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Comment by timeSl | Hacker News Reader

All 3 of those countries are still in the single European market though, with freedom of movement. Given UK appears to be heading towards a hard brexit and doesn't seem to want freedom of movement I think comparing them directly is a bit disingenuous.

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And plenty of Norwegians would love to see the nation exit that market, because they are, much like most that voted for brexit, tired of seeing industry jobs being "offshored" and remaining wages being undercut by temporary workers from the former eastern block.

At the hight of the oil boom a local shipyard was 1/3 Poles, brought in by the busload. Some of them didn't have the first clue about English, never mind Norwegian.

For all the "champagne left's" kumbaya about EU being about European peace and solidarity, most of the working class see it as a way for the economic "elite" to defang unions and force down wages.

This is the crux of the matter. Giant companies hijack the hands-around-the-world narrative of the left for their own monetary purposes. In the US, the narrative is that there will be 'crops rotting in the fields' if cheap labour is not imported. Ironically, this is a very similar argument to pro-slavery campaigners who said the US would collapse without slavery.

Do you think no other countries bring foreign workers for cheap because the locals won't accept the job at the wages paid?

Canada does it, the US does it. No EU needed for that.

The alternative is to have production stalled or unaffordable because you don't have enough people to do the grunt work.

The industry jobs are more likely to be offshored without free movement of people, because import taxes are cheaper than manufacturing in high-wage countries. That's why free movement of goods and people go together.

And of course Brexit will stop that in its tracks.

Most of the working class right doesn't understand that Brexit will not be allowed to have any direct effect at all on immigration, because the EU is not the direct cause of wage gouging.

If corporations can't get cheap labour from Europe they'll get it from other countries - just as they did before the UK joined the EU.

And their toadies in government will continue to be noisily in favour of protecting the working man from the influx of nasty foreigners in public, while working hard to keep the cheap labour coming in private - just as they've been doing for at least a century and a half.

The corporations will at least have to go through an ostensibly democratic parliament system to get their agenda passed instead of a fully authoritarian EU Council that is not subject to any kind of democratic control.

Norway probably doesn't need the single market and freedom of movement to thrive. However, as countries go Norway (Switzerland as well, for that matter) is quite unique. The UK on the other hand with its largely service-based economy is dependent on international trade and workforce movement.

The thing is that the whole debate is skewed. As a politician I want to capture the political capital, but I can't do it without providing solutions. I think the job automation is the major contributor to this, but no one is eager to talk about it. What can you say that would get you elected? Stop using technology? What kind of enforceable laws can you provide? In the current politics this problem is insolvable. Some industry jobs are definitely offshored, but no one wants to talk about the fact that, say, steel mills have become 100x more efficient per employee in the 70 years.

> tired of seeing industry jobs being "offshored"

This is really a complex one to solve. What are the solutions? If you impose the tariffs the poorest one will suffer the most - they spend the highest percentage of the income on "stuff". Less competition, higher prices. Trading will slow which will have further implications for the growth. Historically, countries that were trying to isolate themselves failed (19th century China, Brazil 50 years ago)

I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most to undermine workers rights are exactly the same people who support Brexit.

In the UK, one shocking source of work insecurity is the zero-hours contract (basically, you have no guaranteed income but have to be available whenever your employer feels like it). The EU has nothing to do with that, in fact most EU countries have banned the practise [1] but the British government refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour flexibility'.

These same people are now claiming that leaving the EU, which offers important protections to workers rights through the treaties and the European Court of Human Rights, will magically solve problems they created and sustain themselves.

[1] https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-europe/

>I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most to undermine workers rights are exactly the same people who support Brexit.

The people against Brexit were all major political parties that ruled for 50+ years, all mainstream press, all businesses, the financial sector.

The deep establishment, in other words, that is, precisely those who have done the most to undermine workers rights.

>but the British government refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour flexibility'.

Yes, but the British government was all for bremain. So who are those people you were referring to?

It's true the UK gov is not being helpful. But the UK gov supported remain. All major parties did. In the language of the vulgar tabloids, the British worker has been spit-roasted by both the EU and the UK government. One of those is withdrawing. The UK only has stop the UK gov fucking workers in the mouth now.

Bingo, it's the EU version of the US playbook going back to the late 70's... Take advantage of labor arbitrage by moving production to the cheaper Eastern European labor markets. But the workers in Britain, Norway etc. don't have the freedom to take advantage of the lower costs of living in those cheap labor markets.

It seems to me there's an inflection point in these national economies when the citizens' wages can no longer pay for goods and services produced locally.

I'm all for free trade between countries but I think nations need to really discourage imports of goods and services that can be provided internally solely for maximizing profits.

and how would you implement that?

Well the UK creates laws so that banks can't lose out, why can't we do it for the rest of the country instead of just the fat lazy bank owners?

Yeah, it's a tough problem but perhaps restrictions can be placed on multi-national corporations. Using Apple as an example; trade agreements would be setup such that Apple, being a US company, could sell iPhones abroad but they wouldn't be allowed to design or manufacture iPhones abroad.

They would be allowed to import the components for the iPhone from foreign manufactures but the design and assembly would be restricted to the U.S. They wouldn't be allowed to setup shell corporations abroad to handle component manufacturing or distribution. Distribution would need to be handled solely by companies within the importing nation.

Basically free and open trade but with clear national boundaries... Put restrictions on the rent seeking.

The UK's leaders seem to want hard Brexit, supported by an ever-decreasing number of political Flat Earthers, and some online bots.

The sentient element of the population is agitating hard to stop Brexit and/or making plans to leave.

>All 3 of those countries are still in the single European market though, with freedom of movement. Given UK appears to be heading towards a hard brexit and doesn't seem to want freedom of movement I think comparing them directly is a bit disingenuous.

None of these countries is in the "European Market" in the way EU member states are.

And Britain will be as much a part of the free market as those countries are, if not more.

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