Please can someone explain? Will we pay if we leave EU without a deal?

[HappydaysArehere]

With all this talk of billions of pounds which we are supposed to owe if we leave and talk of continuing to pay after we leave, I am in the dark. If we walk away with no deal will we pay anything like the amounts talked about? If we are able to do that surely the EU will be big losers as well as us! I am at a loss. Grateful for your input as I am bewildered. I voted to remain but must say the shenanigans being played by the EU are showing them as more like the Mafia than a democratic institution.

@Rufustherenegadereindeer1

I think there were two items:

1. youth unemployment in other EU countries like Spain and Greece and relevance to the UK. Is there some risk of similar contagion with our youth if we stay in?

2. relevance to the UK of a eurozone country like Italy defaulting on its external debt if the UK is in or out of the EU. This in response to a recent rise in Target2 balances at the ECB wrt Bank of Italy.

Correct?

This is the response i got from a poster

Me : I appreciate if you know this stuff its 'blatantly' obvious

Poster: On the one hand you can worry about the financial state of other EU countries which are approaching critical mass....Or on the other hand you can be like Olivia and pretend it doesn't matter.

Hope this helps.

Well no it didnt help

And to be fair to me....either caroline or olivia could be right on this subject, i dont know! But some posters have a great deal of trouble answering questions

and that is one of the reasons that its the same old posters on these threads...because people like me who want to learn about both arguments are being ignored in favour of point scoring

olivia

Correct

Olivia, in easy language, your assertions throughout this thread, that the UKs membership of the EMU has nothing to do with Brexit or the single market. You are merely regurgitating remainer rhetoric, with no understanding about the rationale behind it. Its a common problem with those that cut and paste economic theory. You attempt to tie in Single Market access with alleged beneficial arguments, whilst utterly disregarding the contradictory economic impacts, indeed worse, you assume membership of the single market is 'free'. You professed to be an economic advisor. How much clearer to you, does that need to be?

Bowling shoes, "You will be hard pushed to find any other economist speaking in favour of any Brexit, let alone one in favour of WTO trading terms."*

*
Utter bollocks too. Heres a list of those who publicly do, the list of those who are less 'public' runs to pages.

Oh and the Northern Ireland border issue hangs on VAT, which is why we absolutely 100% will keep it.

Professor Patrick Minford
Professor Vudayagi Balasubramanyam
Professor David Blake
Roger Bootle
Michael Burrage
Professor Tim Congdon
Professor Kevin Dowd
John Greenwood
Liam Halligan
Martin Howe QC
Warwick Lightfoot
Professor Graeme Leach
Neil MacKinnon
Professor Kent Matthews
Edgar Miller
Professor David Paton
Dr John Whittaker

@Carolinesbeanies

Please answer the questions or cease and desist. You have again not replied, relying instead on questioning whether my arguments make sense.

Stop trolling and use your noggin will you?

"otherwise help us better understand Brexit by being a meaningful and factual contributor."

You need help understanding? Havent we all wasted our time over the last few days here, you were so clear that you knew it all.

Just in case thats too subtle, it was you Olivia, that stormed into a thread claiming credibility and authority to pronounce on brexit, whilst throwing out a mass assault of highly offensive and insulting assertions. I dont need to explain anything.

Agree with Olivia, there is too much whatabouttery from the Brexit posters and not enough concrete answers.

Whatabouttery is a classic tactic of bots and trolls.

And as for Rufus put your question here how rude! If it was a pm it was private correspondence, or do the Brexit crowd need to control all thought in the manner of Chris HH of the university letter fame?

Caroline Thank you for the list of economists, copied from the group "Economists for Free Trade". Yes, you are right there are more than one of them. However it is they, as a group led by Patrick Minford, who produced the now discredited model I referred to above. Are there any economists not part of this group, who make positive economic arguments for the WTO option? Apart from these supposed ones that are " less public " about it. I would be interested to hear their theories.

@Carolinesbeanies

More diversions again? You like gratuitously asserting stuff don’t you?

I’ll repeat the request. Please answer the questions posed so we can all benefit. They are not obvious to me or to others.

Carolinesbeanies

The MTOs? I still don't understand the relevance.

Carolinesbeanies

whilst utterly disregarding the contradictory economic impacts

And this is the point in the argument where you tell us what these "contradictory economic impacts" are and why they matter.

Unless you can explain it is just blah, blah blah.

Please explain.

All,

I think we’ve hit the end of the road again just like w M4dad and spinflight.

I hope @Carolinesbeanies proves us wrong but I’m sensing significant resistance either due to lack of willingness or ability to respond.

I too would like to hear both sides of the argument so it’s unfortunate it’s unlikely to be forthcoming

If there’s anyone else who can help please feel free.

Olivia

Yes absolutely bowlingshoes, it wasnt hard to find, yet utterly contradictory to your initial claim.

You are trying to sell us a low growth, low innovation, high unemployment model. The EU model. (and save me the rhetoric about 'unemployment', whilst zero hour contracts even still exist in the benevolent EU.) Having failed to materialise the economic doom predictions post referendum, youve now moved to 'predicting' doom in a deal/no deal scenario. All I have to do is wait. You on the other hand, have to demonstrate a little better, why the best remainer economists (allegedly) in the land persistantly get it wrong over and over again.

The MTOs are highly relevant for 2 reasons. Olivia shouts 'sovereignty', MTOs (enforceable by economic sanctions) shouts otherwise. Olivia shouts 'benefits', the MTOs demonstrate whose paying for the benefits.

When you come onto threads, making abusive posts about intelligence levels, either you best be sure that historically, you were correct, (which remainer economists werent) or predictably, you will be correct. To do that, you must address all impacts, not just cherry pick selective ones. Its an issue these days, and why we had a run of highly paid pollsters crash and burn. Either take into account all available data, or dont bother in the first place. The single market and the CU is one such place. Disregarding the costs of our existing membership of the SM and CU is doomed to failure, and all I have to do is sit and watch as the trajectory of low growth, wage stagnation and falling market share continues. I really dont have to explain anything.

The MTOs are highly relevant for 2 reasons. Olivia shouts 'sovereignty', MTOs (enforceable by economic sanctions) shouts otherwise. Olivia shouts 'benefits', the MTOs demonstrate whose paying for the benefits

OK - did I miss the bit about sovereignty and benefits?

Why do the MTOs prove Olivia wrong? In relation to which point?
Who is paying for the benefits.

Again a very general statement with no facts to back it up.

I didn't say MTOs were not relevant, but I questioned their relevance. Difference. I don't understand the 2 reasons. Please expand.

EU model ... What are you talking about? Like Germany's unemployment (3.7%)? Or the UK's? Or maybe the Dutch (4.8%)? Please explain. We should all have high unemployment according to your gratuitously assertive statement!

Low innovation model. I don't understand. Is the EU expressly trying to suppress innovation? How has this affected the UK?

In terms of forecasts, you seem to be right that the expectations of doom and gloom were excessive. Personally, I never understood these cliff edge doom and gloom forecasts: an economy as large as the UK's has inertia where it takes years to see effects, unless the shock is very large. And we haven't left yet. Nor do we know what leaving means. So we can only model and use logic for now. Scenario test. Might be flawed but it's the best we have.

But what worries me when I look at the GDP equation is where growth will come from: GDP = C + G + I + X - M. Consumer is in trouble. Goverment expenditures too. Investment is now down. Xports haven't really jumped even given £ drop and Mports well, haven't tapered off either ...

The single market and the CU is one such place. Disregarding the costs of our existing membership of the SM and CU is doomed to failure, and all I have to do is sit and watch as the trajectory of low growth, wage stagnation and falling market share continues. I really dont have to explain anything.

Don't understand this. How would removing ourselves from the SM and CU help our growth? How would introducing NTBs and tariffs (less important) help our growth? This is a claim that doesn't compute with me.

OliviaD68

I'm glad you didn't understand the points either. I thought I had missed something important.

@Carolinesbeanies

One more question .. You say low growth is an EU problem. But the UK is the slowest growing economy out of the EU28. How do you explain that? Are you saying our membership in the EU is to blame for our low growth? It seems to be suiting others fine cf their higher growth relative to ours: What are we doing wrong then?

Final question: to what do you attribute our low GDP growth? My view is Brexit uncertainty is delaying investment and, as indicated above, the Consumer is not spending (bc too leveraged and inflation is up), Govt can't spend anymore bc too leveraged. And the economy is just not the export machine we would hope for. But go on: tell us your view.

@Moussemoose

Well that reassures me too. Thought I was being pigshit thick.

www.ft.com/content/715406fc-bb0b-11e7-8c12-5661783e5589

Article in FT on release of the 50 sector reports the Govt has procured. Seems we are not the only ones to be suffering from a fact free Brexit ...

I just had to laugh at Brexiteers shouting that the Norths had been discredited "by economists", when every reputable economist has declared that Brexit will be a disaster (Minford and his cronies having been thoroughly discredited themselves)!

You couldn't make it up!

@CardinalSin

Wish we could laugh. You’re right that most relationship models look like they would lead to a disaster. Possibly EEA membership might not be so bad. But this has been rejected so we are not going there.

Everything else seems to lead to trade barriers being put up with all trading partners. Especially the EU which matters most.

Why? Well according to Boris it seems because this will benefit free trade.

Head scratcher right?

Maybe @Carolinesbeanies will help us understand. It’s the crux of my questions to her.

As I think you've gathered, I wouldn't hold my breath. This latest set of Brexit bots seems to have taken the route of strongly claiming "opinions" as facts, and then not backing them up. But I guess telling lies and then moving on to the next one worked well enough for them during the referendum campaign.

@CardinalSin

Guess you were right. Ask for facts or supporting arguments / rationale and get silence.

Fact-free zone as the FT says.

Wondered where to pop this little gem, but decided M4dad had earned it on here.

This is Ed Conway, Skys Economics editor. (Perhaps from the Olivia school of economics?)

He tweeted,

"There is only one other country anywhere trading solely on WTO rules. And 1 to 17% of the population live in slavery"

The response is pure twitter gold.

@Carolinesbeanies

Not going to answer the questions?

Once you reply we can then dig into this latest submission and why it does or doesn’t matter.

So I think you still owe us a response on MTOs ...