Thread: UK out of EU

Originally Posted by BobH

I grant you that having a university education is an advantage in even finding a job but not nearly to the extent that it was in the 1950s. Nothing like have a bunch of over qualified people working at jobs where they are basically underemployed at. Sounds like a recipe for contentment to me.

I didn't look up the numbers for Canada, but here there are for the USA from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics


I have to say that based on the evidence your generalization is not correct - the unemployment rates are higher the less educated people are. In other words even if education, or even good education, is not a 100% guarantee for a good job, less education is worse. This is most likely a reflection of structural changes - jobs evolve to require more skills and education and not less, and the worse people adapt to this reality the worse they fare.

A government can't change this or fix this - it can only make the transition easier or harder. For example, a government can provide student/job retraining loans or even grants.
In USA the left thinks this is a good thing as it facilitates the structural transitions, the right thinks it's a bad thing as it distorts the free market which will solve the issue one way or another and will solve it faster and better without intervention.
If the government intervenes there also plenty of further policy choices, e.g. make help conditional, say available for attending only accredited educational institutions (favored on the left), or make it available for attending anything from Princeton University to Trump University and let the poor educational places fail by market forces i.e. people who don't get what they paid for can sue the other party into bankruptcy (favored on the right).

Another economic trend seems to be commoditization of labour and shifting of corporate-model employment to temporary/gig jobs which erodes the protections of guaranteed pensions and health insurance. The government can respond to this change (favored by the left) or not (favored by the right).

Originally Posted by gugi

I didn't look up the numbers for Canada, but here there are for the USA from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics


I have to say that based on the evidence your generalization is not correct - the unemployment rates are higher the less educated people are. In other words even if education, or even good education, is not a 100% guarantee for a good job, less education is worse. This is most likely a reflection of structural changes - jobs evolve to require more skills and education and not less, and the worse people adapt to this reality the worse they fare.

A government can't change this or fix this - it can only make the transition easier or harder. For example, a government can provide student/job retraining loans or even grants.
In USA the left thinks this is a good thing as it facilitates the structural transitions, the right thinks it's a bad thing as it distorts the free market which will solve the issue one way or another and will solve it faster and better without intervention.
If the government intervenes there also plenty of further policy choices, e.g. make help conditional, say available for attending only accredited educational institutions (favored on the left), or make it available for attending anything from Princeton University to Trump University and let the poor educational places fail by market forces i.e. people who don't get what they paid for can sue the other party into bankruptcy (favored on the right).

Another economic trend seems to be commoditization of labour and shifting of corporate-model employment to temporary/gig jobs which erodes the protections of guaranteed pensions and health insurance. The government can respond to this change (favored by the left) or not (favored by the right).

All I can find at the moment is this The value of education is dropping fast for university graduates | Financial Post .

As to if a government should or should not be involved in making the transition easier depends on your pov, as you say. It also could just as easily be some mix of those two povs and not a one or the other thing.

No matter how you cut it, the current situation, if it is not eased, likely will lead trouble eventually.

Bob

Wisdom comes around the age of 50 :<0) England was 1 of the 3 that paid for the rest. The deep pocket so to speak. The people woke up to that fact and the fact that somebody else is giving away all the rights to sovereignty. None of this matters to those who on the receiving side but it will later.
The US is going to go through the same sort of revelation in this next election.

Regardless of Polls skewed and invented to direct public opinion, the major media which any dolt can figure out is also just more propaganda, has been so wrong all of a sudden. Makes me smile to think a majority of the people aren't so dumb after all and willing to step up at the last minute.

Just a side note/prediction here,,,, If the powers to be don't listen to what the people are saying, the pitch forks will soon follow.

All economics aside I think a big part of this is culture. The mixing of cultures is fine in theory. Jamming opposing cultures into the same place is all out madness. We have tried it and it doesn't appear to work at all. This is not racist this is about culture. Anybody pointing a finger and calling race is the problem. Your only adding to the confusion and don't know the difference.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

All economics aside I think a big part of this is culture. The mixing of cultures is fine in theory. Jamming opposing cultures into the same place is all out madness. We have tried it and it doesn't appear to work at all.

That's been the argument for most of the last several Millenia - everybody thinks they've got the best culture and all other cultures ought to be either annihilated, subjugated, or kept away (depending on how far your resources stretch).

Some of the europeans who settled the present USA were subject to persecution for having a differing culture themselves, and as we know the history of this country is no exception to oppressing others. You name it Jews, Catholics, Irish, Italians, Chinese and countless of others - those are the real life examples of 'it's not racism just different cultures don't mix' here in the USA.

As history shows it does work and it does work far better than the opposite. In USA of today very few people identify above all as, say, German, or Scottish, or Italians, and try to isolate themselves from americans with different roots.

Could you think of what present USA would be if instead of forming a single country despite the cultural differences and allowing them to diminish over time it were numerous small independent countries each proud in their unique culture striving to keep its own culture pure?

Or to stay with the UK you can compare the situation with Northern Ireland from 40 years ago and today.

I can see you read what I wrote but I don't think you understood what I meant. :<0) We agree ! I should have pointed out that if you come to the US and want to change our laws to suit your culture or if you use your language instead of learning ours, you are separating yourself and not becoming 1 with us. That is what doesn't work. That is what also gets confused as racism and may be a contributing factor to that ignorance. I never said racist attitudes don't exist, just that there is a difference.

During the last election Trump was a leader in the movement alleging Obama was not an American. Do you think he really thought he wasn't? Of course not but he knew by lying he was building a base and those lies and others he espouses were the base upon which he has gotten to the point he is at now.

The media is his best ally because they give him unlimited coverage to the detriment of his competitors.

I'm astounded when people say about him "he's one of us". It just shows how easily folks can be manipulated and how gullible they are. It's the old story about a drowning man grasping at straws. It's about all the banana republics who have voted in dictators and thrown away their rights.

But back to world events. If I were a betting man I would bet the world in general is moving towards anarchy.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

I can see you read what I wrote but I don't think you understood what I meant. :<0) We agree ! I should have pointed out that if you come to the US and want to change our laws to suit your culture or if you use your language instead of learning ours, you are separating yourself and not becoming 1 with us. That is what doesn't work.

So, what would you do with the Amish in Pennsylvania and the Hassidic Jews in Brooklyn? Revoke their American citizenship and expel them to wherever they came from? How would you make them absorb the middle america culture - have three TVs on in the house at all times, spend minimum 5 hours per week at the mall, make their children participate in american sports such as baseball, basketball, or american football, etc.?

If you read the history of US, you will note that CT was formed because some people found the puritans in MA too permissive, RI because others found them not permissive enough, NH because some were looking for adventure; MD was place for Catholics and PA for Quakers.
But one of the most prosperous, NY, was where the British mixed with the Dutch, the Walloons, the Flemings, the Huguenots, the Scandinavians, the Germans, etc. and likewise elsewhere cultural tolerance (at the time it was primarily on religious-sectarian lines) attracted people and led to prosperity.
The opposite is isolationism and it ultimately leads to backwardness and misery.

As far as cultural assimilation goes, somewhere in the middle is probably the happy medium, a place where ethnic and religious groups can celebrate their own culture, but after a generation or so assimilate into the mainstream culture, what we used to call the melting pot. It seems to work mostly pretty well (or used to), and I was astounded at how London, the most cosmopolitan city on earth, seems to run fairly smoothly and retain quite a bit of what we think of as classic British culture despite seemingly every country on earth being represented in your average tube car.

The difference is that those groups like the Hassidic Jews and Amish have operated peacefully and apparently with great success for decades if not centuries. While they may reject the larger American culture around them to a large extent, they do so peacefully and very productively, working together in tight-knit family groups. The problem we have both here and in Europe is that some other cultures are marginalizing and radicalizing, sometimes with shockingly violent results (ISIS and their sympathizers). What to do about that is a big part of the problem, isn't it? If you just demonize, for instance, all Muslims as blanket policy, does that not make the problem exponentially worse? It seems there are no easy answers to our current conundrum. In answer to the "Just bomb the shit out of them" crowd, we have been doing that for a long time (Obama has ordered the targeted assassinations of more Islamic radical leaders than all previous presidents put together despite the "Muslim President" nonsense), and what has been the result? It seems like we are playing whack-a-mole in the Middle East. Target a few jihadis in a bombing raid and 10 more pop up in their place. I know, I'm probably straying off topic (again, but these are all inter-connected topics, no?). Whatever the solution is, it won't be found in simplistic bumper-sticker slogans.

I'll close by saying that I don't think that the ISIS problem will be solved until ALL civilized nations get together (but especially the Arab nations surrounding Iraq and Syria who have the most skin in the game), perhaps in an ISIS "summit," and commit to its absolute and utter destruction. Sort of like what happened for a few months after 9-11. Remember the absolute focus on multi-pronged takedowns of cells all over the world led by Bush, Germany and France in those "We are all Americans now" days? And hey, nothing will bring a people together like a common enemy; sad but true.

BUT then we have to deal with millions more immigrants whose countries have been left uninhabitable, and what to do then? I'm afraid that I share BigSpendur's cynical but realistic view that there is no happy ending here, and that it will eventually evolve into anarchy on a global scale.

This is all moving away from the point - the UK voted to leave the UK for a host of reasons. Robin has chosen to concentrate on immigration which was actually about the third most important one. The main reason is one of a sovereign state - when Btitain joined the EU it was on the basis of an economic union between the major western Europen countries.

There was never any intention to provide a security ot military force - and even now - security in Europe is the preserve of NATO which the UK contreributes to in a far greater extent than other European countries.

The single most important reason why the UK chose to abandon the EU is the question of sovereignty - France and Germany have a stated aim of creating a supra-national state that was never agreed to when the UK joined. We have experienced a situation where European Courts have superseded and overruled local legislation and reached what appear to be ridiculous conclusions.

The U.K. Is not a right wing society - we are one of the most tolerant and accepting societies in the modern world - despite what Robin would have you believe. The vote to leave the European Union was not taken lightly, it was a gut feeling that the EU cannot survive in its current form.

Gugi shouldn't you as an administrator try and get things back on subject, this is getting way off subject and either it needs to start another thread or get everyone back to talking about the subject of Great Britain leaving the EU, or close the thread, what's up eh.