To Stay or Not to Stay

I find many people are extremely negative about Brexit.

I didn't recommend Brexit but when I hear people describe it like an unavoidable catastrophe I think it might be good to remind you that this is just what Norwegian politicians told the public before the 1994 EU referendum.

Turns out they were wrong: Norwegians are very happy outside EU.

Every time I hear the "Norway" issue I just point out one crucial fact: oil. Norway is a huge oil exporter.

>>Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, there are a lot of people in the UK that feel that ‘the foreigners took their jobs’, or that refugees are the kind of people that there simply isn’t room for. It’s a tough problem, but I highly doubt that this problem is large enough to isolate a country over from its main trade partners.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether immigration has a net positive effect on employment, GDP or pretty much any other measure of wellbeing...

The reality is simple - there aren't enough jobs in the traditional industries for poorly educated people (especially in the North & Wales) to continue 'as normal' on a liveable wage. This has been the case for at least 30 years.

All solutions cost money - whether it is retraining, increasing the minimum wage/benefits or investing in forward thinking industry in affected areas, Politicians and the wealthier middle & upper classes decided it would be 'easier' as well as cheaper to perpetuate the lie that immigrants are to blame.

And after a few decades of continued job loss and struggles, there are now enough people who are affected and believe that immigrants are to blame, that our lies have finally caught up with us.

So it doesn't matter whether immigration is good or not - we've dug ourselves into a hole, and I can't see any politicians admitting the truth anytime soon.

I wonder if Britain's exit is really as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be. My pretty much working class family in Germany has made frequent use of open borders in the Eurozone, traveling to Spain and France several times in their lives. I wonder how much that would be true for generally working class British people. Do they go to Disneyland in Paris? Do they travel to music festivals in other European countries? My siblings do this in a car for cheap in the way that a young person in the US might travel to another state to go to a concert.

On top of that is that the UK has had a different currency whereas in the rest of the Eurozone everyone uses the same currency. It's so easy to go to Belgium and just use whatever's already in your wallet. Like a country like France or Germany or Sweden leaving the Euro would be a much much bigger deal than Britain, which I don't think really integrated as well with everyday people as they do on the continent.

I'm not saying it is not a step back, but I doubt it will be the end of the west as global leaders some people are portraying this.

>The world is a much more connected place today than it was 50 years ago and next to a unified EU with the UK as an outsider (and, if we are to believe the latest developments with England as an outsider) it is not a very important country economically.

The sad thing is that if the UK were more invested in the EU (for example, with the Schengen zone), then people might have ended up feeling more attached to it. The constant opt-outs made the UK an outsider, I think.

This does bring up Junker's reaction though("Please leave immediately, close the door behind you"), which is a depressing reality of how most EU politics end up happening.

Especially with the handling of Greece, there's this whole moral grandstanding that ends up becoming super antagonistic, when actual pragmatism would solve problems much better.

"They need to suffer for their sins" seems to be a leading political thought process in Brussels(+Paris+Berlin), that makes the union seem less like a partnership and more like the Troika, flying in and making things worse for the hosts.