I live much of the year in France.
Most of my family is now French.
I know the empty, hollowed our countryside, and I know the cities.
Where do you live?
Spain. My family is from the poorest region in the country, I live in the capital.
But subjective opinion is just subjective opinion. I just showed you data.
While there is a good percentage of Americans that are better off than their Western European counterparts, they belong to the top quintile (and probably a section of the second quintile), once including European safety net benefits like free quality education and free best-of-its-class healthcare. But the top quintile is not middle class by any stretch of the imagination.
Economic data and this argument is a red herring, because when you actually get a bunch of Brexiters in a room what you get is chants of" go back home" aimed at British Sikhs.
It’s not about sovereignty, or regulations or passports, and never was.
To me, chants of “send them home” at Puerto Ricans and British Asians sums up both branches of this hard right ultra nationalist movement better than anything. The mask slips, reality is laid bare.
Juan.
Go look at the Median number.
And here’s a discussion from Pew a couple of years back.
draxen
5357
This is a really complex topic.
There have been claims of a Tory conspiracy to privatize the NHS for as long as I can remember. If any party chose this course of action they would swiftly find themselves out of power for a generation.
It is entirely possible that Boris is completely mercenary. Perhaps he would happily benefit his insurance buddies at the expense of the NHS but there would be massive public outcry from all sides. I’ve seen no evidence of this other than conspiracy theories from Remain-leaning media.
I was talking about the median. Did you even click the link?
Income and wealth are different, I said so above. Income is higher, but wealth is lower, which means the median American saves way less. When there’s such a disparity between gross wealth and adjusted income (so the disparity would be even higher if you adjusted wealth too), you know the income adjustment is off (or that Americans just splurge like madmen). PPP as an adjustment to income works somewhat, but it does not include some services that are free in some countries but paid for in others.
My personal guess would be that a 3-person household income difference of $20k of the US vs most of the EU is moderated quite quickly when you add education, retirement accounts and medical costs (which trend towards $0 a year for the European middle class). Median retirement savings are easy to calculate at $5k a year per household (of course higher as you get older, but that’s an average per year of the median final number), so that takes 25% of the difference off. Average out ot pocket healthcare expenses seems to be about $4k (but that’s average and a family of 4, not 3 as the report you linked), so we are down to a $10k yearly difference… and so on.
rho21
5359
Eton. It’s an expensive and prestigious selective school for the upper class. What we Brits call a public school, which is nothing like what the Americans call a public school. :)
Personally, the thing I find most perplexing and that makes me question how in the world is this thing going to work is the apparent belief by people in the high places of Brexit that Britain could both leave the EU and retain all it wanted from being in the EU. All it takes is a bit of information and being able to see it from the other side to see that that’s not going to happen, and can’t happen, even if it were true that the EU needed the UK more than the other way around. So, they’re either massively misinformed or liars.
Everything else, I either don’t know enough about the subject (not living in the UK) or think that it’s a choice people are entitled to make as long as they’re aware of the facts.
Because again, facts, data and their public argument don’t make sense because it’s not about that. It is only about immigration. Its about keeping out the foreign hordes and protecting white culture. Once you remove the arguments and replace them with that then it starts to fit into place.
This thread sure exploded.
Anyway, it’s nice to see our currency falling in value while the government tells us there’s nothing to worry about.
In fact, there’s so little to worry about that they are going to spend millions on an information campaign to provide leaflets to let us know how to prepare for this thing we don’t have to worry about!
I’m very happy to be wrong, but it sure doesn’t look like Brexit going well.
You listed so many good things! So I’ll just take the first. Why do you think wages will rise? There might be a brief uptick if enough labour returns to the continent (which will revert as companies leave), but the fall of our currency and increase in inflation we will more than offset that.
Which makes sense, because prosperity isn’t usually brought about by reducing both trade and the supply of labour in an economy.
wavey
5364
If only all conspiracy theories were so well documented.
Last year, roughly 30% of all mental health spending was in the private sector and 44% of spending on child and adolescent mental health goes to private providers. Private sector domination is most complete in the provision of controversial ‘locked ward rehabilitation’, in which a massive 97% of a £304m market in 2015 was held by private companies
Paul Evans, the director of the NHS Support Federation, which monitors privatisation of healthcare, said: “In response to criticism, failures and waste, the health secretary promised no further privatisation. But since then the outsourcing of NHS services has rolled on and more services have become reliant on the private sector to deliver their core services.” For example, a third of all hip replacements on the NHS are now done privately.
As you point out, of course it’s a vote loser - which is why they do it without publicity, bit by bit, boiling-frog style.
draxen
5365
That also occurred and continued under Labour. As I said earlier - it’s a complex topic. Slow privatization via Trusts (aka backdoor privatization) is a genuine concern but that has no connection to Brexit. Although I’d agree we must be wary of the possibility in the future.
1 aspect of just 1 industry. No deal cuts demand by 40% overnight.
Again, none of this matters when you know this isn’t about trade and industry. Is sheep farming threatening the white way of life? Nope, ergo its expendable.
Doctors are about washing their feet. I mean, since they do wash their feet, then one can describe doctors accurately by saying they are about washing their feet, right?
A conversation:
A: The Tories want to privatize the NHS!
B: That’s an unfounded conspiracy theory.
A: What? Here’s a time when they were in power and tried to privatize parts of the NHS.
B: Oh, it’s a complex topic.
draxen
5369
As I said, it’s an (extremely) complex topic and it doesn’t directly relate to Brexit other than the “Boris will sell off the NHS” conspiracy theory headline that’s being used for political point scoring.
If you wish to make this type of argument a much stronger one would be food standards and how they might be lowered to facilitate a US trade deal.
The method of NHS privatization mentioned isn’t solely the domain of the Tories. It also occurred under Labour. There is debate about whether some privatization should occur as it could be beneficial for efficiency. There is debate even about what constitutes privatization. Are NHS Trusts a form of privatization even though they are not for profit entities?
I would happily give my opinion but the debate could take up a thread in and of itself.
I’ll simply say this has no direct relation to Brexit. Any kind of NHS privatization in relation to a trade deal would be political suicide.
It is possible Boris could seek to increase privatization by other methods (which I would strongly oppose) and this is a genuine concern. I’ve seen no evidence that he is seeking to do.
So all I can read about is how Johnson is headed straight into a no deal brexit. Practically this means all trade agreements are null and void right? What does that mean in actuality.
I understand that all goods from the EU in and out of the UK now have potential import/export taxes and all have to go through customs on both ends. How else does it impact them.
Also has the UK spent any effort so far working on trade agreements in the case of a no-deal Brexit? What about trade deals with non-EU companies, I presume all the trade agreements they had in place are null and void because all trade agreements were with the EU and not the UK directly right?
Canada halted any trade agreement talks because they know they can wait until no deal and get a better deal because we’ll have no leverage and will be pretty much a failed state with civil unrest and desperate.
I do believe arrangements about core/critical functions ie air transport regulation, nuclear medicines, water treatment supplies etc were based around the failed withdrawal agreement. The Tories refuse to negotiate these again unless the EU drops support for the Irish and lets the like of our Home Secretary and her fantasies that her threats of inflicting food shortages/famine will force them to allow the Brexiters to do what they please.
All the current trade deals are with/through the EU and will therefore evaporate when a no-deal Brexit occurs, and it generally takes something like 5 years to negotiate and finalize a bilateral trade deal where none exists. Of course it is possible that time could be cut with some sense of urgency, but it’s worth remembering that, because the UK hasn’t been making its own trade deals for decades, there are likely very few existing civil servants with experience at making trade deals, and no politicians with that experience. So I wouldn’t gamble on a successful crash effort myself.
Edit: Also, the UK lacks the infrastructure to even operate a customs inspection function or to collect duties on imports on the scale they need to treat all their current imports as imports (rather than as free movement of goods per the status quo) and there’s no reason to think they can create that infrastructure anytime soon.
