revenue and sends a tiny trickle back to the EU. This was never going to last long. Britain has probably only hastened the inevitable.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-st...
Wouldn't that be nice? Too bad no one stops to think about the rest of the world...
The euro is flawed[1] for similar reasons. The economies of southern Europe are too different and its impossible to adjust as the flow of labour is limited due to cultural and language difficulties.
[1] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-o...
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...
Ironically, that might not be as easy as it sounds. Closing the borders works both ways.
The UK, little more than 10 years ago, was pro-immigration via EU in a way that seems inconceivable now. The UK's anti-immigration response today probably owes something to those decisions. Turns out those other EU countries knew a thing or two about immigration after all.
What the EU needs is a story about its future identity. What should the european values be? How do we bring more of those values to the EU's citizens? In other words: how do we make the EU better for those already in it, instead of just talking about how to preserve the status quo? Unless and until the EU develops a vision for future prosperity, it will keep facing "no" votes from its citizens. People want to believe their children will be better off than themselves, and they'll vote for anyone who promises them that. Who can blame them?
I feel like the EU has been becoming more of a ruling political power than just the trade regulator it began as. I think the recent increase in EU laws is what set this into motion. I agree that the EU is beneficial for trade, but I don't understand why they've started trying to make political moves impacting citizens day to day lives
Portugal is in trouble, so is Italy. The upcoming Italian banking center crisis, which is pretty much inevitable, will reset any economic gains from the last 5 years quite nicely. France is doing okay-ish. Definitely second fiddle to Germany though.
Speaking of Germany. Their bone-headed fear of - gasp - inflation and austerity measures are dividing Europe, not to mention Merkel's idiotic handling of the refugee crisis. Euro-scepticism is growing. Fully 1/3 of Germans are now Euro-sceptics. Let that sink in for a moment. Right-wing nationalism is increasing. Marie Le Pen and Geert Wilders are growing in popularity. If that's not a failure of Euro-liberal policies, I don't know what is.
I don't think what happened yesterday is great. But portraying the EU experiment (I call it that since it still might fail) as some kind of giant happy family and the UK being the unhappy, ungrateful child is grossly inaccurate.
The EU project has been in trouble and under pressure for a while now. I'm 100% convinced this is only the first domino to fall.
Now, the Greeks don't even have that. They're basically a collective EU servant class. Portugal is in the same boat. Italy is not too much better.
That's your precious EU with a single-currency-under-German-control right there, Bud.
That is absolutely what the UK has never wanted from the EU. I would wager a good chunk of the Remain voters would have voted against a 'US of E'.
The unskilled, or partially skilled working class in Britain had to compete with immigrants from poorer EU countries for jobs and the immigrants also drove down wage rates.
The leadership of the EU is able to dictate treaties to member countries, but the leadership (unlike the President of the US) is not elected by the people, but rather appointed by elites. In other words, the leadership of the EU had no mandate to govern by the electorate of the EU. This favored policies that favored elites, but not the working class.
The rise of Trump and of Sanders was caused by the Republican and Democratic political elites and media elites that ignored the suffering of the working class. Working class in the US has to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs while at the same time having their wages depressed.
It is against the law to hire illegal immigrants, but they are hired anyway.
Meanwhile firms are exporting jobs to Mexico, China etc.
Recently Carrier air conditioners closed a factory in Indiana and moved the jobs to Mexico. There is a video on youtube with the Carrier leadership acting terribly towards the factory workers in Indiana. Only Donald Trump spoke out against Carrier exporting jobs.
Trump may not be able to "fix" the problems, but at least he's not a member of the Republican or Democratic elites that simply ignore the plight of the working class.
The UK withdrawal from the EU was most about economics for the working class and lack of autonomy for voters. The situation was created by British political and media elite who by and large simply ignored the complaints of the working class.
PM Cameron had the hubris to call for the referendum because he that it was impossible that he would lose.
The EU leadership and the leadership of individual EU member countries need to start listening more to the citizens, the electorate and less to their clueless elites.
They need to take into account the job concerns of the working class in member countries instead of just ignoring them.
This is all probably because of a structural problem in the EU that makes it basically not a democratic institution elected by the people. If the EU has any chance of a successful union, they need to ensure that all leadership offices are elected, much as they are in the US.
Secondly, why would the UK end up with a Norway or Switzerland deal, when the UK is the 5th largest economy in the world? This is unprecedented. This isn't some one sided negotiation.
The EU needs the UK. If you sift through the garbage press, you'll see that the BDI in Germany - "The Voice of German Industry" - says that trade curbs against the UK would be "foolish". Of course they would be! Do you know how many German cars are sold in the UK each year?
"About a fifth of all cars produced in Germany last year, or around 820,000 vehicles, were exported to the UK, making it the single biggest destination by volume." Source: FT.com
"The UK is the fourth-biggest export market for German engineering companies, with sales of €6.8bn last year." Source: FT.com
The scaremongering goes on even after the vote has been called...
Imho I think the threat of greater force does not prevent nations from taking drastic actions when pushed against a wall.
Civil unrest is caused by large unemployment especially of the young, which in turn leads to nationalistic and isolationist policies breeding bigotry and violence that are seized upon by demagogues. These are warning signs of something to come. The weird thing is they seem to be popping up all over both in eastern and western europe over the course of the last decade.
The US election in turn I think will definitely tilt the balance. From what i have seen it is not looking good on this side of the pond either.
As for isolationism leading to war, I think this I think has been blown out of proportion. Of course in extreme examples it can happen, but I'd suggest at most we'd be looking at Australian-style economic protectionism rather than North Korean-style isolationism.
To avoid sounding cliche, I hope we remember history...
I honestly believe I work for an amazing company so the metaphor may not be perfect, but if you want to increase confidence temporarily you could certainly try to manufacture these circumstances. In my case I think they're genuine, which does actually give me significant pause any time I think about how much of a raise I might get, or where else I might go.
The EU simply has to ensure its rules are sensible and fair, and offer the UK a fair deal. The UK will still be better off than non-EU countries, but not as good as EU members. Members who want the full benefits will stay.
And such d* moves will certainly not help them get back anyone where in the near foreseeable future because of bridge-burning.
It will do exactly that because it will show how bad of an idea it is to quit from the EU even for the richest country in Europe.
The comments on this thread are ridiculously naive, I expected better from HN.
By the way, this is the very problem with the Euro. If you want to have the same currency of (let's say) Germany, you should perform like Germany, or better. If you are less efficient, in any way, you're going the way of Argentina, even if not as quickly. This is why the EU should have one real central government, maybe USA style, and local governments should be like the governments of the US states.
OK, where's the central government going to sit? In Belgium? No, I don't the Germans or the French would tolerate that if they have to give up their power to act as nations and have their PMs demoted to the role of state governors. None of the member countries would either.
And who among them thinks anything like a Jefferson or a Hamilton? And which portion of the citizenry would even buy into such a debate?
And then there are all the language and cultural differences - actually still a problem for the EU.
Next thing you know, we'd have yet another war in Europe.
I've lived in a country with high double-digit inflation through the 1990s (in one year it even surpassed 100%), I'd say be careful what you wish for. People seem to forget that paper money is just that, paper, and is based mostly on trust. Once trust evaporates (even if temporarily) shit's gonna definitely go wrong. But, hey, at least the decision is yours! You've got freedom!
I personally doubt it. It is still much better than its neighbors.
This is not limited to Greece, of course.
The raw value of the figures seems scary (lowest value in 30 years, value of the pound dropped by 13%), but the reality is that after dipping very briefly to "the lowest level in 30 years" the GBP is currently about the same as it was in Feb this year and the value is down 4% from 2 weeks ago (not great, but nothing like a 13% downwards plunge).
Edit: Also worth noting, the FTSE is up from the start of the month, and roughly equal to what it was at the start of the week. Aside from a big dip and a bounce, it's literally like nothing happened [1].
0: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=2Y
1: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^FTSE#symbol=^FTSE;ra...
That doesn't mean I'm not in a place to comment on what the market is doing - especially when it's a pattern that is repeated again and when major events occur.
2-3 months after the event will give a better idea of how the market values the decision to leave, rather than 1 day after.
A good 1/2 of the "tumble" was only added in the 10 days leading up to the decision [0].
I might not be making a killing, but someone is.
0: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1M
I don't know which way that trend will go, just that it will be clearer.
Edit: Also, keep in mind that all of this is in the context of the post of was replying to, trying to point out that the pound hasn't "tumbled".
You can't take the highest point from just before the result was known, and the lowest point from the few hours afterwards as a representative point of how the pound is doing in response to the news. If you put it in the context of a few weeks, or a few months, things are much more sane.
Despite all the sensationalism that the pound reached it's lowest point in 30 years, the pound is currently at the around the same price it was a few months back (currently only trading at a couple of cents lower than what it was back at the end of Feb - $1.37 vs $1.39).
Also, even if you don't know which way it'll go, you are making some claim about how the market will behave. It sounds like you're predicting a decrease in volatility? Ok, you can bet on that. If not that, then what? If you aren't predicting something that can be bet on, you aren't predicting anything at all.
In case you didn't notice, the pound just went down the toilet. A ton of GBP is not worth all that much suddenly.
And as you say - the English need the foreign booze, so low tariffs are in their interest. The French don't want or need IPA or scrumpy, so they don't mind tariff barriers so much.
You are saying that France can easily impose import tariffs against the UK with no repercussions because the UK wants wine but doesn't need cider in return. This is the worst game of Civ ever played.
France has 3 big car manufacturers, Citroen, Renault and Peugeot. They sell lots of these small cars in the UK. Many Britons holiday in France (and own property there). The French economy doesn't want to take a hit on manufacturing, exports and property prices as well as tourist francs (remember those?).
Imposing tariffs on the UK would be a disaster for the French economy. It isn't going to happen. European manufacturing tariffs would be akin to routing a percentage of all trade out of Europe and into Asia.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-19/china-s-do...
Renault on the other hand allied with Nissan.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-23/lower-saxo...
They may well want to impose big tariffs. The question is to what extent the French themselves want that.
If by "down the toilet" you mean back to February 2016 or early 2009 levels. It's hardly way off recent historical lows. If we see £/$ parity, then we might have an issue.
The negotiations themselves may prove a good catalyst for further disarray.
They would have given him a better a deal on immigration, which they thought was an absolute non starter, and was the main grief against the EU. I think it would have made a difference.
(As an example of the EU gravy train, the former prime minister in my own country, Jyrki Katainen, first screwed up things home and then landed on a nice job in Brussels - because he kept saying nice things about the European project. This is one more little thing that has turned me suspicious of the whole project, a project I didn't vote for when I voted for EU membership 22 years ago.)
Simply: admit out loud that they got it wrong and they have to change direction.
But that would have meant a loss of face.
Yes, EU needs to be more democratic, very much so, but "more integration" would only accomplish the opposite. More power to "local" parliaments would be more democratic, or making the European Parliament matter (i.e. be the sole legislative body, which it isn't now) and make it visible locally so that voters care.
Well -- there was the whole "politicians lost the war" thing and general bitterness about the Rhineland.
But another Hitler or similar dictator. Not possible.
Europe is defenseless without NATO. All EU countries, with the exception of UK (yes), Greece (historically strong army because of Turkish threat) and Poland (rich experience with Russia) fail to meet NATO requirements on army spending. EU armies are disfunctional and barely able to provide symbolic support for the US Army in operations (remember Libya? EU couldn't sustain a few days of air-only operations).
It may very well be that NATO is done. But if it is, it's because of EU members that lack any will to defend themselves. So how do you expect EU's own defense to be any better than NATO backed by USA's might (politically ambiguous as it may be these days)? Again with the exception of Poland, whose EU-hated government is serious about defending the country, but that's too little, too late.
Europe were "barely able" to provide support for the US because there's huge political opposition to get dragged into US interventions.
[1] http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/06/nato-members-defe...
The Netherlands has unfortunately become much more Eurosceptic since, but let's not conclude too much from those referenda.
If it's based on fiction, start up the PR machine. And repeat this AT LEAST every decade.
If it's based on fact, fix the EU, or start up the PR machine explaining this cannot be fixed for the EU to work. (depending on the fact)
Education is the only thing that can work against it, pray that your people value it over other things.
"your people"? You mean that from the perspective of the politicians ? Or from my perspective ?
This is pretty reckless risk management on Britain's part: to place so much weight on a question of just how a future, unclear negotiation, subject to who knows what bureaucracy and other countries' own interests, will turn out. It's very vague to just say "well we're trading a lot, so surely we're very important" without any supporting evidence or precedent: it makes all sorts of unjustified assumptions.
Not true. It is the reverse because the UK runs a gigantic trade deficit: in 2014 they exported 472 billion USD, but imported 663 billion USD¹. In fact the UK is the second country in the world with the largest trade deficit (behind the US). A huge portions of UK's export go to Europe, therefore the EU has definitely more say when it comes to negotiating trade deals with the UK. I would be very worried for my economic future if I were a UK citizen...
The EU under the Euro is the Fourth Reich. Nothing more, nothing less.
Germany has always exported a lot but also imported a lot. The crazy export started just in the 90ies. It has been very unhealthy.
It's definitely going to hurt, but it's nothing like the pressure that will be on the UK.
I'm expecting most EU countries wanting avoid as many job losses as possible.
Doesn't really matter who's got the most leverage. The optimum strategy for both is low/no tarrifs
Since it is clear that the optimal economic outcome is not being selected, the optimal Political outcome will win.
EDIT: to elaborate on what I mean. I think that this event has more to do with political points being earned, and poor leadership than it has to do with actual good economic sense.
In such an arena, most of what the HN crowd tends to be focused is less applicable.
What I expect to happen is that life will continue as normal. Any premium which was built into the Pound due to reduced transaction costs with the EU will be priced in very quickly.
What matters is what penalties the EU decides to apply on the UK, in order to set a precedent. I expect the precedent to be onerous - sufficient for the UK to pay with its larger economy, but much harder to cover for any smaller state planning to leave.
Unfortunately this is the worst kind of conjecture - guesswork by someone not currently in the market.
De Gaulle certainly was right in vetoing the UK application repeatedly, given how much harm they have done to the common European project and long-time peace and prosperity on the continent.
I've heard that all EU laws will remain in place unless explicitly removed
It's a bit more complicated though.
In fact, nothing stops the UK following the EU laws that it wants to afterwards as well.
It's the loss of things like financial services companies based in London being able to readily "passport" their services into other EU countries without relying on local branch offices somewhere in the EU that will really hurt.
When it comes to passporting rights, it's very much in the interests of the EU to tell the UK to bugger off, and let the London HQs relocate a whole bunch of jobs to Frankfurt or Paris or Tallinn if they want to carry on doing business with EU nationals. This is likely bad if you work in some London-based back office role for a big European bank; really bad if you're a London-based fintech startup aiming to serve most European markets.
The city may lose up to 30% (google Euro clearing and ECB. I was always a big issue). It will move to Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin. Possibly Scotland if Scotland decides to secede - a vague possibility.
For comparison the UK-EU trade is linked to over 3.3 million jobs in the UK,¹ or 5.1% of the UK population.
0.3% vs 5.1% → the UK needs EU more than the EU needs the UK.
The best deal for both is low tarrifs. There's no conflicting interest here.
Tarrifs = more jobs losses for both No tarrifs = fewer job losses
Apparently it looks like the English dont grasp this idea...
Would you care to elaborate?
If the HoL stopped being anything more than a handbrake on laws it'd be abolished too. And as for the monarchy, well, nobody cares whilst the Queen is so disciplined about staying out of politics. If she dies and is replaced by Charles, and he doesn't change his ways, expect a constitutional change soon after.
To give you a quick introduction to the EU's legislative process... There are three main groups involved in putting together new EU legislation: the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council. In terms of democratic debate, the European Parliament is where the bulk of elected representatives sit, with the Council being the 'upper house' (equivalent to the House of Lords in the UK). However, neither the Parliament nor the Council have the power to propose new laws, they can only discuss proposed laws put forward by the Commission. Therefore, it is the Commission that controls the agenda for the EU.
EU Commissioners are not elected democratically. Furthermore, they are required to take an oath to put the interests of the EU first, and not take any instructions from the countries they are from.
In addition to all that, the Commission has very close ties to big business. There are reasons why TTIP and CETA are being pushed forward even with resistance from MEPs. I'd recommend checking out the documentary The Brussels Business for a look into the ways the Commission and big business work together.
Well, they are suggested by the democratically elected governments of the member states and either accepted or rejected by the democratically elected European Parliament.
> Furthermore, they are required to take an oath to put the interests of the EU first, and not take any instructions from the countries they are from.
As they should, they are to work in the interests of the EU, not a single member state. German ministers are also required to serve the whole federal republic appealing to individual states is not looked upon very favorably.
> In addition to all that, the Commission has very close ties to big business.
Hopefully we can solve at least some of the issues with corruption and lobbying when the most corrupt country in the world[1], which has worked against workers’ rights and increased regulation to ensure public health and safety in the EU for the last four decades, leaves.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/when-a-mafia-expert-tell...
We're not talking about some inconsequential civil servants, we're talking about the leaders of the EU. If you want to call the EU a democratic entity, you should at least be able to vote for who runs it.
> "As they should, they are to work in the interests of the EU, not a single member state. German ministers are also required to serve the whole federal republic appealing to individual states is not looked upon very favorably."
The point I was making is that they aren't placed to represent the will of the people that put them in power. They represent whatever pushes the agenda of the EU forward, regardless of whether that serves the member states or not.
> "Hopefully we can solve at least some of the issues with corruption and lobbying when the most corrupt country in the world[1], which has worked against workers’ rights and increased regulation to ensure public health and safety in the EU for the last four decades, leaves."
Best of luck with that, with the lobbying machinery that exists in the EU you're going to need it. There are over 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels, in terms of volume it's second only to Washington DC.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...
The UK and German cabinet (including prime minister/chancellor) are also not elected. Should we not call these democratic entities either?
I'm not aware of the situation in Germany, but I can tell you that in the UK they are elected.
First of all, the leader of each party is elected. There's due to be a Conservative leadership election soon due to the resignation of David Cameron, so you can follow the build up to this election if you're interested in how it works.
Secondly, whilst the positions in a cabinet are selected by the leader of the party, the available pool of people that can be part of that cabinet are all voted for democratically. Therefore, if they do a poor job, they can be voted out at the next election.
In contrast, you have no power to vote out Commissioners who do a poor job, and without that you basically have no power over the decisions they make.
In short, the Commission is not directly elected, but selected and approved or vetoed by elected officials, and can be removed if it loses the confidence of the democratically elected legislature.
It's not a hugely significant thing - maybe costs just a hundred million € per year, or a bit more, not a lot in EU context - but its symbolic nature about the essence of European Union is telling.
I wasn't aware you'd disestablished the House of Lords. It will indeed be delightful not to have the Anglican Church dictating social legislation!
I read that about 5% of EU's trade is with UK. It's not insignificant but it's not the end of the world if it goes down to 0.5%. We will fuck UK over, good riddance, we will be stronger without UK, now we will finally pursue tighter integration without fear UK will sabotage such attempts.
If you want to go with the rationalist perspective you seem to be advocating, then the UK government will have to be anti-democratic and strike a deal explicitly against their citizen's declared interests.
(This vote is particularly vexing for me since I'm Irish (voted stay) and now will have to sell my house in order to leave. Quite upsetting, overall.)
You honestly believe that?
Let's be clear: it's the UK that felt obliged to send a message.
The rest of Europe's countries does not have delusions of grandeur and feel disenfranchised by foreign workers making minimum wage.
There are many reasons to leave the EU, other than "delusions of grandeur" (the US seems to do pretty well..) and xenophoia. Perhaps the UK wanted to make choices without being slandered like this.
What choice? You can wish that the refugee crisis would not exist, but the choice has been made when deciding whether or not to be the 6th largest weapon exporter.
Acting like an overrun victim now is a bit schizophrenic and it's sad to see 52 percent small minded bigots pulling down a country in this way.
What an astute grasp of politics..
Accepting lots of troublesome unskilled illegal immigrants hurt the German economy, and the workers, but sent a message.
I think I can see a pattern here...
It's the other way around: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/09/germany-imf...
Actually robots will take away lots of jobs. Why do we need more unskilled people in our lands, when soon even the skilled labour will be automatized, and unemployment will grow further?
Except they can. Many Syrian refugees are proficient in English, and many even speak German. There was strong collaboration between German and Syrian universities historically.
(I'm not saying that everyone can read and write, but then again, Western societies have a surprising number of total and functional analphabets.)
And re the automation argument: Automation only takes away medium-skilled jobs. Jobs are for unskilled people because they don't require training, and that's also why they are a poor fit for robots. (Robots don't like irregular situations and need programming for new tasks, whereas you can easily explain a new task to a human worker in a few sentences.)
I always laugh at how people equate more people in a country with growing unemployment rates. If this really worried you, you would move to outlaw procreation, since procreation produces new workers to compete with you about 18 years from now.
Only if the birth rate is above replacement which it isn't in any developed western country.
And it's not about Germany. It's about 27 countries, some of which don't even like Germany too much right now.
Not to punish the UK, but to firmly establish the principle that leaving the EU is painful
Do you realise how crazy you people sound? "There's no punishment for leaving the Mafia, you just have to understand the principle that it will be as painful as possible".
The EU has warped into an ideological disease that sees European people's turned against one another by an absolutist religion that sees diversity as a flaw to be fixed and believes its own hype about stopping wars.
The EU does nothing to stop war. If turning Europe into a single country could stop war, there'd be no civil wars, but today the only wars are civil wars.
Or other debtor countries in the EU will see this as a chance to possibly get out of the union and "start over" as it were.
Hitler and Stalin will be proud of their heritage.
This vote will set in motion a chain of events that can reshape politics across the continent. The EU leaders who have little to lose will use their votes to force the UK's main trading partners (Germany, Netherlands, Sweden etc) to start a trade war with the UK, at the same time as the UK is wanting to sign trade deals. This will piss off the populations in those countries. Referendums may well follow there too.
I have to say, with this kind of attitude, I am even more glad that the UK has left the EU. Who would want to be partners with this kind of spite and hatred?
Be able to set immigration to points based - like the US, Canada, Australia. Why should we discriminate against Indians, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Africans for the EU? I like immigrants and I think they help our economy, but I want this to be run better.
I don't agree with how the EU subsidizes e.g. French farmers at the expense of e.g. African farmers.
To not be a part of what seems to be a failing system and having to answer to the un-elected European Commission, and to therefore avoid being swept along in integration which isn't so good.
It might sound odd, but I didn't vote for leave. But I can see that now that this is what we have, maybe there are some reasons to be positive.
Because EU people are not immigrants. That's the whole point. They are citizens, which happen to be born 1000 km to the east and in a different historic region - but they are citizens. There is no discrimination here because you're comparing apples and oranges.
One day, if globalization advances far enough, we will have the exact same conditions for all (or most) of the world, in some form or another. But brexit is a step back from this, not forward.
Don't you think not having enough local food production to feed the population is a liability of any sovereign nation? Personally, I think there are "strategically important" industries (like food, steel, weapons) that countries need to protect to remain sovereign, by subsidies or other means.
So why are UK's xenophobes more afraid of the Polish Plumber than the Bangladeshi Goat Farmer??? That's what makes no sense to me. If you're going to be scared that your "Britishness" is disappearing, fine - but at least be logical about it. Who's more a danger to your way of life? Someone from 400 kilometers away or someone from 10,000?
Has the EU actually said this or is this just what people on the internet are assuming?
But yes, multiple people connected with the EU government have been making statements to this effect: out means out. It is not in the EU's interest to give the UK a more favourable deal than it had before, because that signals to other member countries that leaving has financial benefits.
Now we're in a sorry situation where each party's incentive is the opposite of what is required for a healthy economy, and the important decisions require referendums and take a very long time. The fact that the vote to leave was mostly supported by older voters is a tragedy for the future generation, who do not have a straightforward way of having their concerns heard in the coming decades.
Goodbye Britain, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I think vindictive sanctions or refusing new trade deals with the UK would be stupid, childish and harmful for the EU. I hope they work together on a reasonable and fair deal. And then maybe the EU can move forward towards a closer union, and maybe also address some of the problems with the EU, because it's hardly perfect.
There'll be negotiation and both the EU and the UK will get less than they want. There'll be free trade for sure, ironically there'll most likely free movement too.
It is possible that the UK gets a slightly better deal than what Switzerland and Norway have, because the UK is bigger, but it's still not going to be a lot better. Certainly not in the current climate.
- they have dragged their feet for 40 years, preventing EU progress
- they have forced on the EU expansion to the East (which I welcome), and then complained that too many poles are migrating to the UK
- they have prevented political integration and shoved down our throats a neo-liberal EU
- they have been treated excepcionally well by the rest of the EU, with excemptions and rebates. How have they thanked us? By continuing to blame all their problems on the EU.
And now they leave.
But I do not loathe them (my personal experience with british people is excellent). I think that you, as a country, have been extremely unfair with your EU partners, and basically betrayed the European project, and the trust that we have deposited in you.
So, the only thing left now is just to accept things as they are: you have chosen to leave, so please do it immediately. Do not burden us with your petty politics. We are not interested in knowing if the next prime minister is going to have the majority to invoke article 50 or not, or if you will have a new referendum, or if Scotland will split from the UK. We do not want to wait for 6 motnhs, or 2 years, or 10 years until you get your house in order. We do not want this uncertainty anymore. We have respectfully waited the last two years (?) for your referendum to be held, but now we have had enough. David Cameron has organized this mess, and he should bear responsibility for making it legally binding.
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lScVfwe-Rp0
YOU have decided, and must take responsibility. We can not wait for years while your jonsons, farages and whoever sort their internal politics.
Cameron called the referendum and assured in case of defeat he would activate article 50 immediately. He must deliver. You have two years time to negotiate anyway.
I am sorry for the UK, I really am. I think you were an important partner, even though a bit unfair. But we must respect your decission: we can not pretend this is business as usual. The british people have voted, and we must respect that.
Specially sorry for the remainers, but this is something you need to sort out internally.
You are a sovereign nation.
However, and I know this will grate horribly, but the EU might have to wait, whether it likes it or not. If article 50 is not invoked, no one can force the UK out. What's more, there are gathering suspicions that the UK could consider a second vote in some months' time. Only by waiting could this happen.
For context: I am British and do not want to leave the EU, despite my best efforts to find the positives in my other comments. I think that the UK had a good deal before and was able to influence policy from within. Now we will be punished by the EU and break up internally.
But beyond all of this, I don't want to live in a country where people have voted so stupidly, and so nastily. One of the leave campaign's biggest claims has been proven to be false. Actually proven to be false. And people voted on that. This in my view is almost grounds for a voiding of the entire process. I feel ashamed of my country and I'm a "true" Brit by their standards. I consider myself lucky in that I can leave and live somewhere else, and this is what I intend to do. I no longer feel a part of the country of my family and of my life so far. And I didn't see such a strong feeling coming until it hit me with the leave vote.
This has been a big blow and, unless we act united and fast, the EU is going to crumble. You say that, due to how the referendum has played out, it would be better to repeat it in some months time. What happens in those months? Nobody knows, but probably very big damage for the EU and for European countries, while financial havoc paralizes the economy.
And afterwards? You vote again? Leave again? Why wait more then? Remain? Can the EU really deal with such unstability, a partner which does not accept a role alongside the rest of EU members, constantly complaining, penny pinching and accusing the EU of all imaginable problems? We have frankly had enough. I understand this is not your personal stance, but that is the UK's attitude.
I think that “what is done can not be undone“. Lets try to craft a deal which suits both parties. It could be that lots of EU agreements can be salvaged for EU-UK cooperation.
If we were talking about this last week, I would support you, but reality has kicked in, and you wanted leave. This is not a game you get to play again and again. This was a one-man bet, and the whole country played along. What a disaster!
There is precedent for a second referendum - Ireland did so in 2009 on accepting the 28th Amendment. I admit, this is a lot bigger.
I think the context here which may help this to make more sense to those outside: a lot of British people voted for leave on false claims. Ok, lots of elections have false claims. But these were enormously misleading and widely spread. It seems like there are a lot who regret their decision, though I'm not sure what % they represent. If there is a general election called early with a party that explicitly backs EU membership winning, then there's no way we can leave without another referendum. And if we vote to stay, I think there would be grounds for the EU to get us to accept a lot of things which we might not have before.
But yes, it's a totally miserable situation for everyone.. you know what, I'd even say it's miserable for the politicians who 'won'.
I understand that the plan is maybe not detailed, but I assume they have some kind of detailed roadmap on how to proceed? The Scotland independence referendum had a very detailed plan, hundreds of pages long.
The other issue is the British government: that Cameron did in fact not prepare for losing is his biggest blunder, and history will judge him for that.
It's disingenuous to say they "took everything and gave nothing."
Besides, you are counting only EU related expenditures. Are you counting indirect benefits? How much money makes london operating EUR finantial center? And lots of other indirect benefits.
> they have taken everything from the EU, and given little in return
(not edited, that's my original statement)
If the UK leaves this decade, it will be without any deal in place.
"As of date X, all existing EU regulations remain in force. Changes to UK law that overlap with existing areas of EU regulation will result in a notification to the Commission".
Done. There is no need to 'replace' detailed regulation on a thousand topics when, as you observe, it is already implemented in UK law.
Differing regulations create trade barriers and much of the work the EU did was unifying exactly those myriad different and sometimes contradictory regulations. That way someone making something in Germany only has to adhere to one set of regulations (and not, in the worst case, maybe even open different production lines for different countries) if they want to sell something anywhere in the EU.
How does the UK plan to be involved there? Realistically they can't if they are outside. So it's adhere or be out of the common market … this is the UK losing some of their power because they are unwilling to cooperate. Not even ill will involved
This is not the EU trying to do something harmful. If you don't cooperate and participate in something complex like unifying regulation you obviously lose power. It couldn't even be any other way!
I mean, what do you even expect the EU to do here?! Roll over and say that the whole EU will adhere to all UK regulation from now on? Accepting that the UK unilaterally gets to dictate regulation? That’s obviously not fair. The EU cannot give that kind of power to the UK. That would be monumentally unfair to all members of the EU.
It's already fucking hard to unify regulation and it's hard to find a way to somehow respect everyone's interests. How should the EU even react to the UK saying that they don't want to play ball anymore? There is no way except to give the UK an unfair amount of power or less power than they have inside the EU.
And the second solution is the only plausible one to me.
Well, the people have sent their message.
The North of England has seen their manufacturing base migrate to the cheaper countries of the EU while the SE reaps the rewards of the service economy.
The seeds have bloomed, enjoy the fruits.
On the other hand, EU could import less from UK, since (probable) taxes will increase the price => EU will consume more from it's own production and have less imports from UK. So to me, if it's about jobs, UK jobs are at risk, not EU.
Europe will not disadvantage themselves with tarrifs and risk job losses
Adding tarrifs essentially means Honda will get more customers at the expense of BMW.
Germany won't want that
OTOH, looking at other possible referendums across Europe, I would like it to be clear what an exit from the EU entails as soon as possible. I don't think leave voters will get what they had hoped for, vide https://amp.twimg.com/v/6ca5195b-a8a5-4b20-b209-92440b9a25d6
Maybe it's possible for the UK to get custom tailored agreements that are more beneficial. But I'm afraid that until all of that is settled, a lot of time will have passed. Negotiation about the FTA between EU and Japan has been going on for about four years now. Other fora of exchange have been established decades ago. Until the UK can benefit from their own negotiation efforts, the EU might look more attractive to Japanese investments and trade.
International trade is complicated and takes time but the Leave campaign made it look like everything's going to be fine in just a few years.
- Will Honda keep UK plant to sell higher priced cars to UK (due to higher priced of imported parts from EU)?
- Will Honda move the plant to an EU country to have better prices to a larget market?
How how does this work in the UK advantage, again?
http://www.reuters.com/article/maersk-containerfreightrates-...
"Shipping freight rates for transporting containers from ports in Asia to Northern Europe fell 17.8 percent to $540 per 20-foot container (TEU) in the week ended on Friday, a source with access to data from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index told Reuters."
You generally have 40 foot containers, not 20. But then double above freight. With how much you can fit in there, it is nothing. You can fit 3 cars in a 40-foot container (though normally you'd use special vessels for cars).
The exact figure is disputed, leave were saying £450 million per week, remain were saying it's £150million per week.
https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million...
*not including cheaper labor into account.
The EU has vital interests in controlling the consumer goods available in its market. If we don't have a say in, for example, how they control their food production, we can't just take their word on it.
If you now think, let's just assume the British government does its job correctly in that regard, and we'll be fine, you're wrong. Companies often know which of their products are going to end up in exports, so they know where they don't need to follow the rules.
Low tarrifs = good for both. it would be politically difficult to go against that.
For example say Country A and B trade coal and agree to no tariffs. Country A now cuts back on worker protection and wages, such that their coal is cheaper. Country B's only other chance than doing the same would be to raise a tariff to keep its own coal competitive. That's why Country B wants a say in Country A's labor laws.
Let the race to the bottom commence!
The same economic theories that lead to the conclusion that low tariffs are good place the same importance on the free exchange of goods as the free exchange of labour. The treaty of Rome is the governing treaty in the EU in this respect and it has provisions on both. Since it is precisely the free exchange of labour that the UK wants to eliminate, they will need to violate the treaty and lose the free exchange of goods. How this will affect the application in the UK of existing trade agreements between external countries and the EU is another question. Since the bureaucratic process of bringing goods to the UK will be different than bringing it to the EU, foreign countries will likely take the stance that those trade agreements no longer apply to the UK.
You're confusing economic theory with reality. There were already plenty of conflicts in many sectors (eg fishing) and now each EU country that think they can gain something in any sensitive sector by having tariffs on UK products will push in that direction.
Exports are things we sell, imports are things we get to keep.
It's like taking your temperature. Sure, it could mean you're going to die. Could also mean you've got a healthy immune system fighting off a disease. Could mean it's time to stop wanking in the sauna.
This is not true at all. Food is eaten. Energy gets used up. Electronics depreciate (very) quickly. Most physical goods wear out. Etc.
The only imports you get to "keep" long term are a few things like gold, cement, etc.
Wherever the UK citizens choose to, just like it's up to EU citizens whether they want to buy from the UK. We have a global market, (for the most part) anyone can buy anything from anyone else. The UK is likely to experience price rises for EU goods, and the EU is likely to experience price rises for UK goods, but if customers still want a particular product and can afford it even with the price rise then they'll continue to buy it.
> "Apparently the pound just fell to a century-wide low..."
That's just the markets reacting to uncertainty. The future is indeed more uncertain, so it's to be expected, but uncertainty does not necessarily mean a downturn in the long run.
Members of EU benefit every-time they export something to a large market such as UK (e.g. Cars). Members of EU benefit each time they willingly import something from UK (e.g. Tea). Either ways if EU wants to protect interests of its members it makes sense to trade with UK just the way it did in past. Any "revenge" is likely to hurt EU members whether or not it hurts UK.
UK survived before EU and will continue to survive beyond EU too. In fact I think with better immigration policies and freedom from red tape of EU, UK will be better off economically. The very presence of EU in my opinion is against principles of democracy. People of England basically accepted restrictions coming from Brussels who were not voted for by them.
>In exchange for access to the common market, Britain had to accept an external tariff and, over time, a deluge of regulations from power-hungry Brussels. The former makes imports more expensive in Britain, while the latter makes British exports less competitive globally.
> Jean-Claude Juncker, the current president of the EU Commission, summed up the decision-making behind the introduction of the single currency thusly: "We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back." [1]
[1] http://humanprogress.org/blog/britains-democracy-is-a-sham
If that is indeed true then I think every other country should leave EU with the urgency of a man whose hair are set on fire. It clearly shows that EU is not something that protects the interest of its members but a bureaucratic agency who is interested in expanding authority.
If you're so sure the UK will be better off economically, you should put your money where your mouth is and trade against the overwhelming deluge of financial analysts who say the exact opposite. Last I checked the UK banks were down ~30-35% today, sounds like a cheap deal for you.
Only if they want to be part of the single market / EEA. China trades with the EU and doesn't follow EU policies.
The ideals of the union certainly haven't been held up with what has actually occurred. The fear factor being put out about doom and gloom for UK people's is mostly engineered by those who profit off the union and don't see the same margins with a separate UK or worse other drop outs. With a union marginal countries can be propped up to great profit for the financial groups but without one, who knows.
It will, of course, be a compromise, but one that likely results in the UK being much worse off.
The terms are simple: You can't have free movement of goods without the equally free movement of people. As long as people in the UK are ok with the free movement of people (even though the fight against it was a big part of the "Leave" campaign) then I would see no reason why us, the rest of the EU people, should impede the UK products' access to the European market. You can't have your lunch and eat it too, meaning you can't be against free movement of people (against "immigration") and then expect us to accept your economic products. It's not "scaremongering", this are the true, hard facts.
Unfortunately, even within EU the influence of small countries on trade norms is rather negligible. We also get lost of proposals for regulation of things we don't want and could avoid outside the EU.
Note that I'm actually for the continued EU membership of my country. I just find it abysmal that the pro-EU camp is often in denial about things and too enthusiastic for deeper integration towards USE.
I faintly remember a butter shortage in Norway because they are trying to protect their extremely uncompetitive dairy industry.
That's what already happens now, in a way. My brother (I'm from Romania) used to be a farmer his whole life until his early 30s, when our accession and integration into the EU made it very hard for him to live from working his land. That's when he switched jobs and became an international truck driver, because his cows' milk could not compete with the rest of the milk coming from the other EU countries. Right now he's on his way to France, from where he'd probably carry some stuff to the Czech Republic. That's how a single market should work: a Romanian driver working for a Romanian company carrying stuff from France to the Czech, the same as it happens in the States.
What's happening with Uber in Paris and the other big French cities is an economic anachronism.
That would totally work. It wouldn't make much sense to register the car in Romania though since the registration fees are probably the least of your costs and the hassle outweighs the gain. That's why you're not seeing it. But I regularly get drivers of foreign origin in the cabs I'm taking in Berlin.
Why not? Other countries have free trade without the free movement of people.
Why not? No movement is absolutely "free" of course, but we get lots of goods from (e.g.) China, while it is not that easy to immigrate into China. There are many big trading nations that are not at all that free about moving into them (for instance, Singapore).
The people in UK seems to think that their island is rather full. Those of us in the remaining EU need to reassess the idea to push deeper and deeper political integration towards a federal wannabe-superpower.
Care to mention why? In my quite limited circle of acquaintances I have 3 people who now work in China, and they seem to have had no problems with getting work permits in there. One of them is even a guy in his late 20s who's now working with kids under 7, which would have been an issue in other, more "liberal" countries, but I digress. I'm from Eastern Europe, if it matters.
> Why not?
Because if you make superior products to out internal, home-made ones, and then flood our market with those products then that means our domestic producers go out of business and we lose our jobs (while we happily buy your better products). We want to have the chance to share in your country's superior economic power (which, let's not forget, also depends on our cash, it depends in our buying your products) by working for your country's companies, if need be in your country. It's as simple as that, any other outcome is economic colonialism.
I have myself worked in China thus I know the process (well, the process 16 years ago). Yes, it is easy for a professional who goes there to be a well-paid expat. Income differences are huge in China. But the forms really look like the Chinese are concerned about immigration of people who come there to exploit the welfare state (even if it is actually rather non-existent).
That's literally the same concern everywhere. Polish people are concerned about immigrants coming there to claim their benefits, even though the immigration is literally non-existent, and Polish welfare pays something like $60/week if you are unemployed so it's not exactly something people would come here for. It's just people being fearful of issues that don't exist.
He's a teacher at a kinder-garden teaching English. My reply was a little far-fetched, I agree, but that job is usually not given to men in other parts of the world because reasons. The guy has no convictions or anything like that.
2. It is impossible to get a passport
3. Chinese have a race based idea who can be Chinese. The idea is that sooner or later all foreigner may leave and should leave. If there is a huge economic downturn, China may even throw most of them out.
Do you know what you get if you marry a Chinese? A tourist visa!
Because it's part of the same deal. You can't take one part of the deal and refuse the other part. The EU is really not going to make a special exception on this for the UK. In fact, I think the time of special exceptions for the UK is over. The UK will have to learn to accept fair deals.
You only meant freedom of employment? I'm annoyed that UK asks questions while in loads of non-EU countries you just wave an EU passport and it is like an open border (no questions, nothing).
There, I fixed it for you. You don't need a VISA, you don't need a permit. I know plenty of Europeans that moved from the UK to mainland Europe and vice versa. (That's right - we are all Europeans...)
It's one of those rules that makes the EU more than just a pro-corporate alliance. It actively tries to increase the freedom of its citizens. Member states can't just pick and choose which of those freedoms they want and which they want to deny. It's a package deal.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...
Leaving the economic impact aside, the societal and demographic implications are just as important (for me) and a very hard to predict. Great Britain might very well fall apart over this, as Scottish politicians already announced that they will push for a leave if the UK leaves the EU.
For me, this thing is just the biggest and most catastrophically failed political gamble of the century. Times are strange indeed.
I have just spent the last 20 minutes drafting letters to my MP and MSP basically telling them I do not want another referendum.
Northern Ireland is also going to be one to watch.
Northern Ireland has absolutely no chance of seceding, they can't go it alone as a separate country, and there's absolutely no appetite for unification from either side.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-norther...
The EU train is leaving and governments need to make a decision whether they want to get on or stay off.
Which sides? Sinn Féin politicians have already called for a unification vote...
Scotland is less messy and would separate fairly easily imo (but you never know British nationalism is on the rise so letting them leave could be seen as something to prevent at all costs)
This would be the first time that those who want Irish unity could actually sway a significant number of unionist voters. Violence would ruin that opportunity so I doubt it would happen. This vote has increased the possibility of their goals being achieved politically. If anything I would expect violence to rise on the unionist side if it did look like a border poll was going to take place and not go their way.
There is now. Leaving the EU actually brings the Ireland debate away from typically nationalist/unionist politics to actual real issues. If the Republic has to secure it's border with the North (as I believe countries on the border of Europe are required to do so) consider the impact on people who live in border towns. A lot of people living just within the north side of the border work in the south and vice versa - they would have to go through border control every morning and evening. And what happens to the large number of ROI citizens living and working in NI (and vice versa). This actually opens the debate on unity up and brings it past the typical dividing line politics. It will also likely fuel nationalist support as the democratic will of people in NI (and Scotland) is essentially ignored thanks to people in England. It's a very strange situation. I think it's still highly unlikely but if Irish unification is ever going to happen this will be the catalyst.
It's just not that there would be border control, there's also question would they need visas to get through the border control?
No need to be condescending. Border controls are one issue. I didn't say they were the only one. Today's decision is going to cause many issues for Northern Ireland and if a persons daily life starts to get affected by the decision they might eventually be willing to put to the side their built-in unionist/nationalist mentality and figure out what's actually best for the people. I don't know what that is but ruling out unification or independence would be silly.
But this time I might actually vote for independence because I'm not sure a Britain outside the EU is one I want to live in.
Now the next referendum will be a lot more significant since it'll effectively be a UK vs EU decision. Either you follow the English into isolation or you suddenly have a very real border between England and Scotland with customs&immigrations checkpoints and similar things.
Scotland is part of an existing member state of the EU, but it is not a member state of the EU. Were it to become independent, it would likely have to join the EU as a new member state.
There's perhaps an argument to be made that if the UK broke up, each successor would have a claim to be a successor to the UKs treaty obligations and benefits in general, which might carry some weight (though would be extremely complicated for a treaty arrangement like the EU) if it happened before the UK formally started the process of withdrawing from the EU (if it happened after that, even viewing Scotland as a successor to the breaking-up-UK would leave it a short-term member of the EU in the process of exiting under the Article 50 process, inheriting the exit date that the UK has, and needing to negotiate its own exit agreement if it wanted anything but the default exit terms.)
That being said, I reckon they will have another indy referendum regardless but I also see three potential scenarios that might stop it going ahead:
1. Britain prospers like crazy now we are out of the EU 2. The EU collapses (I think this is likely. Maybe not in the next 2 years but likely!) 3. A bunch of other countries decide to flee the EU as well. This would bring about 2 I reckon.
Imagine if Germany decided to leave! That would kill the EU stone dead I reckon.
That's worse than what the UK had, because they wouldn't be part of the EU decision making process anymore and they'd still have as much immigration as now, and that's supposed to be the sore point. So I presume they wouldn't go for such a deal, but it's also hard to see the EU going for a deal this good.
I'd suggest the deals made will be based on trade tariffs and product standards. Deals that required dealing with EU regulation or free movement of labour aren't likely to be popular in the UK.
If the EU drags its heels, the UK will probably use it's position as a member of the British Commonwealth to push for increased trade between Commonwealth countries whilst it waits for EU trade deals to get ironed out.
And good luck running your NHS without EU doctors...
Can you give me one example?
As for Champagne, its a product from the Champagne region of France (similar to how Prosecco is from Italy), I don't see why it's a problem to call similar products from elsewhere sparkling white wine.
It will probably also have to allow in EU exports which could threaten parts of their economy.
Of course they'll have to let in EU exports, just like the EU will have to let in UK exports. Why? They're all members of the World Trade Organisation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization
The EU is set up to allow the member countries to cooperate more closely, through lower trade barriers and suchlike. The idea that leaving the EU means zero trade is absurd.
The EU has some interest in cushioning the drop in trade, but it is a lot less sensitive to it, than the UK economy. There is no free trade without certain agreements, and these will at a very minimum include full freedom of movement for EU workers and enforcement of the full set of EU trade regulations.
So what you are saying is that brits will stop buying German/EU cars? Where are they going to buy their cars from? It's not like UK has some meaningfull car making industry, they moved all factories away. Not everyone can buy an Aston Martin.
I think that as long as the price for an EU car will be just below the price for importing an equivalent car from US or Asia, brits will have no other choice but to buy from Germans, even with new taxes added.
More importantly, your UK purchased Japanese car is most likely fabricated in a UK or EU factory. The UK factories exist simply because Japanese manufacturers then have direct access the the EU market without tariffs, and take advantage of the EU subsidies in order to set up and operate.
Those subsidies and tariff benefits just evaporated. The EU market for their vehicles is much larger than the UK. It now makes sense for them to move their final manufacturing inside the EU zone and out of the UK. Bye bye jobs. The only benefit is that the GBP devaluation buys more Euros, so if you still have a job in the UK after this, you can buy your Japanese European made car cheaper as an import from the EU.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-company-shares-reeling-aft...
I'm simply suggesting that may not be the case since EU is now likely incentivized to disrupt the current status if only to set an example. Rather than disrupt physical trade that is linked to export oriented mainland jobs, financial sector may be a riper target as barriers to moving these jobs are low (essentially no capital investment), disrupting it can be used to create jobs on the mainland and can create a punitive effect on UK.
That said, whilst it may seem tempting to run to the EU, other countries have been wanting to kill off the city and take its profits for their own for a long time. In the event of a remain vote, they may simply have been emboldened to outvote the UK and do it anyway, hence the focus in Cameron's negotiations on protecting the City. He knows it is vulnerable.
The banks now face a choice. Which is more risky/expensive. Needing to go through separate EU regulatory processes and get an EU "passport" via a subsidiary. Or relocate to e.g. Paris, and have all their activity be regulated by an EU now dominated by socialist governments rather than just some of it.
If this had happened 10 years ago they would probably have moved them to Ireland but that won't happen now.
This isn't scaremongering. It's just the way the banks have to do business. It doesn't directly mean that all finance jobs will move to the continent. They won't. But there will be a slow migration over the next few years.
It is also highly likely that, over the next few years, the EU will implement the finance reforms that the UK has been blocking e.g. the transaction tax. It is almost unthinkable that they won't implement that for UK banks.
It is also wholly in the EU's interest to delay a trade deal on services and financial services in particular as the UK has a significant surplus wrt the rest of the EU. It's more questionable over manufacturing as we run a deficit. How quickly we can negotiate a deal will be a toss up between industry that will want one and politicians who are likely to cause a fair degree of pain pour encourager les autres.
To me it looks like Dublin has lots of things in it's favour, not least the likelihood of an open border with the UK and native English speakers.
Because some have been there and it almost took out the Irish economy. They, the Irish, won't allow that to happen again any time soon. The fact is that the Irish economy is quite small and banks' balance sheets are quite big.
Realistically, only Germany, France and maybe Italy would be big enough to take a significant chunk of the UK banking sector.
Whatever bilateral deals will be made post brexit, there will be a lot of shifting going on.
44% of UK exports are manufacturing.
Over 450,000 Nissans are built every year in Sunderland; when it opened the plant was considered the great hope of the area, which had been devastated by the decline of British manufacturing in the 80s, and Thatcherism in the 80s.
80% of those cars are exported within the EU.
An overwhelming majority of Sunderland voted to leave.
But should that that happen, what would those people who voted for leave in Sunderland make of it? Would cognitive dissonance kick in and the blame again be placed on the EU or are they going to call for the head of Boris Johnson and Farage?
Citizens of the UK have to ask themselves if they are going to allow the EU to threaten them into submission.
I am now 100% sure that the EU is done, this is it. Le Pen will win the next elections in France and then they'll leave too. Same goes for the Dutch.
They also have significant strategic advantages which the UK is just lacking, and their economies are rather small. The UK can't get a better deal even if the EU wanted to give it to them. Which they don't by the way!
Eh, no. 58% wants to remain, 26% leave (numbers as of two weeks ago). The Dutch realize much more than the Brits how much we depend on tight integration with others (as a small country, as a heavy trader, but also as less inward-looking as the Brits).
I can't find those numbers, in fact the numbers that I did find are literally all over the place (for both Leave/Remain).
Yeah... not a chance really.
They have no intentions to actually leave, their economic program doesn't even make sense.
Of course the UK has the option of going for the same deal, but if they do, a lot of the Leave voters are going to feel very, very betrayed.
The EU is talking survival. The UK will get indeed a bad deal. And the rest of the EU will stick together even closer. I hear "fiscal harmonization", e.g. common taxation is the new big thing.
The markets are already reacting. And they aren't confident./
Reality will be a lot scarier.
Reality is boring most of the time. It will be fine in the end. The UK isn't going to sink into the sea or become the North Korea of Europe. The EU won't fall apart, it might need a little adjustment, and one or two additional countries will consider leaving, depending on the kind of deals that the UK can get.
I don't expect anything fantastically interesting to happen. The rest of 2016 will be a little bumping as everyone adjusts and then that's it.
There is a whole lot of uncertainty going around, and the Leave campaign was full of optimistic assumptions about the EUs good will.
At this point yes, no one has any real idea of the out come. Investors are just dumping pounds and British investments because they have no clue as to what is going to happen. But, just in case it's bad, money is moved to investments that is perceived to be safer. The UK isn't even out of the EU yet, and it won't be for years.
I'm not saying it's not going to be bumpy, or that the British aren't going to become a little poorer. It's just not going to be the end of British economy. It won't devolve into a third world economy, and certainly not over night.
But i think that in the long run some company's will act as proxy's to deliver goods and workers, so nothing will change, just some other way's of looking at it..
That's not the only reason. UK is taking advantage of its position as a global financial hub in the EU. It's in the EUs interest to make the UK less attractive for foreign investment.
I imagine EU courting Switzerland for assuming this role from now on.
The new economic hub will be Frankfurt.
As of now, France is the 5th largest economy of the world. The Pound collapsing has already bumped the UK down.
Yes, eventually there will be a relatively free trade agreement in place. But still the UK will have to abide to any European regulation, if they want to trade. Just that they do no longer get a vote on those regulations.
Well, 6th now. Sorry about that. France said "bonjour" as you passed.
Edit: presumably you're referring to reports based on today's Pound Sterling crash, but those are incorrect as well: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-referendu...
In short, I'm very unconvinced. In negotiation, the person who cares less wins. Individual EU countries - who would have to vote on any deal - care a lot less about their exports to the UK, because they're a small percentage of their economy, than the UK cares about its exports to the EU, which are just under half of all our exports.
https://medium.com/im-trying-to-fact-check-brexit/fact-check...
Asian car manufacturing were and are heavy investors in the UK, in order to produce vehicles for the UK and EU markets [1].
Those perks have just evaporated, along with the jobs. The blue collar workers that heavily backed a Brexit, have shot themselves in the foot. It makes financial sense for Toyota who sell 90% of their UK produced vehicles to move away from the UK and back into the EU zone. They have just lost their EU trade tariff benefits and been hit by the GBP/EUR drop, making their cars 8.5% more expensive to 90% of their customers.
Those firms would be hit hard by a Brexit, losing preferential tariff and
customs treatment in Europe. Toyota, for example, exports 90% of its U.K.-
built cars.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-company-shares-reeling-aft...
No European ever has never think "woow this shinny $consumer_object is been produced inside the EU so I don't get to pay the import tax" but every single European younger than 50 at least once in its life has open up the Ryanair website and thought "for 30€ I guess this weekend I will be in London/Paris/Berlin/Madrid/Rome".
The whole point of the European union is to be able to watch rugby with the English, get drunk in Berlin with good beer, being lazy at the seaside for a whole day with the Italians, have sex (or at least try to) with smoking hot French girls. And yes I can use the most stupid stereotypes because we all know that those are just stereotype and we can make fun of each other like only good friends can.
The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.
Merkel welcomed migrants/refugees into Germany which ultimately meant EU due to no border control. This opened the flood gate and increased the fear factor in older English people.
I'm not talking about if it was wrong/right. Just stating an event.
Sweden benefit system won't survive it. A lot of those refugees need MORE service too.
I think that's the second most infuriating part of it.
The areas of the country that overwhelmingly voted against "unlimited immigration" from Europe have predominantly the ones that barely received any immigrants. Whilst London, which is destination numero uno for EU migrants, overwhelmingly voted in favour. (the EU migrants themselves didn't get to vote)
Obviously there will be exceptions: rabidly anti-EU Boston, Lincolnshire actually does have more EU immigrants per capita than anywhere else and the British population is genuinely very unhappy about it, but assuming I can find a suitable dataset to run the analysis, I'm expecting areas which disproportionately voted Leave to be almost perfectly inversely correlated with how likely they actually are to be "swamped" with EU migrants
And make no mistake about it, there are plenty of other arguments that have been made for leaving the EU, but it's the one on migration that has got usual non-voters from council estates in Sunderland queuing to place their ballots, not concerns over banana directives, the transparency of EU political processes or enthusiasm about the opportunity to negotiate new bilateral trade deals with the Commonwealth.
Says who?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/25/why-p...
TL;DR: "Polling showed the areas that had the most to lose and the least to gain from the Brexit are precisely those where the referendum saw the most support. In other words, the places — the most export-heavy regions —most hurt by the economic disruptions caused by Brexit could be the places that pushed hardest for it..."
I don't buy the idea that people only travel into Europe because of the EU. Freedom to travel is really freedom to work.
Anyway for youngish people, at least in my friend circle, is pretty common.
Yesterday I was having dinner with an English friend, two weeks ago I spend a week in Berlin, pretty much every year we have a family trip somewhere in Europe.
Sure, I am young, with a lot of energy and money are not a huge concern right now; but most of my friends are in my same condition.
And actually I am a pretty cheap folk and I don't spend much money...
For me, flying to Florida from Toronto is only $300 - that price is not bad to me but I'm not familiar with Ryanair.
I would be excited on Monday to tell people what I got to see on the weekend, and coworkers would tell me about Barcelona and Greece etc. Just wild. The flight/train prices are so absurdly affordable that it just makes sense, personally and professionally, to travel.
I actually do that. Shipping costs from US and taxes outside the EU is crazy. ;) I regularly picked UK Amazon because of that.
I happen to be an European Union citizen under 50 and never heard of Ryanair...
But I'm familiar with (and tasted a little bit of) each stereotype-named perks you enumerated after!
Hard to know what will happen here, but I suspect once the UK (or what's left of it) signs a trade deal with the EU, they'll get the same deal as Norway - all the compliance with EU regulations, with none of the say. I suppose people may be happy with that deal, as long as they can get to say they're "free".
I'm hoping this somehow leave the EU in better shape, perhaps more cohesive, perhaps reforming in ways to minimize chances of anyone else leaving. As a Bulgarian (not living in Europe) this makes me somewhat bitter - seems Englishmen can't accept belonging to a club we also belong to.
Yes there are, it's Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. Scotland, Gibraltar, or whatever other country/region, will be considered as new applications for EU membership as the previous application was by a "different" country. This was reiterated by the EU during the Scottish referendum, this is no different.
[1] I am no lawyer nor politician, I have no idea how easy this would be from any practical point of view
Italy is also having problems with separatists.
Venice want to become a city-state republic again, and the Italian islands also made moves about wanting independence.
Italy is very aware of this, and in the past last time someone tried a independence stunt (some guy built a artificial island and declared independence) Italy bombed the shit out it.
Italian and Spanish "estabilishment" politicians are probably panicking now, since independence movements might consider UK leaving the EU, and the potential for Scotland to leave UK, "inspiration" to make their own moves.
† This is not meant as a nationalist slur, or a conflation of identities - it is meant in terms of political sentiments and voting patterns. Scotland and Northern Ireland are far more devolved.
http://www.ondacero.es/programas/mas-de-uno/audios-podcast/e...
That's a tough one. No idea how that will turn out. In my mind, I now see lots of bits and pieces of the UK becoming parts of Scotland.
The SNP's absolute dominance slipped a little in the last Scottish election, making a quick followup referendum less likely. But this new result will put it right back on the agenda.
If there is a second vote I imagine the tone will be a lot less positive. Last time it was all about being a small, wealthy nation with the desire to stand up and make its own name in the world. This time, the previously small but poisonous anti-English voices in the campaign will be emboldened. It will be a vote to leave in panic rather than in confidence.
Overall as a staunch supporter of Scottish independence this is nowhere close to what I want to see.
I don't think the UK is going to get the same deal as Norway or Switzerland especially since the UK doesn't want to get involved in the free movement.
I heard there are a lot of tech companies that already bought land in Ireland as a hedge against the Brexit, and that's where a lot of the tech jobs are going to be going. (Albeit that's only one industry, and I doubt that the financial industry would go in the same direction.)
Let's not forget that there are many engineers who don't live in the Bay Area, NYC or London, for whom Dublin may be quite attractive. And while it may not be on the level of those three regions, it has a lot going for it in its' own right.
Now Ireland has both: human capital and tax reasons.
Not saying there aren't plenty IT jobs, but you can't look at size/investment alone without looking at what kind of roles are actually there.
I'd also note that while companies get plenty tax breaks, actual income-tax is pretty high. Accommodation is pretty pricey near the centre too, though not as bad as London.
Dublin in particular is incredibly dynamic right now. And it's a lot better than where most London tech companies are e.g. Canary Wharf, Stockley Park etc.
This is the dilemma, I don't think the EU does want the UK to suffer just out of spite, but they can't give them a generous deal considering EU stability.
By the way: Berlin and London Stock Exchange markets want to merge, the UK leaving the EU is more of a problem in that regard http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/lse-agrees... (though they said they want the deal to go along no matter the vote)
[1] Front national (FN) in France, Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) in Germany, Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) (Party for Freedom) in Netherlands, nationalist movements in Poland, Hungary, ... Election in Spain might also not turn out to result in a EU-friendly government... (seriously could go on...)
No wonder everybody hates it.
That being said it's not so much about "unfair consequences" or "punishment" directly, it's more about "not giving special treatment", ... "out means out", interesting times ahead.
They don't have one, and they assumed they would get one. Why? Obama just clarified: you do not have it, and will not get it. Why does the UK think they deserve a trade deal? Just because?
> Germany threatened of no trade agreement.
Same here
> France threatened to flood eurotunnel with migrants
France has a huge refugee camp in the border with the UK, which France is keeping out of the UK just because of the agreements that the UK has with the EU. Why should now France carry the cost of keeping those immigrants out of the UK? They obviously want to go to the UK, so let them.
Do you really think that the leaving the EU has no consequence? It is not punishment, it is just voluntarily deciding to renounce the benefits of a club.
When you resign your Tennis Club membership, do you complain that you are not allowed to use the showers, and to play in the courts? Those are automatic things, which come by leaving the club. You also spare the monthly rate!
Well, there's a four-hundred-year-old "special relationship" between the two that Obama unilaterally has decided doesn't mean anything.
> When you resign your Tennis Club membership, do you complain that you are not allowed to use the showers, and to play in the courts? Those are automatic things, which come by leaving the club. You also spare the monthly rate!
Um, the EU is hardly a tennis club.
You'll keep your special relationship. You'll simply not get a new trade agreement. There is already one with the EU, which you are leaving. You are also getting out of all the rest of the EU agreements.
But don't worry: maybe you get a trade agreement with the US after all: you are more than welcome to start negotiating dupes (or improved versions) for the agreements than you consider interesting, but it does not follow that your potential partners must agree, not even that they have any interest whatsoever in negotiating with you, which is what you are implying. Maybe they have, maybe not. For starters, a new agreement is definitely extra work, which some may just not want, or maybe even not be in a position to dedicate resources to.
You are now free to fight for your interests. The rest too.
> Um, the EU is hardly a tennis club.
The analogy applies at the tennis club level or the galactic empire level: out of a club is out of a club. It is not "out of the bad things but keeping the good things". The club got you those good things. Now go fight for them on your own. Hey, maybe you get an even better deal!
> “We will not continue to guard the border for Britain if Britain is no longer in the European Union.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/03/calais-borde...
The EU was more than a market for the UK. You'll eventually see that.
We are simply not in the same camp anymore.
The British people didn't say "fuck you", they said "we don't really know what we want". I mean, 52-48 is not insignificant, but it's also not a "clear, strong message" for leaving - it's a message from a divided nation who is quite literally not sure what it wants. Just sit in a restaurant tonight and look around - whatever your opinion, half of the customers agree with you.
The issues at hand are very complex and quite simply too much so for most voters to even get an idea of what's at stake. As with any such referendum, the overwhelming majority of the votes are cast emotionally. You cannot get such a massive amount of people to think through the implications rationally - they go with their gut.
So again, the message here is "we have no idea what we really want", not "fuck you".
And are you actually saying that such important decisions shouldn't be left up to voters? If so, then should choosing leaders be left up to voters?
It seems pretty clear that many (not all) of those who voted Leave were in fact telling the EU and the scaremongering demagogues for Remain, "Fuck you." And some other portion (the sets probably overlap) were saying something like, "This EU thing isn't working out like you said it would, so we want out." Not, "I don't know what I want."
I think the population has a right to vote. I just don't think most people are fit to vote on every particular issue. It's en emotional vote and it could have swung one way or the other. Interesting times!
Not entirely sure of your general opinions on voting, but for the most part, majority is majority when it comes to democracy. You can't now claim "oh but it isn't victory by a significant margin, therefore people didn't really know what they wanted to vote for." The message is: "52% of the voters at the time wanted X, therefore democracy-dictates we do X". If it's good-enough for electing our leaders, it's good enough for a referendum.
Because he's gone in five months. Assuming the UK doesn't leave Europe till the negotiations have been sorted out (so maybe a few months from now) then it's unlikely he'll be doing much negotiating in regards to a possible UK/US trade deal. Matters much more what Clinton or Trump thinks of the whole idea...
even the remain arguments seem to be, yeah sure it's not great but it's still better than nothing.
what a ringing endorsement.
The EU works pretty well. Just last week one of my Romanian work colleagues paid an Irish company (Ryanair) only $80 euros for a 2-person airplane trip to another European capital (Rome). All that would not have been possible without all of us being in the EU. For comparison, just look at how crazy expensive airfares are in the States for similar flights. And I could find other, numberless examples from the day to day life with which people have accustomed themselves, they have started to see them as granted, but which would have not been possible without the EU. UK's decision is sheer idiocy.
I assume you're referring to the cost of a comparable domestic flight within the US.
How can you credit the success of the EU for your $80 flight ticket and then compare this to the US? It obviously goes without saying that the US is a far more effective and integrated union than the EU (the EU is not even a fiscal union). I suspect the difference in flight costs has more to do with population sizes than "political unions".
Interesting price difference. It seems after a little bit of research this has to do with reduced demand for air travel in the us. But if it were to be something the eu has done, which largely generally surrounds higher regulation and the suppression of competition. How has it done so?
If two parties agree on any contract or trade agreement, the parties are not always of equal weight and do have their own interests at heart. The UK needs the EU more than the other way around, so the EU has more pull and will make use of it. So "bully your client states into submission" is not a fair description to use, to put it politely. You could say that about any deal where one party has an advantage.
By the logic of your parent posters the UK wouldn't have left because of Greece, which has been used to set an example last year.
It's not about the technology, it's about the people and the money, which is all in London.
In any case, expect a lot of the money to pile into other currencies and not get spent as people try to ride this out.
I think a more interesting metric will be the price of land in London and the change in the rate of flows in/out of the property market in the coming weeks. Less liquid, less prone to volatility, more indicative of long-term economic trends for the city.
Because the anti-immigrant nature of the Leave campaign e.g. from UKIP suddenly makes the UK look a lot less inviting. If the Visa situation doesn't get a whole lot worse.
If the EU really wants to go that way, it will only make more people wonder whether they want to be part of a transnational bully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_U...
Greenland and Algeria left the EEC (EU precursor)
If you refuse, are you the bully?
But whatever the response of the EU, it will decided by power politics that appear very distant from the control of the voter.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f00c4a58-384a-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8e...
The FT is reckoning on a split across the Eurozone:
"But, as a small city with a population of less than 700,000 people, Frankfurt is seen as provincial and unpopular with staff. Dublin is English-speaking and attractive on tax grounds, but it is a relative backwater. The most likely outcome is that foreign banks with large operations in London will shift staff to a spread of eurozone locations where they already have operations — including Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris, Warsaw and Lisbon. That would fragment the financial services industry in Europe, potentially weakening the continent’s ability to compete internationally."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23d576b0-386a-11e6-a780-b48ed7b612...
Calmly, but clearly.
This will be good for everybody: UK will be happy being free (a feeling which will trump any disadvantage they may be getting by leaving the EU), and the EU can proceed with greater political integration.
Plus, you know, either way roughly 50% of the population is going to be unhappy by the outcome of this referendum.
But my other point stands: I think this will definitely be good for the EU, if contagion can be avoided.
As a Brit I am in despair this morning.
I'm assuming you are in US. Imagine the feeling you will have the morning Trump wins the presidency. This is the same feeling. A gut punch. My Facebook feed is full of very upset friends. It's really depressing.
Fear, hate and ignorance won.
Or are you mostly just lamenting your contrymen's xenophobic and isolationist attitudes, without necessarily foreseeing a particular measurable change in your life?
It has had an immediate effect on me and my co-workers (been working since 4am). It is entirely possibel my job will move to continental Europe some time over the next few years (I may or may not go with it).
It is also entirely possible that it will cause a second Scottish referendum and possibly a Northern Irish one too. My current plan is to agitate for London to secede from the UK. Not sure that'll work though.
Pretty sad and angry today, but you turned out indeed to be quitters.
People like you will be the ones suffering the consequences the most, so I wish you all the best!
My guess is that they are hoping that the economic loss will be short lived and people will want to continue to trade with the 5th largest economy.
My objection isn't that somehow we'll turn into a banana republic. My guess is we'll drop 3-5% GDP. It's that building growth in a slow global economy is painful. We've spent the last 8 years going through that pain and we'll just have to do it again. It's like shooting yourself in the foot but without actually being on the front line.
Where I have a feeling my view diverge from yours is that the only good reason I see to be in the EU is economic. The single market has been a success and good for the UK. The rest, not so much. I think it's a mistake to leave the EU but not an unqualified one.
I am very interested in hearing about the concrete manifestations of policy changes on economic activity, public health, national security, the environment, etc. I honestly have no idea what the implications of a Brexit will be with regard to these things.
In politics, though, such discussion is often drowned out by people's quests to self-identify as whatever kind of person (eg. liberal) and make note of cultural differences between themselves and the opposition (how they're uneducated or xenophobic or not globally-minded, in this case).
The GP seems confident that a Brexit is an extremely bad thing. I have no a priori reason to suppose otherwise, but it would be a lot more useful if they would explain what negative consequences they foresee.
For one, and by definition, broken agreements and extra burden to paimfully craft new ones. Work duplication. Petty fighting for minute details with each potential partner.
Next, broken trust. We have spent years negotiating with the UK, accedimg to ever increasing demands, accepting expansion of the EU to the east at your behest (and then complaining about too many poles), etc. Luckily we did mot accept Turkey (which I actually supported, but in the current situation would have been a further destabilizing factor) at your (and USA's) behest.
And now you quit. You shatter all we have built together. Not nice. Resentiment is bound to take hold of lots of europeans against britons. I for one do not welcome you anymore. I hope all agreements with the UK are declared void, students are not accepted in university exchange programs, that you have to pass screening processes (like all mon-EU people have) to enter and set shop in any EU country, that you have to prove cultural and language integration whenever you decide to permanently move to another EU country, that you are only allowed to move if you have a work permit and a work offer, etc.
In short, the EU should put back all red tape that belongs to any non-EU member. And each piece of red tape will be romeved, or not, after long negotiations, which the EU will agressively stear to defend our interests.
Is this retaliation? At all! YOU have decided this. The club you are leaving is all that, and much more. You are leaving ALL that behind.
Will this happen? Is this in the EU's interest? You bet. Maybe not strictly in our economic interest, but defenitely in a political sense.
We have been dealt an existential threat, and we need to show the remaining 27 members how cold it is outside.
The reactions of EU polititians have been cristal clear: we are cutting ties with the UK, fast and furious.
Boris can pretend to continue to be european, but we will not necessarily welcome it.
This vote tore all that up.
I do wish people in the Remain camp would stop with this. Just because people voted to Leave, doesn't mean they were uneducated. I was on the fence about whether to stay or go for a long time, it was only after I put in research that I decided to vote to Leave. Despite what you see in the mainstream media, it's not just a bunch of racists voting to Leave. In fact, I really wish I could've voted to stay, but I didn't want to compromise my principals to do so.
If you want an educated voice that was in favour of leaving, watch this clip of Tony Benn...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0wFii8klNg
Jeremy Corbyn also had serious misgivings about the EU too...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXTvsqUphMc
From what I've seen, neither of them were/are susceptible to jingoism. Do you see why they wanted to leave?
Sorry, but sour-grape bullshit.
There was pro-leave bullshit, but there was also pro-remain bullshit. Characterising anyone who disagrees with your position as ignorant, or less educated is the height of arrogance.
If you have so many pro-EU friends, it sounds as if you live in a bubble. You need to get out more. It is very depressing.
Sorry, but the figures show that those who voted remain were not only older, but also less educated.
(https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/yougov-referendum-model...)
And most of the evidence for the 'right choice' is clearly in the remain camp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USTypBKEd8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgKHSNqxa8 (A bit uncouth, but the evidence he presents is pretty clear)
I was rather undecided, leaning towards remain, until I started examining the posts by my friends. I examined most of the quotes and figures they mentioned in each article. As a result, I think my 'leave' friends are insane, because I found all of the 'leave' articles were utterly disingenuous about their quotes. They repeatedly misquoted newspapers known for extremely poor (third rate) coverage, and some of the information was downright fabrication. On the other hand, the articles posted by my friends who supported the 'remain' camp frequently listed what I consider to be 'first rate' sources (The Office of National Statistics, etc.), and the quality of the information was much higher and truthful. I found only one or two misquotes, and no fabrications.
Obviously, that's purely anecdotal, but it seems to mirror the experiences that a lot of 'remain' voters have had.
But aren't those also the ones who have been hit hardest by Globalization? Isn't that the big divide we're seeing here: the fact that high skilled and well educated have greatly benefited from the EU. Meanwhile the working class have faced stagnation.
Leaving the EU gives up power, economic might, and so on, but I don't find it so surprising that so many would risk such a decision in hopes of breaking away from the status quo.
You have decided to leave beleaving that being independent will improve your chances of facing global problems: globalization, immigratiin, inequality, tidal movements in the labor market due to technology disruption ... It is not a given that global problems can be better confronted by withdrawing from international organizations. Time will tell.
But even if you happen to ne succesful in that front, the political damage, for the UK and the EU is huge. The EU is much more than a market, and the UK is about to realize about it.
Though one could of course, consider this part of the ongoing aftershocks from WW2 which Britain never fully recovered from (i.e. final nail in the coffin of the Empire, its virtual indebtedness to the US), which led to what are probably the most US-like, capitalist-minded policies of the entire EU. Policies which, although making London the financial powerhouse it is, have undoubtedly alienated its rural areas, and have led to the referendum result we are seeing now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_...
so the statement is accurate
It's like Northen Irish people voting Sinn Fein were complaining that they don't actually sit in Westminster.
the situation is identical
Congratulations, you will see the United Kingdom disappear in your lifetime.
Please don't post flamewar-style comments here, especially in divisive threads.
It's a logical fallacy to say that "the country's laws were decided by politicians the people did not elect.", when indeed they are elected by the people.
The UK has zero members in the EPP because the conservatives decided to go it alone; they still have votes, they've just decided to form their own parliamentary bloc, the AECR.
Yes, there was a democratic deficit in the original EU structure. It was addressed in the 2009 treaty, and it keeps getting addressed with more and more decision-making powers slowly moving from Commission to Parliament. But it's too late, people think Bruxelles decides banana sizes and we can't have that.
Unsurprisingly, who was among the first journalists starting the whole "crazy bruxelles" meme? One Boris Johnson.
Churchill argued for a European super-state. He was the architect of several of the early steps towards European integration, such as the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights, and he wanted a European army.
He's pretty much one of the fathers of the EU.
He also at one point proposed outright union between the UK and France.
The important thing to consider, with respect to his United States of Europe speech though, is that when Churchill spoke of this, the UK still had an empire - it was a super-state, though one in decline, and the Commonwealth still meant something more than a loose association. He was speaking from a position where the UK was already "spoken for" so to speak.
Yet over the years afterwards he was one of the driving forces of European integration, including for the UK, but of course he did not see how far it was going.
It wasn't just virtual.
"The Anglo-American Loan Agreement was a post World War II loan made to the United Kingdom by the United States on 15 July 1946, and paid off in 2006. The loan was negotiated by John Maynard Keynes. The loan was for $3.75 billion (US$57 billion in 2015) at a low 2% interest rate; Canada loaned an additional US$1.19 billion"
The interesting thing to consider is that although the repayment terms were generous given the general context of the Marshall Plan, the US should probably have had to go an extra mile given the UK's contribution of its Tube Alloys program [0]. This nascent R&D project was moved over to the US, expanded and upgraded - and nowadays we call it the Manhattan Project.
Including immigration? That seemed to be a big factor in the Leave vote.
Including Poles, Romanians, all those people the far right despises.
They wouldn't have to let war refugees and asylum seekers in, though.
The great majority of foreigners in the UK are coming from non-EU countries, and they are not refugees. Leaving the EU will not change that.
Other EU states would give them citizenship (or residency) though
Long term the EU is going nowhere, it is dominated by socialist countries that will go the way of Argentina, a slow but steady decline (well under way). And the migrant crisis, which is likely only at its beginning (look at african demographic projections), combined with Brexit and the rise of populism all over Europe, will likely put such a strain on the EU that I think its days are numbered.
So on the long run, I think the UK has probably made a wise choice.
Socialism in Europe died in the '90s. What we have now are right-wing neoliberal elites trashing the place that social-democrats built in the '70s and '80s.
Les députés européens socialistes français estiment que la victoire annoncée du Brexit est "l'échec d'une Europe exclusivement dédiée au marché intérieur"
Translation: the French socialist members of European parliament think that the victory of Brexit is the "failure of a Europe solely dedicated to free trade".
Free trade is the only thing UKIP or the euro-sceptic tories want to keep from the EU. There is a fundamental cultural gap between the UK and Continental Europe countries.
I'd wager that the OP hit the nail on the head here. There are many large Pakistani communities in England in areas such as the Midlands, East London and Bradford that do not inter-marry, socialise or integrate outside their own culture, and when after two or three generations this remains unchanged the perception to the locals is that the cohesion of their communities have taken a real turn for the worse.
The EU's inability to manage middle eastern migrants in a controlled way, along with the belief that most will eventually hold EU passports and speak rudimentary English I think were major deciding factors in those communities, communities that have had demographic shifts not seen in Scotland and Northern Ireland & whose concerns are shut out and branded racist and xenophobic by both the media and the left.
Without young immigrants and their higher birth rates there simply won't be enough tax revenue to cover future social obligations. We know what this game looks like: Japan. A country looking at a steady and certain decline in quality of life. This is what the UK is going to be like.
The EU is absolutely going to be dominant in the future. Collectively it has an economy that is more varied and flexible and the single market is invaluable. As a startup or prospective exporter being able to try things out in your local market (of 500 million people no less) is the reason the US is so successful.
African demographic projections which shows Africa's population growth slowly dropping? Coupled with economic projections which shows most African economies growing at far faster rates than Europe? With some African countries, like Nigeria, likely to overtake the UK in total GDP (not per capita) over the next 20-30 years? Largely as a result of massively improved stability and fewer wars over the last decade.
Africa has plenty of challenges, but they're mostly headed the right way. And they're also slowly but steadily moving towards a far more ambitious union project than the EU, with several of the African Union pillars (regional closer unions like ECOWAS serves as "first stage" integration) hard at work at monetary unions and extensive integration.
Of course things can change - nobody expected Syria to blow up the way it did and more than we expected Yugoslavia to collapse as violently as it did.
But at the moment, countries like Nigeria are seeing graduates etc. returning in droves from the UK because the opportunities there are immense, cost of living low (though housing prices in parts of places like Lagos can rival London) and growth at levels you can't hope for in the UK.
http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_proj_continent.aspx
Now if it is matched by an unprecedented growth, it may turn out OK. But if I was a young african male, I would try my luck in Europe.
> But if I was a young african male, I would try my luck in Europe.
If you were a young African male with the means of getting to Europe, there's at least half a dozen African countries where your economic prospects over the next 20-30 years would likely outstrip going to Europe unless you are in a tiny minority with skills that are in very high demand in Europe.
As it stands, they'd need to see a total catastrophic collapse of the economy of most of the African continent, with no subsequent recovery, for economic growth to not outpace population growth over the next few decades.
I'm sure you can't extrapolate it and assume it will stay the same for the next 30 years. But you can make reasonably educated estimates assuming that the average change in velocity will be all that extreme, given that large part of these amounts are based on income from relatively stable industries with well understood risk profiles.
Largely the development of Africa at present boils down to whether or not we see further major wars disrupt the progress. If we do, then, yes, things may go the wrong way. If not, it will take unprecedented crises to prevent Africa from continuing to see massive growth.
Northern Ireland will unify with the Republic.
FTSE 100 will open down 12-19%, which probably wipes out ISAs all over the place.
This is history in the making. Decided by something like 1 million people as of right now.
Just an absolute disaster.
Scottish independence is likely - the question is just how firm the polls need to be before the SNP go there again.
If the UK had voted to leave, with only a 2% margin, would you have complained that it was to little to determine something of this magnitude and called it ridiculous?
Regardless of the outcome, the EU needs to re-evaluate how it operates and if it needs to change drastically. I'm a fan of the idea of an EU, but in it's current form it's an almost unmitigated disaster and a role model for people wanting to circumvent democracy.
I'm not sure I get this part. Are you just counting the difference in votes? How about the millions that voted for Brexit?
This was decided by %50+ of the populace. If you didn't agree to the terms, why did you come to the voting?
Not true. The electorate was 46,501,241 and the leave vote was 17,410,742, so about 37%. You're forgetting to take into account those who didn't vote.
I didn't agree to the terms, I didn't vote for Cameron and I still voted (remain). Why wouldn't I?
Those who didn't vote but could of effectively decided "I don't care enough to participate. You decide for me".
If they were too lazy go out in the rain, mark a piece of paper with a pencil or use a postal vote then they can't really complain after the fact.
I'm sorry if I sound a bit annoyed, this is not directed specifically at you, I just don't like the result.
The issue was important and the voting procedure for those eligible to vote was not onerous.
It's possible. The same with northern ireland. But more interesting question is which european country will leave the EU next. Hungary? Greece? Finland?
The UK is a pillar of the EU ( 2nd largest economy and the 3rd most populous country ). Don't see the EU surviving without the UK.
England has canada, australia, new zealand and of course the US. England is part of the anglosphere. England will be fine.
Also, the "mines", "oil" and "fish" make up a tiny portion of england's economy. England is mostly a financial center, not a oil or a mining center.
As long a Germany and France are on board, the EU will survive in some form. The UK has always been an obstacle to tighter integration, and that obstacle will likely be gone soon.
They won't be on board much longer. The EU is nonsense at its very core. It is a corrupt cesspool where a select group of unelected masters rule over the unwashed masses.
It is a farcical idealized fantasy. It doesn't exist the way the people idealized it to exist.
> The UK has always been an obstacle to tighter integration, and that obstacle will likely be gone soon.
Actually, the UK was a force for tighter integration. After all english and modern anglo culture is the dominant culture of the EU.
It is just shocking how naive people are. The problem with the EU is precisely france and germany. To have "integration", you have to have a common language, culture, history, etc. So will french or german be the language of the EU? That's just the basic first level aspect of a "union".
The only way the EU will ever work is if one dominant nation/ethnic group/etc conquers the whole thing and forcibly integrates the region. And that won't happen anytime soon.
Greece and Hungary are probably next to leave soon to be followed by everyone else.
People are disappointed. Even this vote , is actually a vote of dissatisfaction against the status quo. They just managed to direct enough of that anger against the EU.
I'd like to suggest the following three hypotheses and hear what you guys think :
1. As growth slows , liberal democracy ceases to be the status quo. It's much easier for a demagogue to whip up sentiments against the "other" when people feel that they have been left behind.
2. The media has always been a gatekeeper and helped keep the more extreme voices out of mainstream discourse. The internet breaks this dynamic and now disaffected majorities can coalesce across regional boundaries within a country.
3. The Western working class has realised that globalisation doesn't seem to be raising everyone's living standards. It's more of an equalisation where large numbers of people in Asia are lifted into the middle class while the western working class stagnates.
This diagram shows a clear class divide in the voting: http://i.imgur.com/SneDXWa.png
I don't have much more data to back these up so I'd be interested hearing any thoughts / anecdotes about such things around where you live.
The Internet didn't break this dynamic, it's just another media in the end (regarding the press) with a louder audience for the same ideas. Moreover the fragmentation of countries into regions doesn't follow from that. It comes from national politics. National politics that just get votes and support from following point #1. And inevitably leads to a blaming game (they are a lot of Nigel across Europe).
I might be wrong and I don't have time to word my opinions like I would, sorry. Just my 2ç in the wee hour of morning.
Ah. Strikes everywhere in Belgium today.
You can say anything online and that widens the scope of what is considered acceptable discourse.
Notice how the media tries to black out Trump's insanity but it gets so much attention on social media that they're forced to cover his tweets.
I think you'll find this book interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/09/net-delusion-m... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/books/review/Siegel-t.html...
https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-Freedom/dp...
> But the internet allows people on the so called fringe to see that they may not be the fringe after all.
Not really, the internet also has that loudest voice syndrom.
> You can say anything online and that widens the scope of what is considered acceptable discourse.
Or you get drowned in an endless sea of information, a dot in the noisegraph.
> Notice how the media tries to black out Trump's insanity but it gets so much attention on social media that they're forced to cover his tweets.
Can't comment on that as I don't live in the US :/ but it's an interesting point. How effecient can they really be at hiding something vs ignoring it.
Completely not true. They air hours upon hours of uncut press conferences. They could easily summarize the press conference in a 90 second piece ("Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump today..."), but they don't.
What? They love covering him because they get so many viewers. Hell, they're partially the reason he catapulted into the limelight--had they treated his antics the same as the other politicians' he'd have received far less air time than he has so far.
Is the UK unique in having pro-immigration, anti-immigration parties? It boggles my mind, and doesn't get discussed much even in the UK. (I suppose Trumps incoherence, and lack of walking the talk, is actually very similar, now I think about it).
I especially agree with your #2, but I warn most people will disagree. It's so foolish to think the Internet does not mean anything. I'm so disappointed when I travel somewhere and people mock my desire to secure a SIM card as quickly as possible. Why is it so frowned upon to connect to the Internet?
Why should the citizens of a country be in favor of an economic policy that screws them in return for making the richest .001% of the population richer, and raising the standard of living for foreigners living in a mud huts to being slaves in a factory? This was apparent all along, but the people voicing these concerns were ignored or marginalized by the one sided economic voices in the media...
So to part 2:
The problem is that the economists you hear on the news telling you what needs to be done are wrong worse than 50% of the time (austerity, free trade with countries that don't have equivalent economies, you name it). In the US after Trump (who I mostly disagree with) started calling out Carrier for closing a US factory to offshore the production, I heard a couple economists taking about how if carrier didn't move all their production offshore no one would be able to afford an AC unit.
To which, I was frankly shocked. central AC units, which are mostly assembled from 3rd party components, many of which are already made in china/etc (unless you get lucky with a us built emerson/copeland compressor) are extremely high margin businesses. The assembly costs in the US are a tiny fraction of the installed price of a AC unit (which are dominated by your local AC installer). Worse, prices rarely decline when production is off-shored, rather the savings tend to go back to the execs and majority share holders. Or worse, are used to buy or block smaller more efficient competitors.
So, for a news organization to not vet this before allowing some doomsday economist to come on and talk about how the price of AC units are going to spike if carrier isn't allowed to fire a bunch of $20/hour employees in favor of a bunch of $5/hour ones, while playing tax games with the profits (aka book the majority of the profits outside of the US to avoid taxes) is just insane. Heck carrier has a gross profit margin of > 50% (its higher than Apple!).
Bottom line, I think pretty much everyone I know is now trained to disbelieve anything heard on the news from a self proclaimed economist.
And yes , the citizens of a country should not be in favour of a policy that transfers the lions share of the gains to the 0.01 %.
But overall , a liberal global order has been a good thing.
I blame the greed of the elites for (potentially) killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Greed is a powerful addiction. The elites won't stop trying to concentrate more and more wealth at the top, even when they know it will increase the chance of something like Brexit actually happening (which cut their wealth, at least temporarily, considerably).
Addition is powerful because it's addictive.
So next time you negotiate your salary, or try to make more bonus at the end of the year, I want you to think about your addiction to greed. You just want to concentrate more and more wealth at the top, even when you know it will increase the chance of something like Brexit. Clearly that's your motivator.
If that doesn't work for you, try coming up with a more realistic model or how wealth actually moves, and what motivates people. Parables about the seven deadly sins make for entertaining and convincing story telling, but are not good models for reality.
And yes let's say I make $100,000/year. Would I or most others be happy with it? Surprisingly, no. They probably want to make a little more to get a boat, or even a bigger saving for their children.
Even in the US, 34K a year is a living wage in some parts of the country while in others its extremely hard to survive. Beside the obvious cost of living expenses for house, transportation, food, there is also the question of, how your making the 34k a year. If you can earn it in less than 40 hours a week you have time to supplement your income growing a garden, fixing your own car, or spending time tutoring your children. OTOH, if it takes 80 hours a week to earn that then you pretty much have to pay people to take care of all the little things you could be doing yourself.
> rather the savings tend to go back to the execs and majority share holders.
If so, start your own AC company and undercut them since there's so much margin. As for me, I don't believe it for a second.
Also , acting on emotion rather than reason and whipping up extreme sentiments against outsiders are the harbingers of fascism.
Can you even give a definition without looking it up?
* He wants small gov't * He believes in democracy * He does not support ccontinuing costly wars and meddling in other countries affairs * I'm not sure he's suppressed any political groups
Both sides are acting on extreme emotions these days, and on the other side of the coin, the outsiders are people who disagree with liberal policies.
1) What's the significance of circles? Do they represent voting districts or something like that?
2) What does the size of a circle represent? Is it the population of a district, perhaps on logarithmic scale?
3) Does the position on the x-axis represent how strongly that district was for remain or leave?
Of course, you could give the link to the original source too, Google Image Search shows nothing yet.
5) this is a correction.
As someone who grew up in the Rust Belt, I think #3 hits the nail on the head. For as long as I can remember, the area where I grew up has been struggling economically (it was hit hard by waves of factory closings starting in the 1980's). None of the politicians from either party seemed to care.
Now suddenly there's a politician who seems to care about this issue, has a real shot at being President, and is different enough from the usual run of politicians that he may be paying the issue more than lip service and may actually be able to effect change.
For a lot of people, this is a powerful motivation to get out and vote for him despite his obvious flaws, especially when his opponent is not only as "establishment" as they come, but her husband literally brought us NAFTA.
To (3) I would add a "prisoner's dilemma" dynamic -- theoretically it's better if every country "cooperates" and gives all their effort to putting the benefit of the world as a whole above the benefit of their country (that's the vision of globalization). But if some countries "defect" and focus on themselves first, then whoever "cooperates" feels exploited (and not wrongly so). A lot of people I know feel like some countries (especially China) are defectors in this game and we shouldn't be suckers, so despite the theory, the practical thing to do is look out for ourselves first.
Farage is clearly fascist, and has been for many years. His fascism was identified while he was at school and it hasn't decreased since then. (Albeit it he no longer marches through villages singing Hitler Youth songs.)
http://www.channel4.com/news/nigel-farage-ukip-letter-school...
About as relevant as Cameron's pig fucking...
I post a link to his past because his present - leading a fascist party using fascist tactics - is so obvious it doesn't need linking.
Where is your evidence that he "really did" this?
Before you say "Did you read the article I linked to!" - yes, I did.
As long as your life is visibly improving , you don't mind that some people are doing insanely well. But it's much harder to stomach when you're struggling to get by.
Just my impression of course.
Disclaimer: I am a EU foreigner in Switzerland.
Last time I was in Zurich, this is the first thing I've seen at the railway station [1]. This is a very reasonable thing to do for Swiss people and something very different to what is happening in EU during the "refugee" crisis. On the other hand, in the EU it would be considered anti-immigrant or even racist (especially by media).
[1] http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/lg/...
This growing distance between the people and the government is a fertile breeding ground for populists. And the distance is the biggest between the people and the government of the EU.
It's all about media. I will always blame the media for being extremely biased in whatever they do. I cannot mention today one objective and inquiring media. They ALL report what people already know or what they want to know. Democracy without objective media is oligarchy.
But why call a referendum ridiculous? I guess it is primarily because you don't agree with the proposal that the referendum is about. And because you don't agree with the proposal, you feel that there should not even be a referendum about it? That means that you think your opinion is more valuable than a possible majority of the voters. Isn't that an egocentric point of view?
According to Wikipedia: "Foreigners who commit a crime would be automatically expelled from the country, regardless of the severity of the crime." [0]
I don't know the laws in Switzerland, but I can tell you that in Germany if they catch you without the train ticket for three times, you can potentially go to jail. In Switzerland, if such a law existed (I don't know), such a person would be expelled. This is ridiculous to me, because in a life span anything can happen. If you commit rape, homicide, break-ins, I can understand. It's the "regardless" that makes me wonder how welcome foreigners are. Although "ridiculous" might be the wrong term, I think that such a referendum should not even exist. Why was it even thought about? Why the "regardless"? What's wrong with us humans? Foreigners come, make your country richer - especially foreigners, PHD, master students, and highly skilled employees - and that's how you pay them back? Treating them like if they were worse than animals? "If you fuck up, go away".
I don't doubt the effectiveness of referendums, although I come from a country in which they hardly have an impact. I really appreciate Switzerland's method, as it keeps its citizens closer and more interested to politics. However, I am still of the idea that news can corrupt democracy pretty much everywhere, no matter how it's implemented - as long as citizens are the main responsible for the elected people or laws.
I don't see what is so negative about this event. People got a chance to vote, and voted with quite a convincing majority (58%) against the proposal. Isn't that good? It shows that the majority of people, despite all populism and superficial media coverage, are still making the most human decision.
> This is because in Switzerland there have always been referendums. That really makes a difference on how people see their laws and regulations.
seems not to take into account that media are highly biased, and these do have an impact on people. Referendums are not the solution, but just a different way to express your (?) own opinion. When your opinions are shaped by media (because they inevitably are), then you see, it's not the implementation (referendum/yes/no) the problem/solution, but how people perceive reality.
In a country where media work, you wouldn't have had such a referendum, not because of different opinions, but because people wouldn't feel threatened by foreigners (due to media) - or possibly, you would have a fairer request: send away only the ones who commit high crimes. I am sure that it would have been successful with at least 70% of "yes".
58% of people means 6/10 - this might translate to: 4 people don't like immigrants/don't feel safe due to foreigners.
And the media too. By attacking people for their views, they basically gave these populist movements ammunition and caused their supporters (and much of the public) to see a divide between an elite and the working man.
Things will probably get far worse in the future because of all this...
Globalisation has destroyed the planet along with the capitalism and values it touts as the future. All lies and deceit that contributed to the ever enrichment of the elite while we're left here saying again and again that the working man is stupid for reacting to it.
As said, I don't agree with the rhetoric of the far right, but one thing I have been entirely certain for many years, left or right, it doesn't matter, neither hold the future for us.
I worry the politician voted in as a protest against elites and globalisation is going to be someone merely using that as a cover for a far worse ideology.
Is it? At one point they blocked one type of a building from being built.
Not to mention this clusterfuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...
The fact that enough people think this way (I've had people say your comment to me in person, but not nearly as nicely) just shows how far out of touch things are. Instead of just yelling bigot/racist/etc., I think Trump's opposition needs to actually listen and see what people are really seeing in him. Otherwise they're in for a big surprise. (FWIW I'd never have considered a US right or nominally conservative before.)
Part of winning an election is getting people to show up at the polls, so maybe the Trump opposition rhetoric is aimed at turnout rather than conversion of his supporters.
For what it's worth, I've been a registered Democrat my entire adult life. I don't see that happening, at least not large-scale, I think that much has been made clear. I don't think that many people realize that, to many Trump supporters and swing voters, they are essentially proving his point for him. They'll have no one to blame but themselves if he wins.
That said, the key to a free society is peaceful exchange of ideas. Don't like his ideas? Great! Critique them! But the fundamental human rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights include the right to assemble and speak freely. I would note that rallies to listen to the ideas of a presidential candidate are precisely the situations those who drafted the Bill and those who ratified it envisioned.
Let's leave the thugs out of the picture. If you want to protest, fine. Be peaceful and do impede the exchange of ideas from those who came to hear what the candidate said. You do not have to agree with anything you hear.
I live close to Costa Mesa, CA and the violence at that Trump rally was abhorrent to me. The law enforcement response we later saw in Anaheim, CA, as a result, was cold, calculated, and, quite sadly, exactly what was needed. I agree with you completely, violence is not an acceptable response to not liking the things someone else says.
Many of us here realize that this exponential growth in national debt supported by printing unbacked fiat currency cannot continue. We will be in especially deep trouble if other nations decide not continue to use the US dollar as the reserve currency. We cannot continue to outspend on defense the next 11 or 12 nations combined. We cannot solve every crisis in the world.
We do not have a perfect choice for president. We never do. We do know that Mrs. Clinton is another one who sees more government intervention as the solution to every problem. She was not very effective as Secretary of State and I am surprised she has not been indicted for compromising national security with her private email server. Even if they had put up Sen. Sanders, his own wife's experience (shutting down the college she presided over because it was economically unsustainable, getting a nice severance package, leaving the students with debt...) shows that his plan is unworkable. At least Mr. Trump realizes that not every expenditure is possible or prudent. He seems to understand the concept of 'vital national interests' - that we must get our own house in order before we can continue to help the greater global community.
Those of us who say this are often publicly vilified. We do not seem to be able to have a peaceful, rational exchange of ideas. So people will keep their mouth shut and go cast their ballot in the privacy of the voting booth, exercising their fundamental human right guaranteed by under a constitutional republic. Gee, it sounds a lot like what the voters in the UK just did.
As evidenced by his many bankruptcies?
In some ways that seems worse and a form of double-standard. People didn't get paid. People lost jobs. But he came out OK? Is that leadership?
I'm actually going to need some more evidence on that claim vis-a-vis Jane Sanders past decisions invalidate Bernie Sander's plans for... I mean you just say plans. Would all of his plans be unworkable? That's a pretty bold claim.
The difficult truth is that not every student has the prerequisite skills, ability, and self-discipline to complete university level work. Do you really expect the taxpayer to subsidize remedial courses at the university if the student couldn't acquire the prerequisite skills at the secondary level? Here in New York, despite record per pupil primary and secondary school expenditures, student performance has continued to drop. Why should taxpayers be forced to continue to subsidize poor performers? Those who want to do so are always free to contribute to scholarships.
Now let's consider student performance at the university level. Take a look at, for example, Richard Arum's book Academically Adrift. He notes that a large fraction of students graduate with very limited critical thinking and reasoning skills. This is because very little was demanded of them. As Arum so aptly put it, instead "they provided beer and circuses." The schools were paid for this...
Much of this outcome was produced because schools were paid (typically because of easily-obtained government subsidized loans). These students have not been so pleased when saddled with all the debt later on. Surprise: it is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Talk about the "gift that keeps on giving..."
Now ask, How is "free college" going to provide return to the taxpayers if the students don't have significant "skin in the game"? How will you ensure this?
Matters have been exacerbated by what we call "rampant credentialism." Those who make hiring decisions love this because it provides a way to screen candidates without getting sued. Is there really sufficient demand for workers with all these credentials to pay to produce them all? I don't think so.
I have watched the "great sucking sound" predicted by Ross Perot as jobs were offshored. This now includes those STEM jobs Americans want. I know. I have one. When I started work almost 35 years ago I was in an analytical division of a major corporation that had over 300 scientists and technicians. There are 27 of us left. The major scientific societies have noted demand is weak and salaries are flat at best and appear to be declining.
Are all these new graduates going to be able to find employment at a salary where their taxes repay the public investment? I don't think so. It is one thing if a system is designed where people can freely contribute to provide such education. It is another matter entirely to do this by force of tax law without regard for return on investment. What gives any of you the right to force this on another? Who died and made you despot?
Finally, let me return to the one who has proposed "free college." What has Sen. Sanders really produced in his lifetime? How many such successful programs has he run? What has he really done?
Here. Let me tell you what people see in him.
He's bringing up the issue of labor arbitrage. That's the beginning and the end of it.
Anyone who talks about Trump without looking at that issue is absolutely clueless (IMHO). The reason for this cluelessness is that most pundits are in "alpha cities" like NYC, DC, SF, LA, etc., and these cities with their financial and higher-tech industries have been spared the economic hollowing out that has occurred elsewhere. They don't see it because in their back yard the economy looks okay. "Why do they not eat cake?" they ask. It's really that bad.
Yes there are some people who support him because of his thinly veiled racism, but they are a minority. I know a bunch of Trump supporters back where I grew up (Ohio) and every single one of them talks about outsourcing, outsourcing, and outsourcing, in roughly that order. Most of them are not people I consider particularly racist or anti-immigrant or anti-gay, or at least those are not issues they care deeply about. Many are not religious. They also don't talk much about the Islamic immigration terrorist fear bogey man. They might feel that way a bit, but it's also not a big deal compared to outsourcing. Not even close.
... and as much as I can't stand Trump and would never vote for him for many reasons, I have to kind of agree on this point -- but with a lot of caveats.
American (and European) industry has for the past 25+ years been forced to compete with industry in countries where there are no environmental regulations, no minimum wage, no OSHA, and no labor laws or worker rights. (Or so little of those things that it's a joke.)
I am very much in favor of free fair trade (and immigration to a point), but this is not fair trade. Basically US and EU corporations have been allowed for the past 25-30 years to leverage the Chinese PLA's billion-strong totalitarian labor camp as a long arm to smash domestic labor. It worked. Wages are stagnant, unions are dead, and vast swaths of the American interior are in a state of near collapse.
It's painful every time I go home to Cincinnati, Ohio (where I grew up) and see the effects of this: massive (and understated) unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, alcoholism and drug addiction everywhere (a strong comorbidity with economic malaise), and a general hovering sense of rage that last time I was there I found vaguely foreboding. It reminds me a lot of what I've read about Russia post-USSR-collapse. I live in California now and I feel a little bit like an expat who has fled a dying nation, but who still feels a sense of cultural affinity and loyalty. I wish I could go home sometimes but I want my children to grow up in the first world.
What's scary is that Cincinnati is not by any stretch the worst-off place. It has several healthy employers and many very nice neighborhoods. Look at St. Louis, Cleveland, Flint, etc. Some of the interior is nearing collapse-of-civilization levels of decline. "Don't drink the water" is usually a warning we reserve for third world countries.
Trump is winning because he talks about this. Meanwhile his opponents don't bring it up or even acknowledge its existence except in vague milquetoast "Wall St. vs Main Street" terms. It's not a slight problem. It's a crisis. Not mentioning it as such is insulting to all the people who are affected by it.
(I don't think unfair labor arbitrage is its only cause, but it's definitely a significant contributor.)
Edit:
See also: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
Do people think Trump voters are religious? While it was still a competitive race, Cruz and Rubio beat Trump among religious voters easily.
Trump wins people who check 'religious' in the survey and otherwise participate minimally in organized religion.
I predict that active evangelicals will mostly stay home in November since there's not a credible pro-life candidate on the ballot.
We can't forget about these people. And it's important to remember that these aren't hard working, enterprising people (as some say). But that we've simply criminalized their labor. We enforce labor standards and environmental standards high on our own companies (things I applaud), but are happy to import products not built under those same standards. We enforce free trade agreements, which make it impossible to oppose the flood of cheap products, but we've legislated higher costs for our own products. (This is also why these parts of the country have for so long voted for politicians who promised to remove or decrease this regulatory burden -- you may think they are voting agains their own interest, but they do not perceived it that way.)
The objective truth is that globalization and labor arbitrage overall produce value. That is why we are seeing markets around the world react negatively to the UK's decision. Global economies will work less efficiently in a world in which the UK is not part of the EU.
However as a society we are doing a bad job of distributing the increased value that comes from globalization. Int is true that the way we are distributing the value is leaving the people you are talking about worse even off than before. That is the problem and it will only get worse as other countries continue to develop and more jobs are taken over by automation. The way to solve the problem is not to roll back progress and retreat back into isolationism. That would leave society as a whole worse off. The answer is to continue to encourage progress but increase redistribution efforts to help the people who are left behind.
It is simple math really. Imagine a scenario before globalization where person X has $10 and person Y has $30. Now after globalization person X has $5 and person Y has $40. Person X would clearly be angry about this development but that doesn't mean the solution is to revert everything to how it was before globalization. The answer is to take somewhere between $5 and $10 from person Y and give it to person X. That way everyone is better off than before and we all benefit from progress.
> The answer is to continue to encourage progress but increase redistribution efforts to help the people who are left behind.
This is the Bernie Sanders answer to the same question. For Sanders to get as close as he did to nomination would have been as utterly unthinkable even 4-8 years ago as Trump's nomination would have been. Sanders rode the same wave, offering a left-wing reaction to the decline of the American interior vs. Trump's right-wing reaction.
While I personally can't stand Trump, I'm actually a bit concerned that if he loses to Clinton we'll be facing a real full-blown gloves-off fascist in 4-8 years. The kind of systematic decline I described in my OP is historically the precondition of fascism. I have a friend who's been predicting this for years, calling this "Weimar America."
It is also worth noting that the plan I mentioned isn't one Sanders supports. He agrees with the social safety net aspects, but he still wants to halt progress on globalization and trade. He might be even more isolationist in that regard than Trump. Sadly there was no candidate in the presidential race that joined both the support for globalization with an understanding that increased social programs are a requirement in a new and more globalized economy.
I hear this a lot. I've then gone back and listened to the exact words he's said. I think it's a very hard case for people to say there's anything he has said that's actually racist. Mexico isn't a race, and even if it were, he's simply correctly pointed out that illegal immigrants are not the best people the country has.
Trump hasn't said anything anti-immigration. Only anti-illegal immigration. Much of it is focused on Mexico, and opponents yell about how terrible this is. Yet Mexico is hypocritical. I'm in Guatemala, and friends that have simply had a layover in Mexico require a visa and go through harassment.
On top of that, I've been threatened deportation from the US during a border crossing (I'm Canadian). My wife lived as an illegal immigrant in the US (visa overstay while we tried to adjust status). My daughter was indirectly killed due to us having to leave the US and return to a bad country with junk healthcare.
Despite that, I realise mass migration won't help. Hint: Most of Latam has it not-so-good. Probably a majority would jump at the chance to get US residency. But how is that a solution? Not to mention the current status quo mostly benefits Mexico. Guatemalans face a hard time just getting through Mexico - Mexico has harsh immigration against them and won't hesitate to deport.
Trump's opponents refuse to address this. Instead they just scream racist/bigot/immigrant-hater, while waving Mexican flags. More and more people are realising these are empty insults and non-sequiturs.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-b...
>Mr. Trump, who said last week that a Mexican-American judge in a case involving Trump University was biased against him because of his heritage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/politics/paul-ryan-dona...
Trump wants to stop Muslim from immigrating to or even visiting this country. He also believe the qualifications of an American born US citizen can be put into question if that person's parents are from another country. I'm not sure how comments like that can be classified as anything besides xenophobic, bigoted, and racist.
This is an anti-ideological stance. It's not racist, and it's not anti-immigration as a whole. When hundreds of millions of people in a group agree that leaving the group should result in the death penalty[1], I think it's fine for a country to want to put a hold on things for a bit while better selection processes are put in place?
>Mexican-American judge Who is part of a "La Raza Lawyers" group which seems to stand for the opposite of everything Trump is. (Not to mention if a white guy joined a group called "The Race"...) That aside, ask yourself: Would this judge get some raised eyebrows among friends and family if he ruled in favour of Trump? It's not unreasonable to assume so.
If a judge declared himself Irish-American and proud of Ireland, maybe they wouldn't be the best judge to rule on the Microsoft Ireland data retention/access case. Maybe. Not agreeing with Trump, just pointing out that it's possibly plausible scenario and not a completely illegitimate comment.
At any rate, Mexican is not a race, so it's still not a racist comment.
Anyways this is getting into kill-area for HN, but I'd be happy to discuss over email/Skype if it's interesting.
1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Racist.
/s
I'm confused. U.S. politics over the last decade have been dominated by populist pushes on all sides of all aisles: Tea Party, Occupy, Trump, Sanders, even Obama ran on 'change' had minimal 'insider' credentials when he was elected.
> Populist movements that rely heavily on anger, fear, and anti-immigration rhetoric
Substitute 'anti-immigration' with 'anti-someone' and you basically have the case for most reform these days. The reaction to the Orlando shooting has basically been this, right? Anger? Check. Fear? Check? Pick an enemy? You have three or four to choose from: Muslims, gun nuts, homophobes.
I think we need to be more self-reflective and (socially) self-policing than tutting at all the other people out there.
The "experts" were wrong about the probability of a Brexit, maybe they're also wrong about the motivations too?
Facepalm.
We had this whole World War thing, which is endlessly replayed in TV and movies from your country. How did you miss the moral of the whole story?
Germany was one of the wealthiest industrialized nations. It was a top education destination worldwide, with some of the best universities in the world. The lesson of National Socialism is "if it could happen here, it can happen ANYWHERE".
I don't think that trump is a Hitler. But the emotions and rhetoric that he uses is extremely dangerous stuff. And your media just eats it up. You guys arent just playing with fire; you're playing with TNT.
I mean, don't me wrong, removing trade barriers is probably good. But won't the UK just be able to pretty quickly renegotiate basically similar terms again anyway? Are their trading partners really going to stop trading with them or substantially alter their tariff schedules as a result of this?
Nobody knows the future status of the uk.
If we get good deals expect the markets to recover in a couple of years.
There are around 200 countries on Earth. Sorry, 200 countries and the UK, which is special, by natural right. So let's say that those 201 countries have to make an agreement to sell cars: that's something like 40200 agreements. And each country has to negotiate 200 agreements. To sell cars.
Have fun with that.
edit: Also I now have to buy my shit from France/Germany Amazon? (Or just have an English language Amazon for the continental Europe please...)
In order to not get job losses, both have to cooperate
Occasionally you see someone sitting around reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, ready to jump into action should something go wrong. The times where the industry consisted of huge factories filled with blue collar workers assembling cars by hand is long over.
The industry has two years to focus on other markets to export to. There might be some impact but it won't be catastrophic or lead to massive job loss.
Second the world exists out of more goods than champagne, cheese and cars... . I see you make a big deal about German cars but in the whole scheme of things that is really small. And I dare to ask if a lot of British people will be still able to buy those cars to begin with, as I see how the pound is falling fast.
And third you are dealing with the EU that exists out more countries than Germany and France. Yes, because of their size they have a big position but please let stop that intellectual dishonest narrative that all other countries are living under some-kind of French-German dictatorship where they don't have any saying.
Maybe years down the road there will be some more bickering and trade wars. But I think immediately everyone will look for stability, at least within the economic realm.
The UK is too big a trading partner of those countries for them to truly threaten any substantial denial of trade.
Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?
EU: A mix of countries that don't share the language or the culture. Legislative body is not voted (Comission: bureaucrats in the literal sense of the word). The little bit of directly-voted part, European Parliament, has only limited power and is out of sight of the voters. There's no oversight, most people don't even have a chance to know what's cooking until it's the law and is too late to do anything about it.
US-like federation of EU is not possibly for the lack of common language alone. Without it, there's no oversight. Without oversight, you get the current EU.
All of which took about two hundred years to achieve. The starting point was a mix of languages, to the point it was not clear that English would become so dominant as it has become (and it's not clear it will remain so) and the majority of the adult population could not vote at all.
The EU is at the point of trying to "work around" the type of problems the US had under the Articles of Confederation. A lot of the cumbersome messy structure of the EU basically comes down to not wanting to make those mistakes (leading e.g. Congress to vote for measures only for states to just ignore them and refuse to fund stuff they were against, with Congress having no means of enforcing decisions). It took a lot of time and problems before the US went fully federal.
> US-like federation of EU is not possibly for the lack of common language alone.
By that argument, the existence of the US is an impossibility. The US did not have a common language when it was first created. There are still millions of Americans that speak little English, though the proportion is much greater now tha it used to be.
Every other country in the EEA has free movement of people as a condition. So we'll just have to have the same rules but not get a voice in making them. We've just cut off our nose to spite our face.
E.g. consider car manufacturers. Substantial interests in the EU would love to have tariffs on imports of cars from the UK, and the manufacturers here generally are here to serve the EU market more than the UK and have little reason to remain here if they can shift manufacturing capacity elsewhere.
A lot of UK exports are "on behalf" of companies headquartered elsewhere that have used the UK as a beachhead into the EU. If the UK is outside, suddenly the benefit is drastically reduced for them.
hmm I'm struggling with this argument. So you have a trade deficit now - if UK companies (who presumably now contribute mostly to exports, not imports) move away, the trace deficit becomes larger, not smaller. Of course at some point this is really bad news for UK economy if it happens on a large scale, but it doesn't "erode the trade deficit". Maybe I understood you wrong.
Car manufacturers. You mainly mean Ford UK I assume (that's the only one I know of with a high volume)? Yes, I can see it hurting them. What I don't see is how this would be in the interest of the EU. Germany would be very much against it. France and Italy I'm not sure. The others (mostly non manufacturing countries without high stakes in the game) would most likely not want to have high taxes on one of the favourite brands.
> A lot of UK exports are "on behalf" of companies headquartered elsewhere that have used the UK as a beachhead into the EU.
Yes, I could imagine that, say for pharmaceutical companies, just not so much for the car market.
You're right of course. I blame lack of sleep - I was thinking the balance was the other way. I'll blame lack of sleep.
> You mainly mean Ford UK I assume (that's the only one I know of with a high volume)?
I don't know about volume. But e.g. Nissan employs 6700 people in Sunderland. The purpose of the plant is mainly to serve the EU market. Any kind of tariff on imports from the UK would make it attractive for them to move it elsewhere.
> What I don't see is how this would be in the interest of the EU. Germany would be very much against it.
It would be in the interest of many EU countries to make it attractive for those companies to move their plants to a country that will remain in the EU.
> The others (mostly non manufacturing countries without high stakes in the game) would most likely not want to have high taxes on one of the favourite brands.
It takes very little to block an agreement with the UK they don't like. And it wouldn't take long to see the main relieved by making some of those companies move manufacturing to EU countries.
That's categorically different. The US is united under one national identity, so the ties between states are much stronger. Whereas the EU consists of many different countries and cultures, and each one has a long history of nationalism and rivalry with neighbors.
The UK is a really popular immigration destination (perhaps due to it being a rich English-speaking economy and the legacy of its colonial empire).
Let's say the British public is willing to accept a fixed amount of immigrants. The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD’s in technical fields). Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe? Are you ‘bigoted’ because I think a PhD from India would be better for the economy than a blue-collar worker from E-Europe?
It is high-time that the UK start re-engaging with its own commonwealth. This includes closer trade and immigration.
It is not as simple as replacing blue-collar workers with white-collar and expecting things to turn out awesome. The demand for blue-collar workers will remain. People in Britian will in the future get less for their money (this will also make it a less attractive destination for foreign educated professionals)
It also puts downward price pressure on wages of blue-collar workers!
Immigration should depend on jobs that are in demand. If construction jobs are in demand, I am sure that there would be thousands of people (from non-EU countries) willing to satisfy the demand.
They're still foreign workers.
The downward pressure on wages is fine - the polish guy says I'll work for half that, the British guy says OK I'll work for a bit less than the polish guy. The polish guy says I'll go cheaper, the British guy says that's no longer best for me, I can earn more by doing X instead. More work done, and now there's 2 taxpayers instead of just one.
Presumably the British guy went to another job, didn't just turn up their nose and say 'I'm not working for that! I'm claiming benefits / going to crime instead'
Does a blue collar worker from India deserve less of an opportunity than a blue collar worker from Eastern Europe?
You may answer no to this (i.e., believe in completely open borders). But I think that the general public will not accept this.
I agree, we are a long ways from the public accepting open borders. I just think its important to point out - as a society we have rejected racism, but we are blind to the fact that exclusionary nationalism is it's strict moral equivalent.
I would challenge anyone who disagrees to come up w/ an explanation why racism is immoral, that does not also apply to birthplace.
What we need to avoid is that people end up living off social services, and it's very difficult to know who ends up having a job, who ends up climbing the ropes and making something big out of themselves, and who just ends up lying in the gutter on the street. You definitely cannot tell this solely by education or origin - you'll only know when it happens.
It is not. Have you followed the debate? I'm sure there are plenty of Leave supporters that aren't, but a huge proportion of them have also expressed outright racist views.
> The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD’s in technical fields). Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe?
Not when a lot of the jobs that needs filling are blue-collar jobs.
> It is high-time that the UK start re-engaging with its own commonwealth. This includes closer trade and immigration.
About half the UKs immigration are from commonwealth countries, and a substantial proportion of trade. EU membership did not prevent that.
And noteworthy in this respect: The UK is accepting a lot of lower skilled labour immigration from these countries because of demand. I don't think it is likely that the immigration will drop much with Brexit, for the reason that it could already have been drastically tightened without touching EU immigration if there was any kind of genuine desire in government to limit immigration further.
So by that chain of logic, couldn't we say that because a huge proportion of muslims are for the punishment of homosexuals that we can generalize them as homophobic?
It doesn't work exactly like that. The "value" of a worker depends on the demand for workers in said field. Accepting a million people with PhDs in particle physics doesn't add much to the economy when there are hardly any job openings (you get 999700 physicist working lower-skilled jobs or on the dole). I don't know exactly how the situation in Briatin is right now, but I'm guessing that part of the reason why blue collar workers from Easter-EU come to work Britain, is because there has been demand for them.
That is true. But then, make a uniform standard and measure everyone fairly (whether from European Union or India).
Look at Australia's highly-skilled visa (189). They have a "Skilled Occupations List" that consists of jobs that are in demand (including non-university technical occupations).
There is no reason why this can't be implemented in the UK.
* Workers can (in theory) move around the EU depending on the demand for them in the different regions.
* Lower bureaucratic cost.
Muhahahaha. EU is the largest and by definition most inefficient bureaucracy in the history of the world
Source: living there for 30-ish years.
Not "ideologically", but in terms of money. Now, I am Poland, I have contributed to the EU budget with 3.526 billion eur [0], we have free movement of people, but no, you don't like my people because they are not master/phd? This was not our agreement. If you don't like the fact that people are free to come there, we can discuss about it. Further, if people go there, it means that the country needs such people. So, what are you UK complaining about? I am sorry, but: http://imgur.com/u9oqSWm
If such people come and work there for a very low salary, then the country may try to regulate itself by privileging its own citizens first - and this you CAN do. You CAN regulate your own country, it's not true that you can't. You simply don't have to make it impossible for people to come and work there, because this goes against European values - and it's also fair.
The truth is that it's easy to close borders instead of trying to solve conflicts: it takes less effort, and "move on". But this is short term thinking.
[0] http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/member-countries/poland/...
Is that so? I'm not sure it's true. I have a master in a technical field and given enough money I would be of course be willing to move to the UK, but my salary expectactions have just been raised a lot. I don't like being a second-class citizen, I don't like being paid in a devaluated currency and I don't like depending on my employer renewing my visa. What if I was considering opening an startup in London? It's not going to happen. If I'm going to require a visa why the UK instead of USA, Australia or Dubai? It's not the end of world of course, the UK will do fine, and the same will happen with the rest of the EU but in my eyes it has been an absurd decision. An economic recession is going to have much more impact on employment that inmigrants taking away jobs.
Why should they have this power? To use the above example, New York doesn't. California doesn't. That causes some problems re: housing supply, but we've decided that freedom of movement is more important than agitating some locals.
- We are going to be isolated - Our economy will crash - We will struggle to find high educated people - We will just disappear
Now, after almost 25 years we can't say we did the wrong thing, but hey, UK is not Switzerland, it's a totally different economy which different proportions.
I don't think this has to be considered totally bad, it's a sign something HAS to change, but now the brits have to work to make this happen in the very best way, it's an opportunity and a clear demonstration that the actual structure of the EU can't work on this way, this seems to be pretty clear.
Only time will say if the decision was good or not, but which side is going to end this decision is up to the britains, they have to work hard and do it now to make this be a good thing, rather the beginning of the end, starting with keeping Scotland in the UK.
Until today that was likely to be London.
In general, I think that society is slowly moving towards less borders and more global cooperation. I would be surprised if in a thousand years there are still 200 individual countries and governments. This step seems like a wrinkle in that trend.
Right now the European economic powerhouses are strong enough to thouroughly destroy the continent (winners and loosers alike) and probably a good deal of the worldwide economy.
Whatever happens that fear must not become a reality.
The EU being anti-democratic sounds like a case of "citation needed" for me. What major problems remain after the 2009 changes?
That said, I don't like it too. No real transparency or accountability is always bad. And I'm not saying the EU is perfect - far from it! - I'm just saying that where it's not perfect it is because it is a big compromise between people wanting a federation and people wanting to keep their power and an economic union.
How is that undemocratic?
How is that democratic?
How is that democratic?
The member states themselves (which sorry, democratically speaking means their citizens) want to keep the council more powerful than the parliament. Fixing the power disparity has always been hard, since the member state don't really want to give away their power to the EU.
Anyway, a "no" vote from the EP means a great deal, your information seems outdated to me. The EC can approve a law proposed by the commission alone only in a restricted subset of topics. Everything else is dealt with with the parliament and the council being on equal footing and acting as a bicameral democracy with equal chambers would when approving a law.
The alternative of the current system is to reduce the power the member states hold in the EU creating a real federation or US of Europe. Which for sure will not happen in the short term, and if the EU does not react correctly (and strongly) to this vote, probably never will.
As for the EP. 1. It is composed of amateur politicians. 2. They are effectively powerless. 3. They can easily be bought.
FWIW, there is a host of things where nothing will change, as most treaties don't get invalidated and the UK is still a member of the council of europe, EEA, EU customs union etc
I assumed this was on purpose so it could be acted upon as "become norway" rather than "become ukraine".
You seem to think that the EU is made of sensible people. It's not. Indeed, Brussels is at the very root of the problem. The terms they'll offer will be humiliating.
I can assure you, that they'll be nothing that a UK gov can sign and we'll be displayed in a very, very public manner to make the Britons feel humiliated.
---- begin quote ----
Economist here. This is what a recent poll of economists on this issue looks like [2], we have a pretty good idea of some of the things that come next and they are not good.
There are four major areas of concern;
• London is the financial center of the EU because the UK is both in the EU and is relatively friendly to financial services. Absent the UK having a regulatory treaty with the EU (which they can't without being part of the EU) financial services will be forced to move to the mainland. Even prior the vote there was work underway on this, the first movements will begin to occur in a couple of weeks. Several other sectors are similarly at risk.
• When the UK leaves it has no trade treaties with any other country in the world. This means all British goods will incur new or higher tariffs in all trading partner countries, British goods become more expensive when compared to comparable goods produced elsewhere. There is not a magic button here, it typically takes decades to either create new treaties or join an existing one.
• If the UK decides it wants access to the single market it also needs to adopt single market rules, effectively accepting all EU regulation but without having any voice in that regulation. That's assuming France & Germany don't just block UK access to the single market out of spite.
• The UK no longer has visa free access to EU states and the same is true of the EU to the UK. There are enormous numbers of British ex-pats who live on the continent and enormous numbers of non-UK EU citizens who live in the UK. Even if the UK & EU manage to push through a very hasty set of reforms allowing those who have lived there for n years to remain we are still talking about pretty significant labor displacement & disruption.
When every major central bank in the world have brought in extra staff and have prepared their emergency liquidity facilities you are going to have a bad day. I expect the pound to hit dollar equality tomorrow, its going to be the ERM disaster on steroids.
---- end quote ----
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forec...
[2] http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-re...
Trade deals cover "capital" and "goods", but usually not "people". So concretely speaking, labor costs will rise in the UK (due to a reduction of cheap workers immigrating from other EU countries to the UK) and the country will start experiencing a deficit of highly skilled workers¹ (due to educated workers not able to immigrate).
¹ Of all places, the HN community should be familiar with this issue, because it is often discussed in the context of the US ("startup visa", etc).
And Switzerland even has a deal with the EU that allows the exact same movement of people as if they were a member.
Probably. But the leavers don't want "basically similar terms". They want the trade benefits without "paying" with things like freedom of movement. The EU will never allow that, as if they let the UK pick and choose the part they like best, other countries will want special treatment too.
The best the UK can hope for in order to get the same access to the EU market as before, is something like the EEA, which means accepting all the things the leave campaigners have wanted to get rid of, and get no say whatsoever, similar to Norway.
In which case the UKs democratic deficit will have just widened even further.
Says who?
The EU is arguably more democratic than the UK, and certainly it's very hard to show it's less so.
https://medium.com/im-trying-to-fact-check-brexit/fact-check...
This is in contrast to the EU, where 'legislative initiative', IMO the most important power, is held by the unelected body - the commission / executive branch.
The Parliament and even the people of Europe (via a petition) can ask the Commission to propose legislation, and in the case of the Parliament, it's widely considered that the Commission is compelled to do so.
See http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/bibliotheque/briefing/...
The Commission has only once ever in the history of the EU refused to produce legislative proposals after the Parliament asked them to do so, and the reason there was that existing laws already covered the case. So effectively the European Parliament has legislative initiative - it's just that the Commission is the group that drafts the detailed proposals, which are then debated and amended by the Parliament.
As far as I can tell, the Commission takes the role of the Civil Service in the UK parliament to a large extent.
(Also, I don't believe I argued in the article that the House Of Lords was the only part of the UK government. Obviously it is not.)
That's hardly the same thing as having the power to propose legislation on your own. All they are compelled to do is justify their refusal. Whether or not they have ever refused to do it in the past is also independent of who holds the actual power.
> (Also, I don't believe I argued in the article that the House Of Lords was the only part of the UK government. Obviously it is not.)
I didn't mean to imply that you did. My point is that the two roles seem to be reversed here, and that that is important. The EU parliament (democratic) holds roughly the power as the House of Lords (undemocratic), whereas the House of Commons (democratic) holds power equivalent to the European Commission (undemocratic). And that this makes the EU less of a democracy than the UK.
When politicians hear people say 'not democratic enough!', they think you mean 'more power to the EU parliament' (elected directly) and less to the European Commission (one member per member state, chosen by your own elected government), but that's not what they want, is it? What they really mean is they want it to be less democratic, because democracy makes it look like a state. So when people call it anti-democratic, what they really mean is they want to do away with the democratic elements altogether.
The EU made it possible to drive from the Baltic to the Algarve without having to ask permission, without armed border guards searching your luggage... seven times! It made flying from Belgium to Italy as easy and pain free as flying from Atlanta to Pensacola.
Why people reject the freedom to travel is beyond me. I loved every minute of it, while it lasted...
It's not just open borders or free trade. It's about removing barriers and red tape hindering free travel and trade. It's about making sure that the car you bought in Estonia isn't stopped at he border in Spain because of different safety regulations, ending your trip to the Algarve in tears. It's about not getting in trouble because the food you bought in France on the way back doesn't meet the regulations in Austria.
I'm old enough to remember the difference. You, I assume, are not. The EU has brought a massive amount of freedom. Actual freedom and freedom from red tape, but all people want to talk about is burocracy. This burocracy is working to straighten out the differences between countries that caused tons and tons red tape in the past. That's a lot of work, there were a lot of differences.
People keep talking about a waste of money. The total budget of the EU was 143 billion euro in 2014, roughly comparable to the government budget of Finland (5 million people). To put that in perspective, the total federal budget of the US is something in the order of 4 trillion. It's really a budget price for something of such a massive scope.
To the people trying to take this away: thanks a lot. Why they hate freedom, I'll never understand.
The 'undemocratic' element, I suppose, is that the elected parliament of the EU appears to me to be its weakest component. The commission and the council seem notably more powerful and are both unelected (except quite indirectly).
Now, I don't disagree with you that free travel, trade and relocation are good things. What I don't quite understand is why it was ever necessary to have a European Union in order to achieve that. It seems to me that this could have and should have been achieved without such a heavy-handed institution.
In what way has the EU influenced your every day life, other than the freedom to travel? Where is this European oppression people are suffering under? Is the EU police beating people up? European army soldiers marching down the street?
The only answer people can come up with, if you really press them, is that they don't like all these foreigners. It's a vicious cycle. Headlines about foreigners doing bad things sell papers, so every bad thing foreigners are involved in makes it to the headlines. And with so many of thousands of Poles and Romanians in the country, there will be a drunk driver, a brawl, an accident, an incident every day.
People and media whipping each other up in a frenzy.
I'd refer to it as heavy handed because of the regulatory burdens it imposes upon its member countries. It represents a super-government enacting laws and regulations that impact every citizen of the member country's with only an indirect accountability to the electorate.
Here is an instance of the EU going after Google:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11490452/why-eu-antitrust-...
Whatever you think of this particular action, this is a broad power, imposed on behalf of all the members states. Similarly with the 'right to be forgotten' law. The power to implement these kinds of things is, in my view, 'heavy-handed' and overbroad if your goal is simply to facilitate free movement of people and goods. Why is the EU telling Google it has to forget people?
The reason, in my view, is that power naturally moves up the stack when there is another place for it to move up to. So, because the EU sits on top of its member nations, it will gradually acquire more and more power over time. This is not inherently good or bad, of course. It's just the way the world works. But it can be bad if that organization is insufficiently transparent and democratic, and it also can be bad if there is an economic heterogeneity to the composing countries.
This is particularly evident with the Euro (which I realize the UK does not use), but it can be true with other economic policies. But in the case of the Euro, you have countries like Greece that vastly overspent and totally screwed themselves with debt because of the cheap credit the Euro allowed them. Ordinarily in a situation like that, the offending country would simply print more of its own money, causing inflation and pain for its population - which would then shift the political discourse of that country toward fixing the inflation - achievable primarily through genuine economic reforms. But in Greece this didn't happen and doesn't seem likely to, and this is, in my view, because they don't control the currency. They can't inflate away their debts, so they are stuck, and the people of Greece blame the EU and the EU blames the people of Greece. But the truth is that they're both right - the structure of the EU prevents Greece from fixing the problem itself - but of course Greece is responsible for creating it in the first place.
Now, I realize the above is not the same as the UK and that the UK does not use the Euro. That is just a convenient example of what kinds of problems are entailed by having a sort of shadow economic government over and above the regular one. That there is a sort of impedance mismatch that precludes natural economic realignment because power is split up in an awkward and nonsensical way that promotes the interests of the larger body over the interests of its member entities, but does so in an incomplete, indirect way.
I guess what I am saying is that if you want a unified Europe you should have an actually unified Europe under a single government. But having this pseudo-government in charge of economic things and some other stuff, but then not other things will end up creating these barriers to natural economic fluctuations that will ultimately harm the entire continent.
Not a fan of EU bureaucracy, but I think entity like this is a necessity. It's really hard to negotiate with a 10x actor like USA or China.
As to the other amendments[2], 203 years is an extreme and unrepresentative outlier. The original bill of rights took a little over 2 years to ratify, and nearly all of the rest have taken under 1.5 years. The only one to take longer than 3 years was the highly controversial 16th amendment.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit...
From the article. 1) The 27th amendment was first introduced in the house in 1789. It was first ratified by a state in 1789 "Maryland – December 19, 1789" It was last ratified in 1992 "Michigan – May 7, 1992"
So if a hot upstart party filled both houses of the Congress with 51% win margins per representative, they can then easily pass a constitutional amendment.
There will be discussion about how soon to file the request to leave, though (actually, that is being discussed on the BBC right now. Problem is that the rules say that, after the request is made, a country must leave within two years. It may be smarter to make sure one can comply with that schedule before formally applying for an exit. Also, they were talking about timing the formal request w.r.t. upcoming elections in France and Germany)
Further Parliamentary lawmakers are supposedly mostly pro-Remain, so given the slim margin of victory it's not clear what will ultimately happen.
Could MPs block an EU exit if Britain votes for it?
Michael, from East Sussex asks an intriguing question - could the necessary legislation pass the Commons if all SNP and Lib Dems, nearly all Labour and many Conservative MPs were in favour of staying?
The answer is that technically MPs could block an EU exit - but it would be seen as political suicide to go against the will of the people as expressed in a referendum. The referendum result is not legally binding - Parliament still has to pass the laws that will get Britain out of the 28 nation bloc, starting with the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act.
The withdrawal agreement would also have to be ratified by Parliament - the House of Lords and/or the Commons could vote against ratification, according to a House of Commons library report.
It adds: "If the Commons resolves against ratification, the treaty can still be ratified if the Government lays a statement explaining why the treaty should nonetheless be ratified and the House of Commons does not resolve against ratification a second time within 21 days (this process can be repeated ad infinitum)."
In practice, Conservative MPs who voted to remain in the EU would be whipped to vote with the government. Any who defied the whip would have to face the wrath of voters at the next general election.
One scenario that could see the referendum result overturned, is if MPs forced a general election and a party campaigned on a promise to keep Britain in the EU, got elected and then claimed that the election mandate topped the referendum one. Two thirds of MPs would have to vote for a general election to be held before the next scheduled one in 2020.
Amendments will be made. Then they will have to go back to EU for approval. EU will modify/apend amendments. Then there is the committee stage, and the Lords.
Could be stretched out for a long time quite easily, so will of people not ignored but end result not much different from now.
However, EU might want a quick process because of the internal politics they have to face. 'Twill be interesting to watch but possibly uncomfortable in parts.
I do not think any politician can fight for such a prospect. They will need to accept the result.
Out is out.
Another way out of this mess is to perform European Voting: rinse and repeat until Brits get the message and vote as they are supposed to. Worked with the Irish...
As I understand it, that's not strictly correct: triggering article 50 is an exercise of royal prerogative[0][1], so it is a matter for the PM and cabinet (or, rather, the monarch alone, who is bound by strong convention to adhere to the advice of the PM and cabinet in its exercise.) [2]
Once article 50 is triggered, the UK is out of the EU in 2 years under default terms unless either that term is extended by the EU (member states acting unanimously) and/or a UK/EU agreement on alternative terms is ratified before the period expires (which, again, requires the EU to be unanimous.)
The British parliament can block an exit agreement after Article 50 is triggered, but that just leaves the UK with the default exit terms.
There's also elements of its relations with European institutions that are written into Britain's domestic law; Parliament could drag its feet on repealing those, but that wouldn't keep the UK in the EU it would make the UK a non-EU nation that choose to remain subject to some EU rules and institutions.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/britain-has-... [1] http://leavehq.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=67 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unite...
Politics is violence: 51% vs 49%
Requiring a supermajority is just privileging the side that prefers the status quo.
Rather, requiring a supermajority is to privilege the status quo, period. There are benefits to stability, no matter how it's constituted. These benefits are codified through mechanisms like supermajority votes.
A more rational referendum would have been a far more serious endeavor, perhaps one in which the population voted multiple times.
Big changes should, in general, not be easy to make.
I don't think citing that line of thinking (by Hamilton and Adams and the others) says a whole lot. It is, perhaps, ironic, that this line of thought was driven by the belief the British system of government was the best in the world. (Incidentally, during that time period, the 'three branches of government' were considered to be the House, Senate, and Presidency, not the legislative, judicial, and executive.)
This point in particular resounded with me:
> The referendum has underlined the social and cultural gap between London and provincial England.
This applies pretty much everywhere. You have the temperate / urban / high-immigrant liberal places, and the more desolate / isolated / sparsely populated / resource rich conservative places, and for some bizarre reason we still keept forcing them to operate under one government.
I have long advocated that in the era of NATO, the UN, and nuclear arms that massive states on the scale of the US or what the EU was designed to be (effectively, over the long term, another US) is counter to all notions of democracy. You only need an independent state so long as it can assert its own borders and have enough economic significance to have bargaining power in international negotiations.
The Northeast Corridor in the US, the West Coast from SF to SD, the Rust belt, and the Carolina's are examples of fairly homogeneous societies, that would make a lot of sense being their own countries, and are all fairly distinct, but would all have significant enough size and GDP to still function easily as first world countries.
Texas is an example of the opposite problem. It has 4 liberal cities surrounded by cowboys. You would almost just want to make 3 cities (Austin / San Antonio are close enough to form one) that are independent states that behave like Luxembourg by being landlocked around the Midwestern Confederacy of Rednecks that spans from the Carolina's to the Rockies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs#R
White people mostly don't care, but the golden rule, etc.
Isn't it insane how close the race between G.W. Bush and Al Gore was in 2000? Consider the consequences of that decision for a moment. And the voter turnout was only 51.2% in that election, not ~70%. Saying that in the end a small amount of voters make all the difference, that's true in so many cases...
At least regarding the Brexit-vote no one can complain that there wasn't a discussion about the issues, everyone spoke out, politicians, musicians, actors, companies, banks, ... and the people were bombarded with information and arguments for months. And the people have spoken.
(Others have pointed out that this is not legally binding, true, but it's certainly going to happen. There is no other viable way at this point)
There's all sorts of other ways to make collective decisions such as score voting, consensus, requiring approval from a combination of stakeholders (such as in a case like this requiring that all parts of the UK all approve), and so on. Majority rule brings tyranny of the majority and is the worst way to run a democracy.
Requiring all 'parts' of the UK to agree would not work well either. Do you do it by state? County? City? Person? If by state, why?
100% required for change means its tyrany of the minority. So it's really no better.
The problem is we don't know of a better way than FPTP for decisions like these.
Consider simple realistic hypothetical: what if 10% of the pro-Brexit voters are gung-ho and 90% are only slightly leaning toward it with a lot of hesitation; and 90% of the anti-Brexit voters are strongly opposed to the Brexit? With score voting, the pro-Brexit voters can still be majority but the decision will be voted down because the pro-Brexit voters weren't as sure. Even if the majority of voters decide to vote strategically, it would make a difference. I know I would never vote extreme one side or the other on something I myself actually feel conflicted about.
For clarity, instead of scoring 1-10 on "yes" as an option and 1-10 on "no" as an option, it makes more sense for yes/no votes to be on a standard strongly-disagree/disagree/somewhat-disagree/somewhat-agree etc. scale.
I'm not advocating for unanimous support as a mechanism. Tyranny of the minority is shitty, yes.
We absolutely know better ways that FPTP. Score voting is better, period. And just like FPTP can still put the post at higher than 50% (which is necessary for major systematic changes like this), score voting can put a requirement on what level of average score is needed to pass a measure.
And even a simple vote can (and in most cases DOES already) simply set the post further than 50% mark for decisions of such fundamental significance.
If you feel the need to resort to such hyperbolic examples to make your point, then you should really reevaluate whether or not you actually have a point worth making.
That's an odd example because somewhere around half the U.S. feels like the ACA was jammed through without a supermajority of popular approval.
Also, there are many who think mandating the purchase of a product (health insurance) is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that they could squint at the law and call it a tax, but the bill was never passed as a 'health insurance tax', which goes back to popular approval.
Anyway, maybe civil rights reforms, the direct election of senators, or lowering the voting age would be better examples.
I was talking about popular support. It didn't have 60% approval of the voting public. In fact, that wouldn't have even been possible because it was a monster of a bill they were trying to cram through. It was so haphazard that some Supreme Court decisions were about what to do when the bill itself doesn't make sense.
And you mischaracterized the Supreme Court decision. The legal precedent was that an individual tax on not having healthcare is legal as long as it's not too onerous. That was a very odd decision because that tax was not the plan as presented to the American public. The whole process was convoluted, which brings its legitimacy into question.
Again, big decisions should have clear support from the American people. Deciding people can be taxed for nothing (not having healthcare) is a change in the rules of the game and should have required an amendment, IMO.
And the voter turnout in the US only matters for the 18 or so contested states - so it's misleading to talk about really..
I recently read a point which made a lot of sense to me: that regular, multi-party elections are much less winner-takes-all than referendums. Even if they aren't run under proportional systems, a government can be thrown out and replaced, its policies changed, so there's always a chance for a do-over, it's always worth waiting rather than throwing a fist. A referendum, while it technically can be re-run, tends to burn out the public's willingness to listen, while decisively fixing a choice that can no longer be changed. So it's much more divisive and traumatic.
So there's democracy and democracy, basically. And they aren't the same.
0.51 * 0.76 + 0.24 = 0.62
So the majority of the population 62% are happy with decision.
0.49 * 0.76 + 0.34 = 71.2%
do not support change.
The non-voters don't care, so they are happy either way.
because 0.76 + 0.34 = 1.1
IMHO, a change from the norm should require a greater majority (60% majority) if the vote is not compulsory.
There are many reasons why people voted to leave but the journalism covering this seemed to only be able to cover the sensationalist parts of the debate in the most childish fashion. This needed a serious discussion amongst adults, with a lot of thought and we didn't get it.
So if it wasn't some racist backlash to immigration, then what was it? While I can't speak for all, here is a piece that explains many of the issues that people actually have with Europe, delivered in the serious manner that I wish more of the debate had been.
http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/02/david-davis...
Why did the leave camp stick to the 350 million argument after it had been so firmly skewered. There were many other reasons to vote leave that could have been discussed instead.
The media decided brexit was wrong. And therefore they used the age-old argument "all who vote leave are rayciss". So leavers were in anonimity. But that does not stop them from voting. It was a shitshow.
Now if only the media would stop doing this and try actual reasoned debate instead.
I wish that were true. Generally people are fine vilifying each other.
This was a major win for isolationism, but it's not clear to me why an island wants to be increasingly isolated. When you're already geographically isolated, wouldn't you want to try to compensate against that by reducing mental isolation rather than actively reinforcing it?
Ultimate independence is when people forget you exist at all.
It's very possible, and perhaps even likely, that they will look to implement a similar solution as the US has -- visas for skilled workers, to the extent they have a need for foreign labor, and there might even be direct relationships with high-tech hubs like Scandinavia.
But yes, there will be added bureaucracy, and some people will choose not to go because of it.
Problem is if you want to say buy a house or something permanent like that then its comforting to know you're not at the mercy of same visa regulation. Thats is no gone & I'm also re-evaluating my plans to move to the UK. Sure I'll get a visa easily anyway but still the uncertainty unsettles me.
You're right though, I'm sure people will totally forget that the UK exists now.
I grew up in Liverpool and we had all sorts of people living there - owning or renting houses - and getting on with their lives. There were enough Norwegians to have their own church. A fair number of Germans, and a Frenchman who ran a well-known cafe (probably lots more I didn't see). We even had Americans, mostly military people but not all. As well as lots of people from the Commonwealth countries, I can remember my first taste of a curry (a chick pea and potato masala on naan bread) and of wonton soup, not to mention cassava chips.
UK mainland is quite large - it does not feel like an island if you know what I mean. There are a lot of pretty diverse communities. Because of our history (ok, maritime power and imperialism) we have been open to most of the world. Most of the male members of my family tree (going back 8 or 9 generations) arrived on boats, most from other parts of the UK but some from other places (the women stayed put - often living in the same house for their whole life). I live in the midlands, quite near a small nondescript field where people think the first (beam) engine was erected - it pumped water out of a coal mine and that is where the industrial revolution began.
If you have skills, there will be a points system and you will get a visa. Just like the US, if you put down roots and want to stay in the UK as your main home, there will be a way of applying for citizenship. Many people here work remotely in a variety of countries where there is no formal 'free movement' agreement and they seem to get on.
PS: Our mountains are a bit crap though. Scotland has some reasonable ones. They call them 'munros'
It was sobering to see Brexit campaigners citing Australia's immigration policy as a 'good system'. In reality it is the opposite of courageous and humane government. But clearly, it's what people want...
I think it's easy to say that immigration and underlying racism or xenophobia were the cause for the result if you don't agree with the result. Comparing 5% of Australian voters electing Pauline Hanson is a far stretch considering that one vote was a general election, the other was a referendum and one result was 5% of the population and the other is over 50%.
Anecdotes of some campaigners citing Australia's immigration policy is not a strong enough argument to refute other fundamental issues that went into people's votes and is not proof of "Yet another example that immigration policy trumps pretty well all other concerns".
[1] http://m.smh.com.au/world/brexit-poll-why-the-british-people...
As a Brit living in the EU, yes this is exactly what the vote is about. The common Brit believes immigrants from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc came to steal their jobs and benefits and are the cause of all their problems. They believe by voting out it'll magically fix everything. Take a look at the media like the Daily Mail and The Sun over the last few weeks and see what they had to say about this topic.
The problem with advocating extreme anti-immigration policies is you have to take great care to never actually succeed, since if you ever do and things go badly you're left without a nebulous external boogeyman to blame.
And this works for them because there's a small minority in the US -- small in terms of percentage of the population -- for whom banning abortion is the reason they get up in the morning, the thing they shout about from the time they wake up to the time they fall asleep, the thing they would put their lives on the line for, even in some cases kill people for, and they turn out in droves to vote for candidates who express sympathy with their position.
But if the Republican candidates ever did succeed, somehow, in banning abortion, well, they have access to the same polling data as everyone else, and they know that while a lot of Americans don't necessarily like abortion, any genuine ban would turn the very next election into a landslide targeted at overturning the ban and ending the political career of every single person who supported it.
So they end up walking a very fine line of talking about how much they'd like to ban abortion, but having to be very careful to not to ever succeed at banning abortion. Or they have to restrict their success to a local regulations which don't effectively end abortion, or to things they know will be swiftly overturned by courts. That way they get to go back to their rabid supporters and say "I'm with you and did my best, but those baby-killers won again" and get consistent guaranteed votes, but don't have to face the instant-political-death consequences that would occur if they actually succeeded.
Anti-immigration platforms seem to face a similar end, though perhaps on a longer time scale.
> The Republican party in the US consistently has fought to try to restrict access to abortion
...or has consistently fought to have a more sane standard for the right to life than 'has the human life traveled through a vagina yet?' An unborn person at nine months has to be protected as much as a family pet, right?
People should have the freedom of choice in being pet owners, it's their right even, but there's a limit. And the limit when it comes to people is different because we don't own people. Not even parents do.
> And this works for them because there's a small minority in the US -- small in terms of percentage of the population
The pro-life position has slowly (slowly) been gaining popular support over the status quo (basically anything goes as long as the baby isn't born yet). There is broad consensus that abortions should be restricted in the third trimester (with the usual exceptions).
Do some people want to ban all abortions? Sure. But there's a lot of sane common ground here, too, if people actually wanted to solve problems instead of paint caricatures of each other.
It is the simple truth that while many Americans say they dislike abortion, or want some types of restrictions on it, the primary driver is not those peoples' opinions, because they don't hold those opinions very strongly. The primary driver is a much, much smaller but almost unbelievably more vocal subset who take an absolute hard-line stance, turn out at every election, and treat it as essentially the only issue on the ballot.
Those are the ones Republican leaders are trying to appease without actually appeasing, because while they love the reliable automatic support on election day they know what would happen if those folks ever actually got their way.
We might disagree on the empirical question. It might surprise you that American legal code is largely to the left of the rest of the world. Most countries do not allow on-demand abortion with no gestational limit. It's not a hard-line right-wing stance to want to bring American case law in line with Italy, Hungary, or France.
Well, the US doesn't allow that either, so I'm not sure what exactly you think your argument is.
Though to be perfectly honest I think historically-Catholic countries (y'know, like the ones you mentioned, and while we're at it let's add Ireland) could do with a bit of being dragged kicking and screaming in the direction of the 21st, or at least late 20th, century on this and other sex-related issues.
Read into it what you wish, but this really sucks for the younger generation who did not want this yet will be stuck with this decision, likely for their entire lifetime.
Well at least it'll hit their pensions. Oh, wait, no it won't because most of them will have final salary pensions schemes the working generation is paying for and could never hope to have themselves...
At least they can sell their houses which have increased in value by 100%s of percent over the last 30 years. So the older generation (& working class) have fucked us.
Britain has been in the EU for 43 years, 65 year olds were kids themselves when it joined. Everyone in Britain has been in the EU their whole lives. Couldn't it possibly be to do with anything more recent?
If anything I see the reverse. Immigrant fears was the driving factor for the Leave vote. Given that UK tabloids have been doing quite a good job exploiting immigrant fears of late, who's being manipulated here?
The Donald Trump phenomenon has very similar parallels (build a wall!), demographics (white, leans no college education, leans elderly), and root cause (largely cultural discomfort). The rise of other far-right parties in Europe shows similar concerns.
This vote to me smacks of the decades of American Southerners (and others in similar areas) voting against their own economic interests in order to protect a race-based pecking order. As in the American South, now England. It probably won't be the last vote like this, either.
This will affect everyone for their entire lifetime, regardless of their current age.
Reminds me of a Ricky Gervais stand-up where a woman is scarred for life at the age of 93, which is technically true regardless of how many years she lives to.
I work in London at a startup with international markets. I believe in the ideal of free movement. I think the EU is a bit of a mess conceptually and mechanically, but in general a step forward for Europe.
This is really the beginning of a very long, tedious and ultimately unsatisfying couple of years of dissatisfaction and instability as we negotiate with the EU and the rest of the world.
HA! Negotiate. If Britain want to shoot itself in the foot and unsettle the world economy, it can do so on its own. The EU need not concede on anything. Why should they, given that Britain won't be a voting member in a couple years. If I were France I would start bricking up the chunnel tomorrow.
Depending on how things turn out in France in the near future, they may be busy fighting "Frexit" sentiments in their own country. Le Pen has already brought up the possibility (granted, I don't expect her to be in power, but the idea is out there).
Those commonwealth countries (Canada) also trade with the EU. Whether they will choose to favour britain or not is also open. We'll get back to you on that one.
Non-EU Exports for April 2016 were £13.0 billion. EU Exports for April 2016 were £12.0 billion.
Non-EU Imports for April 2016 were £21.9 billion. EU Imports for April 2016 were £19.1 billion.
Regardless, it's not like materials to trade disappears... my guess would be the UK negotiates with the EU to basically keep trade the same. If not the UK will be increase exports elsewhere.
It's far from clear that the UK will be able to sort this out easily.
Switzerland's the real winner in this one
Although with the plummeting pound British stuff might still manage to be as cheap. Only now 4.5% of British exports will be going into European hands instead of British.
This is a lose-lose. Everyone suffers. Trade with the UK will go down, and both the EU and the UK will be poorer.
Difference is that the EU has 10 times the population of the UK. And the EU has political disincentives to keep this breakup civil.
The "migrants" are already working on it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3651956/Hundreds-mig...
Why? Out of pique? Out of being disrespected? Out of a general tit for tat?
I don't agree with the UK voters today (from my safe spot of not being a UK voter) but it seems pretty silly for the EU or countries within the EU to treat this vote--assuming it goes ahead--as a petulant child would, damn the consequences. They should and probably will make a rational response based on their own interests whether or not they're "annoyed" or whatever the word is with the UK.
The EU was specifically meant to prevent countries taking actions in their own interest, to stop them from putting their own interests above those of other countries. Now that is done and France can act in France's interests, which probably aren't exactly the same as Britain's. They are now free to make the rational decision to, for example, place tariffs on British goods so as to protect French manufacturers.
French know this will happen, so they don't do that.
Wait until Berlin replaces London as an economic hub.
Economic war will ensue and we'll all lose.
Great for European unity, I see.
The UK never believed in the EU and only wanted the good side of it. It's better for everyone that they'll be gone. There was no European Union if a selfish state didn't want to be united in the bad things too.
If the EU as a whole decides for a new trade agreement with the UK, that's fine (See? Unity), but I think they won't since the EU has strong motivation to slap back the UK.
When negotiating, you never let a position of power go to waste.
Within a nation, tiered citizen privileges with some sane defaults should control the degree of social security. Keep human rights intact, keep a basic standard of living intact, but ensure that all work is productive and that the people receiving welfare have a plan to not be economic deadweight.
I'm just one miller on the content farm: if there's one thing that I'm going to take away from this, it's that my ratiocinations don't mean jack shit. I'm still curious as to what other people think.
There can still be social safety nets for citizens without the need to support free movers.
As for voters in the UK, I think they are concerned about future immigrants, not the current immigrant population.
There is at least one positive point regardless of how you voted.
The referendum gets people talking about the issue and makes them more aware of the pros and cons. Over time they will find out if that was a good or bad move for the success of the UK.
The British issue seems to be largely with immigration (foreigners working for cheap and bringing down wages for everybody else) and economics (Brits were promised the EU would bring them prosperity, and prosperity isn't in the room right now, so they want to leave). But it's the same sense of the British people feel they're suffering by rules were imposed by an external entity (the EU says they have to accept these immigrants and these economic policies even though they don't really want them).
The liberal opinion machine has done their best to paint pro-Brexit folks as racists, fascists, equating Brexit with Trump and Trump with Hitler. I think this is dishonest and not only slanders the conservative side, but reflects poorly on the liberal side as well (if calling the other side names is the best means of persuasion you have available, it says nothing flattering about the strength of your arguments.)
I can see an Independence Referendum 2.0 being pushed through...
* = I am assuming the Welsh vote was due to a few of the Welsh lads being too exited by the Euros to vote, so they get a pass on being narrowly "Leave" this time
Looking at the majority of each constituency is misleading - it's a popular vote. There both strong pro-EU in numbers.
Roll on London Independence Party!
</half-joking>
Edit: Calls for London declaration of independence on change.org
https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-declare-london-independe...
- They had the unique privilege of a strong, international financial sector within the EU, while simultaneously having their own monetary policy. This attracted foreign capital, and this capital will feel less safe now.
- They profit massively from the import of EU workers, not just the low-paying ones. Lots and lots of academics were welcomed to the huge academic sector. These workers don't have familial ties to the UK, they can move to another european country easily.
- They profit from having hundreds of thousands EU students in UK universities. They used this arm to export their ideas and technology. This means their influence in the continent will be severely limited now.
The resignation of David Cameron is a testament to what a big failure this is. I am still of the opinion that the referendum was more of a way to blow off steam for various issues , and the EU is used as a scapegoat here. Unfortunately, whatever the motives, in democracies decisions are respected. On the other hand, this presents plenty of opportunity for european countries, which stand to benefit from an inevitable shift of commercial activity.
PS. What is funny is that british english will no longer be a EU language, even though it is the most widely used language in europe. I guess we 'll start using the maltese or irish accents more often .
Do you actually lament the fact that democracies respect the choice of their peoples?
I do agree with you that democratic decisions are not always optimal.
My guess is very little changes, it's more of a sign that people want their country sovereign as opposed to being ruled by a committee in another country.
EDIT: As mentioned elsewhere, here's an interesting summary with projected timelines: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
Once the PM formally starts the process, it must be completed in 2 years according to the Lisbon treaty. The end of that period is when the trade deals expire. There will clearly be preparation before they formally pull the trigger, but it's anybody's guess just how long it will be. There may be a change in UK leadership over this, and there are upcoming elections in France and Germany to consider. The Leave campaign has talked about 2020 as a good date to end the separation.
For all the treaties that will expire, trade will fall back to the WTO rules, which (to my understanding) are like the benches at train stations. They're arguably better than nothing, but very uncomfortable to sit on for any length of time.
IMO the market to watch is finance. Losing the free movement of money is an enormous blow to London as a global financial hub. Especially since the London and European stock exchanges are merging, it's possible the big investment banks will simply move to Frankfurt. The financial sector contributes 84bn to GDP (of 2.8tn), so there's a lot at risk there. So if any treaties get signed quick, it'll be the financial ones.
To extend your argument, maybe that wouldn't actually change much in the grand scheme of things! But EU regulations have a pretty big impact, so I think the breakup of the EU would actually be a big deal.
Look at things the British people love: The NHS. We've seen huge cuts in the NHS, and the conservatives still get elected.
There are some good arguments for leaving, but this isn't one of them, IMO.
What is success? High YOY GDP growth? Or quality of life? Look to America (my country) with very limited worker protections, almost no social safety nets, extremely high income and wealthy inequality; we still only eek out only ~2% GDP growth, and that's on the backs of the poor.
Freedom has a cost, and it seems that the UK populace who voted to leave does not fully understand that cost.
In the US, those are all going the opposite directions.
When countries grow powerful, they begin to forget about the "socio" part of socioeconomics, and just look at dollars.
Clearly a very, very large portion of the country felt underserved by the model.
Nassim taleb sums it up well: http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/15/nassim-taleb-the-global-re...
How about measuring by success by the preferences of the people in the country? Apparently a majority of UK voters preferred leaving.
You can educate someone. You can't fix willful ignorance.
> Gotta hand it to stupid people. They may not understand nuance, secondary effects, or the long term, but dammit, they know how to vote.
I'd argue you might be able to have a generous social safety net if you adopted a high tax, low regulation approach.
EU is high tax high regulation, US is medium tax medium regulation.
In case you have a short memory, before the EU there was the League of Nations between WW1 and WW2, to ensure wars would never happen again in Europe (and elsewhere). It did not work out too well.
The fact that we did not get any war in Europe after WW2 has really nothing to do with the EU being there or not. If anything, war did not break out because we were too busy preventing the Cold War from exploding in Europe and having Russia invade or coup every other country, like they did in the whole Eastern part of Europe.
Same values, I beg to differ. The values of a Greek and of a German could be completely different as far as you know. Connected Markets? The EU has become a tariff-heavy zone, the opposite of a Free Market - look at how many trade agreements we have to regulate and impeach free markets. And the TPP, with the blessing of most EU members (in secret).
There's no recipe to avoid war, but political stability is certainly correlated with economic prosperity. The EU is not making this happen, so we should see it slowly desintegrate.
Depend which values you are talking about but Greek signed European Convention on Human Rights, there is a LOT of values written there if you ask me which those countries you mention share.
> Connected Markets? The EU has become a tariff-heavy zone, the opposite of a Free Market - look at how many trade agreements we have to regulate and impeach free markets.
It's not true for most products, but some indeed are regulated because if you have 28 different countries you need to control some of the segments of markets or your country/other countries will suffer, that's why you have for example limits for milk producing etc. Show my any organization exactly like EU which doesn't regulate their common market.
> There's no recipe to avoid war
For sure there is no 100% certain recipe to avoid war but nothing was created closer to that recipe than EU. I live in country that was transformed from communism to democracy in 1989, trust me it can be a lot worse than it's now in EU, you can't imagine.
Also given the recent proceedings in the course of the EU all member countries are better off with the whole house of cards collapsing. We can always build a new alliance, but this USSR style direction is not the least promising.
Take a look at the Greek, what a success the EU was for them. Take a look at the handling of the Greek dept problem, how well the EU reagated to that. Take a look at the migrant crisis: the western EU members criticized Hungary for defending its borders, which it is obliged to by the schengen treaty. The leaders did not play by the rules they have set, yet they talk about more centralization should do the trick.
The European Council is not elected by the people, and is not accountable. Also does not show ability to control this imbecile of a superpower.
This EU must die for its architectural problems. Just as the USSR had to die. I beleive this will also happen without violence, as there is no common military force under the control of the "leaders".
I also beleive, that the European people, even those voting leave, have a wish to be united. But maybe some beleive we are first British, and second European, and they do not wish to sacrafice their local values for some abstract European or global values. Yet they do not feel bad about the other Europeans.
Europe has longer, and different history than the USA, and most importantly, though often forgotten, most European nations have made huge saccrifices for their freedom, for their very existence as a nation.
In short, to save the EU: "everything must change so that everything can stay the same"
> The European Council is not elected by the people, and is not accountable.
European Council is not elected by people? Please read more about EU before claiming such things which are not true - "The European Council is the institution of the European Union (EU) that comprises the heads of state or government of the member states, along with President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission."
The greek economy and books were audited by EU agencies. If a bug slips through reviews and tests in a software project, than the bug is the responsibility of the author? I think only partly, actually many are involved, and the process is the main problem usually.
> European Council is not elected by people?
True, I have mistaken it for the European Commission.
https://twitter.com/DavidInglesTV/status/746192676085600256
> This is something we've never seen, chances are you'll never see again Pound just collapses 13% vs. the Yen #Brexit
https://twitter.com/MatthewPhillips/status/74618964684197888...
> Wow. The £ is down 8.4%. Currencies are not supposed to do that. (1% move is considered massive.)
I think the bigger picture is eluding some people in the face of shiny doomsday articles.
The EU was built on an explicit policy of focus on small treaties, and avoiding creating transnational institutions. This was specifically to ensure that member states kept as much sovereignty as possible. It's why even the largest EU institutions are generally incomplete and only operate with the ongoing cooperation of all the member states. Hence monetary union without fiscal union. Hence the lack of police and military cooperation. Hence no central border or immigration control. These are key functions of government, which the EU has never been able to centralize because of the practice of "small steps."
Its the way the US was supposed to work, only with even less power in the federal government. European federalism is free trade attached to a foreign policy body and a supranational court.
The EU is more than 50 years old, not 15. it was established as a free trade zone first, to "make war unthinkable and materially impossible" - in 1958. That's the core of the EU, and it works very well for the members by every material measure. I don't know what makes you think otherwise. The recession has created a growing movement of Euroskepticism, but that's associated with the extreme political right wing, and remains a minority - outside of Britain, it seems.
The common man may think he knows everything, but he really doesn't.
[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...
Historical evidence suggests that such leaders tend to move towards to political extremes.
Populism is a political position which holds that the virtuous citizens are being mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. The elites are depicted as trampling in illegitimate fashion upon the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people.
The notion itself is quite subjective of course, but it is definitely very different from "democracy".
[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...
The only reason why it seems more "democratic" is because for most of human history, the wealthy elite had way to much power compared to everyone else.
Imo it goes down to what your message is - both Trump ans Sanders are populists.
We already know how easy it is for yellow journalism to sway popular opinion; expecting direct democracy to be able to deal with the subtle nuances of governing a millions-strong society is nice in theory, but simply isn't practical.
Populism is just catering to the short term needs, even basic ones, just to get attention/votes/support.
Populist example from Romania: get an IMF loan in order to increase pensions. Text-book example of shooting yourself in the foot long term, but a very popular action among pensioners, which are a large voting demographic.
The sooner the baby boomers are all retired the better.
Even the house and senate reflect these trends. The average age of a senator went from ~53 in 1980 to ~63 today. The house went from 49 to 57. For over a century the average was stagnant between 50 and 55 and only now is it going off the chart.
These people simply do not retire. They will die in office with dementia but they are certainly not stepping down and their voting base will have nothing less than their own in office until they are all in the ground.
It's an unfortunate side effect of increased healthcare and life expectancy.
Politics in the US is definitely an old boys club (just look at all the political families) fortunately other countries aren't as bad.
Unfortunately, people who are making decisions right now aren't thinking long term. They are thinking about maintaining their own lifestyles despite saddling future generations with debt, climate problems, etc.
The consequences are huge.
In my opinion the biggest issue in this campaign has been the propaganda. Already Nigel Farage has been on TV admitting one of the campaigns ads was completely wrong and any one I've seen defending a leave vote simply has the response "we couldn't let things stay the same". On both sides, despite months of campaigning, voters are completely uneducated on the consequences of either decision.
I purposely did not go into reasons why the said regions are unstable. At the end of the day the wars and governance issues need to be sorted out to stem the flow of immigrants. I don't think anyone has the answer. The solution is certainly not for the whole world to migrate to the "developed" countries.
Ah, just saying: the amount of refugees / people requesting asylum to UK is way less than in Germany/Hungary/Sweden just to mention some. This was just a populist move/slogan.
Vastly complicated by the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland don't want to leave, and will in fact face calls for independence referendums as a result. They get significant funding from the EU in these disadvantaged areas, and I find it hard to believe that the London government will step into the breach and up the funding in the face of a potential recession, and a London-focus over regional focus from Westminster. I can foresee the end of the UK.
Be it, then. The world shapes itself continuously, and it will always do so.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-3659...
NB On a personal note I am way more upset by this result than any other election or referendum I have voted in - even the first Scottish Independence Referendum.
Who would make those deals and what is there to gain from that by those parties?
I can't imagine that our new, and probably far more right wing, government will be keen on Scottish independence and will probably take every opportunity to raise road blocks that will prevent it.
Considering that the voting demographics state that the strong remain vote lies with youth, that means getting the youth to vote again and making sure they don't have their minds changed again.
Then you'd have to have the EU not piss off Scottish people in regards to the UK departure AND offer generous terms to them to revolt.
It's a talking point today, but Scotland isn't going to join the EU independently.
It's a sad day for the UK's younger generation who voted overwhelmingly to stay, the older generation, who will depend for their bread and butter on the younger ones has just made their life a lot harder.
Everybody that's gleefully celebrating will be in an excellent position to review their take on this in a couple of years when the real impact will be a lot more clear than it is today.
1. Falling house prices (George Osborne estimated 18%, helped by rising interest rates) will help many, many young people get on the housing ladder. You can look at this as a massive redistribution of wealth from old to young;
2. Although full of optimism while studying at university, many UK graduates have been crowded out of the job market by more experienced EU migrants, coming from countries with far worse unemployment rates.
3. Young people didn't have much invested in the UK, and in many ways had the least to lose.
But we would need to look at the root causes of a fall in house prices. Is it because people will have less money to spend? If so, then it's not made housing any more affordable.
Implying not all votes are equal.
> who will depend for their bread and butter on the younger ones has just made their life a lot harder.
Or rely on their pension they've worked their entire lives for, which having remained in the EU would be more at risk.
You're right nevertheless--25% is a meaningful probability.
You'd expect the 25% option to happen more often than just now and then.
25% of the time, actually.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/06/britain...
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-el...
Only butter products can be labeled butter
Oh dear lord, what has this world come to...
The people in Europe see, how many regulations just come from Brussels to be just acknowledged by their own parliaments and the democratic process is just circumvented. They see, how much is just for the benefit of big corporations and not for their benefit.
In Germany, we see, how the European idea is misused by our own politicians to bring up laws that they would not dare to let be voted on in their own parliaments. They just go to Brussels, let the law be decided there without much democratic intervention and than the law comes back into our country to be just acknowledged without discussions.
The European idea is (was) a good one. A really united Europe would be a good thing and also a strong one. But that is just an idea and not the reality. We saw it with Greece. We are not united. In the end, every nation is just looking on their own benefits and money. We Germans really acted shamefully in this situation and we already have a big trench between northern and southern Europe. Old sentiments and even hatred is growing again in the EU.
The idea was, to have a Europe, where never again will be war. We are now steering in a direction, where wars are getting more likely again, this time because of the EU and the Euro.
Is it good, that UK leaves the EU? No, it is not.
The only thing, I hope is, that the politicians might learn a lesson from it or the whole EU will break.
Agreed - but I don't believe it will affect the influence of corporations on Brits very much. They have a stranglehold on the UK government just as much as on the EU and a smaller entity is probably easier to influence.
The Brexit would be good for the EU, at least for those who want a centralized, more united, less diversified EU and have been complaining about disagreement on major policies, where GB has often had a controversial position.
-Want to stay in the EU?
-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government?
-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment?
Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com
This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)
It's important to point out that most of the UK jvoted to leave, where as every province (do they have provinces?) in Scotland voted to remain. It's a tad ironic considering Scotland voted to remain in the UK the other year - but I think they'll be leaving the UK soon.
I don't think the UK should remain because the vote was close, as once the Scottish vote is removed, it's much more than 52/48
No. It means 2% more people wanted Brexit.
> No. It means 2% more people wanted Brexit.
In traditional arithmetic, 52 is 4 more than 48, not 2 more.
Well, nice to see that UKIP is wasting no time backtracking from the lies they sold this vote with.
a) Conflating campaign promises (it was Vote Leave who made the promise, not UKIP, so Farage is not backtracking on anything);
b) Misunderstanding the nature of promises made during this campaign; there is no real 'official' leave campaign, and by voting to leave in the referendum, we have not elected any campaign group into power.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*TD7RywMw4YnWGpfjR...
https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/poll-reveals-eea-option-h...
In all likelihood the UK will join the EEA and retain free movement, but even if not, economic migration will still be encouraged and a visa system will be in place, just as the country has for the rest of the world.
My girlfriend is Polish and has lived and worked here for 7 years. She's never claimed benefits or anything.
Its amazing that you know what the terms of the exit deal that Britain and the EU will negotiate under Article 50 already.
Do you imagine Nissan will be chanting "Rule Britannia" and eating that loss, or do you imagine they'll be moving the bulk of their manufacturing capacity to one of the Eastern European countries that already has a solid car making capability?
Remember, this won't even take effect for another two years or so. Literally nothing about UK or the GBP has fundamentally changed as of this moment, and yet the currency has been shorted as if the UK has simply snapped its fingers and is, as of this moment, no longer in the EU.
What you'll see in the coming days is an upward movement. Shorts are going to take their profits, which is going result in GBP buy orders, which is going to squeeze shorts, which will lead to more GBP buy orders. Will the GBP go back to its value as of yesterday? No. But it won't remain down 10% either. Bank on it.
Why are they playing as separate countries yet voting together to leave the EU? I don't get it.
Football, rugby and cricket were all formalized in the UK, so the initial arrangements reflected a vision of Scotland, England etc being "countries". The first international football match, for example, was Scotland-England.
As the game expanded, other countries started their own international federations, which UK clubs eventually joined. As part of the joining, British representatives obtained clauses that safeguard their role as "custodians" of the game, which basically mean you cannot change the rules of football without UK representatives agreeing.
Part of those clauses imply and require that UK countries will remain separate; so you have a Scottish authority, an English authority and so on, with separate leagues and separate national teams.
The two elements (representation in rule committees and in tournaments) rely on each other; renouncing one would basically mean renouncing the other. Of course, you're never going to renounce you ability to make the rules, so here we are.
In the Olympics, for example, it's different, because that institution was actually born in France and reflected a different vision from the start; which is why Britain traditionally does not compete in Olympic football.
Any dissolution of power to "regions" like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is at the discretion of the central government, which can remove them at will.
The fact that it has separate sports teams is a weird throwback to history, now intended perhaps to largely confuse foreigners. (Perhaps a clever way to allow the UK to increase its odds of winning? :)
It is in many ways more one country than two countries but to say Scotland is just a region is extremely inaccurate.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/sovereignty/
Until Scotland leaves the UK, any powers enjoyed by its institutions can be repealed or changed.
Of course in Scotland, the people could choose to be independent, and not be subject to UK parliamentary supremacy.
If that doesn't happen, I would expect the UK to shift from membership of the EU to membership of the European Economic Area (alongside Norway and Iceland) or similar.
If there are further referendums, they'll be for Scottish independence, Irish unity and for Gibraltar to become part of Spain.
The EU may be flawed in many ways, but the free movement of people, goods, and services ain't one. Unfortunately, that flies squarely in the face of the leave campaign's "controlling the borders" message.
Sad day today.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/nigel-farage...
Like getting a divorce and then work out custody and share of assets after.
I personally think it will sort itself out just fine - even IFF (and that is a very big IF) the UK parliament follows the non-binding vote...
What happens next? Next is the shaming; the usual suspects will condemn the UK as an island full of racists. The political class will start trying to figure out how to achieve "Brexit-in-name-only." The BBC will come up with a story template they'll reuse annually telling how -- if they had it to do again -- a majority would vote stay. What happens next is the elites will figure out how to work around their subjects and nullify undesirable electoral outcomes, as they always do.
So what is "The New Left"? Left wing politics in the UK is in disarray, Bernie Saunders espouses a vision that most of Europe sees as frankly old hat centrist, and there is no defining political viewpoint that is encompassing the (now dispossessed) young, the march of technology, the lessons learnt over communism and socialism.
Is the answer just to double down on democracy? Turn to your principles in time of trouble? We are losing the argument in open debate though. Just more "trust us, this is business as usual" does not seem to be a rallying cry.
Where is the intellectual core of what will oppose the New Right?
What I do judge however is that politicians are abusing the divide and the mass media directly influencing it. Non-egalitarian politicians are advertising themselves as the saviour of the poor. It's ironic. The media is publishing data on how education influences the votes and thus implicitly show that there are "the stupid" against "the smart".
Politics is completely torn away from content to emotional rage. When people vote for the far-right they do not show that the far-right have a well thought strategy to make their lives better, but they show that they are not satisfied with their current situation. That's worrisome to me.
The less-educated perceive that the well-educated have been giving them a raw deal, and looking at outcomes it's hard to think they're wrong. They also breed more, so there are more of them.
I am only speaking of the general public and not the individual.
It did work out quite well for the well-educated, but not so well for the less-educated. So now the less-educated beg to differ.
Unfortunately this fact is lost on the less-educated.
The older, less-educated and less-productive members of society are robbing their children of a future they not only desire but voted to preserve. A sad day for the youth of the UK.
The proportion of remain votes drops steadily as age goes up. This suggests that people get more and more critical of EU's ability to create jobs and wealth as their work and life experience increases, whereas younger people have praised EU's role in education and cultural exchanges.
Why should it be "robbing their children of a future"? If people see no improvement in their life within the EU (quite the opposite in many cases), why should they want this future for their children? How is this robbing?
Education level correlates with income as well, so you could also say it's the high income vs the low income. If the going's good, you don't want to change things. If you're getting shafted, might as well shake things up.
This was on HN awhile back: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
More interestingly, I find this is a telling example of the limitations of democracy as we know it. Democracy, very broadly speaking, ignores population clusters (physical or ideological) to the extent that the "voice of the people" is actually not representative of anyone's in particular. I've tried to educate myself about alternatives or adaptations, but I have to admit I haven't found anything especially convincing thus far.
We call random people to vote for issues out of their expertise and we enforce the rule of the majority to everyone.(what happens to the 48% who voted remain?). This is obviously ridiculous but everyone is brainwashed as we learn at school that democracy is like the biggest invention of mankind. Athenians at least were allowed to ridicule it all the time.
As things stand, California is currently the eighth largest economy in the world on their own. 17 of the top 30 U.S. tech companies are in California, which should come as no surprise. Tourism, entertainment, biotech, and agriculture are multibillion dollar industries already. Aerospace and defense contracts still rake in around $25bn a year. And many state business leaders are increasingly showing a real commitment to renewable energy.
Overall, while I believe there is definitely more potential for a social democratic style of government if California were its own country, the changes would not be that drastic. Barring a major collapse, California would, like Canada, still remain in the U.S.'s economic and cultural shadow. And who knows? Secession might be the best thing to happen to other states like Texas, New York, and Massachusetts. Who else would be capable of filling the void left in the energy, media, and technology industries? There is certainly upside in such a move but also a great deal of risk.
Might be an opportunity for some (am hopeful that the Web Summit moving to Lisbon will boost things here), but I'm not sure there will be any substantial upside for this anywhere...
The default seems to be non eu-membership. So why should Britain stay in the EU? People are commenting on this as though it's really obvious.
Truth is, the EU is not a perfect solution. Even if Europe were to become a "single nation" (like the United States) that wouldn't mean all parts of the Union would have the same economic development. Just look at the stark differences between places like New York, Massachusetts or California vs. Missouri and Luisiana.
Prima facie it's impossible to predict if the UK will be as severely affected as the Remain camp wants to paint it. Time will tell. If anything, I'm curious about all this (if painfully aware that it might affect the life of millions of people for the worst.)
And they voluntarily gave all that away. And they've simultaneously made a lot of enemies amongst their largest trading partner and closest neighbors.
I simply don't see how this works well for the UK (or should we say England, since the possibilities of Scotland breaking away have also risen dramatically).
Should Spain and France implement a points & qualifications visa system for all those Brits in the South? After all, many are working in bars, estate agencies, construction, some even shock, shock are petty criminals [1] or lead criminal organizations [2].
What will the UK do if the EU sends back half a million Brits (that's like a new Manchester landing all of a sudden!).
I'm just trying to give a different perspective, but I'm completely in favour of more freedom of movement. I'm very happy to have more diversity in my countries (I have two European nationalities, have lived in 5 EU countries and feel like a world citizen with a European background).
I really hope we find a new solution of understanding and cooperation.
[1] http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/espana/2016/04/28/deten...
[2] http://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-detenidos-seis-miembros-band... / http://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/andalucia/2016-05-15/ma...
Ireland? Malta? Cyprus?
Its unlikely to have ANY deal between EU and Britain, there are too many conflicting interests. So the end result is that all the EU deals just end and there is no replacement deal for them. Problem is when lots of countries want to leave their own mark on the deal and lot of people in the deal making process has vested interest in making bad deal for britain and Britain really cannot approve such deals.
Even though on the surface EU and UK are alies and trade partners, it is not all black and white. I believe US will benefit because they will be able to play UK against EU and vice-versa to gain somehow. Say if EU doesn't allow import of US chicken they can go and try to persuade UK to not allow some import from EU in exchange for some other favor and so on.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if this strengthens US's stock market in short to medium term, as everyone will flee to US stocks due to perceived volatility.
Therefore all change is bad.
Luckily most consume goods don't come from the UK.
But yes, with the strong US Dollar (in general) our exports have taken a hit.
It's impossible to say what will happen in each case as the US will have the upper hand in US-UK negotiations. Also, dropping the UK from the EU is less favorable in EU-US deals than it was as it's dropping a large economy from its market.
However, the election results in the US are probably a bigger consideration in the short term as a huge anti-free trade or anti-immigration election in the US would cause major changes as well.
(Total US->UK ~$55bn, about 4% of total US exports, top categories: aircraft, oil, cars, machinery, electronics.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
The EU is the largest trade partner of the US.
And when ordered by US Exports, the EU is the 2nd largest trade partner after Canada.
I suspect the problem you saw was related to American Brands (for food) vs the actual company behind the food. Many foods are bottled/packaged in local plants, and/or resold under local brands.
The betting markets were giving a 90%+ chance for Remain yesterday.
EDIT
I think that even without the UK (and Ireland), the EU would still use English as official language. For better or worse, English is a useful method of communication, even between lets say Spanish and Polish people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
Saddened by this, but the people's voice shall rule.
What I would like to see is a more Swiss-style democratic involvement in EU. It is not for no reason many Europeans feel detached from what the EU does.
So how is it about migration? Are UK voters afraid of eastern European EU migrants or is it something else?
If anything, being a part of the EU allows the UK to force migrants to seek asylum in the country where they entered the EU. Outside the EU I don't think they will have that possibility?
I think the problem is related the weak labor laws of the U.K. (Compared to e.g France, Germany or the Nordics). UK workers can more easily be replaced and have less security when they are.
It's a complete failure of social democrat policies if the popular response to depressed wages is right wing populism rather than unionization and calls for stronger labor laws.
I think I read an article earlier today about Blackrock shorting like 50% of their european holdings or something?
Now we have a two-tier Europe with rich and poorer EU states. Capital and investment leaves the rich states for the poorer ones because of low wages and costs, while population leaves the poor for the richer states for their higher paying jobs and generous social welfare support.
Guess where all the refugees and economic migrants want to live?
It's a reality that cannot be sustained.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks
Obviously if you compound that with the pound losing 10% a FTSE investor is worse off. But my boss has met many investors recently and his feedback was that more investors were concerned for the future of the EU rather than the future of the UK.
The FTSE 250 is probably more representative of UK business as a whole and that is down more today.
Everyone got that?
That being said as a European I couldn't care for the fifth "biggest" economy and I really hope that the EU keeps their 2 year timeline (if no deal can be reached in that timeframe it should be over) and deals on EU terms. They should not give a Switzerland or Norway deal without a hard bargain. My country and region is exposed a lot (jobs at our own country btw, trade,... ) and we where slowly recovering and now we are kicked down again. In the future we need to look for better and reliable business partners.
Also it's sickening to see how this give extreme right wing parties (and not right wing in the American sense, but really racist xenophobic parties) a boost. All old is new again, it is only 70 ago years we saw the same uprising of these kind of parties. I do hope that this doesn't jeopardize peace at the main land, that I fear the most. I can only imagine that a Putin is having the day of his life.
On a political sense I think in the end the EU can be possible better of, they never had a constructive attitude. With all the special statuses it got, it was already an island in Europe.
Btw seeing how the Euro is also falling, the whole idea of a weakened pound which have a positive impact regarding trade is also seriously backfiring. UK goods and services are still as expensive, maybe more after today.
For example, La Stampa: "A recent poll found that 48 per cent of Italians would leave the EU if given the chance to vote in their own referendum."
Scotland had a pretty clear Remain vote.
At least in my case think of it as my identity being some mix of Europe-in-general, Britain-somewhat, Switzerland-somewhat. Now Britain says "we're not Europe" (to horribly over-simplify). That doesn't make me think "oh well, now I'm less European", instead it makes me thing "oh well, now I'm less British".
I was born here and I've lived in England my whole life, but that's exactly how I feel.
I've always identified as both British and European. Now that the UK has decided to isolate itself from Europe it hasn't made me feel less European it's made me feel less British.
Britain is right-wing, xenophobic, corrupt and utterly in the service of financial elites who direct everyones attention toward Johnny Foreigner in order to hide their own self-serving agendas.
Plus we're well on the way to becoming a police state now that we face a future without the tempering hand of the EU on our thoroughly right-wing, demagogue politicians.
I need to start seriously considering moving somewhere else because I have very little patience for the path this country is on.
My retired parents voted out not because they are right-wing or xenophobic (their son is a New Zealander now with an Asian Wife) but because they read right wing media (which they do not believe is right-wing) and believe the hype of the politicians and journalists. When they wake up tomorrow it is not going to magically be the UK of the 1960's they remember and the journalists and politicians will find someone else to blame.
Trump is doing the exact same in America and politicians from the right and left wing are doing it in other countries too. Generalisations are what gets politicians off, the fact generalisations also cause conflict is neither here nor there to them so long as they get power.
Fuck this country.
I think the EU with less German influence would be better. (FYI I am german)
We in the EU can then proceed unhindered.
Ha! Let's remind each other about this conversation in 3 months and review our arguments.
Ironically, it's the EU that seems impatient to get this over with.
As a Brit, I find that laughable.
I also noticed some Irish people mentioning they would have to sell their house and leave - please for your sake, look up the official information on Irish/UK rules, you will find that they have freedom of movement regardless of the EU and in fact it goes much, much further than the EU rules.
Specifically: "Unlike other EU citizens, UK citizens may retire to Ireland without having to establish that they have sufficient resources or that they have private health insurance." http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/moving_t...
"Irish citizens automatically have a right to reside in the UK as part of the common travel area. If you were habitually resident in Ireland or any of the other places in the common travel area before you came to the UK, you will automatically satisfy the conditions of the HRT." https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/coming-from-abroa...
I think everybody needs to try and calm down. Even though a great many of us would have preferred not to leave, this can be OK.
The UK can easily end up in the EEA which has freedom of movement etc anyway.
This is not the time for panicked reactions!
Whilst it doesn't seem to cover every nuance of the situation, it adresses some of the points brought up for discussion in this thread, such as punitive tariffs (ruled out based on WTO non-discrimination rule), and seems like a fairly unbiased primer. It's fairly short too, 32 pages, written for a MP level of reading comprehension.
[0]researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06730/SN06730.pdf
But most goods are sold from other countries, so their prices just went up overnight. Of course, there are sticky prices but in general I would expect prices for imports to be higher in the near future with a weaker currency.
However, a weak currency does encourage exports, so it is true that the benefits/costs are complex. But in the past large currency devaluations have been harmful to the average citizen, and that is the consensus on them.
Now Latvia has veto power on whether the UK can have access to the single market (provided that the UK ever leaves, something that has not happened).
The UK simply didn't buy the EU's story about the Euro, and now they want a fully independent monetary policy. I'm not sure how much they have studied such possibility, but I bet that taking this to a democratic level was a data-driven decision.
The EU is going to want to put some political pressure for sure, but I don't think that they are going to want to do such a huge damage as wanting to establish a trade embargo with the 5th biggest economy of the world.
In what way is it more independent now? It was independent before.
Anytime a sovereign group of individuals declares independence from a larger group, which inevitably has different interests, it's a good thing.
I don't know why there's so much despair over this.
Yes, surely there are short-term negative effects, whether in the loss of EU privileges, or the temporary losses in currency values, but in the long-term, there's more independence and self-sufficiency.
A larger body of government isn't smarter; in fact, it is more detached from local concerns, and less able to react to them in a timely fashion.
We should celebrate the Brexit, just as we should celebrate any and all declarations of independence from larger bodies of governance.
"Okay guys, just one last world war, then we'll really make some progress"
We underestimate the power of idiots in large numbers.
You might also see tech leave the country. Selling in the EU will be more costly. As a result, companies might start moving out or collapsing. Their former employees would then leave too.
I'm not saying that racism or xenophobia did not play a part, but when you brush everyone with concerns with that brush you push them towards extremism.
This is a sad day for the EU and for the UK. This is a bad outcome for each side. I'm not sure where we go from here.
Correction: they were made worse off by their own government. The EU is an easy scapegoat, but the EU did not close down the mines or manufacturing plants.
I'm talking about the fact that unskilled wages have stagnated due to the influx migrants that was enabled by the EU.
Honestly it doesn't matter who is really to blame as the people who voted perceived that the EU was the cause. And in these circumstances perception trumps reality.
The lack empathy to understand where people are coming from and talking over the top to correct people is why this debate is so toxic, and why so many voted to leave. To win this debate the remain campaign needed to understand the drivers of brexit, to empathise with those wishing to leave and to show how that leaving wasn't the solution to their problems. Instead they browbeat people supporting brexit, by calling them racist, xenophobic, and stupid.
I wanted the UK to remain in the EU. I still do, I'm not sure where we go from here.
Yes, sad, isn't it? You can royally shaft part of your own citizens for forty years, decrease the tax burden on the richest people and largest businesses, and when push comes to shove, there is always an external enemy that you can blame.
We've been down this road before.
No longer will those with "wrong opinions" be shut out of debate and policy because they are conditioned with a pavlovian response of fear from being called bad names
It goes from bad to worse. Leaving the EU and now we'll get Boris Johnson as well.
The supranational oligarchy is mostly concentrated in a few key places in the world, Wall Street, City of London, Vatican City, DC, Switzerland, etc. The supranational oligarchy the most in control though according to my estimations is City of London. I analyze from an American perspective and Wall Street and DC seem to have rolled over for them on most occasions.
That being said, the true goal of the oligarchy is a collectivist global government model. The problem is the collectivist model hurts the countries that join it while propping up their oligarchy.
I predicted months ago UK would leave because they are the ones who pushed the EU onto the Europeans in the first place, (keeping the pound was a dead giveaway), and now I simply think they are aiming to maintain local order and prosperity at a higher level than Europe so as to keep their people placated somewhat.
Next up, massive restrictions on Immigration in the UK.
Recommended reader for background, anything by Carroll Quigley.
- The Swiss move is one-sided, it's not yet implemented. There's a good chance their EU treaties get cancelled when they implement it. - The border controls some countries implemented are a suspension of certain Schenfen rules. They do not affect the free movement of people within the EU. Also these Schengen rules have never applied to the UK.
If that's why you voted out, you've been made a fool of.
At this point we have absolutely no information about what the Brexit deal will look like, it's impossible to know what the UK economy will be like post EU. For all we know the eurozone could face a crisis in the next few years and by distancing itself from Brussels the UK could end up better off.
In a month or two when things have settled down we'll see a much more reasoned debate. Once article 50 is invoked and we begin to see what the 'leave' deal will actually look like you may see many people adjusting their position.
So uncertainty translated into markets diving, which translated into believing it was a bad idea because markets are diving. Interesting analysis that makes quite a bit of sense.
Out is out.
This result seems to be 52/48 so it's incredible that such a monumentally important decision is to be made from this interpretation of a majority.
This decision feels very much like it's on the wrong side of history, but perhaps that's just the denial.
We'll start feeling the riples of this in a couple of years. What a huge mistake!
The old England introduced to the world of kings & dictators, the Habeas Corpus and Magna Carta.
Now, the UK of 2016 had shown that the voters -- can take the decision power back.
The so called 'representative democracy' is no longer representative, it is, instead -- a 'Placebo' democracy. Where the voters are mislead to think that their opinion matters.
And it is the 'leavers' people of UK, the voters who are described on this forum as the 'old and un-educated' -- are the first in Europe, to recognize that they were sold a Placebo-democracy.
The vote to leave is the first chapter in the modern's world Magna Carta.
And I congratulate the people of UK.
A good thing I can see is that British offshore banking will not be allowed to siphon off European tax payers money. In my country there is things like pharmacies where medicines are payed by the wellfare state that is owned in British tax havens. Right now that is the only positive effect I can see that may end.
In light Norway and Switzerland are also doing ok as countries.
I try to make up my mind, which Union will be more affected by the Brexit: The European Union or the British?
Both institutions deserve some "house-cleaning" but after the Leave-Win it is sort of "either-or": A vote for "Union A" becomes a vote against "Union B" and vice-versa.
And now Cameron resigns - I'm shocked.
Seems like a blow to that theory from where I'm standing.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from...
- Learn german
- Invest in german language schools
For example look at this:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1740f3a6-2cc2-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519...
It appears EU is immensely unfavourable in greece, yet people again and again vote government to stay not only in the EU, but in the eurozone as well.
That said, I would wager there is a lot of cognitive dissonance and disillusionment at this time across both ponds of the atlantic. These are unpredictable times.
Dutch far right politician Geert Wilders tweeted it was time for a Dutch referendum on EU membership. Front National leader Marine Le Pen wants a French referendum on EU membership. Italy's Five Star Movement wants an Italian referendum...
So yeah, various populist political parties are now using it to try and get their own 'Brexit' equivalent for their countries. It's not that serious yet (since hey, these parties aren't in power in these regions), but you can bet that if a far right or populist group gets control of an EU country now, they'll try and copy what's going on in the UK.
As for how many can leave... depends more on what the countries are and how much of an economic effect they have. If France and Germany ever decide to leave, the EU is probably in trouble. If a small country/small countries leave, or one that's running at a loss at the moment (like say, Greece) does the same, then the EU can probably survive it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36614643...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-5-star-movement-calls-for...
Congratulations Britain, today you took back control of your own destiny.
Proudly galloping off into the dusk towards a glorious future as the world's uncontested exporter of wine gummies and vinegar chips.
Congratulations Britain, today you handed your destinies over to oligarchs in the City of London instead of oligarchs in Brussels.
Edit:// I clearly did exclude the US here.
As the enormity of the situation sets in, Britain must reflect on her status. Yet as currency and foreign investment alike tick into the ether, we cannot afford leisurely introspection. Commentators alight to social media, fast food opinions winding through the networks to be forwarded, appraised, accosted, and forgotten.
A stunned middle rouse from their silence, incredulity reigning. Someone must be blamed, and there are no shortage of targets. The deceitful far right must surely be deposed, their 350 million untruths a week publicly unravelled at the teeth of the media. Tautological slogans, much as we must surely want to “Make Britain British again” wear thin, amid claims of xenophobia being noncommittally dismissed, and swiftly, lest anyone ponder too long at their origin.
The leave campaign celebrate an ethereal success, yet no definition of success appears. Nor was one provided - a marginal result in a referendum which declined to assert a majority, or to be legislatively bound to parliamentary action, leaves dangerous room for interpretation, yet as a consequence manages to leave none at all.
The glaring omission makes one thing clear - there is no plan - for who can plan for what cannot be defined? The stage show props of austerity budgets are shuffled back under coats amid sheepish mutterings of “ah, well, before the vote, you see…”. The idea of success of this referendum was to do not with the outcome, but with its existence. A scrap, thrown far to the right in exchange for a grubby four years, has swiftly been devoured, and the leader finds his four years have, overnight, been devalued to two.
Exposed to his short sell on the exchange rate of democracy to political capital, he has built an unflattering legacy. The leader who failed to lead, and the alumnus who handed the keys to the counterfeit every-men riding a wave of anti-intellectualism, has gambled one time too many and must bear the greatest loss of his era. Not only has the sea between Britain and the world become rougher than ever, but the political dice are cast, and as they tumble to a halt, the shape of the United Kingdom itself now rests on how they lie.
What I find surprising is that it is the British who first decide to act about them instead of the southerns.
But that's the only kind of shamelessly self-interested sort of kind of silver lining I can think of. This is pretty bad IMHO.
THAT WAS THE CLAIM.
Ask any English-born tradesperson trying to find work in England that pays anything.
The reality is the EU morphed into a Leftist prank to have open borders and CENTRAL GOVERNMENT (in Brussels, Belgium).
The Left says "let anyone into the country who wants to come."
Yet me and my software engineer peers are constantly undermined by the very same thing -- elitists attempts to undermine our wages by flooding the tech worker ranks with as many foreign workers as our worthless U.S. Congress will allow.
No freaking thank you.
When my friends bring up 'the U.S. must eliminate our national borders' and I bring up the fact that our jobs have been undercut, our salaries marginalized, by that very same thing -- over-supply of labor -- it makes them stop and think of this 'no more borders' differently.
And overseas sales will probably go down.
In any case this will not be done in two years which is the max time allowed by the EU treaty after the UK gov makes it official.
Trade negotiations much more simple than this between the EU and other countries usually take 4-5 years or more. I will be surprised if the UK is out completely within 5 years.
During that time the UK is still subject to all the terms of EU membership.
Plus there are re-negotiations with all the other countries the UK had access to via the existing EU trade agreements.
There is only one scenario without a grace period: some more radical Brexit supporters advocate breaking EU laws and regulations immediately (right to work and live and so on), just because the European courts take their time and by the time they'd hear the case the UK would already have left, so no consequences.
In that case some European politicians have replied there will be an immediate cutoff from the Common Market.
Both threats are highly unlikely to be played out, IMO.
But the fact is that plenty of people don't have a clue how the EU works. On the streets of Britain, public services have been run down by underinvestment, house prices are out of control due a reluctance to reign in property speculation and good blue collar jobs with decent pensions are being lost to globalisation, automation and 'Uberisation' of the labour market. So a bunch of older poorer people in villages and small towns across England and Wales (not Scotland), read in the right wing tabloids that immigrants are to blame, they take this at face value and fall for it hook line and sinker and will ironically end up with an even more right wing government that no-one has voted for under Boris Johnson. What's more, it was clear that the vote was entirely down to fear of immigration not actual experience of immigration as the brexit vote was strongest in areas with the least immigrants. Places where people have never met a brown person voted most strongly for out based purely on fear stoked by tabloids peddling a racist agenda. Indeed some of UKIP's campaign posters were almost facsimiles of 1930's NAZI imagery.
There is a real democratic deficit in our system though. This referendum was proposed by the prime minister as part of a tactical gamble to control the right wing of his political party. This is a government which was only voted for by 1/3 of the electorate, and scraped through with a tiny majority of 6 MPs. The real wasteful bureaucracy with a strong dose of unelected elites is the UK parliament with the unelected House of Lords and the inefficient Houses of Parliament which is effectively a 'bistable' two party system due to the first past the post voting system. They waste unbelievable amounts of money changing things the previous government set up just in time for it all to be undone when they are voted out 10 years later. Political discourse amongst the populace seems like it is mostly dead in small town England and Wales, but it is striking to note however that political discourse is definitely not dead in Scotland and you can see the results as all of Scotland voted to remain. As an Englishman living in Scotland, and I speak for a lot of other English people I know up here too, I will definitely be voting to leave the UK and stay in the EU if the chance arises. There is plenty that is wrong with the EU, I think the council of ministers should be replaced, but it is at least as democratic as the UK parliament is now and more importantly it is a forward looking institution which is much more likely to evolve into something better than the UK parliament, especially after a vote like this.
I noticed that some "typical headline news" are gathering a lot of votes and getting to the top of front page. This seems to be working against the HN guidelines:
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I know political news get some kind of penalties. Would that apply to a more generic headline news like this?
Personally, I upvote stories like this purely because of its significance. And I am not sure if that was the intended use case.
I can't imagine that it would be a good idea for you to invest in anything when you have to rely on the judgment of internet strangers if it's a "good time" to do so.
If you disagree, I have a really fine bridge to sell you in London.
Will it still be possible to travel from Ireland to the UK without showing documents?
If not... then will there be a new fence across Ireland (between north and south)?
It seems there will be no change in regard to visas.
Leaving the EU will open up a whole range of challenges and opportunities, some of which may see young people ending up slightly less screwed.
Being a member of the EU undoubtedly pushes demand up.
This may actually work really well for the opponents of separatist movements in developed nations.
* The British were not an external enemy. That would have been the French. For the most part, even the people leading the revolution were proud of being British subjects and would have liked to remain so, but could no longer tolerate the conditions being attached to that status. Our enemy was recognized to be our own cousins, not some external force.
* The shared dream of settling the continent was real but - given that said continent was already occupied and settling it meant exterminating the current residents - it's not something I'd want to put forward as key to our identity.
* Shared culture, language, religion? Language, mostly. The Puritans in New England didn't really have much to say to the Quakers in Philadelphia, and both had even less in common with the not-particularly-religious folks down in Virginia. Yes, I guess they all were (or at least professed to be) Christians, but that's not too different than Europe today.
So, basically, the difference between the US and the EU, according to the criteria you've mentioned, is that the US united to commit genocide and the EU united to avoid it. Congratulations on making the point that the two cases are different.
It wasn't cut and dry, there were many English loyalists in the colonies at the time of the war. After the US gained independence, most of them fled.
The way he very broadly sums it up was the South didn't have a reason to revolt until Lord Mansfield's ruling on slavery in the empire sparked fear and uncertainty of slavery's future in the South. That's what united the Northern and Southern states against the British. The book also goes on the explain the critical role slavery played in molding our constitution because it was the most contentious piece. It suggests that once the states reached a compromise on slavery, the rest of the pieces fell into place.
I think that's a better characterization than "The US united to commit genocide." My story at least tries to flesh out how the interests of real humans leads them to commit atrocities. Your obtuse characterization paints them as villains with the depth of a comic book character. You will never learn from history if you paint people like comic book characters, because they'll never resemble the complex real people you're trying to compare them to.
When reading the parent post, I too thought it left out slavery. (Understandable, in a short comment.) As I understand, Europeans generally were against slavery, not heeding intellectuals in favor of it. (In part probably because in preceding centuries they'd been its victims more often than not.) Nation states are about promoting a certain culture to dominate its territorial boundaries, and central to US culture is the invention of modern racism, to make its slave society back then robust.
It seems more believable that it would only be deeply held (if held at all) by the westward bound.
Even if manifest destiny was not primary in the hearts and minds of a majority of colonial American citizens, their most potent leader saw it as the common bond that would unite the colonies.
This is a false historical picture. Most of the continent was not settled at all, most of it was empty. Most of it is still empty space today. You'd have to claim there were billions of Native Americans to pretend it was entirely settled.
The average settler never killed a single Native American. Up to 90% of the Native American population was killed off by Europeans through the spread of germs prior to the formation of the United States.
The infamous Trail of Tears involved 4,000 Native Americans being killed. Napoleon's wars murdered millions of Europeans by comparison.
Europe was also mostly empty in this sense in the 1930s. Why was there this big war, the Germans could have just walked into those big empty spaces in the Ukraine and built some farms.
"* Shared culture, language, religion? Language, mostly. The Puritans in New England didn't really have much to say to the Quakers in Philadelphia, and both had even less in common with the not-particularly-religious folks down in Virginia. Yes, I guess they all were (or at least professed to be) Christians, but that's not too different than Europe today."
Let me expound upon this further:
The Puritans (not the Pilgrims, who they ended up forcibly annexing into their much larger colony) were by and large the "Roundheads" who won the English Civil War. Ethnically, they were non-gentry, descended from the Anglo-Saxons who lost to the 1066 invasion forces of the Normans.
In Virginia, the settlers were the younger sons of the English gentry, losers of the English Civil War, with lots of titles (if not tons of blood) descending from the Normans. They brought huge swathes of indentured servants with them (the bulk of the white population of Virginia was descended from indentures). They sought to recreate the English countryside in a strictly feudal sense.
In the Deep South, (South Carolina, Georgia, etc) the settlers were descended from the wealthy sugar planters on Barbados. They ran out of land for their sons on Barbados, and the sons came to the Deep South with tons of slaves and a specific goal of recreating the despotic Barbados chattel slavery system and it's huge profits.
Each of these colonies had strict rules on who could enter, and from where.
Pennsylvania was a different story. Founded by Quakers, they pretty much let anybody in, which leads to the Ulster-Scots aka Scots-Irish. Literally hundreds of thousands of Scots who were booted out of northern Ireland or fled the poverty of the Scotland/England borderlands came into Pennsylvania, and immediately went west into the Appalachian mountains, from there spreading themselves and their culture south into western Virginia, western North Carolina, Tennessee, and anywhere else in the US where you picture a rugged landscape that couldn't support plantations. (the places in the US South with rich soil and flat lands were taken over by the slave owners, but the Ulster Scots descendants took all the land that the plantation owners couldn't use, which is why northwest Arkansas is completely different than the rest of the state, or why western North Carolina and western Virginia were filled with Unionist supporters in the US Civil War.
All of these groups HATED each other, and there are still lots of tensions. The Ulster Scots (Appalachian folks) literally fought a rebellion against the US in the early days of the republic due to a financial scam run by Alexander Hamilton and his cronies that is like something out of 1980's Wall Street. (He first colluded with the governor of Pennsylvania to disallow veterans from paying their taxes with IOUs from the US government for war wages, rendering the IOUs worthless, then he and his speculator buddies bought the IOUs for pennies on the dollar. Immediately afterwards, he enacted the US government's plan for buying the IOUs at face value plus interest in hard currency, making his buddies rich. Following this, he leavied a tax on whiskey, which was a valuable medium of exchange in the frontier.)
However, without the Federalists, the US would likely be more fragmented than it is now, with its 5-12 (depending on who you ask) disparate regional cultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
>The shared dream of settling the continent was real but - given that said continent was already occupied
I doubt you understand how large the US is if you think that. Most of it was empty. The union was already strongly formed before the genocide of the west got under way.
>Shared culture, language, religion? Language, mostly.
I think you might underestimate how much a single shared language helps mobility, doing business, spreading culture, etc. The fact that the EU embraces individual country identities will mean it will never be as cohesive as the US. If every state in the US spoke a different language, the US probably wouldn't have even made it past the size of the original colonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
From your own link: "Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their rights as Englishmen" (my emphasis)
The article then goes on to say that after the Tea Party, the colonists petitioned the monarch... not exactly something you'd to do an external force.
According to the book 1491 (which is a great read, highly recommended), the population of the New World was much larger, and more more historic than we may be lead to imagine. Millions of Native Americans lived on the east coast alone. What may have did them in was disease (smallpox, etc) that desecrated the people before even the pilgrims came on the scene. What the first colonist may have seen was just all that was left of a epidemic.
(I also agree a genocide also happened in the West, from what survivors there were)
The conflict between settlers and natives started pretty much right away (i.e. the early 1600s), long before there was any union.
Of course it's relevant. If there are 1,000 miles between each settlement of a thousand people, that's fewer deaths than European countries inflicted on each other during WW2. The fact that you don't think numbers are relevant is baffling to me.
(Below are several events in which the early US was aligned with either side, note this changed frequently)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolut...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Alliance_(1778)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams%E2%80%93On%C3%ADs_Treaty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Neutrality
Yes, our most valued and prized allies during Independence, whose supplies, blockades and expertise delivered to us our home... yes they were our enemy...
The shared dream did, indeed, mean exterminating the current residents. The current residents were often described in news accounts from the time as inhuman savages, not unlike how Africans were viewed. While it's not something I'd want to put forward as key to our identity, it most certainly was key to our identity. Predating the Manifest Destiny, the people of what the United States saw themselves as the right, God-given rulers of the land. It's disgusting, and lead to one of the few "successful" genocides in human history. But it most certainly did unite the early United States of America.
Shared culture? Yes, there were many different religions in the early United States. However, they all had a united cause--they were fleeing religious persecution in their home country. This includes the Catholics (fleeing England), Lutherans, Calvinists, Quakers, and Unitarians. It is so much a part of US history that the US Constitution guarantees religious freedom as its first Article. Religious freedom is at the very heart of the founding of the United States, and it is a result of this realization that many American immigrants were fleeing religious persecution in their country of origin.
So, basically, the differences between the US and the EU are exactly as the GP mentioned. They were very strong allies to France--the US constitution even includes almost direct quotes from French writers of the time; France both financed the US war of independence and the US bailed out France from the Napoleanic wars by purchasing the Louisiana Purchase. And while they didn't share the same religion, many fled from religious persecution--it was such a common cause that it was enshrined as the first Article to the US Constitution. The US was, indeed, actively engaged in genocide. This, at least, is one thing the US shared with Europe. Europe, from at least the time of the Crusades, but continuing through the slave trade and the many genocides in the 1800s and 1900s, most certainly shares this thread in common with the United States. Congratulations on making the point so clearly that the two cases, in this fashion, were very similar.
The one that used to be called the Roman Empire, then Christendom, and is now called Western Civilisation. It is also arguably the greatest achievement of the human species.
Even when one of those kings (Charlemagne) nearly united all of the roman lands together it collapsed into in-fighting.
There is almost a thousand years of cultural difference between each of the member states of the EU. I think in the future a political union will happen, but it takes all of europe to be united as a people, to have common cause and that is a long way off. Today every member of the EU still fights for their national interest.
I think Yes Minister said it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrN-gkzVYI
Bleh, gross
Also there's the ex-communist countries for a more recent cultural split.
Is that really the case? Seems more like wishful thinking to me. Christianity was spread globally through missionaries. liberal enlightenment - not so much.
Colonialism? Or else why does the UN extend throughout the globe?
The founders of Christianity were Jews. Early churches were in Ethiopia, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and, yes, Rome and Greece. It was a very multi-cultural movement.
(edit: strictly speaking, the Eastern Roman Empire didn't exist yet by that name. It was the eastern part of the Roman Empire)
Whilst the anatolians had sort of a partial continuity into Islam by the middle of the millennium, a process that completed with 19th-20th century genocides of ottoman christians. (Off-topic: I'm reading into comparative genetic reseach about anatolian/near-east peoples, of which I'm a member, which suggests that there is a continuous people since the paleolithic here, that is divided differently at different times in the history because of culture replacements of imperial origins, i.e. Parthian, Armenian, Greek, Roman, Muslim and Turkish empires. But especially the Turkish-speaking, the Armenian-speaking and the Kurdish-speaking peoples seem to be genetically very close to suggest common origin, whereas Anatolian turkish-speakers are genetically closer to brits than central-asians.)
Why wasn't Christianity more popular among the Jewish people? The Bible has some theological answers to that question. I wouldn't consider a Greek heritage to Christianity to be a main cause of that though. Jesus and the apostles were all Jews, after all.
So many shifts and things have happened since christianity enters the european continent that it can't hardly be the foundation of the common european identity. Just look at who started the EU in the 50's and led us to believe in an european dream.
Point given: it's an argument used to antagonize proponents (nationalist leaders and `muslims`(whatever that group really is)).
Just wanted to check, were they:
Rome / Constantinople?
Henry the 8th can divorce / not divorce?
Martin Luther says the church is corrupt / not corrupt?
If it wasn't for the West, humanity would still be mired in dirt, poverty and ignorance.
If the bulk of technological accomplishments of recent centuries were made in European and European-derived countries in recent centuries... well, that's because those happened to be the affluent regions of the times, the result of being the ones that colonized and ran roughshod over the rest of the world. But there's no reason to suppose non-white people were/are somehow intrinsically less capable of innovation.
The GP didn't say that they were.
Whoops! Redundancy it's too late to edit. Oh well...
If you have some basic ideas about human history you should know that the Arab world helped preserve a great deal of classical knowledge from the Greek/Roman Era while the "Western Civilization" f*cked itself so hard in a cultural regressive "Dark Ages".
All human inventions are progressively built on past discoveries and you should be ashamed for only taking things at their face value.
This belief, and a horrid past (and present) of exploiting, plundering, murdering, etc all over the world, from the Crusades and colonial times to the Holocaust and onwards, is what makes it one of the most bloody and backwards "achievements of the human species".
Some exhibits from the "greatest achievement of the human species":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Congo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War
A lot of civilizations at worse were at war with some other. This list is like a cancer spreading over the whole planet -- including some of its "achievements" that can wipe out the whole planet literally, like nukes.
The Holocaust, for example, doesn't leave much to trivialize. Plus at least those other civilizations had a lot of excuses (ignorance etc). Most of those things in the list have done in the era of "lights" and "science" with no excuse but pure greed.
>I would argue that the character of a culture is not set by its lowest points but by how it claws its way back towards the light of liberté, égalité, fraternité
I would argue that liberté, égalité, fraternité is just a way of seeing the world of a particular culture, not the be all end all of morality and civilization.
Plus it has been a hypocritical slogan for centuries, one used to beat other peoples to make them "civilized" or "bring democracy" (the white man's burden), when underneath it was profits and greed doing the work.
You know very well he is celebrating where this has taken Europe and not the brutal aspects of its history, which, if you're honest, you'll agree are present in all cultures, especially when they rise materially and technologically above neighboring ones. If you stand by your statement, would you prefer to have western civilization go back to pre-roman times? Was it less bloody and more civilized than present-day Europe? C'mon.
Christendom is totally divided with constant wars. The values are not uniform and christen philosophy was never particularly great. Rejection of most of those values defines modernity.
That said, yes Romanization was real, but it impacted small population and it mostly suck in the Med, and did not spread to far into places like Britain. Making a connection between the Roman Empire and current Europe is quite a stretch. Much of the Empire was not even in current EU countries, Turkey, Egypt and all the richest parts.
Yes it did. Two times the British garrisons took matters into their own hands and hailed their own Augustus. The last time, they haieled Constantin III who went to Gaul to fight barbarians and then bargained recognition from the court in Ravenna as co-ruler. I think this shows that the Britons did see themselves as Romans and that they cared about the Empire as a whole.
>Much of the Empire was not even in current EU countries, Turkey, Egypt and all the richest parts
Sure, muslim countries are not children of the Roman Empire. The empire was, pretty much but not only, a container for hellenized mediterraneans, kind of what Islam rejects.
> Sure, muslim countries are not children of the Roman Empire. The empire was, pretty much but not only, a container for hellenized mediterraneans, kind of what Islam rejects.
That is bullshit. The current muslim countries actually have a lot of Roman influence. First of all, the Eastern Empire had dealings with Muslims 1000 years after the west fell. Caliphate took over many of the Roman institutions when they took over North Africa and the Levant.
You can not compare current Islamists with Islam at that time.
Like what? All I can think of is anti-roman influence. It's very hard to settle that in a short answer but I think Islam is almost the opossite of hellenism and "roman influence".
>First of all, the Eastern Empire had dealings with Muslims 1000 years after the west fell
The same dealings the Western Empire had with the Huns. We are not calling the Huns as heirs of the romans right? It was a hostile relationship from day 1.
I think the cultural roots go to Greece, not Rome. Rome basically was a logistical and administrative juggernaut but I'm not aware of anything new they created - Roman law being the only exception, I think, which created basis for the laws in a large group of european polities.
After Rome, there was the period which is called the dark ages, but probably mostly only looks like that in the context of the exceptional developments which started after it.
1400:s europe finally was done with dark ages, and the energetic cities embraced innovations from around the world (including material from greece antiquity preserved in the muslim civilization).
The catholic church did not really do much to help that progress. You will notice that e.g. industrialization was fastest in the countries where the church did not have as much power - the mostly protestant ones. Big parts of what we call 'western civilization' was innovated ny guys despite the stifling effect of the church on sapient inquiry.
In the border regions where a bunch of tiny polities that imitated and admired the developments of biggest neighbours.
My point is, just saying 'rome and christian culture' is giving undue prominence just to a one cultural development that moulded europe.
I would have said the same thing 4 or 5 years ago, but in the meantime we did in fact have a war in Europe, I'm talking about the war in Eastern Ukraine (which is still part of Europe). But you're sort of right, who can think of something like that spreading to the Western side of the continent?
Until last night I would would have answered: "no sane person", but after I saw the idiot Nigel Farage speak on the BBC (I don't actually follow UK politics, this was my first time hearing him actually speak) I had quite the internal shock. To hear a (what has now become) mainstream politician talk so vividly against immigration and against "multinationals" in 2016 was... don't know how to put it, harrowing. You're probably from the States where you people treat Trump like the idiot that he is and think that even if gets elected things will move on as usual, but us in this part of the world have had the privilege of slaughtering ourselves in the trenches of the Ardennes or in the steppes of Western Russia because of people like Farage in the past.
A country needs social cohesion to have a strong government. Mass-immigration without integration breaks down social cohesion. I see it happen in my country (The Netherlands). Immigration at the current scale is not sustainable. Many immigrants are from backwards societies and don't adapt. Even worse, our government expects us to adapt to the immigrants way of life (just this week in Germany some nudists were prohibited from walking nude, because an asylum centrum was being build nearby the nudist camp and they might take offence [0]).
The governments of countries try to keep tensions between immigrants under wraps, especially in asylum centra. Often the guards in these centra are muslims so share the same ideas as the majority of immigrants. Woman are sometimes forced into prostitution under watchful eyes of the guards [1]. Christian & Yezidi immigrants have to hide their religion or be threatened with violence [2][3]. This kind of stuff certainly is happening in The Netherlands and Germany. Yesterday in my hometown (Dordrecht) some Kurdish people celebrated their children graduated and put out the Dutch and Kurdish flag [4]. They were threatened by about 30 Turkish people to remove flag and windows were thrown in. In retaliation other people attacked the Turkish mosque in Dordrecht [5].
In another town, last week people from Jewish decent put the Jewish flag outside their home to celebrate graduation of their son. But they too were threatened by Moroccan people to remove the flag immediately [6].
More and more Jews are leaving Europe for Israel [7]. Europe is not save anymore for Jews as more and more muslim immigrants enter Europe. In The Netherlands every synagoge has permanent security and I imagine in many other European countries it's the same. In some way an ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe is happening right now.
We're importing tribal warfare and values into Europe on a massive scale [8]. Apparently 1 in 4 Swedish woman will be raped and the main culprits are immigrants, by a very large amount [9].
---
[0]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/row-over-refugee-...
[1]: http://awdnews.com/top-news/refugee-women-are-forced-to-beco...
[2]: http://www.dw.com/en/german-activists-decry-attacks-on-chris...
[3]: http://www.germanjoys.eu/2015/09/violent-sunni-fanatics-thre...
[4]: http://www.rijnmond.nl/nieuws/143347/Koerdische-familie-in-D...
[5]: http://nos.nl/artikel/2113139-mannen-bestormen-turkse-moskee...
[6]: http://regio.tpo.nl/2016/06/20/even-een-israelische-vlag-oph...
[7]: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/jews-are-leav...
[8]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3391075/Why-Germany-...
[9]: http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/175434/1-4-swedish-women-w...
And I agree, Farage is just against the undemocratic, far from the people but not far from lobbyists, will make us eat American pesticides via ttip -EU that it is becoming. And what big bureaucratic institution will not become like that?
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/120...
This is just about decent people hiding their heads in the sand hoping that the problem would go away. It won't. I'm on Sam Altman's side on this (http://blog.samaltman.com/trump), even though he's talking about a different political idiot the idea is the same.
There is nothing inherently "good" about those concepts, so I don't see how you can claim it bad that a politician is against them.
Is treating people fairly a good that we should all aspire to? Yes (I would say)? Then respect a peoples' wish to stay sovereign and keep people they don't want from entering their country. It's not all that different from private property, just on a much larger scale.
Any schemes proposed by Leave would probably see a rise in immigration.
And that's the problem: Farage isn't debating multiculturalism or immigration. He's lying about what he can do and about the effects of immigration. He trades on ignorance and fear.
I wish the liberals take a notice of the problem of immigration, mainly the immigration of from Islamic countries. I am a liberal at the core. But what I have found that when it comes to Islam, many mainstream liberals and liberal politicians follow a double standard. The legitimate criticism of Islam, Quran and its prophet are shunned by many mainstream liberals by labeling it as racist attacks, Islamophobia, far-right and what not. I call such people phoney liberals.
The phoney liberals take a stance that the Britons/Europeans should bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims along with their medieval, backward Islamic way of life in order for the integration. They never tell Muslims in clear words that "Look, we have a policy of separation of church and state, in your case it means separation of mosque and state. You should accept, if you want to live here, that we value freedom of speech and that includes freedom to offend you too by criticizing Islam or by making fun of your religion, your prophet, your scriptures and your religious practices." But what did the phoney liberals do after Charlie Hebdo episode? They criticized the tabloid for being offending to Muslims.
A liberal thinker Bill Maher has put this in a very good manner [1],[2],[3],[4]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntv3a80RGiw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8rZTuGfZo
Sam Harris : Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]
So, in short: Nothing at all like the interbellum.
>The PR outfall of that debacle is probably what pushed the Brits to vote for exit.
But yes, the Brits are very wise to exit, because (especially if they enter the eurozone, which is clearly the next step in ever closer union) they are definitely the "next germany". And that might even happen without joining the eurozone, by fiat.
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2014-Social-Expenditure-Upda...
What they are doing to Greece is actually much worse then Versaille. It has to do with the issue that Greece should have defaulted years (I was arguing this even in 2008) and change their government. Because of EU (EMU) logic this can not happen. So Greece is forced to change its government in the context of huge debt and even worse a flat demand curve (look at EU NGDP and Greece NGDP). Greece is about the only country that actually did significant Austerity but its not working. The EU should have let them default or take over their debt completely.
You are probably right that PR is the main issue. It was with 'Versaille' as well. German government PR is the main reason why you use 'Versaille' as an example of evil practice. Maybe the most successful example of PR in the last 100 years.
Germany actually was on the road to economic recovery when the Great Depression hit.
Then the Great Depression hit and Germany, wanting to stay on gold, got hit really hard. By 1934-1935 they overcame the shock and Hitler earns the credit.
Fantastic book on this stuff:
- The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
http://www.statista.com/statistics/275335/government-revenue...
Without external input, decreased spending would decrease demand, which would decrease output, which would reduce the expected revenue:spending increases from the initial spending cuts, which would require further spending cuts to hit ratio targets, etc etc.
Importantly for a country used to borrowing every year living within their means will seem like a huge sacrifice even if it's not optional. The further drop to paying down debt is even further, but it's that or default. And no you can't grow the economy with stimulus spending when you got used to decades of stimulus spending in the first place.
Back in the specific case of Greece, I think it may well be that the loan was taken in bad faith. But even though previous Greek governments committed fraud that doesn't mean anyone's better off now kidding themselves about the chances they'll pay.
Frankly, I'd argue that official lender's are already effectively forgiving loans by subsidizing indirectly via unreasonably good loan terms. No commercial entity would have given loans like the IMF and ECB have; they're worth far more than greece is paying. The question is then whether you're better off pretending that you are lending X principle at terms Y, or bookkeep that as the equivalent lending some fraction of X at fair-market terms Z. Even if greece can keep to the letter of the current deals, that's equivalent to having probably the majority of its debt forgiven, and the rest generating fair market returns.
It's just politics as to why that's not publically admitted - northern European voters might go bannanas. The downside is that the current situation might contribute to European instability, because southern Europe (and especially Greece) really believes they're paying all that unsustainable debt, when in fact, they aren't not really, not even today.
The Keynesians believe that you can increase demand by government spending but that was not an option for Greece anyway. The EU would have to pay for it but its hard to do that and do fiscal reforms at the same time.
The only solution you have left is really harsh reforms, and most importantly wage cuts. A flexible labor system is the best defence against extend recession. Check out some of the Baltic states, they took pretty harsh wage cuts. They were lucky that they did not yet have such large governments and debt that this could be done and they did not have to face default at the same time.
Greece was institutionally not capable of these things, and their situation was bad to begin with.
The should have defaulted and set up a tmp government in 2008 that could do sweeping reforms. Had they had a high change of being more or less stable right now. But the EU is against that and Greece was faced with the impossible task of both do structural reforms, debt payback and terrible monetary policy from the ECB. Its an economic shit show of epic proportions.
I certainly don't want the EU to put a government there.
Even if that was not possible, a default would have been good. Normal election would also cause some changes after such a period.
What the EU is doing is just terrible. Not letting them default and making all lending depend on the countries complaints with the EU.
Had they had their own currency that was well handled their problem would still have been considered, but reforms could have actually helped.
Just because it did not work, does not mean it was not Austerity.
Otherwise, you would call every spending cut and or reductions in future growth Austerity. If your living above your means your living the high life not practicing asceticism.
Greece needed EU loans not to pay down debt but to continue to make payroll. Defaulting would have left them with less money on day 1.
> Otherwise, you would call every spending cut and or reductions in future growth Austerity. If your living above your means your living the high life not practicing asceticism.
Its totally false to say that Austerity is reduction in future growth. Normally decrease in the size of government leads to better growth.
You cant take the moral definition of Austerity, in economic Austerity means spending cuts and maybe some other measures to decrease debt.
The government was spending up to 15.2% of GDP based on borrowing money. That's never going to be sustainable and a default would have also forced them to make deeper cuts.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/government-budget
Also, several other countries have made deeper cuts. It's failure to collect and raise taxes that's been Greece's issue.
> Cutting spending is basically Austerity.
Also, even if Greeks do start saving, that will only handle the symptom and not the root cause, which is corruption, and corruption comes from lack of discipline, which in turn is a state that comes from a certain way of thinking, a mentality.
Ironic that the very nation which once embodied discipline and higher cognitive thinking now lacks both, is it not? I weep for Greece, truly I do.
There was no remotest chance in hell it could have worked without fixing tax evasion problems.
Greece did not do any austerity; just like the Croats, the Greeks lived on debt and piled up more and more... and I watched some hidden camera documentaries on Greece (VICE comes to mind), that secretly filmed how nobody in Greece issues one a receipt upon payment, basically eschewing paying taxes and committing tax fraud... on a systemic and massive scale... why? Because Greece has a corrupt government, so the citizens want to "stick it to the man". Why does Greece have a corrupt government? Because they tolerate one, and the guys which replaced them, and the guys which will replace them, will be just as undisciplined and just as corrupt.
Meanwhile, German citizens were footing Greeks' systemic embezzling through German taxes and by German government fiat; and now all of a sudden when the Germans demand Greeks pay back their debts, you think it's okay to default?
It is not okay to not pay one's debts. That's German citizens' money. They didn't embezzle, they pay their taxes, they work hard, they save, and they deserve to have their loans paid back.
How would you like it if you lent someone money, and they purposely defaulted, with the intent of not paying you back?
> The EU should have let them default or take over their debt completely.
No! That would mean Greeks would have lived on someone else's labor and walked away with financial and material gain scott-free, or supported corruption by people who did. That is not okay!
By not lending this person any money in the future... A default has very harsh consequences and is not pleasant at all, but it is a normal process in capitalism. It happens all the time, everywhere. This is why banks make risk assessments (normally).
> It is not okay to not pay one's debts. That's German citizens' money.
No its not. Its german banks money, they made the wrong decision in lending money to an untrustful debtor. German tay payers money only came into play when the state worked out the 'rescue packages' for greece. These 'rescue packages' were only meant for the greece government to pay back the banks. About 90% of the money given to greece goes directly into the debt-payback. So if anything german tax payers are financing the flawd descision making process of 'Deutsche Bank' and others.
And about the level of corruption in greece. Yes it exists, and is systemic. But so are the shady deals of Bilfinger Berger, the whole Berlin Airport-farce, the quicksand investments of the Landesbanken and virtually every public building project conducted in germany.
First of all. The EU is responsable for Greece having such low bond yields to begin with (back in pre-2008). This was a direct effect of the widely held believe that debt would be common to the EU. This gave a lot of countries bad incentives. When it became clear that debt was not held in common, mayhem ...
Then they did not let Greece default. German banks did not actually hold that many Greek assets, but they acquired more and more. The ECB equally started to accept bad Greek bonds as collateral. The German banks made deliberately bad investments because they believe the government would pay it. You can now of course argue evil banks, but the real problem is the constraints on Greece.
During the gold standard times it was actually common that countries could default and then come back.
> How would you like it if you lent someone money, and they purposely defaulted, with the intent of not paying you back?
They did not purposely default. They literally could not lend anymore money and could not pay back. They only were in this problem in the first place because they had the such low bond yield and now had to refinance with bond yields having reason 4x.
Notice the red line: https://inthelongrunwerealldead.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/...
Just to make it clear, the Greek have a shitty system and they are a terrible government that should have never be let into the EU. But the EU is equally a total shit show and they are largely responsable for the collective trouble.
> Your analysis is terrible and full borderline racist
> crap.
By the way, I have nothing against Greeks. I wouldn't lend them any money is all, not because they are Greek, but because of the way they think, hence ---> current situation.
And on a further note, I am actually rooting for you, and I hope you pay back all your debts and come out of the hard times better for it.
> Then they did not let Greece default. German banks did
> not actually hold that many Greek assets, but they
> acquired more and more. The ECB equally started to
> accept bad Greek bonds as collateral. The German banks
> made deliberately bad investments because they believe
> the government would pay it.
I wish the best for Greece; I think they will be able to overcome their current situation and be better for it in the end. It used to be a place that people longed to vacation in and saw as a gem of Europe. It is still the same country, regardless of their financial situation. Put up tens of thousands of travel posters that say, "Greece, Beauty on a Budget" around Europe, and you could solve that problem in a decade or less, perhaps.
> a system whereby the government undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need, by means of grants, pensions, and other benefits.
The above is standard in all of the northern-European countries typically lauded for their economic success. Clearly, this was not what caused the collapse of the Greek economy. Of course, there are many alternative theories, but the most convincing one I am aware of is that it was the result of subprime lending by north-European (predominantly German) banks.
That has not been going particularly well for France or Spain either.
The UK is our #1 source of tourism (that contributes 2.7% of our GDP) - it's sad that brexit is making it harder for them to visit.
I realize it's a bit more work, but is there any EU authority that could block member states from doing this?
However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years. I think still a low chance, but it does almost sound like the beginning chapter of a history book.
You have all been listening to nonsense media way too much in my opinion.
What is certain is that the (nationalistic) political class will use this situation to its advantage. Viewed through historical lenses, this is not exactly good news. But that does not lead de facto to war.
You're right, there's little chance of a war between any of the EU (or soon to be former EU) countries. And, more importantly, there's no foreseeable reason for there to be a war.
But, not to put too fine a point on it, there also can't be a war for one other reason: Nobody but Putin has much in the way of armed forces. Things could get really ugly if Putin decided to, e.g. invade the Baltics.
I did some quick checking. Here's an example: Germany's current unified armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have 178,000 active soldiers.[1] In WW II, Germany's army (just the army) had 12,000,000 active soldiers in 1944.[2]
For today's EU, war would be more of a dalliance than serious business. And that's a good thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_(Wehrmacht)
Germany doesn't need an invasion force, just a defense aided by dozens of other countries by treaty. It is hardly a surprise it has a fraction of it's WW2 army.
The mood in the USA is turning more inward. There is less appetite for NATO. The sentiment is moving more toward: if the Germans don't want to be learning to speak Russian, then they should be paying for more of their own defense. But they're not:[1]
in terms of share of German GDP, military expenditures remain average at 1.2% and below the NATO recommendation of 2%.
I'm personally astonished at how little of an Army Germany has today. Especially considering that just a few years earlier, Eastern Germany was studying Russian in school and was a large component of the Warsaw Pact.
Poland is quite afraid of Putin. But Germany seems to have adopted a "meh" attitude toward the whole situation. They probably think that if they sell enough BMWs and Mercedes to Russia that everything will turn out OK. And probably it will.
Edit: Germany doesn't need an invasion force, just a defense aided by dozens of other countries by treaty.
Just want to add that I think you're wrong about this. There is a world of difference between large integrated forces, such as the US V Corps and VII Corps in Germany during the Cold War, and what exists in NATO today.
Nowadays, some of those "dozens of other countries" would contribute what, perhaps a battalion or two of combat troops? Not the same as when VII Corps deployed from Germany to Iraq and defeated the Iraqis in the first Gulf War. Not the same as when V Corps deployed from Germany to Iraq and defeated the Iraqis in the second Gulf War. Both those Corps have been deactivated. Nothing took their place.
Total US force in NATO was 67,000 in 2015. Not as big as one might think.
Here's a "semi-official" NATO statement about force levels: Some 25 per cent of NATO members do not have an air force, 30 per cent have no naval force or maintain a navy with less than 600 sailors, and 50 per cent are fielding an active army of less than 20,000 soldiers. NATO is an Alliance of unequals [2]
Finally, the other side is now run by an ambitious, intelligent, charismatic leader in Vladimir Putin. It's no longer led by Boris Yeltsin the drunken bum, and hasn't been since 1999.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr [2] http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2015/Also-in-2015/europe-def...
I agree NATO is an alliance of unequal partners. The US definitely spends above 2% GDP on .mil, and as NATO is mostly controlled by the US (and was always intended to be). I think it is reasonable to assume they will be on the hook in the event of a major invasion.
I tried to quickly find the numbers, but had no luck. It was 100,000 in 1931 (scaled back from WW I) and was supposed to be tripled through recruitment before Hitler started conscription.
That table has nothing older than 1939, but the number in 1939 was still pretty impressive.
I also got confused, the 12,000,000 peak is directly comparable to the recent 178,000 since "Wehrmacht" was the previous name for the complete "unified" armed forces, not just the army.
1939: 4,722,000+
1940: 6,600,000+
1941: 8,154,000+
1942: 9,580,000+
1943: 11,280,000+
1944: 12,070,000+
1945: 9,701,000+Before Hitler broke the Versailles treaty in 1935, the German army was limited to only 100,000 members -- fewer than today. It took less than a decade to mobilize to the extent you describe. It happened then, it can happen today.
Honestly - I'm afraid of this development.
>However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years.
If and when a large subset of NATO states are dysfunctional, it will definitely create opportunities. It's like with rot - rotten things don't stay put they spread rot around.
At this point yes.
But what about 10, 15, 50 years from now on?
My opinion is that the chances of a war are far greater in a Europe of nations vs a Europian union vs a Europian nation.
I really hope Germany, France, Italy and the rest take a notice on the wake up call and transform this to an opportunity for tighter integration.
And Greece too. Get your shit together Greece!
- A blitzed economy coupled with increased nationalism... ring any bells? I'm obviously guessing about the economy, but it's not unlikely.
- Russia. A dissolving Europe is going to look... let's say "interesting" to a certain Mr. Putin.
I agree with you that the chances are low, but they are definitely higher than yesterday.
That's my real fear - a lot of people voted for Brexit because of the situation with immigration and that's not really going to change. So next time around I see more extreme right wing government (I'm having waking nightmares of Farage in a BoJo cabinet) that will take "measures" to deal with immigrants...
His behavior in Eastern Ukraine says it for him. His saber ratting about the Balkans says it for him.
That sound almost too easy. If we are lucky, we could eventually see this in a blockbuster Hollywood movie before it really happens.
Why would we grab part of Baltics or Poland? Crimea has strategic importance. Most of the Baltics - does not.
And Poland in the current state of affairs is more valuable as a partner, not as an emeny (despite our history of mutual distrust and wars)
Many see the EU as constituted as something concocted by bureaucrats in business and government, for their own ends, a view which I think is correct. So the UK or Greece and the like being fed up with the EU should come as no surprise.
I think the EU as organized is a bad idea. I don't think European integration is a bad idea, but it was done without much consultation of the populace of Europe, and things like this are the result.
In the US, the popular candidates with mass rallies bucking against their party establishments have been Trump and Sanders, although Sanders was pushed aside for the establishment candidate with the help of superdelegates etc. Congressional job ratings for 2016 fluctuated between 13% to 18% approval, 75-84% disapproval. The average American feels alienated from Washington DC because Washington DC is unresponsive to the desires of the average American. The situation is not dissimilar from Europe.
How does the 1% gain from the Working Time Directive?
When I google "sanders delegate total" I see a nice Google page showing that Clinton actually has a higher total of plain old regular delegates than Sanders has.
It seems like Clinton just simply got more support from the electorate than Sanders did. I don't think the "super delegate explanation" can be invoked to explain the loss here.
Sanders did a fantastic job as a non-establishment, grass-roots candidate. He came very very close to pushing Clinton aside. So close. But ... not ... quite...
Europe keeps getting destabilized. If i was an enemy of europe and freedom, id be cheering. Instead i'm deeply concerned.
The thing is, the -exit camps can't have it both ways: saying that EU is imposing and than arguing that someone should make it more Democratic or" else we'll leave".
Brussels however, makes up to 60% of our laws (It depends who you ask), and they override ours. We can't control our borders while in the EU, we get forced frustrating legislation on us, things like inferior low energy bulbs, which might be good for the environment but are nowhere near as good as traditional ones, and we can't vote out the people who make our laws when we don't like them.
Now we can.
the internet and the media has taken away a lot of the moderates
British citizens may not be able to world and live throughout the EU any more either. People already abroad may lose their work status on nations without reciprocal fall-back agreements.
This is a pretty big change, but I don't think it's a bad one.
Countries have engaged in trade for thousands of years - Brexit won't change that.
Welcome back to the Hobbesian jungle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism
>"When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."
I think it would be interesting to see how many protectionist schemes have lead to wars vs. free trade.
Brexit will change that.
I wonder if the UK will start buying NZ dairy products again. UK joining the EEC (they went from taking 75% of NZ cheese exports to <10%) and the oil shock in 1973 basically tanked the NZ economy.
We should be talking about the lies.
I'm pleased for the British and think in the long haul this is the correct decision.
Right now though that interests me less than what happened with the media. It was all lies on every level I can think of. Even the Kippers thought they had lost the war.
Is anybody going to talk about the fact that when the polls closed odds showed 95% chance of Leave?
This was all very highly coordinated propaganda. What other reasonable explanation is there? Occam's Razor says: conspiracy is the simplest explanation.
Really if you have a good explanation I'll be waiting to hear it.
Hardly. Britain has voted. The result of the vote is that Britain will leave the EU. The fact that the votes haven't been counted to 100% doesn't make that fact any less the case. Statistics work.
You'd be surprised at how much day to day stuff you consider an "fact" is actually "statistically correct" rather than an absolute.
It's still technically a forecast, but the BBC has called it and so has everybody else.
A long and protracted disengagement period will only worsen volatility in the market, because of uncertainty around trade deals, as well as the political uncertainty of the UK itself.
Not to sound like I'm wearing a tinfoil hat, but it's not surprising that Soros decided to go long on gold when he did.
Pacifists are nuts.
(edit: the above is satire, folks)
Yeah, there have been like 1000 (much less actually, but let's put it at that) victims in Europe in attacks in say, 10 years.
Europeans use to kill the same number of those people, in their own countries, where on top they ruled and occupied their lands, every month or so. And sometimes just for fun. And not in some ancient ages -- up to the 1960s, and in some places, today still.
Just two examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france...
That's about a fraction of the number of muslims killed by islamic terrorism. Here in Turkey we had about five or six major ISIS suicide-bomber cases in the past twelve months, e.g. 30-odd dead in Suruc, 100-odd in Ankara, and in Istanbul, 10-odd in Cemberlitas, 5-10 in Taksim, 6 in Vezneciler (the most recent). In the recent 10 years there have been many Hizbullah attacks (I recall the HSBC bombing, tho vaguely). And I don't even talk about what the ISIS is doing in the levant at the moment, we'll learn the numbers later. I'll just add: there are about 3 million syrians here in Turkey, a couple million in Lebanon, and a minute fraction of that in Europe. And all that we have today is thanks to post-WWI european imperialism and imposed borders in the middle east.
> Does it ring a bell? It's not like it hasn't happened
> thousands of times throughout history.
If anyone knows what a violent war is, it's us, Europeans. Isn't that all the more reason we should turn to civil disobedience and non-violence, instead of repeating the same mistakes, over and over and over again?
In a way, what the English did by voting to exit the european union is a form of civil disobedience, sending a very clear signal to Bruxelles, and the EU government's rigidiy and unwillingness to reform. And for that, for being peacefully disobedient, for sending a signal, that's worthy of respect.
I'd say the only way to advance civilization is to stick to civilized principles as much as you can. Yes, there's a breaking point, but that has not been reached by far.
I don't believe it is the ONLY way, but history has repeatedly proven that humans find it to be the most efficient way (and therefore, preferred).
Like you, I'd be far happier if the humans with power would actively seek out alternative paths. However, for a significant minority of people, the old adages, might makes right and history is written by the victors are the way that they -- and the rest of us, by association -- progress.
Now I guess you would suggest the EU should invade the UK to set them back straight ? Third time the charm for Germany ?
Of small comfort then, is the fact that the English have abolished slavery in 1833.
To put it poetically, with one hand I embrace you, with another I stick my blade into your throat, while my boot tramples on your broken body, that's the portrayal one might construct from history and contemporary actions and thinking of the English.
And "the commonwealth", oh my! Australia was a penal colony, of, you guessed it, the English. Not the Scottish, not the Welsh, not the Irish (Irish were busy being downtrodden, Scottish were busy massively emigrating because they were poor, while London threw galant parties, and the Welsh were trying to muster every bit of strength and intellect they could, so as not to be assimilated), and New Zealand... oh yes, in "the commonwealth", but not before the English killed a good number of Maori, isn't it?
And then, we didn't even touch upon the mess that the English caused in India, or in Africa (Zulus really "got theirs" from the English, didn't they?), or the mess on the Bosphorus, or the "Arabian question of Palestine", the consequences of which the world is still suffering from today, with all the strife going on in Palestine... ah yes, our English, everybody else in Europe drives on the right, except in Anglo-Saxon lands, where it's of course the opposite... everybody else is on the metric system because it's practical, except for the English, who still scoff at that non-Imperial nonsense from Bruxelles, our "special Petunias", with their "traditions", who view the rest of EU citizens as immigrants... with such friends, who needs enemies?
As sad as I am that the English have decided to ruin it once again for everybody, I say: if the English think the standards shouldn't apply to them, if they think that they are special, well good riddance, and stay out of EU.
Which imperialist was the non-violent one then?
> Of small comfort then, is the fact that the English have abolished slavery in 1833.
I imagine it was a major comfort to slaves at that time. But you probably know better.
> And "the commonwealth", oh my!
Oh my, indeed. Perhaps you can name another country, perhaps your own undoubtedly spotless nation, that has over 50 former colonies, comprising two billion people across six continents, happily and willingly belonging to such a commonwealth.
Pretty strange thing for them to do, considering all the evil the British Empire committed non-stop, 24/7.
> we didn't even touch the mess that the English caused in India
The mess of leaving it as the world's largest democracy? (By population, that is. By size it just so happens to be another former colony of the British monsters.)
In fact if we make a short list of the most advanced/stable/richest/democratic former colonies in the world, we'll probably find it does not include the likes of Vietnam, Algeria, Congo, Mexico or the Philippines, but does include the likes of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, India.
Funny that.
> you think that you are special, well good riddance, and stay out of EU
How is it special to be outside of the EU? Most countries in the world are.
> Which imperialist was the non-violent one then?
> Perhaps you can name another country, perhaps your own
> undoubtedly spotless nation,
And yet, even though we dislike them, and we do not trust them, we bear the English no ill will and will continue to protect Europe as we have always done. That is the ethical and moral high ground which not even the mighty British empire can claim. To subjugate, to murder, to plunder, yes, but not to protect as we will continue to do, even those who have done us wrong. And while my nation isn't spotless, it feels pretty good to be the protector rather than all these other things that the English have wrought upon the world. Yep, life is great.
> that has over 50 former colonies,
It is not a point to be argued in favor of one's honor, but of one's eternal shame at subjugating, murdering and stealing from others over the span of several centuries.
> The mess of leaving it as the world's largest democracy?
The English left the EU, and they caused a mess, as usual. They believe that they are special, that EU norms, standards and regulations and laws do not apply or should not apply to them, and you have the nerve to label me uncivil for pointing out that they did this en masse before in history? By the by, the parent topic is "UK votes to leave EU" and wouldn't you know it, that is a purely political subject.
True, this is a political topic. As such it would normally be killed, but occasionally exceptions are made in cases like this where an event is of unusual historical or cultural significance.
But commenters aren't suddenly given license to engage in boorish behaviour just because a political topic is given a rare green light.
Indeed the reverse should be the case; extra effort should be made to contribute respectfully and substantively in discussions over topics like this. Lest the mods deem that this community is incapable of discussing any political topic with intelligence, and that all political topics should be banned in future, no matter how significant.
Plenty of other places on the internet welcome heated, partisan political arguing. There's no need to do it here.
But it's up to you to properly cite. And what you wrote was vague.
You didn't even mention which was your country, though I expect this was intentional: this is not how you reply with substance.
This is an example of how your posts are uncivil. It's not a factual observation, but a passive-aggressive potshot at an entire population. So is "They believe that they are special".
If you do this again, we will ban your account.
>>The mess of leaving it as the world's largest democracy?
The mess of Bengal Famine, killing over 4 million people : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
The mess of massacres like this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
The mess of partition of India : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
I could really go on. But seriously the British have the temerity to go around the world tell others how they screwing India was for India's own good?
So, economically UK is doomed to be new Japan.
EDIT: And next time think before saying that someone is in same shoes as fascists. My grand grandmother husband and son was killed fighting with fascists.
Just as if I said, "soccer moms and skin-heads both breathe air". Should soccer moms feel attacked? Am I name calling? Of course not.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966245 and marked it off-topic.
Of course we have biases, but (a) we consciously work at suspending them, (b) they're probably not what you think they are, and (c) one cannot accurately assess another's bias by consulting one's own passions.
Why? Do you think only EU citizens are allowed to live and work in the EU? Do you think British people are now banned from entry into the EU?
Most people - young or old - do not even want to live and work in another European country.
> I think it's pretty disgraceful that they've torpedoed our future based on their hazy rose-coloured memories of some supposedly-better past.
I think it's pretty disgraceful that people like you demonstrate such incredible arrogance that your minority opinion is somehow innately superior; constructing ridiculous fantasies of why people voted to leave, based on absurd generalisations and a childish, rose-tinted view of the EU.
There's nothing to stop you living in an EU country, if you think by virtue of those two letters it's such a utopia compared to the UK or any other non-EU country (aka almost every country on the planet).
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11968904 and marked it off-topic.
He NEVER said that. You're either lying or ignorant.
He simply said that the UK would go to the back of the line for trade deals and given it is simply a smaller market than the EU this is understandably so.
Fuck you
You can't comment like this here, as I'm sure you know. Please edit such incivility out of everything you post to HN.
If you like, you can do as I do and set 'delay' in your profile to a number of minutes (up to 10) to give you editing time before your comment is published.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966563 and marked it off-topic.
History has rightly judged Neville Chamberlain as an abysmal failure in dealing with German interests. I'm happy that Britain has given Merkel and her cronies the finger.
David Cameron <--> Angela Merkel
According to your comment, Angela Merkel is about as evil and reckless as Adolf Hitler.
Okay. I am not taking this seriously.
There was no comparison of Hitler and Merkel implied. Britain and Germany are both far bigger than any of their past or present leaders.
Two words: British Leyland
Neither Hillary nor Trump agree with Obama's "back of the queue" comment. So no matter who wins in November in the US, they will almost certainly be very eager to make a good trade deal with the UK. Australia and New Zealand will too. Hopefully, this will result in a reinvigorated Anglosphere.
Good for Australia and New Zealand. But the ANZAC future stopped being British when they surrendered Singapore.
> Hopefully, this will result in a reinvigorated Anglosphere.
Why hopefully?
The head of state of the UK is an unelected monarch. The upper house is life peers and Anglican clergy. What kind of "belief in freedom and democracy" is that?
> We share a taste for competitive capitalism and individual initiative.
You... don't actually know anything about the political history of most of the world's English speaking countries, do you?
And what about their history? I know full well that the UK, for example, has dabbled quite heavily in socialism. They're also one of the most resilient people on the planet, up there with the Jews, and they came back from that with a vengeance.
US cars are strange. I often find the European versions of US models to be miles better than those produced for the US market. So it's hard to decide what exactly is an American car.
Most British car companies are owned by foreigners anyways, and if anything, this was a vote against non-British than a vote against the EU.
Unfortunately that was my impression of the main motive behind this Brexit vote - xenophobia.
American cars are v-8's :p
Sure. Like those excellent Volkswagon diesel vehicles that are vastly more efficient than their Japanese competitors.
Edit: I thought my sarcasm would be clear. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
pick two. (this is controlled by software which means they can sell the same engine that differs in performance and fuel consumption)
Both Japan and the US has enormous car manufacturing industries, as do many other non German countries.
No "trade deals" are needed for free trade.
Actually, Britain has a significant automotive industry - the third largest in Europe!
British brands are heavily weighted towards premium, high quality models. Jaguar, McLaran, Land Rover, Mini, Bentley, Aston Martin, Lotus, Rolls-Royce, and others.
There's also significant design and manufacturing presence in the UK for Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda.
The failure to make people understand Lisbon 2009 reforms is what is killing the EU.
Yes, Britain has a revising upper chamber populated by people who've made some kind of distinguished contribution to British society during their careers. As with all human enterprises, mistakes occur & some members (peers) have questionable qualifications and corruptive practices do sometimes surface as everywhere else. Sometimes political cronies are appointed. This does not mean we throw the bath water out with the baby.
The upper house provides a venue for extended discussion of laws put forward by the lower house but ultimately has no power to overturn decisions made in the lower house. Most members of the House of Lords (often experts in various subjects) have no or minimal vested interests in the issues brought before them and can therefore offer totally independent opinions since they do not have to answer to an electorate.
Being unelected does not necessarily always equate to a zero qualification for a limited role in law making.
It's rarely invoked and if it were to happen on a serious piece of legislation then Britain would in all likelihood become a republic shortly thereafter.
The British "constitution" is largely based around checks and balances based around mutually assured destruction should any party stray from their expected role. This is one such example.
No, its not. The British monarch, as the saying goes, reigns but does not rule.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966234 and marked it off-topic.
The BBC just announced that "Britain has voted to leave the European Union".
Leave only needs 2,105,984 more votes to win. [edit 12:15am EST] 1,715,256 votes now and closing fast. [edit 12:19am EST] 1,196,678 [edit 12:27am EST] 894,189 [edit 12:31am EST] 785,549 [edit 12:37am EST] 741,795 [edit 12:38am EST] 592,337 [edit 12:45am EST] 448,596 [edit 12:46am EST] 373,532 [edit 12:51am EST] 308,519 [edit 12:57am EST] 94,635 [edit 1:00am EST] 37,665 [edit 1:02am EST] 0. The UK has officially voted to leave.
Predicted result: Leave 52%, Remain 48%
Wow. So what happens now?
- Scotland voted 62% Remain. The SNP said it will call a second independence referendum if Leave wins. Many estimate that the independence movement will win this time around. Literally every single Scottish division voted to remain.
- Gibraltar will probably be royally screwed [0] as well as some other areas that are heavily dependent on trade/travel with EU countries
- The pound drops like a rock. Was stable at $1.48 all day, peaked at $1.50 earlier after Remain was doing well (~6pm EST), now at $1.33 (12:13am EST), now at $1.32 (12:21am EST) and the lowest level since 1985. In 1985 it hit $1.08, which was then the lowest value in a very long time.
- The pound is down 17% from the yen by the way.
- Other independence movements in other EU countries gain a bit of legitimacy. The euro drops (currently at $1.09, down four cents or 3%), and the yen gains (currently up 6%) (12:25am EST)
- For those of us fortunate enough to have our savings in dollars, everything denominated in pounds is currently on a 12% off sale.
Hacker news is indulged in politics as we speak. It's a shame really.
But to add my views to the board...
Yes the EU wasn't perfect. I wouldn't call it undemocratic, or despotic, or communist, fascist, etc...
But it was start of something getting people together. Making Europe a whole.
Now the Brexit sparked other right wing parties in member countries to gain popularity. And we all can remember where far right nationalism leads to.
Remember Hitler being on the cover of Time magazine? Because I do.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530
Key takeaway: we can comment on politics as much as we want (I recently signed up for strongtowns.org !) but here is not a good place for it.