Saturday 27 February 2016

The Brexit joke

We live in our little garden: as long as it’s green everything is more or less quite good. Right? Or maybe (also) Great Britain’s garden needs someone else to take better care of. Britons are debating whether to stay in or leave the EU at a membership referendum: will their garden be greener or not after leaving? Do we have to worry? Will they leave the EU? In my view the answers to all these questions is no. Anyway the correct phrasing will be: ”Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?”
Wherefore, in spite of current opinion polls, when Britain will start seriously debating the costs and benefits of leaving the EU, will also realize that a Brexit implicate immense economic costs. Follow the money and you’re seldom mistaken when trying to understand what’s going on. The EU, with a GDP of $18,000 bn, is the biggest economy in the world. Britain is highly specialized in services (law, media, architecture, research, accountancy, insurance, asset management, banks, hedge funds, tourism, etc.) and all those service businesses would be forced to transfer their jobs outside, to Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin. Or…. Edinburgh (if you know what I mean). In the end a Brexit would even lead to a loss of political sovereignty for Britain. Scotland might join the EU. Let’s not even count goods: 90% of UK’s trade with Europe is in goods. There are so many opinions on this issue, but no concrete alternative to EU membership. There’s only one thing certain in case of a Brexit: uncertainty, the unknown.
Anyway, what’s going on out there, outside our bigger garden? A mix of factors combined has revealed us an entire new world, waking us up (someone is still sleeping). Too many factors, actually: hacking wars, terrorists, ISIS, climate change, cybercriminals, economies kept alive with a wash of easy money, richer getting richer but the middle class disappearing, levels of pollution never seen before and so on and on. To summarize it in one concept: 25 percent of us won’t be better off than our parents: this is scaring us because we all want to feel safe, we all want financial security, nobody likes uncertainty. Also because an “increasingly-diminishingly” number of workers will have to pay for migrants’ benefits (the main cause of current EU problems, emotional rather than purely economic, but nevertheless the main), and most don’t consider this right. It’s so easy to be an Eurosceptic, isn’t it?

Luckily I’m a simple man with simple answers: all leaders of 28 members know that the easiest way to lose elections is destroying your own industries. Again…follow the money. Besides there would be the risk of others following the British example breaking up the EU, and most probably the remaining 27 leaders will choose to make Brexit as painful as possible, to discourage similar actions in future. Because in my view an actual Brexit would trigger the disintegration of the EU.
Technological and economic pressures are unprecedented, so to get a decent job requires more and more technical skills, complicating everything. Exceptionally hypocrite and stupid politicians (NO names, please: really not needed) are promising to bring back the golden era…but it’s not that easy. Yet so many of us are buying it. But it’s only when you see the precipice in front, you start braking/breaking and questioning. It’s only before voting you really wonder: what IF?
What’s our effective defence then? Our brain. Nothing else than it, IF we use it properly. Connect it when you read news, to choose a job, to question a politician, to understand what’s the best way to take care of our garden, or…to decide about a possible Brexit. Keep you intelligently informed. Use it not to follow false prophets, whatever they’re promising: stability (of any kind) or anything else. Everlasting prosperity will be achieved only in a far, distant future (we will! I have faith). For the time being it’s a merely religious conception. For the time being British voters will back EU membership. Because they’re intelligent. No jokes please, we are “Europeans”, we are British. My dear friends, let’s wait for Thursday June 23: The People WILL speak (let’s just hope they’re all aware of 1st April 2016 new restrictive rules).
….Always humble,
Angiolino

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