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Comment by hndudette | Hacker News Reader

Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.

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>Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.

It's not quite an equivalent comparison, though; Norway is essentially a Middle East petrostate relocated to the North Sea.

Norway is in EEA. For most (all?) economic purposes, being in EU, EEA, and Switzerland is equivalent. The same rules, procedures, responsibilities, and privileges apply whether the country is a member of EU or EEA.

Being in the EEA is somewhat worse than being in the EU; in particular, it's not in the customs union, so a lot of small businesses will not sell direct to Norway, and Norwegian SMEs are less likely to be direct exporters or to directly import their inputs. Being outside the customs union creates opportunities for middlemen, but otherwise isn't great for most people.

Norway's arrangement is much more comprehensive than the UK's, though.

Choosing the one European country that has vast amounts of oil and a very solid public investment strategy for it feels like a bad faith argument to me.

In the long run, it may not make much difference, but I suspect there will be an economically rough transition.

But honestly, I’m not an economist and haven’t read a great deal about the projections. And many Brits will accept any difficulties in exchange for increased control over their own political destiny.

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