How about some metrics on issue that led to Brexit?
I don't know if average Londoners can still afford authentic Polish sausages, but if they can't, I hope the original commenter is happy now.
Those sausages have only become less affordable.
IMF figures for 2025:
87% GDP per capita PPP, 50% nominal GDP per capita
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
Source?
The top three GDP per capita are: Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Bermuda. The bottom three are: Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sedan. As an average person I would rather live in the top countries of the list than the bottom but that's just anecdote.
And yeah, if you study GDP its easy to see it’s a giant scam and the economy cannot be put into numbers. Qualities are better than quantities
You'll need to have some sources for that!
Even if it was really meaningful, by the simple Cobra effect it would be made meaningless
Edit: For an average person its not always true that an illusion of prosperity is always good. Eventually there might be a payback for all this capital.
The world has never seen an explosion in prosperity, and reduction in poverty, like the post-WWII and post-Cold War years, and it was accomplished via free markets, trade, etc. (not perfectly or exclusively, of course). Look at S Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, China, India - like nothing the world has ever seen. Billions lifted from poverty.
Look at Western Europe after the absolute destruction of two world wars, and compare their recovery with places that did not follow the path of free markets and trade.
You can have a rich elite and a high GDP, but that doesn't mean the common people are doing as well as the GDP suggests.
A good example of this is Ireland. It has a huge GDP. 129,132$ per capita. It's the 3rd richest country in the world if you look at it like that (Liechtenstein and Luxembourg are first and second).
But do you think the average Irishman actually makes 129,132$ per year? No. Ireland is a tax heaven and its artificially inflated by tax shenanigans from foreign multinationals.
There are other reasons why absolute GPD is bullshit. Even PPP GDP is a little bullshit.
It has many flaws, but can you name a better one?
> that doesn't mean the common people are doing as well as the GDP suggests.
Nobody who understands GDP would say everyone is doing as well (or poorly) as GDP suggests. Some people do better, some worse.
But people in places with higher GDP reliably do better. Visit a poor or middle-income country; the difference is unmistakeable and this debate becomes absurd.
Inequality is a major problem in high-GDP countries; that doesn't mean GDP is meaningless.
For example, based on GDP/capita:
- The United States outrank the Netherlands.
- The United Arab Emirates outrank Italy.
- Puerto Rico outranks South Korea.
- Saudi Arabia outranks Japan.
You'll see that immigration was at record levels post Brexit.
Not that it solved the issue of jobs, social housing or housing prices of course.
Yes, let’s see some details on that.
Right have been removed from tens of millions of Brits (some like Farage have kept their European citizenship but most have had it taken away)
I’m still waiting for a benefit.
Why do people always focus on food in these discussions? It's such a weak argument.
Something the GP omitted: Recently, weren't there supply and inflation issues regarding food?
Of course, many in the land of kidney pies might be just as happy either way. :)
From a US perspective, the supply and inflation issues regarding food were primarily focused on eggs, and the problem resolved itself as soon as companies stopped killing chickens due to whatever avian flu was going around. That being said, it might be different for the land of kidney pies, I'm not sure.
Also, I should've been clearer in my original comment. I usually hear the whole "but what about the food?" argument from people who are just upset that deportation of illegals will make their favorite empanada restaurant close, or who argue that the original food of a place is terrible and by introducing migrants of legal or illegal status, then everything (culinary scene & life in general) will magically become better.
Not that it matters for immigration policy, but Britain's food was greatly improved by immigration; it's not magic. In the US it's hard to say because, other than things like corn and bison, etc., all cuisine is from immigrants!
I do have contempt for illegals and the people in the countries where they're illegally present who care about them and stymie attempts to remove said illegals. It's a gross violation of the social contract and I'm tired of people just hand waving it away like it's no big deal and we just have to accept it.
>Not that it matters for immigration policy, but Britain's food was greatly improved by immigration
I agree with you that it doesn't/shouldn't matter for immigration policy, but at the same time I've heard this argument used by people who brand themselves as pro-immigration as a reason why we can't do anything about illegal immigrants because if they're deported, who will cook their unique cuisine?
You might see others acting with contempt - the more you see it, the more you need to stand up for something better.
Brexit can be a bad idea and at the same time the GP can have a good point about globalization.
downvotes ahoy
The vast majority of people arriving from Nigeria and India do so on visas, and would have near zero chance of getting asylum claims approved.
Also a lot of regular Brits have moved abroad. Dyson who famously advocated for brexit to help Britain moved to Singapore, my friends have moved to France, Portugal, Spain and Dubai.
Where would that be? The Stuart heir isn't interested in the job, and Divine Intervention probably isn't on the table. Reform Party? Oh, come on...
The EU is still a major trading partner, and regulatory divergence would kill trade, not increase it.
Elsewhere, the only way fewer regulations would increase GDP would be if the UK was selling goods and services that benefited from lower standards.
It already does that, because tax evasion and money laundering are a significant part of GDP.
But there are very, very few areas in normal international trade where buyers want to see looser regs and lower standards.
As an argument, it's just incoherent.
Speaking from finance view, the trade from Britain has been moving capital out for years. Not in. The stock market has shrunk,
If real deregulation comes at some point, maybe the curve changes. That remains unlikely, however, given to export anything the UK would have to meet their importers’ (read: America and Europe’s) standards.
(The benefits of deregulation are absolutely swamped by the benefits from trade. This inequality grows the smaller your economy is relative to your trading partners’.)
I would say a real problem is how current administration is fighting against immigrants at the moment.
Statistically, illegal immigrants behave better than american citizens. Less burden to the budget either as they are cut off from public services.
It's a fucking mystery, isn't it ...
But it was idiocy to not set those kinds of terms out before the vote.
I think the thing is a bit of a travesty though. At the time of the vote, the apathetic who didn't bother voting were about 60% remain so the overall balance of the population was pro remain but it got forced through for better or worse, probably worse.
The core problem here, and pretty much everywhere else, is rising inequality. We have seen a truly massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich (either directly or via the government) and we're rapidly reaching the point where the poor simply won't have anything left.
Post-GFC austerity measures have been an abject failure. Successfully blaming those failures on immigration (as what became the Reform movement did) directly led to Brexit because neoliberalism in the UK is uniparty. So here we are where Nigel Farrage is odds on favorite to be the next Prime Minister of the UK (barring whatever leadership coups take place in Labor in until the next election, at least 1 of which is expected).
So the problems of neoliberalism are blamed on migrants. There is no counter-narrative to that. So we see a rise in isolationism and nationalism. And nothing improves. Well done, the system works.
What I find particularly fascinating is that many who push this agenda fetishize the 1950s (particularly in the US), which is funny because there was vastly less inequality and the marginal tax rate (in the US) was 91%.
Switzerland and Norway have better navigated being on the edge of the EU but not in it. But Norway has vast oil reserves (and, to their credit, is using them for a sovereign wealth fund instead of minting a handful of billionaires). Switzerland was the banking center but is really losing that title. Britain was once the heart of a vast empire and it too is a financial hub and a center for international money laundering (ie real estate) but, much like Switzerland, it doesn't really produce anything anymore.
That's what the fascists always have said.
The post-neoliberals have created even more inequality, and openly oppose any efforts to fix it. The US government is still trying to disrupt food programs for the hungry.
> There is no counter-narrative to that. So we see a rise in isolationism and nationalism.
Few argue for a counter-narrative, but there are plenty. One is that almost everyone in the US is in a family of immigrants. The economic counter-narrative is overwhelming. Also economics is not a zero-sum competition - it's not beggar-thy-neighbor: If your neighbor does well, you do well - they are your employers, customers, employees, lenders, borrowers, renters, etc. Fewer neighbors is a smaller, slower economy.
In theory, any new country joining the EU has to switch to the common currency, the Euro, something the UK was able to gain an exemption from while still a member along with Denmark, Sweden and a handful of others, a long time ago when the Euro was first introduced.
This has always been an issue when discussing Scottish independence too, given the SNP have always claimed Scotland could rejoin the EU and keep the pound; the EU has always said otherwise.
> https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...
But to join the Euro, it is a requirement to be a member of ERM II for 2 years, and Sweden argues that that is voluntary, and just haven't done it.
You're right that Denmark has an opt-out, though.
What good is 8% higher gdp if that only belongs to richest. A lower gdp but higher wages is a win for the average citizen and a loss for the banking class.
Brexit was a loss for the banking class but win for the average person.
That has not been my experience, and I haven't seen any data to support your statement. Please feel free to provide sources.
Please share your experience how have things turned worse for you. When did it happen?
Have you already forgotten about the Boris Bus, or him being publicly censured by the ONS (and then carrying on with the same lies)?
my wealth is reduced
Impressive feat.
Nevertheless they got the opposite of what they voted for, besides lower GDP and investments.
> 64% of over-65s voted for Brexit - compared with 71% of under-25s who voted Remain
Source and more context: "Vince Cable: Young 'shafted' over Brexit" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40842017
If not, how do you define what a democratic country “deserves”?
This is deepening as people with either are now leaving in droves...
Of course it's tosh, and it unravels as soon as the first horse spooks, but in the run up to the referendum people were making all sorts of stupid claims about what we'd be able to have. Remember Soft Brexit? The idea that the EU would give us favourable terms when we were in no position to negotiate? Absolute madness.
seems to be somewhat of a stretch
You can see all such claims are lies by just looking at the relevant graphs and comparing like with like. UK GDP has continued to track that of France. These are neighbors with similar economies, one in the EU and one out.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-p...
You could also compare to prior trajectory or look at trade impact.
This study doesn't do any of those things. It makes up a convoluted economic simulation and compares against that, with "uncertainty" being a major component. It's the same technique used to predict a recession immediately following the 2016 vote that would cause 800,000 job losses. No recession happened and employment numbers hit record highs. The prior failure of economic forecasting doesn't stop them from doing it again, with full confidence.
The establishment tell these lies about Brexit for the same reason they doctor video footage of Trump. They staked their credibility on these things being a disaster, and when the sky didn't fall it shook their worldview. Letting go of their prior beliefs is hard because the updates required would affect everything, so some of them decided that maybe if they lie hard and often enough they can live in the fantasy forever.
I think that is a bit disingenuous
- Good exports are down significantly and exponentially while services exported are up significantly [1]. This has a massive impact on agriculture, fishing as well but it is its own can of worms historically.
- Migration between EU continues to drop and the promise that free movement would continue is not true [2]. There is a stagnation and decline in speciality medical jobs in the UK post Brexit [4] and a significant decrease in investment forecast and outrun [5]. These both have led to less than projected increases UK job numbers.
- The UK is now paying the EU £6.4bn a year for no benefit [3]
[1]: https://www.aston.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/Full%20R...
[2]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
[3]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65fc4485a6c0f...
[4]: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/has-brexit-affect...
[5]: https://www.camecon.com/hubfs/145725293/GLA_Impacts-of-Brexi...
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...
There is no divergence between goods exports between EU and non-EU after the end of the transition period. They continue to move in sync and certainly haven't "fallen exponentially". Therefore, this slight fall isn't due to Brexit. If you look at the graphs in (1) you can see that the big falls are things like textiles, footwear/headgear and "raw animal hides", which haven't been big exports from the UK for over a century!
Imports did diverge immediately after leaving, but got back in sync in around Jan 2023, so any effect was temporary (p11).
Services exports were totally unaffected by leaving. They continued to grow strongly on their prior trends after the hit caused by lockdowns (p13).
So the commentary in (1) is thus very misleading, but it's an academic paper so what do you expect. You can't rely on commentary from academics to understand this issue, they are driven by ideological agendas.
> the promise that free movement would continue is not true
Who do you think promised free movement would continue? Ending it was one of the goals of leaving.
> There is a stagnation and decline in speciality medical jobs in the UK post Brexit
The UK has been giving out visas to medical staff nearly for free for decades, there are tons of non-EU medical workers in the UK. What does this have to do with Brexit?
> The UK is now paying the EU £6.4bn a year for no benefit
I think that's not per year, it's an estimated total remaining intended to cover things like pension payments, and once paid (over a period of many years) it will stop being required. This number is much lower than what the UK paid as a member!
nrhrjrjrjtntbt•2mo ago
(Dont know... dont have too much dog in fight)
femiagbabiaka•2mo ago
A_D_E_P_T•2mo ago
Though I know yours is a rhetorical question, I'll answer: No. Brexit was essentially an anti-immigration and pro-deregulation movement. Simple small-c conservatism. (It was also anti-status-quo, but that was implicit.)
The, uh, "Conservatives" who were tasked with implementing Brexit supercharged immigration and, with considerable assistance from the EU, doubled down on ridiculous social and business regulations, paperwork, and red tape. There was no upside. They just made everything much worse. I know that they expected the Brexit vote to fail, and I think there's a term for their subsequent actions: "Malicious compliance."
Now England is a powder keg if there ever was one. If things are going to kick off, it'll happen there first. As Weimar as America is these days, England is worse.
TheOtherHobbes•2mo ago
It's how the ruling class works. They import cheap labour from the (former) colonies to drive down wages. Then they pay their puppet politicians to hyperventilate about how terrible immigration is, how filthy these foreigners are, and how it Must Be Stopped.
It's been happening for centuries - the same scam, over and over.
A_D_E_P_T•2mo ago
Estimates are that between 1870 and 1913 net emigration of British citizens averaged about 131,000 per year, i.e. more people left the UK than arrived:
>https://docs.iza.org/dp81.pdf
In the 1881 census of England and Wales, "natives of foreign states" were 174,372 people, just 0.671% of the population.
In the 19th century, England was a country of emigrants, with net migration at roughly -100k/year. From 2014–24, you're looking at typically +200k to +900k per year. This is totally unprecedented to put it mildly. And now, like it or not, I'm sure that things are going to get ugly.
throwawayqqq11•2mo ago
crote•2mo ago
This obviously led to a massive issue when they actually won: you simply can't have your cake and eat it - especially when it involves another foreign power! There is no universe in which it would've been possible for the UK to completely detach itself from all EU rules, while still retaining completely free transit of goods, while also taxing import certain goods for protectionist reasons. Similarly it was never going to be possible for UK citizens to retain unlimited visa-free travel to the Schengen area while retaining the possibility for the UK to arbitrarily block access to certain groups of EU citizens.
The most obvious example of this is Northern Ireland: you can't leave the Common Market, and keep an open border between NI and RoI (thus not blowing up the Good Friday agreement and not starting another civil war), and keep an open border between NI and GB (thus not partially giving up sovereignty and suggesting acceptance of a slow move towards a united Ireland). Failing to deliver on all three at once (as promised piecemeal by various pro-Leave people) isn't malicious compliance - it's reality. Something has to yield, and if you don't decide up-front you'll of course get a nasty surprise later on.
simonw•2mo ago
cedws•2mo ago
st1ck•2mo ago
simonw•2mo ago
Sadly my compatriots apparently didn't value that at all. It was barely an issue in the Brexit public discourse before the vote.
disgruntledphd2•2mo ago
alimw•2mo ago
mike_hearn•2mo ago
afroboy•2mo ago
simonw•2mo ago
I used to be able to move to France or Portugal or Germany with almost no bureaucratic overhead at all.
mike_hearn•2mo ago
I'm one of the few Brits that actually did move to Europe, specifically to Switzerland at a time when being in the EU didn't help, so I went through the usual immigration process. The paperwork wasn't an issue. 99% of the work was language learning and social integration. Hence why Anglophone countries get the bulk of the UK emigration.
ben_w•2mo ago
The "right to" something means an application process can't be refused by default.
mike_hearn•2mo ago
ben_w•2mo ago
Do you actually use the word that way? I have yet to meet anyone who has accepted such a use.
Using the word "right" in such an expansive way would be saying that I have both a right to Californian food stamps and Norwegian child benefits and a Chinese pension; as a Brit living in Germany, I assert that this is a silly use of the word "right".
You can't spell "birthright" without "right". I don't have the "right" to become US president because I was not born there. And yet, changing the USA's constitution has a "usual process that is otherwise required" — the fact that it is so does not mean I can reasonably say that I have the "right" to become a president of the USA.
The fact is, before Brexit, any Brit could freely travel around and relocate to the other EU countries for any reason. No visa requirements which you could fail. Student with no income? Sure. Builder needing a job, as per plot of UK comedy series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, despite low pay in this profession? Again, fine. Pensioner with no job? Also fine. Musician with expensive instruments? No need to prove you're not actually importing them to the EU. Truck driver making a delivery? Just cross the border, make sure you know which side of the road to drive on.
Going from the UK to the rest of the EU used to be as easy as if you were going from England to Wales.
Now, it isn't.
mike_hearn•2mo ago
1. You can only stay for three months. After that, at least in some states, you have to prove you can financially support yourself and family if you want to stay, i.e. you need to find a job pretty fast.
2. You can be refused if you have committed a crime.
For instance this is true of Germany. It's easy to fail these requirements. However you can't lose the right to live where you're born.
The reason not many people cared is that this requirement isn't much different to normal visa rules for most Brits. If you don't have a job and you move somewhere, you need to find someone to hire you fairly fast which means but you wouldn't have time to become fluent in the language unless for some reason you already were (not true of nearly all Brits). You can do it if you have specialized skills that compensate for non-fluency. But if you have specialized skills you can probably convince a company to hire you ahead of time, and that usually unlocks a visa anyway.
There are edge cases where this right is useful, but there aren't that many, which is why it didn't come up much ten years ago and why so many Brits move to non-EU countries.
ben_w•2mo ago
Yes you can. And many have.
> The reason not many people cared is that this requirement isn't much different to normal visa rules for most Brits. If you don't have a job and you move somewhere, you need to find someone to hire you fairly fast which means but you wouldn't have time to become fluent in the language unless for some reason you already were (not true of nearly all Brits). You can do it if you have specialized skills that compensate for non-fluency. But if you have specialized skills you can probably convince a company to hire you ahead of time, and that usually unlocks a visa anyway.
1. I literally listed examples with no income in that list.
2. You'd be amazed how much English is spoken in Berlin. Even political slogans, so you'll get the point of e.g. this even if you don't translate it/understand German: https://made-in-germany-2030.de
This is even a point of contention, for obvious reasons.
3. That it's a small number who cared (though 48% voting for anything it isn't what I'd call a "small"), doesn't mean you're using "right" correctly.
If Texas seceded from the US, their citizens would (probably) lose the rights of US citizenship; if Ticino seceded from Switzerland, the rights of Swiss citizenship; if Scotland from the UK, UK citizenship. The British stopped being citizens of an EU nation, and consequently lost the rights that are afforded by treaty and which are broadly described as "rights of EU citizenship".
That you can get those rights back by going through a process of changing citizenship is what it means to have lost them in the first place.
mike_hearn•2mo ago
If you can support yourself off savings you don't need an income, which is why retirees can go to Spain. But you do need to be able to support yourself financially and without much time to do so.
I wouldn't be that amazed, given I've been to Berlin many times. Sure, you can go to big cities and then compete with locals for unskilled work without speaking the local language. You might be able to find temporary jobs where it's not strictly required. Most people don't want to do that.
> though 48% voting for anything it isn't what I'd call a "small"
But we're talking about moving abroad here. Of that 48%, 15% were primarily motivated by the false claims made about economic armageddon.
https://dominiccummings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/scree...
Only about 30% of the population actually supported the EU for any reason (we don't know which ones). If you could go back in time and tell people 10 years ago that leaving would have no impact on GDP, no impact on trade, and no impact on jobs, the vote would have gone to Leave by maybe 65-70% (rough guess, can't be bothered to recompute the numbers with the 9% of don't knows excluded).
> If Texas seceded from the US, their citizens would (probably) lose the rights of US citizenship
This is ultimately a not very interesting debate about the precise semantics of the word "right". In the past I've attended a lecture by a human rights lawyer who argued there might be actually no such thing as rights, because if you try and nail down the term to legal precision it always ends in a mess.
But OK - what rights would Texans lose? Citizenship is a status, not a right. The rights afforded by the Bill of Rights? Probably not unless secession involved rewriting the constitution from scratch. The right to move to California and live there? Unless it was a very nasty split they'd presumably retain the ability to apply for an H1B or green card, like anyone else.
Moving to the EU was never a right in the sense citizenship rights are, because the "right" to move to other EU countries was always contingent on massive monetary payments, and something you have to purchase isn't normally described as a right. A better analogy than Texas seceding is if someone walked into a shop and declared "I have the right to own this expensive watch". It would just confuse people to talk like that and they'd disagree with you, because you'd have to pay for it first. If you bought it and then said, "Now I have the right to this watch" you'd again be talking very unidiomatic English (at best).
That's just one reason the EU isn't a nation and never has been, despite how some people dream of one. A nation doesn't charge you a subscription fee to be a citizen of it. The EU does. It's why EU federalists talk about empires and colonies when they think nobody is listening.
ben_w•2mo ago
The UK explicitly gave up EU membership, so you can't play that card.
That said, other than wars, and other than the e.g. UK home secretary determining you're not allowed to have a UK citizenship any more because they recon you're entitled to another one so they're not bound by obligations to leave someone stateless, there's the specific example I gave:
Secession.
> But we're talking about moving abroad here. Of that 48%, 15% were primarily motivated by the false claims made about economic armageddon.
1. You're literally telling people who did the moving that our lived experiences don't matter. I'm reminded of US politicians who were against gay marriage responding to gay men who said they wanted the right to get married with "But you can get married, nobody's stopping you marrying any woman!"
2. I can also suggest a number of the 52% were primarily motivated by the false claims made about economic costs, c.f. that bus.
3. "False claims"? The GDP loss as per the linked article this entire thread is about, is 12-16 times higher than the UK's net contribution to the EU, which was about 0.5% GDP:
*The article under discussion itself that shows 6-8% GDP loss*: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34459/w344...
> Citizenship is a status, not a right.
Why do you insist that all the rights that in law depend on citizenship are not rights?
> Moving to the EU was never a right in the sense citizenship rights are, because the "right" to move to other EU countries was always contingent on massive monetary payments, and something you have to purchase isn't normally described as a right. A better analogy than Texas seceding is if someone walked into a shop and declared "I have the right to own this expensive watch". It would just confuse people to talk like that and they'd disagree with you, because you'd have to pay for it first. If you bought it and then said, "Now I have the right to this watch" you'd again be talking very unidiomatic English (at best).
Oh, now you care about "massive monetary payments"? Do you know how much it costs to become a UK or US citizen, all-in? Bearing in mind that you count the EU's net budget contributions (0.5% GDP) as "massive", you must surely agree to count the taxes these migrants have to pay, and in the UK's case the immigration health surcharge as part of that cost, not the ceremony, not even just that and visa fees, if you're counting the UK's net contribution to the EU budget, you have to count everything tax-like.
I wouldn't do this. So far as I'm concerned, the UK telling itself that EU citizen rights were not "rights" because they were "contingent on massive monetary payments" is like being someone who just became homeless because they voluntarily left home as a young adult on the grounds they didn't like their parents (i.e. you're allowed to, you did, what happens next is all your own responsibility) who is telling themselves that nobody had any right to a house anyway because to live in a house in the UK is "contingent on massive monetary payments" of "council tax" — council tax on A-band properties in the UK back then being approximately 3 times higher than the UK's net payments to the EU.
mike_hearn•2mo ago
> 1. You're literally telling people who did the moving that our lived experiences don't matter.
Where do I tell you your experiences don't matter? I myself moved to Europe from Britain! What I'm telling you is that very few people have our experiences. Settlement abroad might have mattered a lot to you or me, but it didn't matter to the vast majority of people. And that's just a fact, you can check in old polls from that time if you like. Freedom of movement only ever came up in the inbound direction.
> I can also suggest a number of the 52% were primarily motivated by the false claims made about economic costs, c.f. that bus.
It's disappointing that this comes up so often, ten years later. That was a true claim, a true cost. The belief it was the wrong number revolves around a net vs gross calculation and the gross number is correct. Net spending reflects the EU's priorities, not the priorities of locals. If I am forced to give you $100 and you use that to buy me something that cost $20, but I didn't want that thing, you don't get to claim I only spent $80. I'm still $100 down from where I wanted to be. If I quit that arrangement the $100 is a genuine saving.
> The article under discussion itself that shows 6-8% GDP loss
There has been no GDP loss. Please read the actual paper and evaluate it critically. It is, like all claims there has been a negative economic impact of leaving, a lie. There's a thread starting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45934061
This claim of economic harm comes up every few months and the underlying research is always like this. Usually they compare the UK against an insane counterfactual scenario, like assuming economic growth would have suddenly 3x-d out of nowhere after voting to Remain whilst the rest of the EU didn't. Or they compare the UK to a non-EU country like the USA and then say, UK growth would have matched if it had stayed in. Or they compare to a fictional country they made up on a spreadsheet (e.g. Goldman). The authors know all this is deceptive and they also know it works on people already predisposed to being fans of the EU, because they won't read any papers telling them what they want to hear.
> Why do you insist that all the rights that in law depend on citizenship are not rights?
This is another semantic problem. A status can lead to a "right" in law. The status itself is not the same thing as the right. The law can change to say "citizens no longer have a legal right to X" and that doesn't affect whether anyone is a citizen or not. The two things have to be kept separate.
I didn't follow your argument in the last few paragraphs. The British government gives people a home even if they don't/can't pay taxes. It costs a few thousand dollars to apply for citizenship normally in most countries, a one off payment that isn't a subscription fee. Once you paid you got it and won't lose it. The costs cover the processing, they aren't a general tax in the way EU membership fees were.
To recap:
1. There is no such thing as EU citizenship. It's not a country that can grant citizenship. You know this. It's just playing with words to pretend otherwise.
2. Citizenship is a status that can lead to "rights".
3. "Rights" should be put in quotes because it's a messy and misleading concept when you try to pin it down. A "right" is normally argued to be something inherent that can't be taken away from you, but what you're talking about was contingent on subscription payments. It was more accurately described as a purchase.
4. My argument about fees isn't contingent on how large they are. It's about definitions.
5. There was no economic loss to the UK from leaving. Claims to the contrary are always playing with numbers to try and sustain a deceptive and dishonest narrative, as all such economic narratives have been from the start.
dragonwriter•2mo ago
By action of the government of that place. Its kind of like asking how you go to prison without doing anything wrong; governments are neither universally well-intentioned nor infallible even when they are well-intentioned, so the outcome of their actions does not universally adhere to any idealistic set of standards of what should be.
epistasis•2mo ago
If you're younger, heeeeeeelllllllll no.
beejiu•2mo ago
Hits on GDP aren't felt equally across the population.
> Fewer workers in UK etc.
You mean fewer European workers. The UK has far more workers today since the post-Covid migration wave.
OliveMate•2mo ago
I can only give anecdotes, but the majority of the support I saw for leaving the EU wasn't rooted in hard economics – there were claims about doing our own free trade deals and having an extra £350 Million being spent on the NHS instead, but that was about it. A lot of support centred around how our culture & history ought to be perceived, limiting migration, and not having faith/trust in the EU and our Governments.
Again anecdotes, but the most common reprieve I hear from Leave supporters is that leaving would've been great if not for 1) the years of political deadlock 2) Johnson's deal being naff. For most of us life hasn't improved since leaving (the pandemic right after didn't help); and after the promises about the sunlit uplands if we left, I don't think anything short of a miracle would make it feel like it was worth it.
I think the only people who feel like it was worth it were those who voted Leave through a culture/prestiege lens and put the fact that we left above everything else.
hdgvhicv•2mo ago
Sabinus•2mo ago
hdgvhicv•2mo ago
He was ok with eu immigration but not non eu immigration, so he voted for less eu immigration.
ponector•2mo ago
In reality they voted to replace immigration from EU with immigration from other countries. I guess it is better for UK culture to have more Asian people instead of European.
mike_hearn•2mo ago