You don't even have to read between the lines with this one. Brexit is a precursor for what is about to come in the next decade; the globalism pendulum is swinging back in full force.
The people saw no benefit from globalism. Instead they saw their jobs dry up, their benefits disappear and their incomes flatline. Of course, rather than demand more from their employers or blame capitalism at all, the corporations guide them toward the demon from afar, as has always happened and as will always happen. I wonder who this round's Hitler will be...
He’s presumably talking about the folks who voted for Brexit, that is, predominantly older, less educated, native-born English (and Welsh), many of them from regions of England which have been economically stagnant or declining for several decades and where a high proportion of ambitious youngsters have left for greener pastures in London or elsewhere in Europe.
> The people saw vastly increasing incomes and life expectancy, primarily at the bottom. Also massive and unprecedented decreases in poverty.
It's not necessarily the case that the benefits of globalism could only come with the costs of globalism. Yes, neoliberal global capitalism was better than the imperialism that came before it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have fatal shortcomings that are coming to a head.
There was a time not so long ago (maybe 12 months?) in which I might have nodded my head at a comment like this.
After a solid year of being told that not voting for Bernie makes me a pro-globalization racist, and being told that questioning the EU makes me an anti-globalization racist, I'm kinda burned out. I've just accepted that people on the Internet are going to call me racist no matter what.
Sadly, I just don't care anymore. I mean... on a substantive level I still do, and I still hold the same left-leaning principles that I held a year ago. But I no longer feel the same wince of recoil at hearing the word "racist" anymore. The current climate is pure histrionics, and people have cried wolf enough times to leave me numb.
Obviously, the commenter was referring to the "people" who live in the UK and voted yesterday. I mean... duh. Regardless of one's position on Brexit one way or the other, this retort was absurd.
> voting for Bernie makes me a pro-globalization racist
I "get" the racist part (as in I get the causal structure in other people's brains that makes them come up with this, not that I agree with it), but not the pro-globalization part. Bernie Sanders was pretty vocal about his voting record on free trade (NAFTA, etc.), which he was consistently against.
(Although there is no shortage of people who will say that Bernie voters were privileged and racist for their condescension toward the black vote too. The fact that you can include or omit the "not", and people don't notice, kinda underscores the point.)
Reading the op - it is not complaint, but - don't really give a fuck fatigue. Just shouting racism gets you nowhere in the discourse nowadays. You are also expected to provide arguments.
Who voted for the referendum? I'm not justifying what happened I'm explaining what happened. I understand the benefits of globalism even if poorly educated 50+s in the UK do not. Don't need your chest puffing faux enlightenment, thanks.
Relax. Britain was EU minus the Euro and the schengen. They gave up pure sovereignty without buying into the true core of the EU, which boils down to economics.
I get it. If the UK didn't buy into the Euro (and retained fiat currency) and didn't buy into the schengen, what exactly were they getting from EU membership minus encroachment on sovereignty?
Edit: since joining the EU, Britain has known nothing but austerity. Whether or not that had anything to do with EU membership, you can see how it was blamed, yes?
Maybe this is getting blown up by the media, but I've seen a lot of tech people in the UK on HN and elsewhere looking (sometimes desperately) for other opportunities. Even if future agreements don't make it harder for them to remain and work in the UK on paper, it may still cause a lot of skilled labor to leave the UK purely due to perception.
That's assuming that it remains just as easy to do so, which seems unlikely given immigration was part of what was driving the leave vote. Even if it is still easier in absolute terms for someone in the EU to work in the UK than the US, the lowered differential could have pretty negative effects on the market for high-demand jobs.
Really? Because I explicitly remember that running a company and dealing with other European countries has been hell of paperwork, lawyers, different standards and protectionism which made running a company that sold goods or software across Europe extremely complicated before entry of the coutry into EU in 2004. Just the standardization of financial (global VAT system, unified taxes, etc.) and regulatory (if an item is legal in one EU country then it's legal in another) has brought so much more commerce, jobs and startups that I doubt people in this topic born after EU can even fanthom.
That's a big deal, but there could and should be free trade and labor mobility between countries whether or not those countries are part of the EU or a similar organization. It is almost guaranteed to be good for any pair of countries.
"The purpose of the European Economic Area (EEA) is to extend the EU’s internal market to countries in the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). These countries either do not wish to join the EU or have not yet done so."
"The EEA incorporates the four freedoms of the internal market (free movement of goods, people, services and capital)"
Which is basically what the people of the UK chose in 1975 with the EEC, before it grew into the EU.
Britain has always had 'pure sovereignty'. With or without the EU, their parliament can do pretty much anything it wants (the US or Australian legislatures are quite limited), including leaving the EU.
Re: Austerity/neoliberalism, that's got very little to do with the EU and a lot to with Thatcher being elected in 1979, with the only non-Conservative government since then being Tony Blair - who wasn't exactly economically left wing.
Re: austerity, my point was more to do with what it was blamed on, not so much the actual root cause. Either way, I'm personally against austerity in down markets, but personal proclivities aside, I can see recent austerity being associated with EU membership - especially while watching Greece suffer, despite the enormous differences in economics.
When you're looking to blame someone for recent suffering, it doesn't so much matter the actual cause, so much as the perceived...
They didn't. The EU Parliament and the Commission could make laws directly binding on British citizens even if the British government opposed them. That's not sovereignty.
And the U.S. federal government has only the powers devolved to it by the sovereign states. But its hard to say U.S. states retain any meaningful sovereignty today.
No, not the time to relax. This is is the time to worry, to worry big. Nigel Farage (UKIP - United Kingdom Independence Party) said that he hopes this will be the first brick removed from the wall that is the EU, and the rest will follow and crumble because of it. He hopes this will be the end of the EU (paraphrased from memory, saw it on TV during the live coverage). Only his opinion, but not unthinkable. United Kingdom might break up too - Scotland preparing legislation for a second referendum whether to be part of the United Kingdom already.
Front National congratulated, Geert Wilders (PVV, Netherlands) thinks the Netherlands should have such a referendum too, and the PVV was elected 3rd strongest party in the elections 2012 and is currently ahead in many polls (next election before April 2017).
Just a thought: ISIS is not stupid, if they are able to strategically make another terrorist attack months ahead of the French elections, what party will that help? The Front National does have a chance of winning, even if for now it seems unlikely, but hey, who would have thought Trump could win the the Republican nomination half a year ago?!
Anti-Islam sentiment will result in more people fighting for ISIS, re-nationalisation will make the War on Terror less organized, focus will shift from fighting smart and doing so heads on to isolation and protectionism.
Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) in Germany, anti-EU sentiment from the CSU (sister party of the CDU (Merkel's party) in Bavaria), Austria came close to electing an anti-European right-wing president... The PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid - Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, and in countries where the EU-hate is not coming from the right side, it often comes from the left.
The sentiment for Re-nationalisation is a widespread phenomenon.
We can discuss all we want about how the EU failed, but to say Britain in this case is not an important example of what can happen in other European countries is naive... I don't want to paint the devil onto the wall, but look in history how often times "we stumbled into war"[1] - I don't think we are there yet, just to make my point - never underestimate what can happen and looking at all the facts, we have all the reasons in the world to (at the very least) worry.
[1] To stay in Europe: Also consider the Nato/Europe-Russia conflict, East Ukraine...
Britain is yet to leave the EU, and we will probably end up with a leave in name only.
Why is it difficult? Think about a US state secession.
What if North Carolina decided to leave the US, imposed border controls, restricted the entry of US citizens, started drawing up its own regulations (totally different from the regulation from other states). The US would them impose tariffs.
Hard to see how NC's economy would thrive. (Not due to US malice, but just due to the various barriers that have been introduced.)
The UK is not as entangled with the EU as other countries and it is possible, "Supremacy of the Parliament" + "Lisbon Treaty Article 50", the latter of which is not detailed, but certainly provides for the possibility of exit.
Leaving a political union like the EU compared to a state of the USA leaving the USA, apples and oranges! A state in the USA does not have a central bank, its own currency, such an independent (meaning the variety of businesses and services[1]) economy, its own military, its own intelligence agency, I could go on and on and on... you really can't compare that. The UK is a permanent member of the UN security council(!), among many other things.
[1] The UK has agriculture, technology companies, a well developed banking sector, car industry, steel industry, all kinds of services, its own telephone and broadband companies, and and and...
Edit: Your comparison is closer to possible Scottish Independence, though even here the circumstances are different in some crucial areas, for example the EU could be willing to have Scotland as a member state, Scotland could adopt the Euro, Scotland was part of the EU (so it's not like starting from scratch, Scotland basically follows some crucial EU regulations already), what would be the equivalent of such a path for a state in the USA that wants to leave the country? There is none.
Your analogy is completely inappropriate. Was NC ever independent?
The UK was completely independent 50 years ago -- that is, some people still working got their first job out of school when that was still the case. And it's not like it integrated with Europe overnight - or going to leave it overnight.
European's complete freedom of movement as we know it today is about 20 years old, not 50. I still had to go through border checkpoints in Europe less than 30 years ago. It was more of a formality even then, but the checkpoints were still there and operated. Half of today's Germany (the east) was, for most economical purposes, nonexistent at the time.
Only about 50% of the UK's export and import is with the rest of Europe. How much of NC's export/import balances are with the rest of the US?
(Bonus: Texas was, in fact, independent for a short while two centuries ago -- but otherwise you'll find NC is as (in)dependent as Texas on the rest of the US, in the ways that UK is not dependent on the EU.
I don't want to say you are wrong, I just want to clarify further:
Not only was the UK "completely independent 50 years ago", the UK (for the moment let's not care if the UK is a country or a political union) is a completely separate and independent(!)[1] country already and always has been. Parliament can do and undo any(!) law (the principle of "Supremacy of Parliament"), including all the laws that made UK a member of the EU to begin with and all further laws that tangled up the UK closer with the EU. The difficulty is in negotiating a viable exit strategy (because of economic and political consequences), but there is no dispute in the slightest, that the UK is (easily) able and has a full right to simply leave.
The UK always during the last 50 years was sovereign, with every new EU regulation that was "imposed upon them" (they were and are represented in EU parliament, it's not like they had not a say, democracy means compromise) they could choose. Of course having advantages means also accepting decisions of other states in some cases, but they always weighed pro and contra and never ever were obliged to stay. I am not exactly sure how the legal framework in the USA is (I understand it's a heavily federal system), but I doubt it's anyway near the situation of UK sovereignty.
The referendum was not needed, it's not even legally binding. Members of Parliament could have simply made the decision to leave at any given point in time.
[1] It's only not independent in the sense that it of course depends on surrounding countries regarding economic stability, so if one says the UK wasn't independent, then the same is true for any country that has any import/export to other countries and some trade agreements. And in that sense of course UK never was nor will be independent.
> but hey, who would have thought Trump could win the the Republican nomination half a year ago?!
Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) did, and has been blogging about the reasons why for quite some time (http://blog.dilbert.com). Based on those same reasons, he also predicts a win for Trump in the general election.
Whether you agree with his points or not, he definitely provides some interesting food for thought (beyond just rah, rah, Trump, Make America Great Again, etc).
Globalization was one of those things that overall has brought good to the world [See China, India]. With it, there was necessary move towards equilibrium.
Poor countries got richer and rich countries didn't grow as much. It brings wealth to global businesses [Apple, Toyota, Siemens, etc.] But brought with it stagnant wages in developed nations [EU, US, JP, etc.] but wage growth in CN, IN, BR, ZA, etc.
Then you had the anti-WTO anti-globalization movement who sympathized with third world countries [because 'exploitation'] and were anti-big business and pro blue collar workers in developed nations --but how were those countries going to develop without globalization? And of course, anti-globalization also meant more nativism and non-westernization of developing countries... yet they were mostly pro immigration to developed nations [which goes against the don't dilute culture attitude for developing nations]
Economic globalization, which has indeed brought good to the world overall, is not the same thing as political unification, which has not. We don't need to have everyone in the world belong to a single country in order to reap the benefits of globalized specialization and trade. Political unification just means that people have less and less voice in how they are governed. The EU's rules are written by unaccountable bureaucrats; I'm not at all surprised that Britain voted to exit from that.
(Genuine question. I can see some examples, such as the completely idiotic requirement that forces web sites to have those exceedingly irritating pop-ups for consent to have cookies. Whoever wrote that law clearly didn't understand how web sites work, socially.)
In terms of being a political union, the EU doesn’t even do that much. It does do some things, but those things tend to be overall small and also relatively uncontroversial.
The bulk of the work the EU does in “creating” rules in unifying regulations. For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation. Otherwise trade barriers would exist.
That means you have to write lots and lots of deadly boring regulation. And that’s what the EU did. Yawn. All a very technocratic process.
(I’m also not sure why you think people in Brussels are unaccountable. That’s such a cliché propaganda line with no basis in reality at all.)
The Constitution for Europe alone is more than 400 pages. For comparison, the US Constitution is about 10. (Unfortunately the US legal code is probably as lengthy and baroque as the EU's by this point.)
> For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation.
No, you don't. Global markets existed before the EU and didn't need "unified regulation" (meaning regulation by politicians and bureaucrats, as opposed to regulation by the ordinary process of voluntary trade) in order to work. This idea that the only way to have common markets is by lengthy, boring political regulation is precisely the misconception I am arguing against.
When country a calls for diameter x and country b for a different diameter y then you cannot sell your thing in both countries. The EU would then come and say that the actual rule is diameter z, problem solved.
Your view on this is hopelessly naive and really anti-intellectual and dishonest.
> When country a calls for diameter x and country b for a different diameter y then you cannot sell your thing in both countries.
You're still assuming that countries have to set standards. Many standards are not set by countries at all; they are set by markets, by buyers and sellers realizing that a common standard is in both their interests and agreeing on one. (You are also assuming that it is always a good thing for the same product to be sold in both countries--that there can't possibly be good reasons why two different diameters might be used in different places. If standards are left to markets--i.e., to the people who are actually directly affected by what is bought and sold--then those kinds of issues take care of themselves.) Your view on this is hopelessly blinded by your assumptions.
That's just not the world we live in. Contradictory regulations exist in places with no unifying framework and create trade barriers. That's a reality and no wishing for market solutions can solve that.
What are these? They are just a few examples of private organizations that develop, maintain, and enforce unified standards for products, within the US and worldwide. There are many, many others.
> You are living in a fantasy world.
No, you are, with your belief that the only way to get unified standards--assuming that we are dealing with something that needs them--is for governments to set them. Governments can set standards, yes. But they are not the only way to set them. IMO they are usually the worst way to set them, because government officials have the least stake of all parties involved in making the standards the best ones possible.
I'm not so sure. For issues that matter to a smaller number of people a political union can help as there is a bigger and more diverse voice for that particular issue (AFAIK software patents are not happening in the EU).
If software patents get lobbied through a fully independent UK/GB/EN (whatever it ends up) government there will be less protest as there are less people to make a noise.
On the flip side I hope it makes people more politically active, if the EU isn't there to make the decision for you (in support or against) then it is left to the people of the independent country to influence their government.
Entering into that conversation whatever the issue can only help understanding and rational decisions.
> For issues that matter to a smaller number of people a political union can help as there is a bigger and more diverse voice for that particular issue
This reminds me of the old joke about regular expressions, which I'll paraphrase thus: Someone has a problem, and they say, hey, I'll just get the government to fix it! Now they have two problems.
The only reason why small groups of people with a common issue have to have a political voice is that big governments give out special privileges to people, so every interest group has to lobby to get the privileges given to them instead of someone else. But if governments couldn't give special privileges to anyone, then nobody would have to lobby for them.
So 'unaccountable' does not equate to the European Parliament having no power to forward a bill while a group of twenty eight unelected Commissioners have the power under the treaty to meet behind closed doors and override in secret any decision of parliament at will and even bypass it altogether by issuing Commission Regulations?
This is nonsense. There are many, many regulations are driven by trade. There is no effective way to perfectly separate the economic from the political. People need to get a long and agree on many matters in order to trade. Getting people in line is politics, trade is economics, but they are two sides of the same process.
Globalism can't swing back full force because it was driven primarily by advances in technology that are not going to go away. The Internet is not going to disappear. Airplanes and ships and telephone lines and satellites are not going to disappear. From the human perspective, the world has shrunk permanently.
What we are seeing now is the backlash to that from an aging generation. I don't mean to be dismissive; their fears are real and legitimate from their perspective. But that perspective won't last forever. The vote pattern in Brexit was clear--young people, who have only ever known a small world, voted for the EU.
The next decade or two will be volatile (what decade isn't, really?). But globalism is here to stay.
It's far more real than national boundaries, BTW. This globe is humanity's only home, and it's up to us now to manage it. At some point we will grow as a species into accepting that.
Sure, a few countries will try to follow suit and try to leave the EU but imagine a future when, in a couple of years, Britain's economy has dropped below #10, unemployment is at an all time low, the deficit has ballooned, etc...
What do you think EU members will think by then? They will certainly want to stick around.
The bottom line is that the current decision was made by voters who are swayed by immigration and talking points from crafty politicians but who have little understanding of how global economy works.
It's obvious that open immigration was one of the main factors here. Something the "stay in the EU" supporters didn't really seem to address beyond "if you're against the free movement of people in Europe you're a racist". The US was a supporter for UK to stay in the EU but at the same time you don't see it opening its northern and southern borders for free movement of people. It's significantly more locked down than Europe was before the EU.
Another factor is the sluggish global economy. People are looking at that as a failure of globalization. Rightly or wrongly.
A random thought. Why should Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft, NetFlix, Amazon, Tesla, all be separate companies? They could get together and form, FTAGMNFAT Inc. They would share resources, IP, offices, etc. etc. Stop fighting with each other...
I guess one reason we feel this is stupid(?) is that we believe that competition encourages positive outcomes.
So how is this different when it comes to countries? Why is it inherently an economic advantage for the UK to be part of a bigger block? We consider small startups to be nimble and adaptive and big companies to be the opposite.
On one hand the anti-immigrant feelings reminds me of much darker days. On the other it seems chaos would reign if all world borders were abolished tomorrow. As an individual I like the idea of being able to live anywhere on this planet but I'm not sure how that idea scales especially given more and more people and seemingly less and less resources.
To address the immigration point. The UK has fewer migrants than Spain, Norway, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Latvia and many others; [1].
Roughly the same percentage as Germany, France and Iceland.
Why are the other countries much less worried about (legal) migration?
I think it comes mostly down to housing. The UK build ~400 thousand houses in 1971, but last year built 'just' ~140 thousand [2]. There is a huge shortage of housing, and the migrants are blamed for this.
Well, to start, immigrants are not counted from within EU countries in most polls for EU countries. A lot of the immigrants England received and had no choice in the matter were from Czech, Poland etc.
(BTW Switzerland also had a referendum where they decided to no longer take migrants in 2014)
If you get paid €10 an hour and your neighbor makes £10 an hour. Who makes more money (and always has for the past 40 years)?
If you are getting paid 10¥ and your neighbor is making £10 then yes, the yen is comparatively worthless as a wage.
Money does work like that when you are talking about an actual comparable wage. The pound and euro are much more comparable because you could get the same job for the same number, just in a currency that is worth more so you can send some back to your home country.(like many Immigrants do in many host countries)
Switzerland is also a continental country, you can literally walk to it if you were so inclined from any of the EU nations (except the UK and Republic of Ireland) and not spend a penny to get there.
It is mainly common sense vs what people feel is right, really.
Why do my neighbor and I happen to make the same numeric value per hour? I live in the US, so I drink a gallon of water a day. If I move to France, does that mean I should cut back to 1 liter per day?
While I, and probably who you are replying too, agree with you, it simply does not work that way. An easy way to see it is look at the price of computer components in USD and GBP or euro. You will see many with the same or very similar numerical values despite the fact that that the US is drastically cheaper considering the actual currency values
Yeah, see my reply to your sibling comment. I was so distracted by the "same" that I didn't think about how prices of goods in other countries are often so high that the numbers do get close (i.e. a $100 widget will just happen to cost about £100 or 100€).
When I lived in Deutschland, I would almost always shop on Amazon.com in lieu of shopping at Amazon.de (Amazon.co.uk is even more heinous), because the numerical value is almost always the exact same with a different sign and my Euro paycheck would go much further. With prime, shipping was free albeit it would take longer to get to me.
Thanks, that analogy does help. I got caught up with your numbers being exactly the same, and inferred a misunderstanding on your part that you don't hold.
How did you do that? You have to pay customs if you order from germany at amazon.com and shipping is not free to germany, not even with Prime, it's rather expensive.
I am an American and so had a previously existing account with Amazon.com. I had it shipped to a friend at a military base in Frankfurt and I just popped down from Berlin to pick them up once I had a small stockpile.
> Why are the other countries much less worried about (legal) migration?
Don't generalise. Some of these countries are very worried as well. And if they are given the chance to vote, the results would be certainly similar - see the recent (EU unrelated) politic votes in those countries.
Re. countries vs corporations: countries in isolation make laws for themselves (consumer protection, long-term economic protection, etc.), whereas corporations must abide by the laws of their host countries (hence tax evasion via incorporation in accommodating countries). If two countries start to compete, there isn't really anything that stops them from annihilating one another in disturbing fashions (e.g. erecting walls, slinging propaganda, blockading, etc.) other than treaties. Get enough treaties together and you get the EU.
> If two countries start to compete, there isn't really anything that stops them from annihilating one another in disturbing fashions (e.g. erecting walls, slinging propaganda, blockading, etc.) other than treaties.
Or literally annihilating each other, with bombs, for that matter. Thankfully not likely to happen anytime soon in Europe, but in general, conflicts between countries have no limit to how far they can escalate, unlike between corporations...
This is critically important. The EEC and eventually EU came directly out of two incredibly destructive wars on the European continent. If corporations came to that, the leaders of whoever survived hopefully would evaluate the externalities of escalating competition and decide to take the safer route of closer economic bonds.
I'd suggest that it is not treaties that lead to good trans-national relations. TTIP, CETA, and the WTO treaty are examples of modern controversial treaties and treaties historically have been viewed as a very negative outcome for one of the nations.
What leads to good trans-national relations? Open borders. Because when the people of the two nations can visit, live, work, stay, build a house, settle down with a spouse and enjoy life in either country, the countries have a very hard time becoming hostile to one another.
That then leads to a completely separate question about the loss of cultural diversity, but I will not go there.
I only suggest that strong nations with open borders become friends.
> open immigration was one of the main factors here. Something the "stay in the EU" supporters didn't really seem to address beyond "if you're against the free movement of people in Europe you're a racist".
Remain addressed it like this: Since the 'leave' side still want to be in the single market, they must also keep the free movement of labour, which is a prerequisite of the market.
It's only stupid for companies to be conglomerated from the perspective of those outside it, but it's to the interest of every entity to hold monopolyish power and bully the small. The rest of the nation or world may feel that monopolies, cartels, and conglomerates lead to more harm than good, but I think it's locally rational for power and money to concentrate into a few decision-makers.
If you were correct, it would never make sense to do a spin-off or to outsource anything. Agility gets lost when a company goes large, and its internal structure changes. Your views are typical for someone who looks at companies as a black box without considering their internal structure.
I live in California. If I want to move to NJ, I just pack my bags and go. That's freedom of movement. If I want to sell something to New Hampshire, I just do it. Why shouldn't France and Germany be the same way?
Okay, so you can move from California to NJ. Great. But you can't have single payer healthcare in either place because Florida and Texas don't want it. California and NJ can't have effective gun control or close their borders to guns because of Virgnia and Tennessee. Or, we go back a few years: you get DOMA in California and New York because that's what Alabama and Louisiana want.
We're talking about freedom of movement between countries. A state is not a country. Why shouldn't all countries be like states? We can all hum John Lennon's Imagine there's no countries but I'm not sure how that actually works. I'm sure you can at least see some difficulty there and definitely there is a strong sentiment in parts of the US against this vision.
Why shouldn't Canada and the USA be the same? Why shouldn't Mexico, and Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and Brazil, and the USA, and Canada be the same?
If you want to move to Montreal or Mexico City or Beijing you can't just pack your bags and go. You can still sell something to all these places, manufacture them in all these places, etc. At least generally speaking.
There are many advantages to having the government closer to the people. Having a smaller sect of the world population means officials are more likely to listen to the populace.
Very similar reasons why (many) people like working for small businesses and start-ups vs. multinational corporations...they know their boss and their boss's boss. When upper management makes a decision they actually have to speak with all the people it effects, which tends to make them empathize and make more employee-centric decisions.
But competition between companies is justified precisely because employees can freely and easily move between them. It's very different from countries: As a rule, people are stuck in the country they happen to live, especially when free movement is restricted. Free trade and free movement of workers need to go together. This principle is fundamental to a fair globalisation.
Can you just pack up and move to Google? No. They need to want to hire you. This is not completely unlike needing to meet some immigration standards to move to another country. Free immigration, in the sense of the EU, would be the equivalent of people deciding they want to work for Google and they just show up and claim a cubicle.
You can visit other countries as a tourist, even for relatively extended periods... You can buy property in other countries. You can start a business in another country... What's the corporate equivalent?
The comments on the article seemed surprisingly good.
Anyway, if you build a global system, it will only be sustainable if it actually serves the interest of the general public. A global capitalist system that serves moneyed interests and screws over the middle class and working class is one that will be volatile and upended at times, and some of that will be in entirely misguided directions.
Sorry, but what did Merkel expect what would happen after she invited everyone from Africa and the Middle East to immigrate to the EU?
She didn't ask her population if they support this, let alone the other countries within the EU.
What kind of democracy is this where one person can decide on her own how the future of a continent will look like?
The funny thing is that she actually still wants to force mass migration to the EU down our throats, even after this disastrous result in the UK. Seems like our elite is absolutely incapable of learning.
Not that I think it should be decided any other way, but I'm curious what the error bars would look like for the vote. 51.9 to 48.1 is pretty damn close. I would find it kind of funny if the p-value for data backing such an important decision was too low for a scientific paper on just the possibility.
Though with over 70% participation it's probably still sufficient even for those standards.
At the risk of generalizing, most of us reading this are of above-average intelligence, and have the ability to cope and thrive in a globalized world. We probably have more in common with the global elites than we do with the "lumpen proletariat", and most of us are probably nett beneficiaries of immigration. But a bit of empathy is in order. It's telling that Blair points out Eastern European EU migrants contribute more in taxes than they take out in welfare payments, while ignoring the effect they have on wages.
The dominant education narrative in the last few decades in the West has been envy of countries like China, Japan and Singapore, with (allegedly) superior education systems. The subtext being that intellectual achievement is the primary means of determining one's worth (or you will be "left behind"), with no recognition that many people just aren't capable of meeting standards set in cram schools on the other side of the planet. People who are not as capable intellectually are being increasingly marginalized in the quest to drive wages down for non-knowledge work. It's difficult to raise a family as a bus driver, a plumber, a cleaner or a shop assistant if your wages are being undercut by migrants, or (soon) by robots. It's tough to run a corner shop if you are undercut by migrants who, due to the need to remit money, are driven to sacrifice quality of life by keeping their shops open 24x7. The elites, by virtue of being elites, have been able to con working people to vote against their own interests for decades, and put open borders and free trade above all else; and their arrogance has blinded them to the fact that the masses would eventually cotton on to the game.
I am as horrified as anyone about the closing of minds and the rise of populism in the West. But I'm not surprised by it.
If the worker cannot move to the factory, the factory moves to the worker.
That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.
Those problems need solutions. But I'm not convinced that getting rid of migrants will improve things. For the most part it just changes the place "where stuff happens".
We had this revolution in the UK, and yet unemployment is at record lows[1]. Aren't migrants taking jobs?
(Not sure about earnings though.)
> If the worker cannot move to the factory, the factory moves to the worker.
> That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.
Factories need far fewer workers nowadays, due to continual improvements in technology. Globalization is already in retreat, but factory jobs are never coming back.
Automation is not an all-or-nothing thing, in the long term jobs are lost, but over the short term automation has the effect of making jobs shittier. Labor becomes more and more fungible.
The only people willing to do such shitty work are going to be those intensely motivated to do it, i.e. migrants. So they get scapegoated.
Welfare initiatives like basic income will be tried but won't really have a huge impact on the squeezing of the middle class. Automation hasn't yet provided enough of a surplus to really provide for middle class lifestyles and won't for years. What it will do is take some of the pressure off of lower class existence.
What we're going to see is greater geographical concentration of the classes. The middle class is going to have to start doing what the lower class has long gotten used to, moving to areas of greater opportunity.
Only stunning if you're totally invested in the status quo and can't conceive of any alternative reality where the people who haven't benefited from your schemes finally call you to task.
I'm sorry but 2016 is the year the establishment got it very wrong and didn't learn its lessons. Yeah, it's not over yet.
That is so true, and the same thing seems to go on even after the vote.
If I had had a vote in Britain, I would have voted Remain, but I'm not surprised at all by the result and I even see many upsides in it although difficult times are surely ahead for all of EU because of this. But perhaps difficult times are what is needed to find a new direction - is this a project for United States of Europe, or a common market for European nations?
Most major politicians as well as major media outlets - from NY Times to HuffPo to most European government broadcasters - have been painting a picture where the leavers are stupid, uneducated, old, xenophobic racists for expressing their concerns about continued integration towards a federal European government, instead of a common market, and ever-rejoiced multiculturalism in form of immigration that should be unrestricted.
What are you going to get out of that? You'll get angry people. Angry people who still have a vote, however much you dislike their having a vote. You won't get people who embarrassedly rue their previous opinions and nicely behave the way you want. Rather to the contrary: the campaign on the Remain side - as so many other campaigns - that tries to strengthen the feeling of solidarity in their own bubble simply miscalculated, and it backfired big time.
I suspect that the isolation of people, created by social media - Facebook friend selection, Twitter mobs etc - has strengthened a phenomenon where people cannot understand others who have different problems and different opinions from their own.
This could be a result of many, many people de-friending others for just having a different political opinion.
"The lasting effect, however, may be political, and with global implications. If the economic shocks continue, then the British experiment will serve as a warning. But if they abate, then populist movements in other countries will gain momentum."
The phrase "stunning coup" for a major, usually unexpected, success for the party pulling it off (and often an upsetting one for opponents) is common and does not derive from the use of "coup" as short for the phrase "coup d'etat".
"If the economic shocks continue, then the British experiment will serve as a warning. But if they abate, then populist movements in other countries will gain momentum.
> But if they abate
Ummm that means economically it's all ok, just a bit or nervousness on the markets. Sooooo they made a ok decision but not yours so it's bad?
If there's some sort of morality outside of economics then he should have spelt it out. Britain can still allow immigrants so not sure what this is supposed to mean.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadGet back to jp morgan for some more cash you filthy liar, Blair.
http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-chart/ https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/ https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/74560291412360396
Oh, by "people", did you mean "privileged westerners"?
The "people" also saw no benefit from desegregation if you define "people" to be "white people".
It's not necessarily the case that the benefits of globalism could only come with the costs of globalism. Yes, neoliberal global capitalism was better than the imperialism that came before it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have fatal shortcomings that are coming to a head.
After a solid year of being told that not voting for Bernie makes me a pro-globalization racist, and being told that questioning the EU makes me an anti-globalization racist, I'm kinda burned out. I've just accepted that people on the Internet are going to call me racist no matter what.
Sadly, I just don't care anymore. I mean... on a substantive level I still do, and I still hold the same left-leaning principles that I held a year ago. But I no longer feel the same wince of recoil at hearing the word "racist" anymore. The current climate is pure histrionics, and people have cried wolf enough times to leave me numb.
Obviously, the commenter was referring to the "people" who live in the UK and voted yesterday. I mean... duh. Regardless of one's position on Brexit one way or the other, this retort was absurd.
I "get" the racist part (as in I get the causal structure in other people's brains that makes them come up with this, not that I agree with it), but not the pro-globalization part. Bernie Sanders was pretty vocal about his voting record on free trade (NAFTA, etc.), which he was consistently against.
(Although there is no shortage of people who will say that Bernie voters were privileged and racist for their condescension toward the black vote too. The fact that you can include or omit the "not", and people don't notice, kinda underscores the point.)
And it is funny how it sounds like a call for political correctness. From a point of the political spectrum that usually despises it.
Instead, the poster is saying that they just aren't listening anymore.
I think globalization played a big part.
I get it. If the UK didn't buy into the Euro (and retained fiat currency) and didn't buy into the schengen, what exactly were they getting from EU membership minus encroachment on sovereignty?
Edit: since joining the EU, Britain has known nothing but austerity. Whether or not that had anything to do with EU membership, you can see how it was blamed, yes?
That's assuming that it remains just as easy to do so, which seems unlikely given immigration was part of what was driving the leave vote. Even if it is still easier in absolute terms for someone in the EU to work in the UK than the US, the lowered differential could have pretty negative effects on the market for high-demand jobs.
Membership of the EEA provides both:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.ht...
"The purpose of the European Economic Area (EEA) is to extend the EU’s internal market to countries in the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). These countries either do not wish to join the EU or have not yet done so."
"The EEA incorporates the four freedoms of the internal market (free movement of goods, people, services and capital)"
Which is basically what the people of the UK chose in 1975 with the EEC, before it grew into the EU.
Re: Austerity/neoliberalism, that's got very little to do with the EU and a lot to with Thatcher being elected in 1979, with the only non-Conservative government since then being Tony Blair - who wasn't exactly economically left wing.
When you're looking to blame someone for recent suffering, it doesn't so much matter the actual cause, so much as the perceived...
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USTypBKEd8Y
The 40 years of EU membership have, for the most part, been good [1]. The austerity stuff is a post 2008 thing.
[1] - http://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/real...
Front National congratulated, Geert Wilders (PVV, Netherlands) thinks the Netherlands should have such a referendum too, and the PVV was elected 3rd strongest party in the elections 2012 and is currently ahead in many polls (next election before April 2017).
Just a thought: ISIS is not stupid, if they are able to strategically make another terrorist attack months ahead of the French elections, what party will that help? The Front National does have a chance of winning, even if for now it seems unlikely, but hey, who would have thought Trump could win the the Republican nomination half a year ago?!
Anti-Islam sentiment will result in more people fighting for ISIS, re-nationalisation will make the War on Terror less organized, focus will shift from fighting smart and doing so heads on to isolation and protectionism.
Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) in Germany, anti-EU sentiment from the CSU (sister party of the CDU (Merkel's party) in Bavaria), Austria came close to electing an anti-European right-wing president... The PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid - Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, and in countries where the EU-hate is not coming from the right side, it often comes from the left.
The sentiment for Re-nationalisation is a widespread phenomenon.
We can discuss all we want about how the EU failed, but to say Britain in this case is not an important example of what can happen in other European countries is naive... I don't want to paint the devil onto the wall, but look in history how often times "we stumbled into war"[1] - I don't think we are there yet, just to make my point - never underestimate what can happen and looking at all the facts, we have all the reasons in the world to (at the very least) worry.
[1] To stay in Europe: Also consider the Nato/Europe-Russia conflict, East Ukraine...
Britain is yet to leave the EU, and we will probably end up with a leave in name only.
Why is it difficult? Think about a US state secession.
What if North Carolina decided to leave the US, imposed border controls, restricted the entry of US citizens, started drawing up its own regulations (totally different from the regulation from other states). The US would them impose tariffs.
Hard to see how NC's economy would thrive. (Not due to US malice, but just due to the various barriers that have been introduced.)
Leaving a political union like the EU compared to a state of the USA leaving the USA, apples and oranges! A state in the USA does not have a central bank, its own currency, such an independent (meaning the variety of businesses and services[1]) economy, its own military, its own intelligence agency, I could go on and on and on... you really can't compare that. The UK is a permanent member of the UN security council(!), among many other things.
[1] The UK has agriculture, technology companies, a well developed banking sector, car industry, steel industry, all kinds of services, its own telephone and broadband companies, and and and...
Edit: Your comparison is closer to possible Scottish Independence, though even here the circumstances are different in some crucial areas, for example the EU could be willing to have Scotland as a member state, Scotland could adopt the Euro, Scotland was part of the EU (so it's not like starting from scratch, Scotland basically follows some crucial EU regulations already), what would be the equivalent of such a path for a state in the USA that wants to leave the country? There is none.
The UK was completely independent 50 years ago -- that is, some people still working got their first job out of school when that was still the case. And it's not like it integrated with Europe overnight - or going to leave it overnight.
European's complete freedom of movement as we know it today is about 20 years old, not 50. I still had to go through border checkpoints in Europe less than 30 years ago. It was more of a formality even then, but the checkpoints were still there and operated. Half of today's Germany (the east) was, for most economical purposes, nonexistent at the time.
Only about 50% of the UK's export and import is with the rest of Europe. How much of NC's export/import balances are with the rest of the US?
(Bonus: Texas was, in fact, independent for a short while two centuries ago -- but otherwise you'll find NC is as (in)dependent as Texas on the rest of the US, in the ways that UK is not dependent on the EU.
Not only was the UK "completely independent 50 years ago", the UK (for the moment let's not care if the UK is a country or a political union) is a completely separate and independent(!)[1] country already and always has been. Parliament can do and undo any(!) law (the principle of "Supremacy of Parliament"), including all the laws that made UK a member of the EU to begin with and all further laws that tangled up the UK closer with the EU. The difficulty is in negotiating a viable exit strategy (because of economic and political consequences), but there is no dispute in the slightest, that the UK is (easily) able and has a full right to simply leave.
The UK always during the last 50 years was sovereign, with every new EU regulation that was "imposed upon them" (they were and are represented in EU parliament, it's not like they had not a say, democracy means compromise) they could choose. Of course having advantages means also accepting decisions of other states in some cases, but they always weighed pro and contra and never ever were obliged to stay. I am not exactly sure how the legal framework in the USA is (I understand it's a heavily federal system), but I doubt it's anyway near the situation of UK sovereignty.
The referendum was not needed, it's not even legally binding. Members of Parliament could have simply made the decision to leave at any given point in time.
[1] It's only not independent in the sense that it of course depends on surrounding countries regarding economic stability, so if one says the UK wasn't independent, then the same is true for any country that has any import/export to other countries and some trade agreements. And in that sense of course UK never was nor will be independent.
Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) did, and has been blogging about the reasons why for quite some time (http://blog.dilbert.com). Based on those same reasons, he also predicts a win for Trump in the general election.
Whether you agree with his points or not, he definitely provides some interesting food for thought (beyond just rah, rah, Trump, Make America Great Again, etc).
Poor countries got richer and rich countries didn't grow as much. It brings wealth to global businesses [Apple, Toyota, Siemens, etc.] But brought with it stagnant wages in developed nations [EU, US, JP, etc.] but wage growth in CN, IN, BR, ZA, etc.
Then you had the anti-WTO anti-globalization movement who sympathized with third world countries [because 'exploitation'] and were anti-big business and pro blue collar workers in developed nations --but how were those countries going to develop without globalization? And of course, anti-globalization also meant more nativism and non-westernization of developing countries... yet they were mostly pro immigration to developed nations [which goes against the don't dilute culture attitude for developing nations]
Schizophrenic.
(Genuine question. I can see some examples, such as the completely idiotic requirement that forces web sites to have those exceedingly irritating pop-ups for consent to have cookies. Whoever wrote that law clearly didn't understand how web sites work, socially.)
In terms of being a political union, the EU doesn’t even do that much. It does do some things, but those things tend to be overall small and also relatively uncontroversial.
The bulk of the work the EU does in “creating” rules in unifying regulations. For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation. Otherwise trade barriers would exist.
That means you have to write lots and lots of deadly boring regulation. And that’s what the EU did. Yawn. All a very technocratic process.
(I’m also not sure why you think people in Brussels are unaccountable. That’s such a cliché propaganda line with no basis in reality at all.)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=OJ%3AC%3A...
http://europa.eu/eu-law/index_en.htm
The Constitution for Europe alone is more than 400 pages. For comparison, the US Constitution is about 10. (Unfortunately the US legal code is probably as lengthy and baroque as the EU's by this point.)
> For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation.
No, you don't. Global markets existed before the EU and didn't need "unified regulation" (meaning regulation by politicians and bureaucrats, as opposed to regulation by the ordinary process of voluntary trade) in order to work. This idea that the only way to have common markets is by lengthy, boring political regulation is precisely the misconception I am arguing against.
Your view on this is hopelessly naive and really anti-intellectual and dishonest.
You're still assuming that countries have to set standards. Many standards are not set by countries at all; they are set by markets, by buyers and sellers realizing that a common standard is in both their interests and agreeing on one. (You are also assuming that it is always a good thing for the same product to be sold in both countries--that there can't possibly be good reasons why two different diameters might be used in different places. If standards are left to markets--i.e., to the people who are actually directly affected by what is bought and sold--then those kinds of issues take care of themselves.) Your view on this is hopelessly blinded by your assumptions.
You are living in a fantasy world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Electrical_Code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_In...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSF_International
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade_certification
What are these? They are just a few examples of private organizations that develop, maintain, and enforce unified standards for products, within the US and worldwide. There are many, many others.
> You are living in a fantasy world.
No, you are, with your belief that the only way to get unified standards--assuming that we are dealing with something that needs them--is for governments to set them. Governments can set standards, yes. But they are not the only way to set them. IMO they are usually the worst way to set them, because government officials have the least stake of all parties involved in making the standards the best ones possible.
"Harmonizing" of rules tends to take away rights from the general public - much more often than it does to give them.
If software patents get lobbied through a fully independent UK/GB/EN (whatever it ends up) government there will be less protest as there are less people to make a noise.
On the flip side I hope it makes people more politically active, if the EU isn't there to make the decision for you (in support or against) then it is left to the people of the independent country to influence their government.
Entering into that conversation whatever the issue can only help understanding and rational decisions.
This reminds me of the old joke about regular expressions, which I'll paraphrase thus: Someone has a problem, and they say, hey, I'll just get the government to fix it! Now they have two problems.
The only reason why small groups of people with a common issue have to have a political voice is that big governments give out special privileges to people, so every interest group has to lobby to get the privileges given to them instead of someone else. But if governments couldn't give special privileges to anyone, then nobody would have to lobby for them.
No, they don't. They only need to agree on what is being traded and at what price.
What we are seeing now is the backlash to that from an aging generation. I don't mean to be dismissive; their fears are real and legitimate from their perspective. But that perspective won't last forever. The vote pattern in Brexit was clear--young people, who have only ever known a small world, voted for the EU.
The next decade or two will be volatile (what decade isn't, really?). But globalism is here to stay.
It's far more real than national boundaries, BTW. This globe is humanity's only home, and it's up to us now to manage it. At some point we will grow as a species into accepting that.
Sure, a few countries will try to follow suit and try to leave the EU but imagine a future when, in a couple of years, Britain's economy has dropped below #10, unemployment is at an all time low, the deficit has ballooned, etc...
What do you think EU members will think by then? They will certainly want to stick around.
The bottom line is that the current decision was made by voters who are swayed by immigration and talking points from crafty politicians but who have little understanding of how global economy works.
Let's see what the situation is in 2018.
Another factor is the sluggish global economy. People are looking at that as a failure of globalization. Rightly or wrongly.
A random thought. Why should Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft, NetFlix, Amazon, Tesla, all be separate companies? They could get together and form, FTAGMNFAT Inc. They would share resources, IP, offices, etc. etc. Stop fighting with each other...
I guess one reason we feel this is stupid(?) is that we believe that competition encourages positive outcomes.
So how is this different when it comes to countries? Why is it inherently an economic advantage for the UK to be part of a bigger block? We consider small startups to be nimble and adaptive and big companies to be the opposite.
On one hand the anti-immigrant feelings reminds me of much darker days. On the other it seems chaos would reign if all world borders were abolished tomorrow. As an individual I like the idea of being able to live anywhere on this planet but I'm not sure how that idea scales especially given more and more people and seemingly less and less resources.
Roughly the same percentage as Germany, France and Iceland.
Why are the other countries much less worried about (legal) migration?
I think it comes mostly down to housing. The UK build ~400 thousand houses in 1971, but last year built 'just' ~140 thousand [2]. There is a huge shortage of housing, and the migrants are blamed for this.
[1] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/7/7...
[2] - http://imgur.com/OEP7Sm2
Being paid in pounds, would net you even more than average (for the EU) for low skill requirement jobs.
And what matters what currency you are paid in? If you want to compare salaries you use exchange rates.
(BTW Switzerland also had a referendum where they decided to no longer take migrants in 2014)
If you get paid €10 an hour and your neighbor makes £10 an hour. Who makes more money (and always has for the past 40 years)?
Regarding the pound thing. Money does not work like that.
For example 1 ¥ (Japanese Yen) is worth £ 0.0071. Is the Yen worthless?
Money does work like that when you are talking about an actual comparable wage. The pound and euro are much more comparable because you could get the same job for the same number, just in a currency that is worth more so you can send some back to your home country.(like many Immigrants do in many host countries)
Switzerland is also a continental country, you can literally walk to it if you were so inclined from any of the EU nations (except the UK and Republic of Ireland) and not spend a penny to get there.
It is mainly common sense vs what people feel is right, really.
Yeah, see my reply to your sibling comment. I was so distracted by the "same" that I didn't think about how prices of goods in other countries are often so high that the numbers do get close (i.e. a $100 widget will just happen to cost about £100 or 100€).
Maybe that analogy will help.
Don't generalise. Some of these countries are very worried as well. And if they are given the chance to vote, the results would be certainly similar - see the recent (EU unrelated) politic votes in those countries.
Re. countries vs corporations: countries in isolation make laws for themselves (consumer protection, long-term economic protection, etc.), whereas corporations must abide by the laws of their host countries (hence tax evasion via incorporation in accommodating countries). If two countries start to compete, there isn't really anything that stops them from annihilating one another in disturbing fashions (e.g. erecting walls, slinging propaganda, blockading, etc.) other than treaties. Get enough treaties together and you get the EU.
Or literally annihilating each other, with bombs, for that matter. Thankfully not likely to happen anytime soon in Europe, but in general, conflicts between countries have no limit to how far they can escalate, unlike between corporations...
What leads to good trans-national relations? Open borders. Because when the people of the two nations can visit, live, work, stay, build a house, settle down with a spouse and enjoy life in either country, the countries have a very hard time becoming hostile to one another.
That then leads to a completely separate question about the loss of cultural diversity, but I will not go there.
I only suggest that strong nations with open borders become friends.
Remain addressed it like this: Since the 'leave' side still want to be in the single market, they must also keep the free movement of labour, which is a prerequisite of the market.
Integration is not without costs.
Why shouldn't Canada and the USA be the same? Why shouldn't Mexico, and Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and Brazil, and the USA, and Canada be the same?
If you want to move to Montreal or Mexico City or Beijing you can't just pack your bags and go. You can still sell something to all these places, manufacture them in all these places, etc. At least generally speaking.
Very similar reasons why (many) people like working for small businesses and start-ups vs. multinational corporations...they know their boss and their boss's boss. When upper management makes a decision they actually have to speak with all the people it effects, which tends to make them empathize and make more employee-centric decisions.
That's the difference. US is a monetary and fiscal union that has free movement of labor and capital. The EU cannot only be the latter.
Has California ever invaded NJ?
Do California and NJ even speak the same language?
Hmm...it's not thst easy as packing your bags and moving
You can visit other countries as a tourist, even for relatively extended periods... You can buy property in other countries. You can start a business in another country... What's the corporate equivalent?
Anyway, if you build a global system, it will only be sustainable if it actually serves the interest of the general public. A global capitalist system that serves moneyed interests and screws over the middle class and working class is one that will be volatile and upended at times, and some of that will be in entirely misguided directions.
She didn't ask her population if they support this, let alone the other countries within the EU.
What kind of democracy is this where one person can decide on her own how the future of a continent will look like?
The funny thing is that she actually still wants to force mass migration to the EU down our throats, even after this disastrous result in the UK. Seems like our elite is absolutely incapable of learning.
This is why the EU will fail.
Though with over 70% participation it's probably still sufficient even for those standards.
The dominant education narrative in the last few decades in the West has been envy of countries like China, Japan and Singapore, with (allegedly) superior education systems. The subtext being that intellectual achievement is the primary means of determining one's worth (or you will be "left behind"), with no recognition that many people just aren't capable of meeting standards set in cram schools on the other side of the planet. People who are not as capable intellectually are being increasingly marginalized in the quest to drive wages down for non-knowledge work. It's difficult to raise a family as a bus driver, a plumber, a cleaner or a shop assistant if your wages are being undercut by migrants, or (soon) by robots. It's tough to run a corner shop if you are undercut by migrants who, due to the need to remit money, are driven to sacrifice quality of life by keeping their shops open 24x7. The elites, by virtue of being elites, have been able to con working people to vote against their own interests for decades, and put open borders and free trade above all else; and their arrogance has blinded them to the fact that the masses would eventually cotton on to the game.
I am as horrified as anyone about the closing of minds and the rise of populism in the West. But I'm not surprised by it.
If the worker cannot move to the factory, the factory moves to the worker.
That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.
Those problems need solutions. But I'm not convinced that getting rid of migrants will improve things. For the most part it just changes the place "where stuff happens".
We had this revolution in the UK, and yet unemployment is at record lows[1]. Aren't migrants taking jobs? (Not sure about earnings though.)
[1] - http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-...
> That is the way of the world, and it causes many problems.
Factories need far fewer workers nowadays, due to continual improvements in technology. Globalization is already in retreat, but factory jobs are never coming back.
Automation is not an all-or-nothing thing, in the long term jobs are lost, but over the short term automation has the effect of making jobs shittier. Labor becomes more and more fungible.
The only people willing to do such shitty work are going to be those intensely motivated to do it, i.e. migrants. So they get scapegoated.
Welfare initiatives like basic income will be tried but won't really have a huge impact on the squeezing of the middle class. Automation hasn't yet provided enough of a surplus to really provide for middle class lifestyles and won't for years. What it will do is take some of the pressure off of lower class existence.
What we're going to see is greater geographical concentration of the classes. The middle class is going to have to start doing what the lower class has long gotten used to, moving to areas of greater opportunity.
I'm sorry but 2016 is the year the establishment got it very wrong and didn't learn its lessons. Yeah, it's not over yet.
If I had had a vote in Britain, I would have voted Remain, but I'm not surprised at all by the result and I even see many upsides in it although difficult times are surely ahead for all of EU because of this. But perhaps difficult times are what is needed to find a new direction - is this a project for United States of Europe, or a common market for European nations?
Most major politicians as well as major media outlets - from NY Times to HuffPo to most European government broadcasters - have been painting a picture where the leavers are stupid, uneducated, old, xenophobic racists for expressing their concerns about continued integration towards a federal European government, instead of a common market, and ever-rejoiced multiculturalism in form of immigration that should be unrestricted.
What are you going to get out of that? You'll get angry people. Angry people who still have a vote, however much you dislike their having a vote. You won't get people who embarrassedly rue their previous opinions and nicely behave the way you want. Rather to the contrary: the campaign on the Remain side - as so many other campaigns - that tries to strengthen the feeling of solidarity in their own bubble simply miscalculated, and it backfired big time.
I suspect that the isolation of people, created by social media - Facebook friend selection, Twitter mobs etc - has strengthened a phenomenon where people cannot understand others who have different problems and different opinions from their own.
This could be a result of many, many people de-friending others for just having a different political opinion.
Either they lose or we all lose.
So it's not surprising at all.
> But if they abate
Ummm that means economically it's all ok, just a bit or nervousness on the markets. Sooooo they made a ok decision but not yours so it's bad?
If there's some sort of morality outside of economics then he should have spelt it out. Britain can still allow immigrants so not sure what this is supposed to mean.