Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Own Goal To End All Own Goals

 Britain is becoming a poor country. Back before Margaret Thatcher, Britain was also on its way to becoming a poor country. Then neoliberalism, with all its problems and successes, reinvigorated the markets and Britain integrated with the rest of Europe with the founding of the EU.  Britain's standard of living is about to slip below Mississippi's and it's already been surpassed by Slovenia, and soon Poland.

This idiot, of course, thinks it's time for some more Thatcherite nonsense. Too many freeloaders on the dole. Austerity now!

The real reason the UK is in the shitter (and frankly the EU as a whole looks shakier than the US) is because of fucking Brexit. Divorcing a large economy from the common market of the EU was always predicted to lead to economic pain. Hell, I'd argue that a third of the economic pain America has seen from inflation was a product of Trump's immigration policies. 

Brexit was so incredibly, incredibly stupid when it was happening. Now, as we survey the wreckage, I hope we can learn that abandoning free trade zones would be calamitous, though there is no reason why we can't tweak them and reform them.

Idiocy.

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