UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 249

On November 04 2016 02:26 bardtown wrote:


Your calculations have been consistently atrocious when you are even talking about the right measures. BoE today predicted inflation of 2.7% so your 6-10% prediction is off by a factor of 2-4. And your assertion that their previous prediction of 2.5% would at least double to 5% was also completely wrong.

My point about Nordic countries vs. the US is that they prioritise addressing inequality vs. attracting businesses. Free movement is unsustainable for them, too, and Scandinavians are likely to be among the first to follow the UK out of the EU/single market.

On October 27 2016 08:40 MyLovelyLurker wrote:

Not the vast majority. About 60-70%. The remaining 30%-40% are imports. So when the currency moves by -20% actual--30% projected, you expect the total passthrough after currency hedges expire to be the product, ie, between 6% and 10%. That's by how much prices will increase for everyone in the next few years. And sadly, prices moving parallel up affects the poor the most.

On October 27 2016 09:17 bardtown wrote:


These figures aren't exactly surprising. Actually, if anything I don't understand how import price inflation stays so low.

Anyway, as a wise man once told me: when life gives you lemons, make innovative lemon curd.

On November 04 2016 03:00 bardtown wrote:
LOL. So you write an essay about annualised figures and then compound them all together to reach your ridiculous 10%.

Meanwhile you're arguing we're 10% poorer while quoting a think tank predicting a 0.5% fall in real per capita income.

You're right about it being embarrassing.

On November 04 2016 03:36 bardtown wrote:
I love the gymnastics to try and pretend your 10% figure is not insane to anybody with any frame of reference whatsoever. Why was your prediction for the next 3 years and not 4?

Now you're trying to claim you weren't predicting inflation at all, despite the fact that that was what we were discussing. Reality is your prediction was off the mark by somewhere between 140% and 220%, which is what you might expect from someone trying to use GCSE economics to try and predict the trajectory of a developed economy.

But no, you truly have helped me to see the light. 1/200th poorer next year... That's a couple of takeaways at least. I do wish I'd sold out my democratic principles for a kebab.

On November 04 2016 04:37 bardtown wrote:
Jesus. I'm glad you're done because I'm tired of trying to untangle your web of nonsense. You're not computing anything to do with real income. You have not referenced any figure for wage growth at all. You're also not computing the gap because you have not referenced the inflation which would occur regardless of Brexit.

You're calculating a completely made up measure using only the data you think is useful to your case, and you're completely contradicting the data you cite from think tanks.

On November 04 2016 04:48 Deleuze wrote:


That's what you do.

On November 04 2016 10:27 oneofthem wrote:
question for britbros, the libdems seem like your most reasonable party, but they also seem to be not very popular. what's up with that

On November 04 2016 04:37 bardtown wrote:
You're calculating a completely made up measure over an arbitrarily selected period of time using only the data you think is useful to your case, and you're completely contradicting the data you cite from think tanks.

On November 04 2016 04:37 bardtown wrote:
I love the gymnastics to try and pretend your 10% figure is not insane to anybody with any frame of reference whatsoever. Why was your prediction for the next 3 years and not 4?

But no, you truly have helped me to see the light. 1/200th poorer next year... That's a couple of takeaways at least. I do wish I'd sold out my democratic principles for a kebab.

On November 04 2016 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
The Economic Impact of Immigration

There's the study. It's from 8 years ago, so it predates the refugee crisis, but certainly not the UK's issues regarding immigration policy. The study is long and comprehensive, but reading the (rather long) abstract alone will give a summary that should by all means be sufficient to get their main point. They take a very critical approach to the age-old "immigrants are always good for the economy" fluff argument and explain why that is a terrible argument, among other issues that they address. As an aside they also tore down the "immigration will solve our pensions problem" talking point.

The results they give seem to be mostly what any sane person would expect, but what many people have really done a hell of a lot to obfuscate. Immigration increases absolute GDP almost always, but whether or not it increases per capita GDP is dependent on the quality of the immigrants. Young and educated are generally good qualities for immigrants contributing positively, and on the other hand there are potentially negative effects on the residents from the introduction of immigrant labor (job competition, issues of population increase, etc). Furthermore, the influx of immigrants as a means to fill labor shortages doesn't work except in the short term because more people leads to more jobs that need to be done, and more vacancies - it does increase the size of the economy, but if those immigrants don't contribute positively to the GDP per capita then they brought down the average quality of life of the nation. A lot of the effects can be very regional, including competition for labor, but the overall current net balance as of the writing of the report suggested a rather slim, but net positive, effect of immigration on the economy. The basic conclusion was that better statistics tracking and better immigrant selection is necessary.

What that gets back to is all this contention about the "freedom of movement" issue that is really at the core of the fundamental disagreement that contributed very strongly to a Brexit vote. Based on this report, it seems that the UK is perfectly justified in wanting to have some hard limits on its immigration policy that it can enforce, and that in some cases the low-skilled "Polish Joe the Plumber" is probably not a net benefit to the nation, especially if there are many locals who are forced into diminished living conditions because these immigrants drag down the wage to a level well below what would allow locals to make a good living. And then we have the refugee issue which is just insanity, and freedom of movement limits the extent to which the UK can deal with the issue.

So the real problem here is that there is an organization which exists above the UK government that prevents it from addressing these issues. The ruling politicians may in general be willing to abide by the rules of that super-government entity; having the support of such an entity makes them less accountable directly to the mandate of the population. This is the same principle as what happened when an imperial power (say, Britain) took over a piece of land that had its own previous government, and established a colonial government made up of its current leaders. The leadership may be the same, but instead of being subject to the mandate of the people above all else (as all leaders of an independent government are, if they wish to keep their power), they are now accountable to a colonial power and must act in the colonial power's interests, even if those contrast with the interests of the population. I'm not saying that the UK is now a colony but the same situation is true among the UK leadership, which cannot act in the interest of those who do not benefit from the EU policy. I have heard many, many people from the UK complain that they voiced their concerns to politicians on a wide range of issues of policy, only to be told that those issues are not under their control because the EU dictates the policy on those issues.

From a restoration of sovereignty perspective, the case for Brexit does seem to follow from the argument I just mentioned - and so does the rather striking divide in opinion between the population as a whole and the not particularly representative leadership.

On November 04 2016 10:27 oneofthem wrote:
question for britbros, the libdems seem like your most reasonable party, but they also seem to be not very popular. what's up with that

On November 04 2016 17:48 MyLovelyLurker wrote:





'If we take as a central assumption that the UK would seek a negotiated bilateral agreement, like Canada has, the costs to Britain are clear. Based on the Treasury’s estimates, our GDP would be 6.2% lower (HM Treasury)' www.gov.uk

'A UK exit from the European Union could mean the UK misses out on up to 5.6% of GDP growth by 2019, the IMF has warned.' www.bbc.co.uk

'In some respects, Brexit would be akin to a tax on GDP, imposing a persistent and rising cost on the economy that would not be incurred if the UK remained in the EU. (...) In a central scenario, UK GDP would be over 5% smaller than if the UK had remained a member of the EU. (OECD) ' www.oecd-ilibrary.org

'For these countries, the average impact of EU membership after 10 years is estimated to have been a 6.4 per cent income gain with the UK showing an 8.6 per cent gain. (...) If accession to the EU raised UK real income by 8 or 10 percent, then (...) ( Warwick )' www.smf.co.uk

'Although it is always hard to assess what the economic future may bring and there are many uncertainties, we consistently find that by reducing trade, Brexit would lower UK living standards. Importantly, the fall in income per capita resulting from lower trade more than offsets any savings that the UK obtains from reduced fiscal contributions to the EU budget.(...) In the long run, reduced trade lowers productivity. Factoring in these effects substantially increases the costs of Brexit to a loss of 6.3% to 9.5% of GDP (about £4,200 to £6,400 per household). ( LSE )'. cep.lse.ac.uk

On November 04 2016 20:08 bardtown wrote:


They're campaigning on the basis of blocking the referendum while calling themselves democrats.



You're now using different figures again, which are completely unrelated to what you were saying before and for the most part debunked by the current growth figures (revised up again yesterday - now higher than before Brexit). These studies also fail to account for any benefit gained by leaving the customs union and establishing our own trade deals. Surprise - if you only account for the negative effects then you will find a negative result.

Review of existing analysis
A.20 Gravity models for trade can be derived from a range of theoretical foundations
following a tradition started by Anderson (1979).3
In HM Government (2013),4
gravity models
were used to estimate the impact of a potential new international border (the ‘border effect’)
on trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK.
A.21 The gravity model used in the context of the Scotland analysis was estimated using
data from 2002 to 2011 and through pooled Ordinary Least Squares. The estimates from
this model were used to provide an approximation of the counterfactual cross-border trade
between the rest of the UK and Scotland, if Scotland were to become independent. The
comparison of this counterfactual cross-border trade to actual cross-border trade suggested
the creation of a border would reduce trade by around 80% relative to the counterfactual of
Scotland remaining in the UK.
A.22 There are a number of papers that estimate the trade effects of Free Trade Agreements
(FTAs) and EU membership, the majority of which only use goods data. OECD (2015)5
use
data from 1990 to 2011 for 65 countries and finds that EEA (the EU, Norway and Iceland)
membership increases trade by approximately 60%. These results are considered a lower
bound as they do not account for the time lag for the full trade gains from the Single Market
access to materialise.
3 A theoretical foundation for the gravity equation, Anderson (1979).
4 Scotland analysis, HM Government (2013).
5 Implicit Regulatory Barriers in the EU Single Market: New Empirical Evidence from Gravity Models, Domps,
Fournier, Gorin, Guillet and Morchoisne, OECD (2015).
Annex A – Modelling openness 157
A.23 Magee (2008)6
estimates a gravity model for bilateral trade, using bilateral trade data
for 133 countries from 1980 to 1993. In the preferred model, which includes country-pair
fixed effects, the paper’s estimates suggest that the average FTA raises intra-bloc trade
by 89% in the long-term. Baier et al (2008)7
use data for 96 countries from 1960 to 2000
and find that EU membership increases intra-EU trade by 92% while FTA membership
and EEA membership increase trade by 58% and 21% respectively. Hufbauer and Schott
(2007)8
use bilateral trade data from 1976 to 2005 to provide estimates of the trade effects
of specific trade agreements by estimating a gravity model with fixed effects. They estimate
EU membership increases trade by around 31% over the period, while European Free Trade
Association (EFTA) membership has no effect on trade. Carrere (2006)9
uses bilateral trade
data for 130 countries from 1962 to 1996 to examine the ex-post impact of FTAs on trade
flows using a gravity model. The country-pair fixed effects regressions in the paper suggest
EU membership increases intra-EU trade by an average of 104% over the period.
A.24 Eicher and Henn (2011)10 use bilateral trade data at 5-year intervals from 1950 to 2000
to estimate the disaggregated impact of FTAs on trade flows using a gravity model. In their
preferred specification, which controls for country-pair fixed effects, they find EU membership
increases bilateral imports by 37%, EEA membership increases it by 34% and that the
coefficient on FTAs, other than those specifically disaggregated, is not significantly different
from zero. Eicher et al (2012)11 use a similar data set but starting from 1970, and additionally
use Bayesian Model Averaging to account for model uncertainty to estimate a gravity model.
In their regressions with country-pair fixed effects only, they find EU membership increases
bilateral trade by 51%, and that the coefficients for EEA and EFTA membership are not
significant. Head and Mayer (2013)12 provide an overview of the gravity model literature.

On November 04 2016 10:27 oneofthem wrote:
question for britbros, the libdems seem like your most reasonable party, but they also seem to be not very popular. what's up with that