Thursday, March 01, 2018

The Yawning Debate

The one small favour the Brexit debate has done for us is to nail once and for all the lie that there is a "national interest" we all share.
Some businesses depend on exports, some depend on imports, some don't depend on either, but resent any regulation or interference in their business.  For them, tariff barriers and trade deals are important. 

All the business leaders try and convince the rest of us that their interest is our interest that their profits are our jobs.  Yet we know that despite years of continued growth (and profitability) our wages are not growing along with their profits. 
Desperate to persuade us we have a dog in the fight, their hirelings scream about migrants, our fellow workers who move home for work.  Yet, study after study shows that migratory workers don't depress wages.  It's the bosses who depress wages, and the employers who cause unemployment.
A working person in London will always have more in common with a worker from Slovakia or Slovenia than they ever will have with a British capitalist, or anyone else who wants to divide the world up for profit

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