GDP per capita doesn’t contradict the statements of the sources I posted above since it’s a mean of economic activity and therefore, it does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about winners and losers among social groups after Brexit.
Also interesting you chose ‘fixed 2015 US $’ when this was an all-time-high exchange rate (US $ - £) compared to the one in your selected time frame.
Yes it’s normal and usually makes sense. In this particular case, however, it distorts the data basis, as the UK GDP is valued higher than the two eurozone countries due to the very high reference exchange rate.
And I said ‘you’ because you could have chosen other normalizations as well… yielding a different picture.
For example you could normalize by annual % growth of GDP.
Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.
And thank you for the clarification.
To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster… but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pushed forward the populist campaign that ultimately led to the exit.
Yeah, the bets were in on the £ already as it was way overvalued.
The seeds of Brexit were sown when we didn’t get a referendum on Maastricht. That changed the game considerably and even further with Nice and Lisbon. It meant that regulating with common law would be replaced with Roman civil law, which is much more prescriptive and is unable to be changed by precedent.
I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.
I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.
I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:
Cooperation beats competition since competition wastes resources by hindering each other when those could have been better invested in reaching the shared goal.
Representative systems get less efficient and more prone to corruption the bigger they get.
Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.
Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation.
Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the major powers are increasingly hostile to European states), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems.
After all, what would be the alternative?
European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today’s world.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/brexit-lies-and-rich-folk/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/03/observer-view-list-of-brexit-wins-is-in-short-and-feeble
https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/100089116/4_Morgan_Glenn_1976_Brexit_1/_.pdf
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=GB-DE-FR&start=2016
GDP per capita doesn’t contradict the statements of the sources I posted above since it’s a mean of economic activity and therefore, it does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about winners and losers among social groups after Brexit. Also interesting you chose ‘fixed 2015 US $’ when this was an all-time-high exchange rate (US $ - £) compared to the one in your selected time frame.
https://www.cer.eu/insights/brexit-four-years-answers-two-trade-paradoxes
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/lessons-from-brexit-on-the-effects-of-trade-disintegration-20260116.html
https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/38/1/82/6514758?login=false
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/slowing-economic-growth-brexit-and-the-productivity-challenge/
I didn’t choose the measure, the OBR did.
Normalising in dollars is normal.
Yes it’s normal and usually makes sense. In this particular case, however, it distorts the data basis, as the UK GDP is valued higher than the two eurozone countries due to the very high reference exchange rate.
And I said ‘you’ because you could have chosen other normalizations as well… yielding a different picture.
For example you could normalize by annual % growth of GDP.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=GB-DE-FR&start=2007
(Side note: Thanks for the source, this database is amazing!)
Unfortunately that’s the only date the source provides on a constant dollar basis.
Using today’s dollar shows the same thing, the UK is not performing any worse than its near peers.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB-FR-DE&start=2016
To be clear, I’m not suggesting Brexit has been an economic success, it wasn’t an economic decision, it was a political one.
Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.
And thank you for the clarification. To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster… but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pushed forward the populist campaign that ultimately led to the exit.
Yeah, the bets were in on the £ already as it was way overvalued.
The seeds of Brexit were sown when we didn’t get a referendum on Maastricht. That changed the game considerably and even further with Nice and Lisbon. It meant that regulating with common law would be replaced with Roman civil law, which is much more prescriptive and is unable to be changed by precedent.
I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.
I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:
Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.
Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation. Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the major powers are increasingly hostile to European states), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems. After all, what would be the alternative? European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today’s world.