Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

I still remember all the trade shows with vendors on Food Export. Is not that we don't want to buy British Food, it is simply the Pound make it uncompetitive, ( Not to mention their inexperience with export makes things 10x more difficult ). But ever since the pound drop ( after the announcement of Brexit ), the British brand and flag makes suddenly makes things interesting, at least it had a fighting chance on the International Market. Cheddar Cheese were constantly sold out, and Diary are now a possibility. ( Still a some way off from NZ and Australian though ).

I asked if Brexit had any impact on them and if they would rise price in the near future, and all the answer I had is that they don't see any part of the business being dependent on import, unless there is a huge spike in salary they could even sign a contract for two years, so to speak.

Historical experience, including recent historical experience. Naively, most discussions of EU power balances resolve in the nominal voting system, and the vote count allotted to each country. Germany uses its economic and political might to push around smaller nation states, secure satellite votes, and do as it pleases within the EU, far more than its allotted voting power (besides a lot of the serious decisions are taken in backroom deals, and informal bodies like the "Eurogroup", through raw power, bypassing voting altogether).

Here's a good take: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/germany-...

Even this Spiegel article simultaneously downplays and confirms that Germany runs Europe:

"When Angela Merkel travels to Brussels, she does so as the leader of by far the strongest economy in the euro zone. Policies she doesn't agree with don't get passed. Power as such isn't a bad thing when those that have it use it wisely. But do they? There is a new tone in Germany. It is one that no longer abides by the noble customs of diplomacy. Whispering, suggesting and hinting have been replaced by ranting and blustering. (...) The economically powerful Germany got its way. In order to put the struggling countries on the right track -- on the German track, that is -- Merkel brought in the International Monetary Fund so as to free Germany from having to play the strict overseer. Still, it has not escaped notice that Berlin is in charge. (...) German sociologist Ulrich Beck, who has since passed away, referred to the pressure being exerted on Europe from Berlin as "Merkiavellismus." [2]

As a matter of fact, one of the stated goals of the bureaucrats that created EEC was (and remains) to contain Germany.

  "The German question produced the Europe of today, as well as the 
  transatlantic relationship of the past seven-plus decades. Germany’s 
  unification in 1871 created a new nation in the heart of Europe that was 
  too large, too populous, too rich, and too powerful to be effectively 
  balanced by the other European powers, including the United Kingdom. The 
  breakdown of the European balance of power helped produce two world wars 
  and brought more than ten million U.S. soldiers across the Atlantic to 
  fight and die in those wars. Americans and Europeans established NATO 
  after World War II at least as much to settle the German problem as to 
  meet the Soviet challenge, a fact now forgotten by today’s realists—to 
  “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as 
  Lord Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary-general, put it. This was also 
  the purpose of the series of integrative European institutions, beginning 
  with the European Steel and Coal Community, that eventually became the 
  European Union. As the diplomat George Kennan put it, some form of 
  European unification was “the only conceivable solution for the problem of 
  Germany’s relation to the rest of Europe,”

Should the business school give preference to applicants who say they have a real business in their hands?

Yes, when the student's business grosses $73 million in its first year of operation and he come backs to you, hat in hand, asking for more training, that should count for something.

The business school, like the rest of UT, is there to serve the public interest. If a former student needs help with a fast-growing company that would eventually spend 25 years on the Fortune 500 list, the matter of his previous grades could have been overlooked, and should have been. Finding a way to accommodate him would have been the right thing to do.

The Guardian has good journalism, but it is not a useful place to get interesting or insightful discussions of such topics. You are either already in the choir it is preaching to, or outside the church and completely bewildered that people can believe in such a strange world view.

As to whether Britain has been socialist, my preferred measure is the fraction of govt 'control' to GDP. The 'control' means normal govt spending plus the production of nationalized (hence often also unionized) industries. Just looking at govt spending to GDP shows the chaotic socialist 1970s, the Blair-Brown escalation early this century, and the inexorable growth of welfare spending:

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5326/economics/government...

Any country where the govt controls ~40% of national production is certainly socialist. Obviously countries like France are much worse, where direct govt spending is >55% plus all their ownership shares in industries, including railways, utilities, banks, engineering and newspapers:

https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-g...