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

Roughly the same percentage as Germany, France and Iceland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe that analogy will help.

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

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

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

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

> same or very similar numerical values

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I live in California. If I want to move to NJ, I just pack my bags and go. That's freedom of movement. If I want to sell something to New Hampshire, I just do it. Why shouldn't France and Germany be the same way?

Okay, so you can move from California to NJ. Great. But you can't have single payer healthcare in either place because Florida and Texas don't want it. California and NJ can't have effective gun control or close their borders to guns because of Virgnia and Tennessee. Or, we go back a few years: you get DOMA in California and New York because that's what Alabama and Louisiana want.

Integration is not without costs.

There are many advantages to having the government closer to the people. Having a smaller sect of the world population means officials are more likely to listen to the populace.

Very similar reasons why (many) people like working for small businesses and start-ups vs. multinational corporations...they know their boss and their boss's boss. When upper management makes a decision they actually have to speak with all the people it effects, which tends to make them empathize and make more employee-centric decisions.

We're talking about freedom of movement between countries. A state is not a country. Why shouldn't all countries be like states? We can all hum John Lennon's Imagine there's no countries but I'm not sure how that actually works. I'm sure you can at least see some difficulty there and definitely there is a strong sentiment in parts of the US against this vision.

Why shouldn't Canada and the USA be the same? Why shouldn't Mexico, and Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and Brazil, and the USA, and Canada be the same?

If you want to move to Montreal or Mexico City or Beijing you can't just pack your bags and go. You can still sell something to all these places, manufacture them in all these places, etc. At least generally speaking.

You might ask some people in the American South about their views on States' Rights.

NY makes more money (and collects more taxes) than e.g. Alabama. So NY finances Alabama. In the EU, Germany implements capital controls in Greece.

That's the difference. US is a monetary and fiscal union that has free movement of labor and capital. The EU cannot only be the latter.

How many times have California and NJ fought wars agaist each other?

Has California ever invaded NJ?

Do California and NJ even speak the same language?

Hmm...it's not thst easy as packing your bags and moving

> open immigration was one of the main factors here. Something the "stay in the EU" supporters didn't really seem to address beyond "if you're against the free movement of people in Europe you're a racist".

Remain addressed it like this: Since the 'leave' side still want to be in the single market, they must also keep the free movement of labour, which is a prerequisite of the market.

It's only stupid for companies to be conglomerated from the perspective of those outside it, but it's to the interest of every entity to hold monopolyish power and bully the small. The rest of the nation or world may feel that monopolies, cartels, and conglomerates lead to more harm than good, but I think it's locally rational for power and money to concentrate into a few decision-makers.

If you were correct, it would never make sense to do a spin-off or to outsource anything. Agility gets lost when a company goes large, and its internal structure changes. Your views are typical for someone who looks at companies as a black box without considering their internal structure.

Super biased, layman thoughts incoming.

Re. countries vs corporations: countries in isolation make laws for themselves (consumer protection, long-term economic protection, etc.), whereas corporations must abide by the laws of their host countries (hence tax evasion via incorporation in accommodating countries). If two countries start to compete, there isn't really anything that stops them from annihilating one another in disturbing fashions (e.g. erecting walls, slinging propaganda, blockading, etc.) other than treaties. Get enough treaties together and you get the EU.

I'd suggest that it is not treaties that lead to good trans-national relations. TTIP, CETA, and the WTO treaty are examples of modern controversial treaties and treaties historically have been viewed as a very negative outcome for one of the nations.

What leads to good trans-national relations? Open borders. Because when the people of the two nations can visit, live, work, stay, build a house, settle down with a spouse and enjoy life in either country, the countries have a very hard time becoming hostile to one another.

That then leads to a completely separate question about the loss of cultural diversity, but I will not go there.

I only suggest that strong nations with open borders become friends.

> If two countries start to compete, there isn't really anything that stops them from annihilating one another in disturbing fashions (e.g. erecting walls, slinging propaganda, blockading, etc.) other than treaties.

Or literally annihilating each other, with bombs, for that matter. Thankfully not likely to happen anytime soon in Europe, but in general, conflicts between countries have no limit to how far they can escalate, unlike between corporations...

This is critically important. The EEC and eventually EU came directly out of two incredibly destructive wars on the European continent. If corporations came to that, the leaders of whoever survived hopefully would evaluate the externalities of escalating competition and decide to take the safer route of closer economic bonds.

Countries can compete peacefully by e.g. offering more attractive tax environments to potential immigrants or investors.

But competition between companies is justified precisely because employees can freely and easily move between them. It's very different from countries: As a rule, people are stuck in the country they happen to live, especially when free movement is restricted. Free trade and free movement of workers need to go together. This principle is fundamental to a fair globalisation.

Can you just pack up and move to Google? No. They need to want to hire you. This is not completely unlike needing to meet some immigration standards to move to another country. Free immigration, in the sense of the EU, would be the equivalent of people deciding they want to work for Google and they just show up and claim a cubicle.

You can visit other countries as a tourist, even for relatively extended periods... You can buy property in other countries. You can start a business in another country... What's the corporate equivalent?

...Moves into Google cubicle, pay me $150k living wage and full time benefits even though I can't code...