Congratulations to Germany, the US's new BFF in the EU · 4:41am Jun 24th, 2016
The UK has, by the looks of things, voted to leave the EU.
The pound is already down 10%.
And by that I mean 12%, as it has fallen an additional 2% since I found out that Brexit is, apparently, happening.
The economists did warn them.
Ah well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
At the present rate, that will be the exchange rate when I get up tomorrow..
Really regretting not selling all my stocks before this. The stock market is gonna nosedive on Friday. 
Ah well. Ca, c'est la vie.
Farethee well, Britain. Europe knew you well.
Well, now that they're gone - Germany! You know, we've always loved you, ever since we utterly crushed you after World War II and then rebuilt you in sort of our own image.
You want to be our new best friend in Europe?
Don't worry, we know you're good guys now.
The fucking EU is going to collapse now, since other nations will want to leave, and I am so scared.
If the EU collapses, a power vacuum will appear. The last time a power vacuum appeared, in the wake of the USSR collapsing, there was a bunch of wars. Kosovo, Bosnia, and so on.
To make things worse, being a Nazi is cool and funny again in the Right-wing sector of the European political parties. PEGIDA, Alternative Fur Deutschland, National Front, etc., are all chomping at the bit.
It's looking very grim right now.
Can I just add this?
What the FUCK is WRONG with you, Britain? Do you not remember what happened when every Great Power in Europe collapsed? Rome? The HRE? Austro-Hungaria? The USSR?
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
The graph included here is from a poll taken right before voting day. So not reflective of results, but probably pretty telling.
If the real results break out in a similar fashion, it looks like the old chose for the new, at least in large part. Reminds me of post-Reagan America in a way - the old folks blowing up the house on their way out the door, then leaving it for the kids to deal with.
Well, where I live the population is mostly of German Descent. My great gran was a full blooded German, her parents moved to the US before WWI and my great gran was born right before the end of the war in august.
Conversation from Reddit:
Sorry, I linked to the wrong page on the top of my post. It was supposed to be this.
Definitely an interesting graph, though. Huge age disparity.
I'm sure the young people are going to be very unhappy with their elders in the morning.
4045417
This explains a lot.
TFW TD has a typo in the title of his blog post.
4045431
What typo?
I see no typo.
4045426 Yes it does.
4045412 wow, huh. That's like Bernie vs. Hillary levels of age stratification.
Expect a rebound, but not a big one. Right now, all you hear is the panic-stricken screams of the easily freaked. I've been out of the market for over a year, and even if we get a 10% market drop, I'm not sure I'd get back in just yet. Too many idiots.
4045435
should be Congratulations.
4045412
4045440
I feel like I should point out that the age-binning makes that summary very misleading. You've got pretty overwhelming support among 18-24 year olds, but the next group is 25-49 year olds. I don't particularly care what any block of people born across just seven years think.
It's probably the case that the trend extends into that 25-49 block, but we don't have any data actually indicating as much in the post. So all that figure is really saying is that retirees disagree significantly with people born between 1992 and 1998. And honestly, I don't tend to trust college-age kids to have a great understanding of issues. (I don't trust anyone to, but at least older people have been around the block a few times. I personally think Brexit was a dumb idea, but I'm not going to give the young group a lot of credit for being rational actors when it seems like the country as a whole did a good job establishing its irrationality tonight.)
4045468 Point taken. And I agree, utter insanity is what they're going for right now. I can only hope that some kind of buyer's remorse sets in when the markets tank through the floor for weeks on end. :(
Also, by rule, Parliament has the final say here; this referendum is technically non-binding. Now, Parliament would be nuts to overrule the result, but if things continue to slide into the ditch, all bets might be off.
/weird times
4045471
From the BBC:
Period of reflection indeed.
Wonder what would happen if Scotland takes another vote, secedes from Great Britain, and then joins the EU ;)
But more seriously, England will still be our buddy in the Europe. And so will France. They're far more supportive when it comes to blowing up various 3rd world countries around the world than Germany is.
Um, grats? I guess. They voted for it, except for the 48% that didn't, but thems the breaks.
Stock markets absolutely hate uncertainty and this result is going to make waves. Good luck to anyone who lives on planet Earth. Navel gazing seems to be the new and trendy world view these days.
4045468
My experience is that "having been around the block a few times" is a factor that does nothing to deepen the understanding of complex issues.
This whole thing was insane. There is no realistic plan on how to leave, what to achieve and what the future should look like. Best case, there will be a lot of chest-thumping and posturing and time lost in discussing issues so stupid it makes my brain hurt and then nothing will change much. Worst case scenario is so moronic I don't have the stomach to consider it now.
Welp, there's another failure of nationwide polling in the UK.
Man, Balkanization's been big this year: first Catalonia, now this.
4045409
When Rome collapsed, Europe was born. When the USSR collapsed, independent countries were allowed to decide their own destinies instead of being in the grip of monsters. When the HRE collapsed, it started the process of creating a modern Germany. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, it sparked World War 1, which ended the giant empires that kept a boot on everyone else's faces and created our own modern world.
Change is ultimately a good thing. People might not make good choices with those changes, but having the choice is more important.
The best part about all this is how the Leave campaign immediately admitted that no, Britain won't actually be saving any money, and that whole immigration thing probably isn't changing either.
So just over half the country voted to leave the EU for the sake of, uh... regulatory autonomy? I think?
Brilliant work there.
I'll just leave this here:
There's nothing united about this kingdom.
4045485
Scotland seceding from the UK and joining the EU is unlikely because Spain would block them from doing so and probably refuse to recognize them, the same way as they do with Kosovo, in order to deter Catalonia from breaking off from them.
4045565
We need those boots to keep people in their place.
I do not agree with tyranny; I do, however, believe in the necessity of a strong central power to impose order out of chaos.
4045533
The polling didn't fail at all; the polling was not statistically significantly different from this result. Polls have a margin of error of 2-4%, depending on the poll; when the numbers are 48-52 and 52-48, they're not actually any different.
4045565
Change isn't intrinsically good. The Easter Islanders deforested their island, resulting in the collapse of their civilization. The Aztecs conquered their neighbors and cut out their hearts, then the Spanish came over and used that against them. Then 90% of the population died of smallpox. The Little Ice Age doomed the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America. The Chinese turned inwards and ended up losing out as a world power at the dawn of the Age of Exploration. The collapse of the British Empire left a bunch of British colonies as independent nation-states which have struggled economically; a majority of Jamaicans in one recent poll stated that they'd be better off as a British colony.
It was said long ago, "Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full time job."
4045587
My mother hails from a former British African colony and says this all the time. Her testimony is such: education, public works, and infrastructure were all far superior under the Empire. People behaved properly, she said. Everyone was highly educated.
She herself was part of the local government. Let that sink in for a while.
She can't understand why the Indian Subcontinent rebelled so furiously, and thinks Americans were raving maniacs who could not handle propriety and order under the watchful eye of London.
She has made it clear the British code of law was harsh, life was not always necessarily good for the black population, and a few other gripes I shall not expand upon here, but she, like myself, preferred order and authority out of chaos.
4045587
We can go around and around forever using singular examples about "this change was bad while this change was good." Every change is good for someone and bad for someone else. The point is, change overall is in point of fact better than no change. I mean, if various extinction events didn't almost wipe out all life on earth, humanity wouldn't be here, so.
4045574
You do realize you just said you disagree with tyranny but also agree with it.
4045620
Authority is not necessarily tyranny, friend.
4045605 You are in favor of the colonial days...As an African in Africa I'm lost as to how i should feel about that, Shock, confusion and anger bordering on hatred, maybe i should feel happy, truly i am lost.
Never heard such a thing in my life.
4045718
You should discuss it with my mother, since she actually lived there and I did not. However, she recalls the days under the British Crown well enough.
The collapse of her country after leaving the Empire is what impelled her move to the USA.
4045605
The UK is one of the only countries ever whose colonies ended up more prosperous than the home country was. The US ended up being the world's richest country, and Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Hong Kong are all also very rich.
Sadly, that only really worked out for a few of the colonies.
4045723 Some folks did well under British rule most did not, massive respect for the British here in RSA because it was not a black and white relationship but all the bad the empire did is easy to remember than any of the good.
4045718
Freedom only means so much when you have to worry about being murdered by your neighbors now when you didn't before and don't have any money. For people in places where there were significant civil wars or genocide after the British pulled out, I can imagine that they might well regret the British leaving.
On the other hand, a lot of it is probably nostalgia. Recollections of a golden age that never was.
It is worth noting that there are people in Russia who long for the days of the Soviet Union, despite it being a nasty, authoritarian regime.
*insert Putin joke here*
4045736 I totally agree but the problem oaks have here is that apartheid became official government policy after independence, the fact that discrimination was around long before independence is never discussed.
Actually it's about 90 to 95p now...
In all seriousness, what worries me most is if the new leadership cannot make the next four years before a general election a roaring success, then this will be seen as a failure of the mainstream parties, driving voters towards the political extreme.
Much like what happened in Germany in the thirties.
I wonder if this vote will inspire a minor secession movement in Texas.
4045798
Well, who knows how long this government will last. Cameron already stepped down as PM. If there's a big nasty financial downturn, a vote of no confidence in the government isn't out of the question.
Or the Queen could dissolve Parliament, if the population was very upset but the Tories refused to go anywhere.
Another conversation on Reddit:
I don't have time to read the whole thread before work, but I'll go against the grain here and say that historically, a lot of countries seceded from the British Empire, and not always as peacefully as this. They all did at least reasonably well for themselves after the initial growing pains had passed. The Brits will be fine.
In fact, I'll go a step further and say it's fitting that this happens right before the Canadian and American days of independence. In the future, we'll be wishing the Brits a happy Independence Day!
4045573 Yep, and that won't be half as bad as if/when Ireland's leading party attempts to reunify with Northern Ireland. O_O
4045846 Probably not, although without Texas, the US would have had a negative job growth average for much of the last seven years, much like the UK's healthy economy has been tapped to keep a bunch of rolling disasters afloat in the EU.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul has proved remarkably popular for Paul. Once all the screaming and hand-waving dies down, the EU really doesn't seem to be the best solution for the problems of Europe. It was a wonderful solution for Brussels and top-down economic planning (with certain people holding that 'top' position), but for ordinary people? Not so much.
4046155
Remaining in the EU would have changed nothing; all the problems inherent to it would remain even if Britain was a part of it. Now, people are forced to realize that things must change fairly soon or the rest of their great experiment will fall apart too.
4046293 The first step in fixing a problem is getting the people in charge to admit the problem exists. Since the elite people in charge are the problem, I don't have a very high hope for the EU to suddenly embrace democratic reforms, giving the common people affected by their decisions a say in how those decisions are carried out, and the ability to select their own representatives, which of course would not be those same elite people.
You know, I think we have much the same problem over on this side of the pond too.
We'll just have to wait and see what happens. I hope that this crash will be a brief one.
4046155
Believe it or not, this is factually incorrect.
The states that receive the most federal aid per tax dollar spent are overwhelmingly the most conservative and anti-government. In fact, Texas — which you cite as a job powerhouse — received about a buck and a half back from the feds for every tax dollar spent. Liberal California is a net tax donor, and by the way created about one-sixth of the nation's new jobs in the last five years. (You want to talk about states without whom the nation would be in trouble ...)
Freedom's a great abstract principle, but we're an increasingly interconnected world and "freedom" is far from free, and the current panic and chaos and buyer's remorse in the UK right now is Brits waking up to find what it actually costs. I hope we can all cross our fingers right now and hope for as few costs as possible, but it looks like it's gonna get pretty ugly, and it's far from clear that it will end up having been worth it.
Huh? This is totally news to me. The British pound is down, eh... OMG this is totally the time to buy Warhammer models yusssssss. Goin' Forgeworld, baby!
Time to buy overpriced hunks of resin! 
What?! If an imaginary cannon can make a fuckheug imaginary crater and cause untold imaginary death, then it's well worth my imaginary money– wait a minute
4046155
Texas was a state that happened to be well-positioned during the Great Recession due to being a petrostate; the fracking boom was good for it and mitigated the bust. It had little to do with good policy or planning on their part; it just that their economy happened to be focused on something that didn't go to total shit and actually got better during the time period. The GDP of Texas actually declined from 2014 to 2015, while most of the US was growing. Why? Again, because they're a petrostate.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Indeed, it was the same sort of thinking that lead the Scots to think that becoming independent from the UK was a great idea - oil was booming, so things were totally awesome.
And then oil crashed and they needed help from big brother England again.
That's why having a large, diversified economy is valuable - and why the US is much stronger as a whole than it is as pieces, because economic growth in one area can help offset poorer growth in others.
In terms of robbing Peter to pay Paul, Texas is actually one of the takers in the US thanks to a lot of pork barrel projects and military bases in the state. Only 5 of the 14 states which pay more federal money than they get back in return were red in 2014 - [Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Wyoming.](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/) This is actually fairly typical over time, as the further south you go, the poorer the states tend to be (in terms of the number of poor people). This has been true in the US for a very long time - the South and Southeast have long had the most poor people, along with Appalachia.
Generally speaking, being a part of a big diversified economy is a good thing, because it means slower growth in some regions is offset by a booms in others, and it makes your economy as a whole less jerky. The US is less heavily affected by economic downturns than most countries thanks to our sheer size - it is more likely than not that SOME part of the US will be thriving at all times.
The UK wasn't actually particularly losing from being part of the EU - the UK paid about 4.5 billion to the UK per year and got back about 4 billion. A 500 million deficit isn't so bad, doubly so when you consider that they got a lot of other benefits (trade, freedom of movement, being an attractive investment center for other countries who used the UK as a financial gateway to Europe, ect.). Economists agree that the UK gained more than it lost by being part of the UK.
It is true that the EU has added a few countries (most notably Greece) which shouldn't have been in the EU, but Greece is also a case where fraud was involved.
The EU should probably consider remaining stable at its current size for a while.
4046556
A few weeks ago, California passed France as the 6th largest economy in the world unto itself. For a brief time last night, thanks to the pound tanking, it became the fifth. If the UK economy does as expected this year, California may surpass it as the 5th largest economy in the world, behind only the US, China, Japan, and Germany.
Oh, yes.
#2 question being asked of Google in the UK right now:
"What is the EU?"
Hooray for democracy?
Also:
Cornwall votes for Brexit and then pleads to keep EU funding