> We need to pay more people to do these jobs, not rely on exploiting people from poorer nations to fill the gaps.
Agreed, but giving our consumption rate, it's going to be hard to do that and be competitive with a global market. Australia can pull that off because they are swimming in wealth right now, have a lot of land, and also because they have very favorable import rules they can maintain because the country produces a lot of basic goods. I doubt the UK can pull it off, but I'm not an oracle so let's see.
> Wages are rising at their fastest rate on record.
In Australia, yes. Again they have plenty of resources to go by right now. In the UK, I'm not sure how sustainable it would be. But I hope it will. Maybe the UK will prove to be the poster child for a successful economy after closing your borders. I doubt it, usually trades needs flexible borders, but I could be dead wrong, I'm not an economist.
> Working holiday visas require that you must work in service or agriculture, and the will kick you out when your time is up
Yes, but right now you can't even do that in the UK.
> I guess I can't disagree with your personal experiences at University, but I do suspect a lot of it comes down to the institution you attended. I studied at two universities in the UK and found them both academically rigourous.
It's not just universities, though. Just chatting with people of my age kinda scared me. They didn't handle basic geography, couldn't read subtext and were very sensitive to pandering. All in all, they had a very narrow-minded point of view compared to their belgium, german or irish counter parts. Of course, as soon as you reach business London, this changes. But that's true everywhere in the world.
And although I understand arguments in favor of brexit, it's really hard to take the average brexiter seriously. They are the facebook anti-vax of politics, and I suspect their education system didn't help with that.