Brexit: Because Jake wanted to know....

Hate to ruin your image of us, but the United States is not the richest, biggest, or most advanced…and hasn't been for a decade.

Oh we act like it, full of moral superiority, quick to appoint ourselves as the world's policemen, but in reality it is bravado.

While we spend our resources battling terrorism, China sits back and watches us, stockpiles her resources, copies our weaponry for pennies over developing her own, and makes us financially dependent on her.

We are like the Roman Empire…dwindling down and not even realizing the party ended an hour ago.

I have to agree with you Rich, and I hate to admit it. The whole Western world is in shambles in some regard. I can't help but to think this is by design. The warning signs have been there for literal decades, yet we either willfully or ignorantly turned a blind eye to it.

You could be right, but in the moral pursuit of preserving our Anglicised way of life and the continuation of freedom, liberty and democratic principles. Right now you are the big dog in the room. No matter how much the US has pointedly screwed us to its own advantage in that pursuit since 1945, it's a fact that we need each other in that ideal, and likely that at 36 times the geographic size, we need you more than you need us. It is a simple matter of resources.

Russia and China could very well disintegrate in the next 50 years; Russia in the next 20. Russia is economically exclusively dependent on Gas - which we are desperately fumbling to bail out on - while ardently refusing to let its empire die. China can't sustain its growth, competitiveness or the international communities tolerance for its questionable practices for much longer and so will need to start moving its international chess pieces into place before it has to focus on itself. It's a vast place full of sub cultures and despite incredible advances, a lot of poverty. Pretending that they're communist and being led by a dictator is a finite game. They will either emerge from their implosion dominant in a more federated democracy - in which case the US is a sun-setting empire - or weaker in USSR style disarray in which case you'll probably be top dog for the rest of the century; until India is ready to challenge that is.

Another resource war is sadly inevitable. You became top dog after the last one simply because it didn't happen 'at home'. I think that you'll find plenty of life in the old dog yet for the next one.. and we just need hope it doesn't come home for either of us next time around.

You say its in a shambles. Can you elaborate on that?

Are you referring to so-called popularism, becoming soft-touches, decadent? Or something else?

Shambles is when you ignore the tenets of your founding principles, and instead, cling to the verbage rather than the intent.

Example: The United State grew and developed on the principles of immigration. And there are proponents who insist we adhere to this ideology. Yet in 1780 the population was a mere 4 million plus. Today it is near 330 million.

Couple that with the fact that in 1800, the arable land was near 30% in the US, 19% in the 1960s, down to 16% in 2016…and the trend continues. If it wasn't for genetics, technical innovations that let us grow more with less, we would be in the beginnings of a crisis.

Another example: Constitution right to bear arms. Our NRA, if it had its way, would make that inviolate. But logically, why does everyone feel they need an Uzi or AK-47 in the home inventory? Certainly not for hunting and putting food on the table.

I could go on and on… but you get my drift…

BTW, don't get me started on moral degradation of family values. Perhaps homosexuality is fine. Perhaps incest should be accepted… the Egyptions did in the Pharoh's days. Orgies were commonplace in anchient rome. Let's not forget about crime where murderers are set free on legal technobable, or even the less inert idea that no one should have to work, that 35 yo men still live in their mama's basement rather than earn their place in the world.

The signs are there…

C:Amie, pretty much what Rich said. And when I say the "West" as a whole, each western society has it's issues that become more and more dire. Lets take two Scandinavian countries for example. Norway and Sweden.

Both socialistic and are now struggling with trying to cope with an influx of immigrants who never paid into the system but expect all the benefits. Norway is now using it's oil funds to fun it, but every economist says it's not sustainable at this rate. Sweden is worse off. Retirement age has been increased so the government gets more taxes to use. And I'm not even going to attempt to go into detail about crime rates now VS homogeneous populace.

Rich, agree with everything you say (minus the gun part).

You battle with similar issues to us on immigration; though we are tiny and have different struggles. Is it the fact that it happens that causes you to feel that your place in the world is being eroded or the scale and expedience?

Unfortunately our own prosperity, the desires of the capital markets and our own system are the cause of our own issue - not just rampant millennial desires to see the world through rose tinted lenses and "do the right thing".

The system we fell under after abolishing the gold standard is backed on debt. Debt it backed on growth and growth is backed on consumption. If growth stops, the entire capitalist system collapses. We chose to stop growing our own populations, child birth rates fell and we all started to live longer. All good things, inarguably. Yet our own western system cannot sustain that.

Neither can our own blind ignorances and desires for an 'easy life' sustain a reducing population. Every generation gets hypnotised into electing officials based on promises of handouts; tax liberalisation (on the right) or social handouts (on the left). That has to be paid for. Your generation retires and wants everything it was promised, my generation isn't large enough or economically prosperous enough to fund it because the system demands growth at all costs. My generation will retire and want everything we were promised. The merry-go-round will fall off the axel if we aren't willing to make every successive generation of our own children larger than the one before it. The only way to grow it is have more kids (too late now), immigration or to break the promises that were made to each successive generation and watch the system we created burn.

We aren't going to vote for the latter, and the politicians we have are left with a mess from 40 years ago to clean up - a mess that was created to get someone else into office who knew full well that they would never needed to worry about it (and is probably long dead).

I admit, you appear (I've not read around it to know one way or the other so I'll take appearance as bona fide for now) to have an illegal immigration problem. That certainly won't be helping with tax receipts or wider social prosperity 'for all'. Until the point where the entire planet and every country in it has had 4 generations of 2.0 child birth rates and inflation stops, permanently. Our current economic system cannot cope without the need for exponential growth in population and consumption. We have to change it one way or the other.


On the crop issue you've identified. What is the actual issue that is concerning; so I can understand the issue?
I just had a quick look and the USDA states that in 1800 wheat yields were 13.3 bushels per-acre and in 2013 were 42.7 bushels - the same productivity on 3.2 times less land. You suggest that land use has all but halved, which would imply that net production is 1.72 time higher now vs 1800 and that US agricultural mechanisation is vastly efficient?

We have similar numbers over here (I would assume, I've not checked DeFRA [our USDA of sorts]). We have such little land, we've been putting forests back in left right and centre to try and repair the environment or using it to 'pretend' to build housing. Unlike the US though, we hate GM food as a concept. We don't want it.

Presumably though, I've missed the issue here?


On gun control. I think I'll just leave it that I have European views on the subject and leave American's to debate that one. I used to have this discussion with Clint. It usually got quite heated. "Why indeed".

All interesting.

>> I could go on and on… but you get my drift… <<

The holidays always bring out the best in Rich

I dunno, but yesterday, I got PsiWin 2.2 to sync Outlook/Win8.1 with my new Psion Series 7, so impossibility can be possibility and I have hope for the world today.

Maybe we'll get lucky,
Jake

Ah. I see.

I think that the European problem is currently blurred between two issues though: Frau Merkel's near-unilaterally caused immigration crisis on the one hand and attempts at long-term response to declining birthrates (aka government revenue in the light of social promises). Problem 1 would be mitigated by getting Russia the hell out of Syria and Iran out of Yemen and let the situations stabilise.

What's the answer, practically, if we want to continue funding everything as is and have growth? I'm assuming that I won't be allowed to retire until I'm 70 and that I won't be any state pension assistance any more by the time I get there. Retirement age increases are inevitable. When post-war Labour introduced the National Insurance system, there were 100,000 people who qualified for retirement. Now it's a slab of the population. What do we do?

Integration of immigrant populations is a tough one. Actually paying taxes, not being corrupt is a fairly Anglicised norm. It is not shared by the majority of other cultures. That takes generations to instil. They also bring all of their cultural baggage with them; Hungarian vs. Romanian. Sunni vs Shia, Tribe X vs Tribe Y and then all wind up in the same geographic place. We are cultures ourselves aren't set-up to deal with that and Government's do not really want to try.

So what is the answer. Are our collective generations willing to take the pain of no-immigration and are the proverbial 'we' going to expect the next generation to bow to our requirements to prevent it -or- are we going to accept that the Capitalist system is currently flawed and needs to be changed somehow to end the slavish demand for "growth", "expansion", "consumption" and "more, more, more"?
As far as I can see. If we take 'doing the right thing' out of the equation. That's the choice we have

Nicely dodged.

So what are the answers Jake, you're in Washington D.C. As an outsider looking in, is Brexit wrong?

A lot of folks (myself included) don't put homosexuality on the same plane with "moral degradation" and incest, especially given the growing body of evidence linking sexual orientation to biological factors. The real problem is lack of monogamy across all sexual orientations.

That last part sums it up. No one is arguing that no one should have to work (as Rich suggests), but we need to have some rules and incentives in place that truly encourage creation of living-wage jobs rather than pocketing the money through stock buybacks and golden parachutes.

Here's a god pub quiz question for you all (do American's have pub quizzes?).

I wrote my little essays above using the terms Executive, Legislative and Judicial systems, which while totally applicable to our constitution isn't really terminology that we commonly use in Britain. The tripartite model is the Montesquieu separation.

Does anyone know what the quaintly British equivalent is and who coined it?

This is a tough pub quiz question and I'd be amazed if anyone knew, but it has appeared in pop-culture in the last year or so.

There's always answers, and it may not be politically correct or easy. I won't delve into it all, however I'll use Norway in my example here.

For every grown immigrant, Norway uses roughly 1+ million kroner to provide for that person yearly. Immigrant children are upwards of 7+ million yearly. Now an immigrant family of five costs Norway (oil funds and through taxes) 23+ million kroner a year. That's 2.6+ million USD / 2+ million GBP yearly. Now let's take a 100 immigrant families based on the the above, how much do they cost? 2,300,000,000 Norwegian kroner yearly. (260,000,000 USD / 208,000,000 GBP)

This is outright unsustainable. And yes, retirement age increases but in this case it was specifically due to "new Swedes" and the government frantically trying to sustain a sinking ship. I don't know if socialism will work out, but again I don't know if any -ism will work out. It's a crap shoot as it stands now.

I really hate talking about all of this, I should have just kept my mouth shut.