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Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

There is a part of me (I'm a UK resident) that looks at this and wants to see what would happen. As an outsider looking in (and having lived in the USA in the 80s), I don't see a country, I see corporation. A place where the rich really are rich and the poor can go f*ck themselves, but the poor don't seem to mind, y'know, cos America is awesome. Also they don't appear to have a voice.

Do I think the UK is in a better position? Possibly. I think the EU has probably helped to hold back on corporate dominance. Legislation is less about supporting corporations and more about supporting society. (I do think we have a free speech issue. Glenn Greenwald in an interview said he would fly to USA but not to the UK as he had better legal protection.)

The more interesting question most banks/countries must be asking themselves, "How do we get out of the USD?"

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Be careful, the UK's total external debt has exceeded 10 trillion[0]. We have huge financial sector debt here and are worse exposed to financial shock from the banking system than almost all countries globally.

Agreed that getting out of the USD hegemony is inevitable. As to whether it will be an orderly transition, I'd say that is far from assured, especially in the UK.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_d...

I'm not sure that "external debt" is a great measure in this context - it seems to include international liabilities so if people invest/deposit their money in the UK (which seems like a good thing) that creates an external liability (i.e. whoever put the money here will want it back at some point).

Given the UK has a huge financial sector you would presumably expect a large external debt:

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2984/economics/uk-external...

People who put their money in generally want some form of return, so its not a bad measure.

A large financial sector shouldnt mean you have large net external liabilities. It does tend to mean they are very hard to measure though.

Clearly the UK financial sector is too big for us to bail out, we should have let it go under in the last crisis.

Trust me, no bank in the world right now is trying to trade in all their dollars for British pounds.

Also, if you factor in the high cost of living, which is a side effect of the UK system, being a poor person in the UK is a pretty shitty situation to be in, certainly not something to smugly celebrate.

> being a poor person in the UK is a pretty shitty situation to be in, certainly not something to smugly celebrate.

Being poor in the UK does suck. A home is not guaranteed. But I think I'd rather be poor in the UK than in many other countries. There is a possibility of housing (for a subset of the people who need housing); there is free health care for all who want it, including free medication for some of the people who need it (and low cost medication for the rest).

Funny, why is it then that there isn't a net migration into the UK from the US? Why are all these people voting with their feet and leaving the UK? Don't they know what's better for them?

Calm down, I was giving my personal view about where I would live.

To answer your questions:

1) There isn't free entry to the UK. We don't just let everyone in.

2) Poor people can't afford to fly from the US to the UK.

3) People prefer "the devil they know".

> Why are all these people voting with their feet and leaving the UK? Don't they know what's better for them?

How many people leave the UK? About 300,000 people left the UK in 2011. How many of those were poor people leaving for an easier life elsewhere?

<http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/cross-cutting-topics/migrat...

<http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/long-term-internati...

Because the US is a better place to be the kind of person that qualifies for skilled migrant visas or is worth sponsoring as an employee? Very poor Americans might well be better off in the UK, but we obviously don't want them.

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