Brexit

[pegelli]

You're playing word games.

I'm not playing word games, I think my definitions are sound. We just don't agree and that's fine. Would be pretty dull if everybody always agreed. No more fun discussions here

You can always find a smaller group in which your own position finds a majority. Whether that's the solution to the problems at hand remains to be seen.

But I do respect the Brits wanting out and gaining more (perceived or real) control, they made the choice (or at least a relatively small majority of the voters) so let's get the train rolling.

The PM wants to give notice w/o the parliament by late March 2017 and if everybody kept their word ("we'll respect the outcome of the referendum") even with a parliamentary vote that should be possible. Dragging it out doesn't serve any purpose.

[Alan Klein]

No offence.  Politics brings out a lot of adrenalin on all sides.  Curious how people feel in your own country, Belgium.  It is the headquarters which brings a lot of power interests and business.  Do people there feel that Brexit threatens the EU especially their own pocketbook?  How about people from other countries on mainland Europe.  Do Germans feel different about it then Italians and Greeks?  Mainly the discussion is about what Brits feel.  But I don't read a lot of what other Europeans feels about Brexit, the EU and the future of the whole thing.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Alain,

Think of the EU as the United States of Europe, the European Union. In the EU there is a free movement for workforce. If you are a Pole and can find a job in Britain you are entitled to move to Britain. Britishers don't like it as there are some 3 million Polish people working in Britain. The British don't realise that those are grown up people who´s basic training was paid for by Poland, they see that Polish people do some of the jobs Britishers will not do, or will do for lower salaries. The Britishers also forget about their 2 million expats working in the EU.

Brexit is pretty similar to secession, you know, American civil war. In modern time it is not about shelling Fort Sumter but invoking Article 50. It has never done before. There are some legal complications, that may prove a deadlock. Once article 50 has been invoked the process may be irreversible. So government may or may not have a mandate to negotiate. But, there is no way to backtrack if negotiations fail.

Personally, I live in a country where politicians have gone berserk. We had two digit inflation, 102% marginal taxes and having a stalled economy. When our country asked for entry in the EU I was very positive, because the EU mean stability, obligations, rules to obey and now room for a maverick government. That experience has been extremely good. Sweden now has top rankings in many areas.

But, European integration may have moved too fast. Some economies like Greece are lagging behind. In the old time they could devaluate the Drachma, essentially robbing people off their money. Now they have the Euro, so they need to use other means to rob people of their money. The effect is the same, but Bruxelles get the blame. How convenient!

Sorry for the rant…it is just an European view of point…

Best regards
Erik

You're playing word games. You're slicing and dicing sentences to create some meaning that really isn't there.  The bottom line is the EU Parliament, made up of mostly foreigners, is telling Britain how they have to run their own country.  And the Brits object.  They're willing to sacrifice short term economic gains for long term political sovereignty. 

We're seeing the same thing play out here in America with Trump and Senator Sanders who ran against Hillary Clinton in the Democrat nomination.  Both Trump and Sanders are calling for America to come home.  They both object, right or wrong, to bad international trade deals and other economic and fiscal policies that favor those in power.  Although they come at it from different directions and have their own ways of addressing it, they both want to diminish power at the top of the American political and business elite that have left the middle class behind.  American's resentment may not be enough to beat Hillary Clinton who represents the entrenched power because there are too many other factors at play.  These include the fact that the entire political and economic power structures are pushing for her to win.  People in Britain, America, and other places are rising up against the power structure in their countries as well.  Whether Trump wins, or Brexit happens, won't stop the overall movements around the world against countries' power structure.  It's going to be very interesting to watch what happens over the next few years.

[myotis]

Hi Alain,
Britishers don't like it as there are some 3 million Polish people working in Britain. The British don't realise that those are grown up people who´s basic training was paid for by Poland, they see that Polish people do some of the jobs Britishers will not do, or will do for lower salaries. The Britishers also forget about their 2 million expats working in the EU.

I assume you mean "Britishers who voted to leave",  because the same points you make were a core element of the  stay in Europe voters. Along with arguments made about the wider wealth generated by immigrants  their importance to staffing the  National Health Service, engineering services and research,  and that the attraction to Britain was because of our thriving economy, which immigrants had contributed to.

The other point made was that the problems of increased demand on things like schools and health care ( a regular complaint about immigrants), was not the immigrants fault, but the fault of our own government in not providing the services that the country needed.

With an ageing population we need more immigrants to Britain, not fewer.

I fully understand why everyone is writing about what the "British" think or want, but its only  a smallish majority that want to leave, and recent polls are suggesting that if we re-ran the referendum today, it would be more conclusive vote to stay.

I do wish the referendum had been something more conclusive like 60:40, so you could feel a bit more confident that it actually represents what the"British" want. With one exception none of my friends or colleagues voted to leave.

Cheers,

Graham

[kingscurate]

Brexit was a 2 horse race. 1 winner 1 loser, doesn't matter the size of winning distance.
If the result was the other way round, would the losers been asking for a re run of the vote. No and it would not have got another mention.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...Polish people do some of the jobs Britishers will not do...

As an economist, I can tell you that's an economic nonsense. There are no such jobs that Brits (or Americans) won't do. There are jobs that they won't do at the offered wage, which is a different matter. A simple economic solution is to increase the wage until supply meets demand. It is the illegal immigration (or legal, in the EU case) that provides a labor force willing to undermine the equilibrium wage. And the lowering tide lowers all boats, hence the decline of the middle class.

[jfirneno]

Brexit was a 2 horse race. 1 winner 1 loser, doesn't matter the size of winning distance.
If the result was the other way round, would the losers been asking for a re run of the vote. No and it would not have got another mention.

Exactly.

[jfirneno]

As an economist, I can tell you that's an economic nonsense. There are no such jobs that Brits (or Americans) won't do. There are jobs that they won't do at the offered wage, which is a different matter. A simple economic solution is to increase the wage until supply meets demand. It is the illegal immigration (or legal, in the EU case) that provides a labor force willing to undermine the equilibrium wage. And the lowering tide lowers all boats, hence the decline of the middle class.

True.

[Alan Klein]

As an economist, I can tell you that's an economic nonsense. There are no such jobs that Brits (or Americans) won't do. There are jobs that they won't do at the offered wage, which is a different matter. A simple economic solution is to increase the wage until supply meets demand. It is the illegal immigration (or legal, in the EU case) that provides a labor force willing to undermine the equilibrium wage. And the lowering tide lowers all boats, hence the decline of the middle class.

Something is not clear in your statement. Employers won't raise wages as long as they have plenty of people willing to work at lower wages.  Also, if wages are artificially raised such as by government mandate with minimum wage, that will reduce the number of jobs that are available as employers layoff workers as they look for ways to cut costs.  They hire less people.  One way to get jobs for citizens is to eliminate foreign workers who are willing to work for less money.  Then employers have to raise wages.  Citizens will then take the higher paying jobs in that case as you did state.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Something is not clear in your statement...

What exactly? You just restated what I said and added your own thoughts on the minimum wage. I never said, nor implied, that the wage increase should come from the government. I said: "economic (i.e., market) solution", not "government solution."

[Alan Klein]

Economic solution to what problem?  There are plenty of workers available to be filled at the lower wages.

[Zorki5]

Economic solution to what problem?  There are plenty of workers available to be filled at the lower wages.

This is what Slobodan replied to:

...Polish people do some of the jobs Britishers will not do...

I just don't understand what you're arguing with... Or rather how one can argue about what Slobodan said.

[Alan Klein]

Slobodan argued that the way to get British workers the jobs being filled by the Poles would be for employers to raise wages.  Well, employers won't do that as long as Poles keep taking the jobs offered at lower wages.  You have to get rid of the Poles so employers will have to raise wages as there will be less available workers to fill the positions.  I think we should let Slobodan clarify his point, Zorki, because your response does not clarify anything.

[myotis]

Brexit was a 2 horse race. 1 winner 1 loser, doesn't matter the size of winning distance.
If the result was the other way round, would the losers been asking for a re run of the vote. No and it would not have got another mention.

Depends what you mean, first past the post is the system we have, so in terms of what we now do, it doesn't matter.  But  in terms of it representing what the "British" people want it would be more convincing if the leave vote had been higher. It would be ludicrous to re-run the referendum now, as the most important thing now is to get ourselves sorted out and reduce the uncertainty over what is happening.

But you must be joking if you think the leave lobby would have just accepted a stay vote.  They had already anticipated this exact thing happening when they set up the petition to demand a 2nd referendum should the majority vote be less than 60%.  As it so happens of course they won, so it was the remainers who ended up signing it.

Cheers,

Graham

[pegelli]

Brexit was a 2 horse race. 1 winner 1 loser, doesn't matter the size of winning distance.
If the result was the other way round, would the losers been asking for a re run of the vote. No and it would not have got another mention.

I think the Brexiteers had all their speeches about "losing by a small margin", "continuing the quest" and "we'll push for another vote" ready. And they were very surprised that they didn't have to use them and I don't assume they would have given up and said: "that's it, now the matter is solved fore good"

Exactly.

No way

[Manoli]

If the result was the other way round, would the losers been asking for a re run of the vote. No and it would not have got another mention.

The official 'Leave' campaign would have been abandoned, but Farage, on camera, was already asking for the 2nd referendum before the result was out. Of course, once the result was known, he changed his tune pdq.

[Farmer]

An economic solution is like an economic price - it's one that will actually apply in the market (you can set all sorts of prices for things, but the economic price is the one at which a sale will actually occur).  Similarly, an economic solution is one that will actually occur in the market in the manner provided for in the solution (as opposed to a theoretical solution/price/etc.).

[Manoli]

A simple economic solution is to increase the wage until supply meets demand. It is the illegal immigration (or legal, in the EU case) that provides a labor force willing to undermine the equilibrium wage. And the lowering tide lowers all boats, hence the decline of the middle class.

Right. So return to the uncompetitive work practices and raise the 'unitary cost' pricing that Thatcher fought long and hard in order to return the UK to competitiveness. As the saying goes 'back to the good ol' days'

Here's UK per capita GDP minus the average of France, Italy and Germany since the late 50's:

[myotis]

They would have gone away to lick their wounds.  I agree that there would be no call for a re run for now but the euro sceptics would not have gone away. They would be quietly regrouping and planing their next moves.

You only have to look at the Scottish Independence "once in a generation" referendum result and aftermath to see how little trust and respect politicians have for the will of the people.

But the will of 45% of the Scots that voted was to leave, that is still a substantial proportion, should they just be ignored. 

The SNP said there wouldn't be asking for another referendum unless there was a major change in circumstances that would affect peoples views on independence,  which leaving the EU is.  That was not something anticipated at the time of the "once in a generation" statement. 

But, if you are a Scot, and you vote in a government that has a primary goal of leaving the Union, I think you should expect them to grab any opportunity for independence that they can.

However, I think they seriously misjudge things, as I suspect the same principles that led to the majority of Scotland wanting to stay in Europe, will be the same principles that make the majority want to stay in the UK.

But as with the EU referendum, both the UK and Scotland need to put their efforts into getting on with where we are now, and stabilising an uncertain future.

Cheers,

Graham

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

There may be little incentive to work if you can live on welfare programs. I don't know about GB but here in Sweden it is a bit difficult to get into employment. Employers expect good education, 10 years of experience and below 25 years of age. Unemployment for those youth with low education is around 20% while unemployment for professionals is about 2.9%, last I heard.

Immigrants from outside the EU have very high unemployment, that is a real challenge, as we have received something like 150 000 refugees last year, many of those from the arabic speaking region.

On the other hand, professionals from abroad are sought for. Almost all doctors in healthcare are immigrants. Part of the reason is that there used to be a significant emigration of doctors and nurses to countries with higher salaries.

This may go back to 1995, when Sweden was to something similar to what we see in Greece. There were severe cuts in government spending, much affecting healthcare and education. Salaries are low in those sectors.

But, those are complex issues. Immigrants contribute to GNP, pay taxes. EU migrants also come with good education. Those who move are the ambitious ones.

Best regards
Erik

As an economist, I can tell you that's an economic nonsense. There are no such jobs that Brits (or Americans) won't do. There are jobs that they won't do at the offered wage, which is a different matter. A simple economic solution is to increase the wage until supply meets demand. It is the illegal immigration (or legal, in the EU case) that provides a labor force willing to undermine the equilibrium wage. And the lowering tide lowers all boats, hence the decline of the middle class.