I keep reading that they expect 1/3 of people to lose their jobs when furlough ends. The goverment is now suggesting companies move warehouse (and jobs) to the EU. The increase in the costs of importing into the UK will raise prices with people who are going to have less money. Orders coming from the EU will drop massively even for those with EU warehouses because, how do I know if they have one? I've literally made sure to avoid any UK business because I know I'll have to pay extra taxes when it arrives.
And I know people who voted leave who instantly regretted it and only voted leave as a protest vote. "We wanted to give them a scare" was how it was explained to me. So basically. While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote. And when it cames to the general elections, no major party went with the anti Brexit campaign which seemed nuts. The politcal elite wanted Brexit and the poor will pay the most.
The UK has had two general elections since the 2016 vote. If the electorate thought it was the single most important issue and that we should remain, the UK wouldn't have left.
The entire thing was a clusterf### that should never have happened. All voting systems are bad even in the best of cases, and this was far from the best of cases. Good luck living with it.
If your intention was to refute my argument that first-past-the-post doesn't accurately capture voters' opinions, you failed.
I'm in complete agreement that FPTP is a terrible system, and does a miserable job capturing voters opinions. It does so even when there are many extra parties available. (The LibDems were, after all, part of a governing coalition just five years ago.)
The problem is coming up with a significantly better system. The UK is in this mess because of a direct vote that didn't really measure voters' opinions, either.
The divisions on Brexit also run through both major parties, and Labour had quite a bad offering and spooked many people by being so much on the left (they had they worst defeat in 40 years in the last election, which is telling) and in any case they went for Brexit so people had no actual alternative on that issue as the Lib Dems were not seen has credible and as having any chance.
All in all I think it is difficult to draw clear conclusions based on the last general elections. Personally I think positions did not change much since the referendum (i.e. small majority for Brexit overall).
TL;DR, there was no real anti-Brexit party other than the dominating SNP.
> This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.
I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
The SNP basically dominated. Green? They're not a major party. And Labour's policy was ???, I honestly can't remember, but we all knew they were pro-Brexit. If Labour hadn't repeatedly shot themselves in the foot they would have done way better. Nevermind if they went hard on anti-Brexit, they would have done way better. I'm not 100% on this but I believe if you look at the stats, it was basically labour and centeral voters stayed home. And there was no real, and real is important here, altvernative. Many smaller parties splitting the vote wasn't ever going to get anywhere.
> I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
He was led into a fridge where he then stayed until the broadcaster moved on. Instead of his handlers telling the employee, hold on a sec, he's on live TV and this is a great chance to address the nation. They let him be lead into a fridge... And as a paid up member of the SNP, I would like to thank the tories for putting Mr Johnson in power. He's doing wonders for the SNP's cause!
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I think it’s just one of those superlative treadmills.
I still think it will end in either a disaster or some kind of rejoining of EU, possibly under a different name. But of course we’ll see.
So, like any other election?
The difference here is that both main parties supported Brexit, as opposed to having 2 opposing streams of nonsense.
There was a referendum in 2016 and a general election in 2019 which the Conservatives won in a landslide. The notion that there was a major swing in opinion in that timeframe is simply absurd. Pro-Brexit political parties don't win landslide victories in such circumstances.
BREXIT will unfortunately have an impact for much longer. The UK was a place I dreamed about living in. English-speaking, great quality of life, weather is pretty mild compared to where I currently am, and, most importantly, open borders with the EU.
Now the UK does not even register as an option.
This is just me, but I’m sure there are others in the same boat, and as a young Brit you just had a door shut in your face. Not to mention the impact on business that’s going to affect British workers within the UK.
It seems unlikely that we’re going to see a larger case of shooting oneself in the foot anytime soon.
I keep reading this and it's just not true. The vast majority of young Brits go to work or study in the USA/Canada/Australia/NZ, by far, and they don't have the EU's "freedom of movement".
Several of my friends worked and studied in Europe before the UK signed the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and it wasn't a problem for them. If you're determined to move countries, which is a significant undertaking, you'll do it regardless of whatever extra perceived barriers there are.
They're more than happy to charge thousands to qualified Eastern/Southern European to get them to come here and pocket high salaries and relatively cheap cost of living / taxes (the other place that compares in EU is Switzerland, but it's much more expensive).
Also, they didn't want to pay for poorer countries that will never get their economy together.
The UK was one of the few net contributors to the EU.
"They didn't want unspecialised poor immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe" -> the fact is that they were getting a lot of graduated/high specialized immigrants from southern Europe as well.
I guess it is because the folks outside big cities never had a chance to interact with the immigrants and see the value they add to the society, rather than seeing them as a threat. It is quite sad :(
This begs the question: Would it have been as bad as Brexit to restrict worker movements a little more? I would suggest that such restrictions could have even had an overall benefit if done properly. It's just that Germany desperately wanted those cheap workers.
tl;dr: Nobody wants to become a truck driver anymore, even with improving salaries. Higher qualifications and better working conditions might solve the problem in the future.
In the meantime we still need drivers from eastern europe.
A large aging population of post war baby boomers unhappy that younger generations are more liberal and different looking voted in a hardline anti immigrant admin.
Just like in the UK, a very large fraction of youth is very much against "leave".
I expect this to play out interestingly in the next 5-10 years when younger generations wrest political power from the baby boomers. I fully expect "millennials revenge" with a hard left turn eand forced generational wealth transfer using higher estate and property taxes
Today's youth grew up with the dotcom bubble, financial crisis, 9/11, and COVID. They're far poorer with less opportunity than prior generations had. The government has failed them and they want change.
This is pushing younger generations hard left, and I don't think it's going to change. Most of the "conservativizing" life events like home ownership and building a family are being delayed or just never happening. Today's mellenials and gen z will likely lean democrat till they die.
There's also a social theory that older generations lean conservative because the conservative movement dominated their youth, not because they became that way with age. Today's boomers grew up during a ~20 year streak of conservative dominance. Today's youth are the opposite, it's yet to be seen what this will do to political beliefs.
> some things are better off the way they are
doesn't follow from this
> Older people are naturally more conservative
Despite this, there's a increasingly liberal trend: spending, taxes and inflation keep raising, no matter the party.
Another theory is that youth are not going through conservatizing life events like marriage or home ownership because they've been screwed by so many economic disasters. It's hard to argue against this theory, the question is how much of an effect this will have long term.
Yet another theory is more obvious. The anti immigration and anti gay policies of conservatives are wildly unpopular among those under 45. Some estimates I've seen are that less than 25% support either. The younger generations are also less religious, more urban, and more ethnically diverse. All traits that tend to increase left leanings.
I personally doubt school had much of an impact. Educators have been left leaning for centuries. I think it's used as an excuse by the conservative party in the US unwilling to admit their policies are unpopular for more based reasons.
I agree with you that deficit spending has become bipartisan. The fiscal conservatism that once defined Republicans is more of a libertarian aim now. Again I think this will play out in an interesting way. Without fiscal conservativism the Republicans are left with religious and cultural conservativism which are both wildly unpopular among younger generations.
Nicholas Taleb himself is “irritated” whenever the coronavirus pandemic is referred to as a "black swan" (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is...).
[0] newspaper articles, so the Michael Crichton [1] amnesia effect applies
[1] Michael Crichton came up with it and called it the “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” because “by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have”.
I'm not an expert but afaik we're still in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis during which virtually every country in the west contracted insane amount of debt to save their economies, and this is exactly what we're doing again right now. I have my doubt any of this will be "mostly gone" in a few years, more like we're going to pay for it over the next X generations
https://theconversation.com/the-uk-governments-covid-spendin...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/uk-government-de...
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warns-countries-to-watch-...
https://globalnews.ca/news/7318316/us-debt-coronavirus-excee...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fiscal-cbo-idUSKCN26D0CW
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-economy-was-laden-with-...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/06/business/us-debt-deficit-...
I think we need to move away from that construct. If we today are burdening future generations, the proper description is that they will pay, not us. The people saddled with these debts are not alive today. They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything. It is little wonder that revolutions are generally run by young people. It would be very interesting to see how many of these multi-generational debt structures result in profound instability, but sadly nobody alive today will be around to see these decisions. In short: imho no country should take on debts that have no hope of repayment within a single lifetime.
Germany paid the last of its WWI reparations in 2010... roughly a century after the war. Even that was within a theoretical single lifetime.
If you have an economy with zero slack (meaning 0% unemployment) then adding more debt does increase the amount of work that has to be done in the future. In practice this means that the least profitable work will not get done and a backlog of work starts piling up. This is not a problem in practice because of technological progress and the subsequent rise in productivity.
Debt does become harmful if it is spent wastefully.
Financing consumer spending is a pretty good example. Since you do not expect to net a greater return in the future the debt is just an additional fee that provides no meaningful value compared to having the money in your bank account before spending it.
Getting a mortgage to buy an existing house can also be wasteful if there is a housing shortage (=more residents than housing). You're supposed to spend that money on building a new house or condo. The large difference between market rate housing and construction cost is not a flaw. It's a financial incentive for construction companies to build more housing. You just have to let them build.
Using debt to finance a war is also extremely wasteful. If you lose the war your economy will no longer be able to support the debt.
Oh _we_ will too. More taxes, less pensions, more and more privatization of public entities, moving the retirement age up a few years ever decades, &c. the same shit they've been pulling all over Europe for the last 50 years basically
> They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything.
Most of _us_ neither, only the elite/people in charge asked for it. It doesn't benefit the lower 90% of any countries' population.
Brexit has consumed the UK for the last 5 years with it's totally inwards looking activity.
COVID was a black swan event that will be bad for this generations outcomes. Brexit was totally avoidable but will have much the same lingering suppression of economic activity.