While still talking about trading, this aspect has not been mentioned in here to date, IIRC.

"Not a mention anywhere of why this European system is wrong for the low income countries of the rest of the world.
Like many, I was fooled in 1975 into thinking the EEC was a progressive, liberal internationalist project. Slowly, so slowly, I came to realise it is a rich man's club which shamelessly uses illegal means to dump on the poor. Prohibitive tariffs against processed, rather than raw, products – the meanest import regime in rich world other than Japan, far meaner than the USA. Massive farming subsidies which make commercial growing of certain crops in N Africa and the Mid-E all but pointless.
People with a better sense of history than I had in 1975 were able to see this monster for what it is. It is now time the rest of us woke up and saw it too"
- abstracted from elsewhere verbatim.

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Dave

This is Germany's version of "The Today Show" view on our BREXIT campaign.

Don't mention the war. They did but I think they got away with it.


https://youtu.be/w0Y89dfR8v8

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Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour. Very funny.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Their Russian Grandfathers.

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I'd have thought you'd have it all argued out long ago.

The choice is simple:
One the one hand there is the European Commission which is unelected and acts unashamedly in the interest of big business.
Or we can go with those other neoliberalists who want out.

An interesting adverb; there is quite an amount of online comment about how the EC no longer bothers to obfuscate its' real motives.

In real world publand during the past few days, while imbibing copious quantities of ale, there were two predominant conversations:

1. Englands' current success at the game of Rugby last Saturday.

2. The theme of The EU deal with Turkey is fraught with dangers - Telegraph

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Dave

An interesting read and one I can agree with

Wayne

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

The much respected Dan Hannan has put up this video:

https://youtu.be/n3jT-HdwlE0

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Abstract Economies.


In all of the discourse to date about the future referendum, we haven't heard a politician discuss what is the purpose of an economy – your economy, my economy, the politicians' economy.
Nor will the economists address the question, who is the economy for?
What is the purpose of the economy of a specific nation?


The academic economists will talk, endlessly apparently, about all manner of statistics, addressing their own favourite theories drawn from their lifetime of studies about how the economy works – but they won't tell you who it is for.
Cui bono?

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Dave

Don't mind so much abstract economics and university economists. As a matter of fact I believe one can easily forget them. Instead there are those economists with a real life outside the pure and clean environment of the academia, those who have their jobs in the real world and deal everyday with the multiple challenges of the real world, in the real economy, in the real companies with real people. These are the ones to listen and understand each one's own context.

There's an old saying which goes "Those who know, do, those who don't, teach.". Throughout life I've found the saying to be way too real.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abba_Lerner
The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization

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Dave

Another abstract from the wiki link above:
"The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound ...Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability"
IIRC, Lerner wrote this work in the 1950s, so it is outside of living memory for many.

In the light of the above, which of these 7 bullet points is true?

1. The government must raise funds through taxation or
borrowing in order to spend. In other words, government
spending is limited by its ability to tax or borrow.
2. With government deficits, we are leaving our debt burden to our children.
3. Government budget deficits take away savings.
4. Social Security is broken.
5. The trade deficit is an unsustainable imbalance that takes away jobs and output.
6. We need savings to provide the funds for investment.
7. It’s a bad thing that higher deficits today mean higher
taxes tomorrow.

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Dave

In the light of the migrant crisis alone you guys should get out of the EC ASAP and blow that tunnel up, very thoroughly.

EC politics sucks.

You obviously have strong feelings, Walkabout, with over 170 posts (one in every three) on this thread. The earlier stuff I followed but just sticking up links or quotes for people to read doesn't seem to advance the argument much.

Ridetheworld keeps commenting on the fact that Brexit advocates haven't made the case for the advantage of that move, and to a degree I concur. Lots of words written but where's the beef?

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

The KeynesIan economics relevance lost me too. The EU commission has corporatist tendencies, but I don't expect to see anything like 1979. They may want it but haven't the get up and go to achieve it.

Leave to me is about the freedom to differentiate all aspects of ourselves. We can decide to have the death penalty or trade with Australia or ban straight bananas, or sink Spanish trawlers in our waters or not or whatever. We will make mistakes but they will be our mistakes. We will not be dragged into some grey future where everything is based on what two or three dozen disinterested utterly different countries decide is the lowest common denominator. We will have the opportunity to pick up the well paid, specialist jobs that suit us way better than huge Euro corporations.

If we don't have balls to run our own affairs and need the herd to avoid fear, the EU will oblige, but we can't then complain that we end up eating grass not roast lamb.

I would also suggest that having said we might go, if we don't the EU is going to take its revenge. We will be forced to have the Euro for sure and will be the whipping boy for whatever self serving schemes the blocs within come up with. You can bet we will be voted down over and over again, just like the SNP at Westminster. Out is two years working our notice with the full freedom to hurt the EU back as much as it seeks revenge on us. If they let us go with a nice trade deal everyone is happy, so that's what their business masters will choose.

Andy