4 ms·

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 fi

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 3y ago
The conditions existed long before Brexit, _and_ Brexit made it materially worse
- gghhzzgghhzz 3y 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 3y 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.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      Isn't that why UK is easing migration conditions from Africa and Asia now? To cover the shortage left by the EU migrants? A friend of mine who just moved to the UK, went to a migrant GP who barely spoke English and was googling his symptoms to give him a diagnostic lol. No idea how he was allowed to practice medicine in the UK but it's terrifying.
      - rich_sasha 3y ago
        Well, quite. But it seems that, for whatever reason, the migrant workers (or, you know, expats as we'd say if it were the English going abroad) tend to be lower-skilled and, as you say, often their command of the local language is questionable. It's not a dig at people from Africa and Asia in any way, but the selection bias is obvious.
    - gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
      > NHS and schooling are among the top problems in the UK right now. Add social care for the elderly and agriculture but free trade / free movement just papered over the actual issue. You can temporarily use a form of economic imperialism to bring in people to run key services in your country for lower wages, but if won't solve the real issue and won't last forever, because it only 'works' between countries with relative unequal economies. It also does not compensate the donar country for the large issues it creates there. Key workers are not being paid anywhere near enough to compensate for their importance to the country and to the economy, we are not valuing them no matter where they come from, and we are not training and recruiting enough people locally. Until this changes, then people are not going to come here to work in the NHS, child care etc. Free movement or not. This issue was coming sooner or later, in some sectors Brexit has highlighted it. If you want more people to come work here, then support the strikes. EDIT. in addition, good quality child care should be provided free by the state, it is a massive benefit to the economy and to society. That's another core issue that was never addressed while we were inside the EU, nor is it (yet) being addressed outside it.
      - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
    People trade to make money. They don't generally do it to achieve political or social goals. Saying that cutting ourselves off from our main trading partners is "an opportunity to assess what we are trading and why" is like saying that cutting off your legs is an opportunity to assess where we were walking and why.
    - gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
      Indeed. People do individual things. Governments implement policy (or at least should) to make sure these individual things are within the overall goals and policy objectives they have been elected on, and for the good of the whole of the country. Hence you have trade agreements and tariffs, tax, environmental regulations etc. And trade isn't always good. If you are exporting then you are using your own resources (human, minerals, environment) etc to do work for others. This may work for you at an individual level, but it may not work for the country. Four examples from the UK 1) Welsh Lamb. It is produced at great cost to the hill environment, including habitats and the knock on effects of flooding downstream. It was exported to the EU, while we were importing lamb from New Zealand to eat. 2) Fishing. Many of the fish caught in UK waters were exported because we were not used to eating them, while we were importing fish that we were used to eating. Individual fishermen probably did 'ok' out of this system, the companies above them doing much better. But coastal communities were not thriving, they were categorised as some of the poorest areas in the EU. Fishing didn't contribute to a sustainable environment for coastal communities. Then there is the environment, fishing stocks, discarded fishing gear etc. 3) Cars. This is a bit more difficult to solve, but we seem to spend endless resources in the EU and UK producing as many cars as possible. Despite them barely being used (a car sits idle 97% of the time) other than to financially cripple the owners. A car is very inefficient way to travel in the most populated places in the UK. Yet we have built our services around it, and continue to over produce millions of the things every year. Who is benefiting from this approach, rather than proper investment in a first class public transport system and associated planning system? 4) The drug trade. This is a trade full of highly skilled and resourceful people, it generates billions in complex imports and exports and logistics. This is good trade? No of course not.
      - 3y ago
tonfreed 3y ago
From what I've read, Scotland is pretty much insolvent and still has generous social programs because England keeps them afloat.
- gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
  Well that is the story that those who don't want to see Scottish Independence will push. It's a colonial argument. It's a very narrow view of wealth flows, looking at the bigger picture then more flows back the other way. e.g. See the example of Strathclyde Police Training and Recruitment Centre here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/16/the-burden-of-financialisation-a-case-study-of-a-scottish-police-training-centre/ https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/16/the-burden-of...
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  North Sea oil is Scottish oil.

mkoubaa 3y ago

The conditions existed long before Brexit, _and_ Brexit made it materially worse

gghhzzgghhzz 3y 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 3y 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.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    Isn't that why UK is easing migration conditions from Africa and Asia now? To cover the shortage left by the EU migrants? A friend of mine who just moved to the UK, went to a migrant GP who barely spoke English and was googling his symptoms to give him a diagnostic lol. No idea how he was allowed to practice medicine in the UK but it's terrifying.
    - rich_sasha 3y ago
      Well, quite. But it seems that, for whatever reason, the migrant workers (or, you know, expats as we'd say if it were the English going abroad) tend to be lower-skilled and, as you say, often their command of the local language is questionable. It's not a dig at people from Africa and Asia in any way, but the selection bias is obvious.
  - gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
    > NHS and schooling are among the top problems in the UK right now. Add social care for the elderly and agriculture but free trade / free movement just papered over the actual issue. You can temporarily use a form of economic imperialism to bring in people to run key services in your country for lower wages, but if won't solve the real issue and won't last forever, because it only 'works' between countries with relative unequal economies. It also does not compensate the donar country for the large issues it creates there. Key workers are not being paid anywhere near enough to compensate for their importance to the country and to the economy, we are not valuing them no matter where they come from, and we are not training and recruiting enough people locally. Until this changes, then people are not going to come here to work in the NHS, child care etc. Free movement or not. This issue was coming sooner or later, in some sectors Brexit has highlighted it. If you want more people to come work here, then support the strikes. EDIT. in addition, good quality child care should be provided free by the state, it is a massive benefit to the economy and to society. That's another core issue that was never addressed while we were inside the EU, nor is it (yet) being addressed outside it.
    - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  People trade to make money. They don't generally do it to achieve political or social goals. Saying that cutting ourselves off from our main trading partners is "an opportunity to assess what we are trading and why" is like saying that cutting off your legs is an opportunity to assess where we were walking and why.
  - gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
    Indeed. People do individual things. Governments implement policy (or at least should) to make sure these individual things are within the overall goals and policy objectives they have been elected on, and for the good of the whole of the country. Hence you have trade agreements and tariffs, tax, environmental regulations etc. And trade isn't always good. If you are exporting then you are using your own resources (human, minerals, environment) etc to do work for others. This may work for you at an individual level, but it may not work for the country. Four examples from the UK 1) Welsh Lamb. It is produced at great cost to the hill environment, including habitats and the knock on effects of flooding downstream. It was exported to the EU, while we were importing lamb from New Zealand to eat. 2) Fishing. Many of the fish caught in UK waters were exported because we were not used to eating them, while we were importing fish that we were used to eating. Individual fishermen probably did 'ok' out of this system, the companies above them doing much better. But coastal communities were not thriving, they were categorised as some of the poorest areas in the EU. Fishing didn't contribute to a sustainable environment for coastal communities. Then there is the environment, fishing stocks, discarded fishing gear etc. 3) Cars. This is a bit more difficult to solve, but we seem to spend endless resources in the EU and UK producing as many cars as possible. Despite them barely being used (a car sits idle 97% of the time) other than to financially cripple the owners. A car is very inefficient way to travel in the most populated places in the UK. Yet we have built our services around it, and continue to over produce millions of the things every year. Who is benefiting from this approach, rather than proper investment in a first class public transport system and associated planning system? 4) The drug trade. This is a trade full of highly skilled and resourceful people, it generates billions in complex imports and exports and logistics. This is good trade? No of course not.
    - 3y ago

tonfreed 3y ago

From what I've read, Scotland is pretty much insolvent and still has generous social programs because England keeps them afloat.

gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
Well that is the story that those who don't want to see Scottish Independence will push. It's a colonial argument. It's a very narrow view of wealth flows, looking at the bigger picture then more flows back the other way. e.g. See the example of Strathclyde Police Training and Recruitment Centre here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/16/the-burden-of-financialisation-a-case-study-of-a-scottish-police-training-centre/ https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/16/the-burden-of...
theGnuMe 3y ago
North Sea oil is Scottish oil.