E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

You're asking if a price rise in Bacon is a bad thing?

Either you've lost your sense of humor or you don't know the joys of good Bacon Sandwich.

 

Probably both...

Dude. It's bacon! Is nothing sacred anymore?!?


Meanwhile it looks like Vote Leave is having a dose of reality check:

How do they say in France? Plus ça change...

 

Wait a minute, your telling me those immigrants, that haven't emigrated, are staying over there, stealing our bacon. But we have control, we can control our own pigs.

 

Have you ever tried controlling 400lbs of angry porcine, it's not easy, once they've packed their suitcases there's no stopping them.

 

Liz Truss saw it coming.

From over a year ago:



Wake up sheeple, etc.

 

FTFY

(You only need to put the video code (i.e. "bRhlRM6rYck") in between the tags)

 

Ah, TYVM. *Plugin not supported* on this phone but I had a feeling that was the case.

 

Dearer bacon? I'd mobilise over this... but I've just not seen it.

 

"Hey, once we Brexit we'll get rid of low skilled immigrants and all our wages will go up!"

And so it begins...

 

Companies who pay people as little as they can get legally away with in 'we want to pay people less' shocker...

 

Aren't minimum wage increases always deemed to be unaffordable by businesses?

 

I get the feeling there's going to be plenty of predictions in the coming months/years, such as 75% of pension funds expecting shortfalls, however given the unpredictable nature of where the UK's heading i personally think predictions hold little value.

That's not to say i disagree with them or don't think they'll come to pass BTW.

 

Yup, but now we have a new narrative (same as the old narratice). During Austerity we were "all in it together" and had to "tighten our belts and live within our means"; now Brexit will be all "We're going it alone now, guys" and "We have to pull together to make a success of it". Basically nothing changes.

I think that every negative will be wrapped in the Union Jack of Brexit to make it look like a gift.

 

Also much like the minimum wage in which business always doom mongers about rises, pension funds always run into problems from time to time so even if predictions turn out to at least be in the right direction it's hard to isolate out the cause. I'm sure I remember a bank blaming poor results a month or so after on the vote and referendum but then other companies who were doing fine it was due to their hard work and determination. It can often be another excuse "oh it's brexit so you shouldn't sack me or the board when the AGM happens".

Also then following on from that even when things needs to/wants to/should be done there are always winners and losers: breaking the stagflation of the 1970s; breaking the corrupt, myopic and millitant trade unions; reduction in state involvement in industries that don't work best or at all when controlled by the state in the 1980s. Had to be done but created winners and losers. So if a reduction in interest rates and decreases in bond yields lead to short term pension shortfalls but lower mortgage payments and possibly lower cost for buy to lets that may get passed onto tenants (in lower/ lack of rent rises).

 

It actually makes a lot of sense for the UK to abandon unions, minimum wage and such things. I mean, China did it without those things for decades and they had double-digit growth for years.

All PM May has to do is to use her Royal Prerogative to turn the UK back into the proper monarchy it was during the time of the British Empire, reclaim the colonies it rightfully owned for many decades and use their resources to restore the UK to its former glory.

After listening to Quitters chatter on about for months now, such an option makes as much sense as any of the other options provided. Brexit absolutely won't result in economic suicide. No sirree. She's just resting right now. She'll be fine as soon as the UK is out of the clutches of the evil, evil EU.

Sorely tempted to just dig in until November when the first lawsuits regarding Brexit will have taken place. I do not believe that anything useful will happen before then. Let alone the Quitters' Three Stooges coming up with a workable, non-laughable Brexit plan.

 

They also have factories where workers would rather die than continue to work there, because that's what eventually happens when you abandon such things.

 

I'm sure the UK could reopen its factories and mines and be back in business in no time. And once the economic crunch properly hits, Real Brits (tm) will be more than glad to work for peanuts. They better not get sick or get injured, though. Worker's rights and unions are for lazy, socialist countries, after all.

It'll be the glory of the Industrial Revolution all over again

 

While I'd agree in general that correlation doesn't imply causation you can (IMO) draw some fairly accurate assumptions, using the pension example, if a single company blames X and the effect of X isn't seen in any other company then it's probably safe to assume X didn't cause the problem, however if a majority show an effect from X it's probably safe to assume X did have an effect.

In no small part I'd say that's what's responsible for the unequal society we all live in, what's the saying, something about the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members, it seems we're quite comfortable for there to be winners and losers.

 

What if at the same time as brexit yet another banking crisis happens/ is threatening to in a country in a dysfunctional monetary union barely capable of reform or adequate response causing a flight to safety in German, US, Japanese and UK government bonds pushing the yields down towards very low to even more negative rates then you'd have to separate out that factor, as that would be a systemic problem for pension funds, as an example, rather than a unique problem to one fund, .... Italy doesn't seem in good shape.

I'm talking about winners and losers in terms of a policy decision not necessarily those that are "losers" in some kind of absolute terms as a result of the policy mix in aggregate. As an example of winners and losers I'm personally in favour of at least equalising "earned" income taxes (income tax and NI) with "unearned" income taxes (capital gains, dividends etc), in the interests of avoiding an incentive towards rent seeking behaviour being substituted for productive behaviour, improve economic incentives and the link between productivity and pay. I'm sure it'd be easy to find the winners and the losers in that policy but it likely benefits those worse off and is of detriment to the well off.

Pretty much every policy has those who gain and those who lose which is why I'm surprised many take low skilled migration (especially) as some kind of win- win policy that doesn't create winners and losers, regardless of the numbers. When a large pool interchangeable workers are obtainable by firms you'd expect it to; keep wages low, therefore affect to some extent increases in inflation and a return to more normal monetary policy, drive up prices of assets that are fixed in the short term like housing, largely leave GDP per capita unchanged, (and even being young) are unlikely to be paying more tax than they may require in public expenditure (directly and indirectly) and also as a result of keeping wages low encourage firms to substitute capital for labour. Most of those costs tend to have a benefit for the very well off and benefit those who own assets in property and shares etc near the top, but not at the top, of the income and wealth distribution a fair amount too.

As far as society goes as a whole it is important to make sure as many people have a stake in it to some reasonable extent whilst also making sure that there is an incentive to "win" more through work, ideally rather than rent seeking. How to do that is a massive question in itself and people of the "left" and the "right" have different ideas and there are good and bad ones on both sides****. but what is clear is that some do need to win more than others for the system to work but there also needs to be equitable rules or a system where some win more than others wont work either, in the long run (and we seem to be coming to the end of that long run).

****

 

The point i was trying to make was that while you may not be able to isolate a single cause you can, most of the time, isolate factors that were major contributors, take Greece and the global financial crash in 08 for example, yes every country suffered but i think it's safe to say Greece suffered more than most so while the the global financial crash in 08 certainly didn't help ultimately what made Greece different from everyone else was their cooking the books.

It's about comparing "system" and finding the commonality and differences.

Whether they're singular or a mix in aggregate is irrelevant, at least to the losers they are, if you've seen people getting rich on the back of soaring house prices while being priced out of the market you don't care if it was caused by the right to buy or the lack of homes being built.

The fact is society as a whole have been perfectly comfortable with both the singular policy of right to buy and the policy mix in aggregate ever since that only exacerbated the problem.

That all depends on what direction the equalisation takes, lowering a countries total income from taxes disproportionally hits the poorest in society so while lowering "earned" income taxes sounds good if it results in less money in the governments pocket it would end up making the well off the net beneficiaries and the worse off the net losers.

If we lowered "earned" income taxes yes it would directly benefit those worse off and would be of detriment to the well off, but if it meant less money to spend on public services it's reversed, you'd be putting money in the pockets of the well off while taking money away from the worse off.

It's not about who wins and loses directly, it's who wins and loses in the grand scheme of things, take your example of low skilled migrants, if we remove them that could mean less income for the country and if that happens then those at the bottom would suffer the most, the very same people you were trying to protect in the first place.