5 ms·

I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the differenc

I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the difference between that and where the UK is (less growth, more inflation etc) is Brexit. Unless there is some pressing reason to think otherwise? I don't accuse you of this but plenty of brexiteers seem to want to hide in the "we'll never know if it was a good idea because there is no perfect counterfactual" fallacy. It should not be tolerated.

throwaway22032 3y ago
This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.
- aunty_helen 3y ago
  True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      To me, brexit was a self imposed broken leg. The best that can be said is "technically our squats haven't gotten worse because not being able to do them means they are just null, no like 0s".
      - throwaway22032 3y ago
        If that's your opinion then obviously the entire discussion is null and void :)
mike_hearn 3y ago
Where do you see less growth? The reason people don't try to separate out the factors like that is because if you do, the results are that Brexit had no measurable negative impact. It only actually took place for real in Feb 2020 and then there was a transition period for about a year, so the impact was drowned by lockdowns. See for yourself: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&stackMode=relative&country=GBR~OWID_EU27~DEU~FRA~ESP~ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... If you looked at those growth numbers having never heard of Brexit you'd have no clue anything UK specific had happened (virtually indistinguishable from e.g. Spain). Even if we restrict to only exports, the huge dip occurs at the exact same time it does for every other country in Europe (lockdowns). By the middle of 2022 exports have caught back up to where they'd have been without COVID (extrapolated). There's been a dip again since then, but that's clearly driven by the economy and inflation/energy prices given the timing. The GFC and lockdowns were major impacts. Leaving the EU doesn't even seem to show up in comparison. It's worth asking why the economic predictions were so far off here. In hindsight it shouldn't be surprising because EU membership was never that significant to the British economy, despite what was routinely claimed during the campaigns. The UK is a much more heavily services oriented economy than the EU "core" countries, and the EU never really got anywhere with its attempts at a single services market (arguably deliberately). The single market made it easy for Germany/France to sell into the UK, but didn't make it easier for the UK to sell into France/Germany. And of course trade is still happening at significant levels, it's not like leaving the EU meant cross-border trade dropped to zero, it just added some paperwork. There's also the unfortunate fact that economists were exaggerating deliberately, especially when they claimed that merely voting to leave would have instant and massive negative effects. As Paul Krugman put it: https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/the-macroeconomics-of-brexit-motivated-reasoning/ https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/0... What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that it will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility.
- LatteLazy 3y ago

throwaway22032 3y ago

This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.

aunty_helen 3y ago
True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
LatteLazy 3y ago
I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    To me, brexit was a self imposed broken leg. The best that can be said is "technically our squats haven't gotten worse because not being able to do them means they are just null, no like 0s".
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      If that's your opinion then obviously the entire discussion is null and void :)

mike_hearn 3y ago

Where do you see less growth? The reason people don't try to separate out the factors like that is because if you do, the results are that Brexit had no measurable negative impact. It only actually took place for real in Feb 2020 and then there was a transition period for about a year, so the impact was drowned by lockdowns. See for yourself: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&stackMode=relative&country=GBR~OWID_EU27~DEU~FRA~ESP~ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... If you looked at those growth numbers having never heard of Brexit you'd have no clue anything UK specific had happened (virtually indistinguishable from e.g. Spain). Even if we restrict to only exports, the huge dip occurs at the exact same time it does for every other country in Europe (lockdowns). By the middle of 2022 exports have caught back up to where they'd have been without COVID (extrapolated). There's been a dip again since then, but that's clearly driven by the economy and inflation/energy prices given the timing. The GFC and lockdowns were major impacts. Leaving the EU doesn't even seem to show up in comparison. It's worth asking why the economic predictions were so far off here. In hindsight it shouldn't be surprising because EU membership was never that significant to the British economy, despite what was routinely claimed during the campaigns. The UK is a much more heavily services oriented economy than the EU "core" countries, and the EU never really got anywhere with its attempts at a single services market (arguably deliberately). The single market made it easy for Germany/France to sell into the UK, but didn't make it easier for the UK to sell into France/Germany. And of course trade is still happening at significant levels, it's not like leaving the EU meant cross-border trade dropped to zero, it just added some paperwork. There's also the unfortunate fact that economists were exaggerating deliberately, especially when they claimed that merely voting to leave would have instant and massive negative effects. As Paul Krugman put it: https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/the-macroeconomics-of-brexit-motivated-reasoning/ https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/0... What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that it will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility.

LatteLazy 3y ago