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Leaked Brexit Document Predicts 'Catastrophic Collapse' of U.K. Infrastructure

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Re: Leaked Brexit Document Predicts 'Catastrophic Collapse' of U.K. Infrastructure

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally false. And using fear in politics is nothing new. The US now has tariffs on Canada because of the "risk" Canada poses to national security. The idea that the UK crumbles (the document has things like cancer patients dying, folks with diabetes dying - its just an incredible list) seems far fetched. The UK operated prior to the EU without all these disasters.

This is like saying it's easy to refactor a huge codebase to strip a critical software component from it overnight, because 40 years ago you used to have a standalone version that didn't require it.

Actually - if I can get totally illegal drugs in the UK, I suspect that if market forces work the same way for legal drugs as they do for illegal, folks who face death without their drugs will find a way to get supply of those drugs.

And it will be totally appalling if the EU to prove a point blocks shipments of those drugs.

This is a chance for the US perhaps to get in with some timely shipments using the US military or other govt resources. Could save lots of UK lives while the EU let's their neighbors die.

Re: Leaked Brexit Document Predicts 'Catastrophic Collapse' of U.K. Infrastructure

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were British, you'd remember that these are the same people who assured the population that simply voting to leave would trigger a massive recession that'd destroy half a million jobs in the best case, before leaving actually happened, just due to "uncertainty". They were completely wrong. Not just wrong by magnitude, but wrong in the wrong direction. The economy boomed. This sort of report was written by civi…

> The economy boomed. Citation needed? How about this: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/03/21/economic-performan... "Relative to G7 countries, however, the UK has slipped from having the highest growth rate in the G7 before the vote, to the lowest now (OBR 2018)." "Worryingly, the gap between output per worker in OECD countries and the UK has widened since the referendum" "On referendum night, the pound fell from…

Ah, the LSE blog. Always good for the worst possible spin on anything Brexit related.

It's all especially tough for economists because the profession was so united in the claims about economic decline after the vote, but they were proven completely wrong.

The economy boomed. I will show you with data.

People in work hit the largest numbers ever seen in British history, unemployment fell to lows not seen for decades. Wages rose. GDP growth stayed about normal for the UK. TradingEconomics has lots of datasets with useful 5 and 10 year views, so you can get a feel for what's normal.

Go look at the 10 year view here:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua...

Essentially flat, see? From 2016-2018 GDP growth wandered around between 1% and 2%. Nobody looking at these numbers would have guessed there was meant to be some massive economic calamity.

Meanwhile, the pound. The pound has been in slow long term decline, as you'd expect given the trade deficit, and many analysts think it's a much needed correction given the pound being "over strong" thanks to the City. Go here and click "MAX" so you can see the long term trends:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GBPEUR%3DX

The big impact on the GBP/EUR rate was the financial crisis. It eventually got back within its old region around 2015 (pre Brexit) but then went into decline again at the end of 2015 and has been wandering around the same rough level ever since. Again, look at that MAX graph and try to spot this economic calamity that was supposed to slaughter the economy and destroy nearly a million jobs. You can't see it because it never happened.

Meanwhile LSE blog is saying things totally false - there was an exports boom, in fact exports are doing great. See for yourself:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/exports

Look at the 10 year view. You can see growth between 2009 and 2012, stability between 2012 and 2016, then a sudden jump at the time of the referendum. Since then exports have been climbing rather than stable. It seems the (relatively small) currency drop did cause an immediate and large increase in exports, it's impressive how quickly the economy responded actually. I can't see why the LSE guys are claiming there was no exports boom given that dataset. The magnitude of that mis-statement is vast: what on earth would qualify as an "exports boom" by their standards?

Wage growth is also very high, in fact it's at about the level it was before the financial crisis started.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/wage-growth

So let's recap.

The world was meant to end on the day of a Leave vote, even before leaving happened. Between 500,000 and 800,000 jobs lost in an instant recession, according to the Treasury, and only a tiny number of economists disagreed (Patrick Minford was one, Krugman disagreed after the vote but before was publishing similar things).

But exports jumped and continue to grow. GDP growth was normal. Unemployment dropped through the floor. Wage growth grew, it's still high and climbing. Foreign investment is also within normal ranges. Inflation is inside normal ranges and currently wage growth is higher than inflation:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/core-inflation-r...

Remember the central bank tries to target 2%, and that's about where it's sitting. For the LSE to spin this as bad news is implicitly to state that central bank and economic orthodoxy is wrong, but they aren't arguing that.

The LSE blog want you to believe that Brexit is a disaster because that's what academic and government economists predicted, and, sadly, because they desperately want it to be true. But remember to compare what they write against their prior claims and the magnitude of their prior failures. These people have no credibility. That's why they're desperately cherry picking strange stats like "output per worker in OECD countries" and "growth rate amongst the G7 only", which aren't normally prominent in discussions about economic performance. They spin growth as bad news, and in some cases simply seem to mislead you about the data. Don't trust them on anything Brexit related.

Re: Leaked Brexit Document Predicts 'Catastrophic Collapse' of U.K. Infrastructure

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying it's easy to refactor a huge codebase to strip a critical software component from it overnight, because 40 years ago you used to have a standalone version that didn't require it.

Actually - if I can get totally illegal drugs in the UK, I suspect that if market forces work the same way for legal drugs as they do for illegal, folks who face death without their drugs will find a way to get supply of those drugs. And it will be totally appalling if the EU to prove a point blocks shipments of those drugs. This is a chance for the US perhaps to get in with some timely shipments using the US militar…

It sounds like you're either trolling or deeply confused about what's going on.

The EU is not threatening to block shipments of anything nor to "let their neighbors die". It's the UK government that seems intent on imposing economic sanctions unto itself by leaving the single market.

Actually, the closest thing to suggesting to let neighbors die was these outrageous comments by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel a few weeks ago (https://www.joe.ie/news/british-politician-says-uk-threaten-...), suggesting to cause food shortages in Ireland in order to pressure them to drop the backstop. To anyone who knows history between the 2 countries (actual famine in Ireland caused by Britain centuries ago), this is abhorrent.

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