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Preparations companies are making for Brexit

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Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#131

Post by BjoernKW »

grey-area wrote: post #120
BjoernKW wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the current conflicts within the EU arguably originate from the EU trying to be more than an economic entity. It's true that the EU, and its antecedents the ECSC and the EC, has been a tremendous force for peace on the European continent but make no mistake: It's original intent first and foremost was economic collaboration and prosperity. The impact of international trade, however, goes way beyond mere econo…

This shouldn't be a surprise though - Ever closer union has been the slogan since 1983. The EU has always been more than an economic entity, and is better for it IMO - economic union without political union is unstable and untenable in the longer term (just as one example, people in states like Greece have no effective political power over a brutal fiscal policy which impacts them deeply). I suspect the intention was…

I absolutely agree on the matter of nation states. Because they have been the reality for longer than any living human being can remember we usually consider them to be the natural order of things.

However, on a historical scale nation states are a fairly recent concept. Before the 19th century allegiances for the most part were much more local on one hand and centred around religion (rather than concepts such as nationality) on the other hand.

Nation states helped with getting rid of feudalism and gradually ushering in modern democracy. So, historically they certainly were beneficial. In my opinion, they're increasingly and continually becoming obsolete, though.

That doesn't mean, however, that a supranational entity such as the EU necessarily is the right solution to each and every problem in the future. As much as nation states served a purpose in pre-globalisation times the EU was useful in the post-war, Cold War era but it remains to be seen if or in which ways it can continue to be useful in the future.

On the matter of Brexit it'd be pertinent to ask why a disintegration movement should stop at a national level. Why not further devolve power to for example the countries the UK is made up of or eminent city 'states' such as London?

I concur in that I think some aspects are probably still best dealt with at a unified supranational level (foreign policy, currency, removing trade barriers) while a lot more should be handled at a local level.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#132

Post by piokuc »

rezeroed wrote: post #33

Edwin Hayward is a mega-remainer, I've seen him on social media, so the chance of this being a balanced piece is zero to none. Presumably seapunk is also. I work in a company that is largely foreign, and no one has left because of brexit. This is project fear.

It's just a bunch of facts on a specific subject: "companies leaving UK because of Brexit". How would you "balance" a list of facts to make you happier and avoid what you call "project fear"?

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#133

Post by notahacker »

adamlett wrote: post #125
diazon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is very important to people who don't have much money. If you are a plumber whose wages are going down and down because the market is being flooded with cheaper Eastern Europeans, you know who to blame. Of course I don't expect HN users who are sitting on a pile of money in SF or London to ever understand this.

Are plumber wages really going down, though? I am not familiar with the situation in the UK, but in Denmark where I live, demand for plumbers (and construction workers) has outstripped supply for many years now. It's difficult to find a plumber who's willing to pick up the phone let alone commit to a job, and when you do find one, they are outrageously expensive. In this environment, I have a hard time sympathising w…

Plumber wages in the UK are above average and growing faster than most salaries, and self-employed plumbers in undersupplied regions can make six figures whilst turning down a lot of work. Of all the industries to pick to argue "the market is saturated with too many workers", plumbing and specialised construction workers have to be the weirdest

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#134

Post by diazon »

wastedhours wrote: post #85
diazon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is very important to people who don't have much money. If you are a plumber whose wages are going down and down because the market is being flooded with cheaper Eastern Europeans, you know who to blame. Of course I don't expect HN users who are sitting on a pile of money in SF or London to ever understand this.

Multiple studies have shown that in a lot of areas that's total bollocks, and in the pockets where it is true, is a fraction of a percentage difference: https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/ Try harder when trolling.

I'm 100 % sure that link is completely unbiased and independent.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#135

Post by notahacker »

atlantic wrote: post #128
pjc50 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gove: "The British public has had enough of experts" Raab, later: “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,” Experts: at this point you might want to consider stockpiling your essential medicines... Come on, this is hacker news . We're all (supposedly) experts. You wouldn't let random membe…

Either the issue is too technical for the electorate, and you don't hold a referendum in the first place, or it's not, and you do, and then you live with the results. What you don't do is try to cancel the referendum if you don't agree with the outcome. That's disingenuous. And yes, this is Hacker News, but no, I don't think politics can be reduced to technical issues. I'm not British and I don't have an axe to grind…

When a government is clearly deadlocked and damaging the country rather than delivering on its promised better deal, people don't insist there is anything "disingenuous" about suggesting that the country might be better off calling another election rather than the living with their mistakes for the originally-proposed full five year term. Why would a referendum in which the EU status quo lost narrowly to a range of optimistic alternative visions of the future, most of which are now ruled out be any more irrevocable?

It seems far more disingenuous to frame the issue in terms of taking a cut in GDP in order to protect national sovereignty when the Leave campaign's key argument was framing it as the precise opposite: their headline claim was about how much more money our government would have to spend on public services. Sure, some of the people that voted Leave would have accepted the "less EU jurisdiction for less GDP" tradeoff, but certainly not enough of them to have won the referendum if they believed that was the choice they were making.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#136

Post by wastedhours »

diazon wrote: post #134
wastedhours wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple studies have shown that in a lot of areas that's total bollocks, and in the pockets where it is true, is a fraction of a percentage difference: https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/ Try harder when trolling.

I'm 100 % sure that link is completely unbiased and independent.

I'm 100% sure that you are too.

I trust their bias more than yours[0][1]

[0] https://fullfact.org/about/funding/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=diazon

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#137

Post by diazon »

wastedhours wrote: post #136
diazon wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100 % sure that link is completely unbiased and independent.

I'm 100% sure that you are too. I trust their bias more than yours[0][1] [0] https://fullfact.org/about/funding/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=diazon

Of course I am not unbiased, I am a person with my own political leanings, like all of us. What I posted was my opinion, that's why it's called a "comment". It's not an article or a paper. But I'm not going to believe for a single second something like "fullfact" is neutral, the same way Snopes isn't, it doesn't matter to me where they get their money from. Those organisations aren't created and funded just for their love of truth and kindness.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#138

Post by wastedhours »

diazon wrote: post #137
wastedhours wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100% sure that you are too. I trust their bias more than yours[0][1] [0] https://fullfact.org/about/funding/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=diazon

Of course I am not unbiased, I am a person with my own political leanings, like all of us. What I posted was my opinion, that's why it's called a "comment". It's not an article or a paper. But I'm not going to believe for a single second something like "fullfact" is neutral, the same way Snopes isn't, it doesn't matter to me where they get their money from. Those organisations aren't created and funded just for their…

If you have any facts to back up your opinion though, that'd be helpful. Otherwise divisive horseshit comments with no substance, meant to instil an "us vs them" attitude to people who contribute more to the UK than they take out, and have a net positive impact on the country as a whole, will be treated with the unreserved contempt they deserve.

It's some people's opinion the world is flat, there's evidence to the contrary, but they don't believe it as they see the scientists as biased. Think on that one for a moment.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#139

Post by m_t »

alecco wrote: post #109
smackay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just anec-data but from a friend who has spent a lot of time in London this year. It appears that the EU nationals are leaving in droves. As a result many IT departments are becoming seriously understaffed. So there may be a boom in jobs for UK nationals or the companies may be forced to go where the employees are and move to an EU country instead.

> It appears that the EU nationals are leaving in droves EU nationals in low-skilled jobs left in droves. UK is very lenient to give visas to skilled immigrants of any country in the world.

Doesn't mean that someone who was living somewhere will suddenly fancy having a visa attached to their head.

Re: Preparations companies are making for Brexit

#140

Post by jonathanstrange »

chongli wrote: post #58
jonathanstrange wrote: post #30

It's sad that the discussion of Brexit and EU-related matters in general always revolve around perceived economic issues. Sure, a healthy economy is important for everyone, but the long-term goals of EU have always been to create a unity of countries with largely shared values to prevent future wars (incl. trade wars and cold wars) and to increase collaboration in all cultural, scientific and social matters. To grow…

The problem with the EU is that it's a half measure which turns out to be worse than all or nothing. The original idea of creating a "United States of Europe" is a laudable one but it may now be further away than it was before the EU was formed. The gap between wealthy Northern countries such as Germany and less-well-off southern countries such as Greece, Portugal, or Spain has grown substantially. And now it's all a…

That's not my experience as a German living and working in Portugal. Economic differences between countries will always exist, just like there are poorer and healthier regions within every country, but in daily life these play no role. Differences are superficial, people here and there share the same values and overall culture, and European countries are migrating rapidly towards each other in these terms.

Of course, not paying for structurally weak regions has always been a popular topic among the inhabitants of richer parts (see the Länderfinanzausgleich), but in the end this attitude is just selfish and unrealistic. The EU sceptics of today are the same kind of people who were against the unification of Germany yesterday. Let's all go to war with Prussia then.

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