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A lot of commenters are obsessed with just finding money. You can't eat money. You can't build a house out of it (advisably). Money is only as valuable as the

A lot of commenters are obsessed with just finding money. You can't eat money. You can't build a house out of it (advisably). Money is only as valuable as the amount of stuff in an economy. More money with the same amount of stuff is just inflation. The Pound does not need more inflation. Money and trade are only valuable in so much as they aid exchange and efficiency. On a real, practical-level Brexit made England materially poorer. There are a lot of export commodities they no longer have a market for. And there are a lot of markets they can no longer import from cheaply. You can do what you want to make the distribution more equal, but it can also be true that the pie is smaller for everyone.

krona 4y ago
> There are a lot of export commodities they no longer have a market for Exports to the EU hit a record high in the summer of 2022, which ironically, was mainly because of commodities. Who'd have thought? https://www.ft.com/content/47fe0d2a-6e87-4f30-8212-3b37f7f099e4 https://www.ft.com/content/47fe0d2a-6e87-4f30-8212-3b37f7f09...
- eightysixfour 4y ago
  I can’t access the FT article - is that in inflation adjusted/real terms? I know that in 2022 as a whole their trade deficit with the EU broadly increased in size and percent.
- guardiangod 4y ago
  https://www.export.org.uk/news/631720/UK-trade-deficit-with-EU-hits-record-high-according-to-latest-ONS-data.htm#:~:text=The%20UK's%20trade%20deficit%20with,in%20imports%20from%20the%20EU https://www.export.org.uk/news/631720/UK-trade-deficit-with-.... In total, imports from the EU, excluding precious metals, hit £82bn whilst exports to the EU were valued at £49.2bn. This represents an increase of 7.5% in imported goods and a decrease of 6.1% in exports. The UK’s total imports of goods decreased by £3.5bn (-2.1%) in Q4 2022 compared with Q3. Goods imports from non-EU countries fell in this time period (10.4%). Exports of goods over the same period decreased by £4.5bn (4.5%), with exports to both the EU and non-EU countries falling.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Money is only as valuable as the amount of stuff in an economy. More money with same amount of stuff is just inflation." What if the number of people in the country's economy significantly changes, up or down? Nothing? Can one simply ignore this variable or should it be part of the analysis? Perhaps there is a hidden assumption here that it is held (more or less) constant. NB. "stuff" can be natural resources, or other products not produced by human labour
- falcolas 4y ago
  Economists keep chiding us about how that will ruin the economy too. They tell us our population must keep growing to keep the economy healthy.
  - dkqmduems 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Isn't this just an example of how the economy is a legitimized Ponzi scheme?
    - acjohnson55 4y ago
      Yeah, sort of. We're also counting on increases in productivity. Although these have also not been forthcoming.
    - lofatdairy 4y ago
      Not really, insofar as that early buyers aren't paid out w the entry of new participants with the absence of any real productive usage of capital. It's more that firms invest in production with the expectation for demand to increase, and outside of increased per capita spending, the main contributor to that effect would be simply more participants in the market. The expectation is obviously somewhat self-serving, but there isn't the sort of hollowness as you would get in a Ponzi Scheme. The system itself would still work so long as population growth slowly came to a halt rather than collapsed and firms observed such trends.
gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago
The issue isn't about Brexit making the country materially poorer, the conditions existed long before Brexit, it's the main reason for the Brexit vote in the first place. Sure we can trade a bit more, but when the whole economy is financialised to a massive degree, then any benefits of that trade (if that trade outweighs the negative effects) are funnelled through a long standing system of extracting profit and concentrating wealth. there's pretty much nothing you can do in your private or public life that doesn't result in a net transfer or wealth from the household, the local economy or from public funds, through a highly complex system of extraction. So not only has people's purchasing power gone down, because purchasing power is relative to the money you have vs the money others have, but also basic services have just gone away from being free at the point of use. And what is free at the point of use is both low quality (so you are incentivised to pay to get a better service), and is again a black hole of public money being funnelled away thus reducing your purchasing power.
- mkoubaa 4y ago
  The conditions existed long before Brexit, _and_ Brexit made it materially worse
  - gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago
    I'm not convinced about that. This worship of free trade we had was completely unrestricted. A lot of trade was completely decoupled from any real benefit or political or social project or any environmental concerns. If KPIs from trade and financial services are the main thing that are measured, then you will always end up with trade for trade's sake. “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” Brexit has delivered an opportunity to assess and understand what we are trading and why.
    - rich_sasha 4y ago
      Brexit has exacerbated at least 2 industries due to labour shortages - and probably more. These in turn translate into materially worse conditions for everyone. First one is childcare. Nurseries and preschools were full of nice, dedicated people from Europe working for modest wages - for one reason or another they were happy with it. They have mostly gone home, or return soon after coming. I see this first-hand. I had to take my daughter from an increasingly understaffed nursery, with a staff turnover of, dunno, 100-200%, to a much more expensive one, staffed by very nice and very good English people, but costing 50% more. Other parents at the original nursery are told to take their kids away or accept a 30% day rate increase effective immediately. Schools are short-staffed for similar reasons. Schools are on strike for the 5th time this year, I believe, exacerbated by low staffing and overworked teachers. The parents of the grounded children won't make it to work today. Some of these people not coming to work will cause other people to not make it to work - there are train cancellations near me due to parents taking time off work to cover school strikes. The other is the NHS. Again, this was largely running on highly qualified staff from the EU. They are, also, mostly gone. And NHS complaint #1 in my area isn't actually pay, it's the insane working conditions caused by understaffing. NHS and schooling are among the top problems in the UK right now. Add social care for the elderly and agriculture, both running off immigrant workforce, and I'll say with confidence Brexit made it all much worse.
makomk 4y ago
It's not even Brexit really - the whole of Europe is poorer on a real, practical level because its economies cannot produce the same amount of stuff. Brexit put some additional barriers to exporting and importing stuff from Europe, but generally speaking the main reason imports aren't available cheaply is because the supply isn't there for anyone and export markets are mostly going away because there's no longer the same market for those goods or services full stop.
- legitster 4y ago
  Although a political disaster, France's pension reform did not happen out of the blue. The country is facing a real demographics disaster and milking a few extra years out of their working age population will not be enough to head off the problem that they are simply not going to have economic productivity to support their population comfortably.
  - soco 4y ago
    The pension system mathematics is based on a certain age pyramid. If that pyramid changes - which it did and does - you need to change something. So the French may go on the streets until forever, money in the pension system still cannot come out of the pen of the president. Now if they want to change the system itself including its mathematics, that's another story but I don't think it was even touched (and I'm not aware of any other alternatives some other place either)
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> A lot of commenters are obsessed with just finding money. Right and wrong. We are maybe obsessed with finding money to transfer instead of decreasing standards of living of the average person. The key is in your last sentence: > You can do what you want to make the distribution more equal, but it can also be true that the pie is smaller for everyone. Exactly! If you have 9/10th of the original pie and the rest of us are sharing 1/10th, then when the pie gets smaller it makes sense to keep our meager share numerically the same by giving us some of your share of the reduced pie. That is not equal distribution, but it needn't be! In the economic sense this would mean taxing richer people more to fund social safety nets, while increasing interest rates to cool inflation. Lord Fotheringay will just have to make do with one less Bentley.
seydor 4y ago
Money is zero sum and it determines who owns the 'stuff'. Higher wages mean working-age generations are able to generate some wealth whereas until now only older generations could, as their assets continuously appreciated without losing value due to inflation. I see the whole thing as intergenerational conflict. Pre-genX'ers went through a period of high inflation, which was also one of historically low inequality, followed by a period of very low inflation and very high inequality. This enabled them to accumulate and maintain vast wealth. Now post-genX'ers think it is their turn. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yonatan-Berman/publication/301591761/figure/fig10/AS:362300671315981@1463390619907/Historical-economic-inequality-in-the-US-The-Wealth-blue-and-labor-income-orange.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yonatan-Berman/publicat...
- sdwr 4y ago
  Totally agree, love the perspective. But while money is zero-sum, velocity of money is not. It takes trust to spend on investments or services. Less "stuff" happening means everyone loses.
- gilbetron 4y ago
  I like your analysis, but I love how it leaves GenXers out of the picture. Typical.
  - seydor 4y ago
    they never had any hope
rhaway84773 4y ago
There’s also a lot of productive work that used to be done in the UK that the UK has no workers for anymore. I suspect in the short term this has hurt the UK’s wealth and standard of living more than anything else. Fewer doctors, nurses, vegetable pickers, butchers, cleaners, etc means that less productive work is being done in your country, and the few remaining workers to do that will now charge a lot more money since they have to take on more responsibility and have to pay more for everything for all the other workers who are also charging more money. So even as your wages go up, your standard of living doesn’t. Food for thought for all those decrying immigration in a country with less than 5% unemployment (and especially in an industry where the people in the US commonly tout how software devs in the US are paid higher than devs anywhere else in the world).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

krona 4y ago

> There are a lot of export commodities they no longer have a market for Exports to the EU hit a record high in the summer of 2022, which ironically, was mainly because of commodities. Who'd have thought? https://www.ft.com/content/47fe0d2a-6e87-4f30-8212-3b37f7f099e4 https://www.ft.com/content/47fe0d2a-6e87-4f30-8212-3b37f7f09...

eightysixfour 4y ago
I can’t access the FT article - is that in inflation adjusted/real terms? I know that in 2022 as a whole their trade deficit with the EU broadly increased in size and percent.
guardiangod 4y ago
https://www.export.org.uk/news/631720/UK-trade-deficit-with-EU-hits-record-high-according-to-latest-ONS-data.htm#:~:text=The%20UK's%20trade%20deficit%20with,in%20imports%20from%20the%20EU https://www.export.org.uk/news/631720/UK-trade-deficit-with-.... In total, imports from the EU, excluding precious metals, hit £82bn whilst exports to the EU were valued at £49.2bn. This represents an increase of 7.5% in imported goods and a decrease of 6.1% in exports. The UK’s total imports of goods decreased by £3.5bn (-2.1%) in Q4 2022 compared with Q3. Goods imports from non-EU countries fell in this time period (10.4%). Exports of goods over the same period decreased by £4.5bn (4.5%), with exports to both the EU and non-EU countries falling.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Money is only as valuable as the amount of stuff in an economy. More money with same amount of stuff is just inflation." What if the number of people in the country's economy significantly changes, up or down? Nothing? Can one simply ignore this variable or should it be part of the analysis? Perhaps there is a hidden assumption here that it is held (more or less) constant. NB. "stuff" can be natural resources, or other products not produced by human labour

falcolas 4y ago
Economists keep chiding us about how that will ruin the economy too. They tell us our population must keep growing to keep the economy healthy.
- dkqmduems 4y ago
  [flagged]
- dylan604 4y ago
  Isn't this just an example of how the economy is a legitimized Ponzi scheme?
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    Yeah, sort of. We're also counting on increases in productivity. Although these have also not been forthcoming.
  - lofatdairy 4y ago
    Not really, insofar as that early buyers aren't paid out w the entry of new participants with the absence of any real productive usage of capital. It's more that firms invest in production with the expectation for demand to increase, and outside of increased per capita spending, the main contributor to that effect would be simply more participants in the market. The expectation is obviously somewhat self-serving, but there isn't the sort of hollowness as you would get in a Ponzi Scheme. The system itself would still work so long as population growth slowly came to a halt rather than collapsed and firms observed such trends.

gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago

The issue isn't about Brexit making the country materially poorer, the conditions existed long before Brexit, it's the main reason for the Brexit vote in the first place. Sure we can trade a bit more, but when the whole economy is financialised to a massive degree, then any benefits of that trade (if that trade outweighs the negative effects) are funnelled through a long standing system of extracting profit and concentrating wealth. there's pretty much nothing you can do in your private or public life that doesn't result in a net transfer or wealth from the household, the local economy or from public funds, through a highly complex system of extraction. So not only has people's purchasing power gone down, because purchasing power is relative to the money you have vs the money others have, but also basic services have just gone away from being free at the point of use. And what is free at the point of use is both low quality (so you are incentivised to pay to get a better service), and is again a black hole of public money being funnelled away thus reducing your purchasing power.

mkoubaa 4y ago
The conditions existed long before Brexit, _and_ Brexit made it materially worse
- gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago
  I'm not convinced about that. This worship of free trade we had was completely unrestricted. A lot of trade was completely decoupled from any real benefit or political or social project or any environmental concerns. If KPIs from trade and financial services are the main thing that are measured, then you will always end up with trade for trade's sake. “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” Brexit has delivered an opportunity to assess and understand what we are trading and why.
  - rich_sasha 4y ago
    Brexit has exacerbated at least 2 industries due to labour shortages - and probably more. These in turn translate into materially worse conditions for everyone. First one is childcare. Nurseries and preschools were full of nice, dedicated people from Europe working for modest wages - for one reason or another they were happy with it. They have mostly gone home, or return soon after coming. I see this first-hand. I had to take my daughter from an increasingly understaffed nursery, with a staff turnover of, dunno, 100-200%, to a much more expensive one, staffed by very nice and very good English people, but costing 50% more. Other parents at the original nursery are told to take their kids away or accept a 30% day rate increase effective immediately. Schools are short-staffed for similar reasons. Schools are on strike for the 5th time this year, I believe, exacerbated by low staffing and overworked teachers. The parents of the grounded children won't make it to work today. Some of these people not coming to work will cause other people to not make it to work - there are train cancellations near me due to parents taking time off work to cover school strikes. The other is the NHS. Again, this was largely running on highly qualified staff from the EU. They are, also, mostly gone. And NHS complaint #1 in my area isn't actually pay, it's the insane working conditions caused by understaffing. NHS and schooling are among the top problems in the UK right now. Add social care for the elderly and agriculture, both running off immigrant workforce, and I'll say with confidence Brexit made it all much worse.

makomk 4y ago

It's not even Brexit really - the whole of Europe is poorer on a real, practical level because its economies cannot produce the same amount of stuff. Brexit put some additional barriers to exporting and importing stuff from Europe, but generally speaking the main reason imports aren't available cheaply is because the supply isn't there for anyone and export markets are mostly going away because there's no longer the same market for those goods or services full stop.

legitster 4y ago
Although a political disaster, France's pension reform did not happen out of the blue. The country is facing a real demographics disaster and milking a few extra years out of their working age population will not be enough to head off the problem that they are simply not going to have economic productivity to support their population comfortably.
- soco 4y ago
  The pension system mathematics is based on a certain age pyramid. If that pyramid changes - which it did and does - you need to change something. So the French may go on the streets until forever, money in the pension system still cannot come out of the pen of the president. Now if they want to change the system itself including its mathematics, that's another story but I don't think it was even touched (and I'm not aware of any other alternatives some other place either)

quadrifoliate 4y ago

> A lot of commenters are obsessed with just finding money. Right and wrong. We are maybe obsessed with finding money to transfer instead of decreasing standards of living of the average person. The key is in your last sentence: > You can do what you want to make the distribution more equal, but it can also be true that the pie is smaller for everyone. Exactly! If you have 9/10th of the original pie and the rest of us are sharing 1/10th, then when the pie gets smaller it makes sense to keep our meager share numerically the same by giving us some of your share of the reduced pie. That is not equal distribution, but it needn't be! In the economic sense this would mean taxing richer people more to fund social safety nets, while increasing interest rates to cool inflation. Lord Fotheringay will just have to make do with one less Bentley.

seydor 4y ago

Money is zero sum and it determines who owns the 'stuff'. Higher wages mean working-age generations are able to generate some wealth whereas until now only older generations could, as their assets continuously appreciated without losing value due to inflation. I see the whole thing as intergenerational conflict. Pre-genX'ers went through a period of high inflation, which was also one of historically low inequality, followed by a period of very low inflation and very high inequality. This enabled them to accumulate and maintain vast wealth. Now post-genX'ers think it is their turn. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yonatan-Berman/publication/301591761/figure/fig10/AS:362300671315981@1463390619907/Historical-economic-inequality-in-the-US-The-Wealth-blue-and-labor-income-orange.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yonatan-Berman/publicat...

sdwr 4y ago
Totally agree, love the perspective. But while money is zero-sum, velocity of money is not. It takes trust to spend on investments or services. Less "stuff" happening means everyone loses.
gilbetron 4y ago
I like your analysis, but I love how it leaves GenXers out of the picture. Typical.
- seydor 4y ago
  they never had any hope

rhaway84773 4y ago

There’s also a lot of productive work that used to be done in the UK that the UK has no workers for anymore. I suspect in the short term this has hurt the UK’s wealth and standard of living more than anything else. Fewer doctors, nurses, vegetable pickers, butchers, cleaners, etc means that less productive work is being done in your country, and the few remaining workers to do that will now charge a lot more money since they have to take on more responsibility and have to pay more for everything for all the other workers who are also charging more money. So even as your wages go up, your standard of living doesn’t. Food for thought for all those decrying immigration in a country with less than 5% unemployment (and especially in an industry where the people in the US commonly tout how software devs in the US are paid higher than devs anywhere else in the world).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]