The economic consequences of Brexit

[Mrr T]

jsf said:

I have read many reports on the subject, ranging from well before the EU expansion to current day. The consensus of the reports are that mass uncontrolled migration does impact the lower end of the scale people adversely. Open door policies are bad for the social cohesion of a country.

So you know all the reports said effects on lower end of wages where minimal. You understand minimal mean not very much?

As for social cohesion I have never read that in any report in relation to EU immigrants which even mentions that. They are after all are mainly white Christians.

[FN2TypeR]

sidicks said:

///ajd said:

The UK deal will be way harder than the Canada deal. Hilarious to think otherwise.

This also makes a mockery of the "UK has no veto" nonsense. If Wallonia can hold something up it doesn't like, surely the UK can - like the EU army for example.......

If only Wallonia is holding up the current deal then implicitly hasn't the UK effectively already agreed a deal with Canada...

More or less, yes, but there will of course be changes required as any EU law that doesn't affect the UK post Brexit that was considered when the deal was struck will have to be revisited.

[davepoth]

FN2TypeR said:

More or less, yes, but there will of course be changes required as any EU law that doesn't affect the UK post Brexit that was considered when the deal was struck will have to be revisited.

The great repeal bill will take all EU law into UK law on Brexit Day - so there would be no incompatibility. As I mentioned above, all Trudeau needs to do is replace "EU" with "UK" and we could sign it on day one.

[///ajd]

davepoth said:

///ajd said:

The UK deal will be way harder than the Canada deal. Hilarious to think otherwise.

This also makes a mockery of the "UK has no veto" nonsense. If Wallonia can hold something up it doesn't like, surely the UK can - like the EU army for example.......

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/votin...

Nope. It only has to be unanimity when the states consider it sensitive, and the decision to decide whether something is sensitive is by qualified majority.

And a UK-EU trade deal is not sensitive, nor decisions affecting the transfer of national military sovereignty to Brussels?

Sorry but you need to make the distinction.

[davepoth]

Mrr T said:

So you know all the reports said effects on lower end of wages where minimal. You understand minimal mean not very much?

As for social cohesion I have never read that in any report in relation to EU immigrants which even mentions that. They are after all are mainly white Christians.

A lot of people in this country aren't white Christians. I'm a white atheist, and a significant proportion of the people who voted leave would have been from black or other ethnic minorities. It's not about racism. It's not about xenophobia.

Social cohesion is like a meringue. Bear with me.

A meringue is very difficult to prepare. what's really important in a meringue is to add the ingredients at the correct rate. If you add the sugar too quickly for example, it sucks the moisture into the sugar before the sugar has distributed evenly through the mixture, which ruins the meringue.

You have to add the sugar slowly so that it spreads out through the meringue and the mixture has a chance to homogenize before you add more.

At the end, if you've thrown all the sugar in in one go you'll have a chewy mess, but if you did it correctly you'll have lovely stiff peaks.

And that's how social cohesion works.

[JagLover]

jsf said:

walm said:

jsf said:

I have read many reports on the subject, ranging from well before the EU expansion to current day. The consensus of the reports are that mass uncontrolled migration does impact the lower end of the scale people adversely. Open door policies are bad for the social cohesion of a country.

How much of an impact though?
We already have incredibly low unemployment - how much lower would it be without those extra immigrants (who create demand too don't forget)?
Are the figures big enough to jeaopardise the whole economy?

All I can do is suggest you spend some time reading the reports, there is far too much information in them to post here. A good source for you is the UK parliament briefing documents.

We have got used to 1.6 million people being unemployed as low, I beg to differ, its a lot of people who cant get a job. Whats more revealing is the number of people who are economically inactive, that's shows a more true picture of the number of people not in work of working age (16-64).

ONS said:

Economic inactivity
Economically inactive people are not in employment but do not meet the internationally accepted definition of unemployment. This is because they have not been seeking work within the last 4 weeks and/or they are unable to start work within the next 2 weeks.

The economic inactivity rate for people aged from 16 to 64 for the UK was 21.5%, for the period June to August 2016. This is a decrease of 0.2 percentage points compared with the previous period (March to May 2016). The UK region with the highest rate was Northern Ireland at 25.7%, followed by the North East at 23.6%. The region with the lowest rate was the South East at 18.9%, followed by the East of England at 19.1% and the South West at 19.7%.

Some good posts JSF

It has never been about pulling up the drawbridge but about making immigration work for all of the people in this country not just a privileged elite.
We have very flexible Labour markets in this country so of course even the scale of migration seen since 2000 has been absorbed. People continue to talk about the wrong issues while they try and justify what is very significant increases to our population for minimal, if any, economic benefit in terms of GDP per head.

We have had, in effect, open borders since 2000 and where is the economic miracle?. Some of the lowest productivity growth rates since the second world war, a high structural deficit, stagnant median real wages, a persistent current account deficit. The justifications of those who see mass migration as an end in itself are becoming more desperate but it did not save them on June 23rd.

What we need is the freedom to focus on immigration of the highly skilled and now we have a chance to do just that if May stands firm.

[RYH64E]

It's ludicrous to equate trade with countries like Canada with EU trade. I've got one customer in Canada, it costs a fortune to send goods there so we're not really competitive, shipping is really slow and not cheap (though much cheaper than airfreight), and the last time I visited I was out of the office for a week after flying into Quebec then onto somewhere in the middle of nowhere that was under 6 foot of snow. It's impractical for a small business such as mine to provide meaningful support to such remote customers. Europe on the other hand is conveniently located, cheap to visit, and the single market means freight is inexpensive and virtually paperwork free.

[sidicks]

RYH64E said:

It's ludicrous to equate trade with countries like Canada with EU trade. I've got one customer in Canada, it costs a fortune to send goods there so we're not really competitive, shipping is really slow and not cheap (though much cheaper than airfreight), and the last time I visited I was out of the office for a week after flying into Quebec then onto somewhere in the middle of nowhere that was under 6 foot of snow. It's impractical for a small business such as mine to provide meaningful support to such remote customers. Europe on the other hand is conveniently located, cheap to visit, and the single market means freight is inexpensive and virtually paperwork free.

I'm not sure that the UK's trade requirements should be too focussed on 'small business such as yours'!

[avinalarf]

davepoth said:

avinalarf said:

Although I applaud the idea of free trade agreements I have strong reservations about both CETA and TTIP.
Probably the most important bone of contention is the ability of multi nationals to sue governments (ISDS mechanism)if they act against the best interests of those companies and bring in laws that may affect the future profitability of those companies.
Other examples are the laws in the USA governing workplace practices and GM crops which are more relaxed than those in the EU.

It's funny, because there has never been a problem with those in any of the other FTAs the EU has signed - ISDS is part of the South Korea deal, for example.

The alternative to ISDS is setting up some sort of international commercial court with jurisdiction over all FTAs, and while in principle that sounds like a sensible idea in practice it will be horrible if you look at how the international criminal court works.

Even the WTO resolves disputes by way of arbitration, the only difference being that the WTO requires states to complain rather than companies - the companies would have to complain to their state first.

If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Yet that is precisely what thousands of trade and investment treaties over the past half century have done, through a process known as 'investor-state dispute settlement', or ISDS.[78]

“”
—The Economist, October 2014

[///ajd]

sidicks said:

RYH64E said:

It's ludicrous to equate trade with countries like Canada with EU trade. I've got one customer in Canada, it costs a fortune to send goods there so we're not really competitive, shipping is really slow and not cheap (though much cheaper than airfreight), and the last time I visited I was out of the office for a week after flying into Quebec then onto somewhere in the middle of nowhere that was under 6 foot of snow. It's impractical for a small business such as mine to provide meaningful support to such remote customers. Europe on the other hand is conveniently located, cheap to visit, and the single market means freight is inexpensive and virtually paperwork free.

I'm not sure that the UK's trade requirements should be too focussed on 'small business such as yours'!

Really?

One minute brexit is all about SMEs and getting rid of WEEE regulation (as if)

The next its about big business? I thought they all wanted remain, like Nissan?

Newsflash : state sponsored 2019 Qashqai pictures just in....

[sidicks]

///ajd said:

Really?

One minute brexit is all about SMEs and getting rid of WEEE regulation (as if)

The next its about big business? I thought they all wanted remain, like Nissan?

It's about lots of things. You continuing to make it about one issue (whatever suits your argument at the current time) suggests you'll never understand.

[PurpleMoonlight]

sidicks said:

I'm not sure that the UK's trade requirements should be too focussed on 'small business such as yours'!

How many sacrifices are there going to be in brexit?

[///ajd]

sidicks said:

///ajd said:

Really?

One minute brexit is all about SMEs and getting rid of WEEE regulation (as if)

The next its about big business? I thought they all wanted remain, like Nissan?

It's about lots of things. You continuing to make it about one issue (whatever suits your argument at the current time) suggests you'll never understand.

You say its not for SMEs - who is it for then? Do explain!!

[RYH64E]

sidicks said:

RYH64E said:

It's ludicrous to equate trade with countries like Canada with EU trade. I've got one customer in Canada, it costs a fortune to send goods there so we're not really competitive, shipping is really slow and not cheap (though much cheaper than airfreight), and the last time I visited I was out of the office for a week after flying into Quebec then onto somewhere in the middle of nowhere that was under 6 foot of snow. It's impractical for a small business such as mine to provide meaningful support to such remote customers. Europe on the other hand is conveniently located, cheap to visit, and the single market means freight is inexpensive and virtually paperwork free.

I'm not sure that the UK's trade requirements should be too focussed on 'small business such as yours'!

Small businesses employ an awful lot of people in the UK, and from what I can make out we pay the bulk of the taxes, as taxes appear to be optional for large corporations.

A quick Google search would suggest that SMEs employ over 15 million people in the UK, 60% of the private workforce, with a combined turnover of £1.8 trillion. I'm niw up to 13 full time employees, sales are 30% up year on year, exports account for 50% of turnover, I pay £20k per year in business rates and based on 10 months trading the 2016 corporation tax bill is unlikely to be less than £150k.

I think that the UK very much needs to take small business trade requirements into account.

[sidicks]

///ajd said:

You say its not for SMEs - who is it for then? Do explain!!

No, I said it's not for 'small business such as yours'

HTH

Edited by sidicks on Saturday 22 October 12:37

[RYH64E]

sidicks said:

No, I said its not for 'small business such as yours'

HTH

So not for a small, profitable, expanding, export driven company like mine? Are we back to fishing as being our economic salvation?

[sidicks]

RYH64E said:

So not for a small, profitable, expanding, export driven company like mine? Are we back to fishing as being it economic salvation?

Straw man nonsense.

1. You don't current trade with Canada
2. You won't trade with Canada post Brexit with or without a trade agreement.

[JagLover]

PurpleMoonlight said:

sidicks said:

I'm not sure that the UK's trade requirements should be too focussed on 'small business such as yours'!

How many sacrifices are there going to be in brexit?

It is natural that where you move from a single market to trading with Europe on the same terms as anywhere else that there will be some disruption and smaller firms will perhaps be less able to deal with that so may reduce their exports to Europe, but then of course the reverse also applies to European exports here.

Despite its proximity Europe already only accounted for 45% of our exports and that share would inevitable fall.

Some sense of perspective is required here. The Economist had one of its periodic scare stories about Brexit today, but the worse case hard Brexit scenario they cite is GDP being 7.5% lower in 15 years time than it would have otherwise been.

7.5% of GDP in order to maintain hard won democratic freedoms, and to have a chance of a country that works for the many rather than the few.

[davepoth]

RYH64E said:

sidicks said:

No, I said its not for 'small business such as yours'

HTH

So not for a small, profitable, expanding, export driven company like mine? Are we back to fishing as being our economic salvation?

I think we're getting a little ad hominem here, which is less than helpful.

There will always be winners and losers with any change.

In the example of Canada, I assume you've gone for a direct sales model, which causes some issues in terms of delivery and service. Did you consider employing a distributor or agent in Canada instead? If they had to buy from you a full container at a time and hold stock in Canada, it would be substantially more economical, since a full container to North America is roughly the same price as a full truck to Poland, and it would also mean that you would have somebody on the ground in Canada who knows the market.

It's things like this that need to be taken into consideration when exporting; having a proper market entry strategy is critical. Hopefully the government will be offering plenty of extra assistance to SMEs over the next few years to help with that.

[avinalarf]

davepoth said:

A lot of people in this country aren't white Christians. I'm a white atheist, and a significant proportion of the people who voted leave would have been from black or other ethnic minorities. It's not about racism. It's not about xenophobia.

Social cohesion is like a meringue. Bear with me.

A meringue is very difficult to prepare. what's really important in a meringue is to add the ingredients at the correct rate. If you add the sugar too quickly for example, it sucks the moisture into the sugar before the sugar has distributed evenly through the mixture, which ruins the meringue.

You have to add the sugar slowly so that it spreads out through the meringue and the mixture has a chance to homogenize before you add more.

At the end, if you've thrown all the sugar in in one go you'll have a chewy mess, but if you did it correctly you'll have lovely stiff peaks.

And that's how social cohesion works.

Surely it was the intransigence of the EU bureaucrats to sit down with member countries and agree to some sensible arrangements to address the justifiable concerns of the electorate of member countries,that has been the problem.