Tony Blair: Brexit’s Stunning Coup
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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)?
Maybe that analogy will help.
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€).
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.
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.
Integration is not without costs.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
I think globalization played a big part.
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.
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?
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...
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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
So it's not surprising at all.
Either they lose or we all lose.
> 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.
Though with over 70% participation it's probably still sufficient even for those standards.
Get back to jp morgan for some more cash you filthy liar, Blair.