https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-gov-website-2/

Wow. Clearly Musk and his kids are in need of a DOGS also staffed by 20 year olds, whose only task is continuously red-teaming DOGE.

@JazzG some light reading for you
https://www.profgalloway.com/elon-musk-welfare-queen/

Kel Varnsen this company is only alive and worth as much as it is because it primarily serves the government which allows it deeply as much capital as it has to R&D. If this was a private sector only endeavour, all funding models would fail. There’s too much time and risk. But government support has allowed it to build a $250bn valuation.
Of course, he earned it. Same with Tesla. We should never look past the fact that he had the boldness and appetite to push these businesses when nobody else would. But in both instances, patient capital from government enabled it. It’s not some heroic effort on his own.

JazzG This is what happens when the so called normal politicians let people down, they look elsewhere.

You mean establishment politicians. And you'd be right, except many had the opportunity to vote for such kinds of politicians and failed to do so.

Like, why vote for Farage when you could've gone for say, Corbin's group or Lib Dems? There's only one real answer to that.

Fucking hell man, this woman really needs to come up with a better example than that.

Kel Varnsen Next president in the US.

Was really impressed when I saw him on Joe Rogan before the election. I don't agree with everything he says but he does articulate himself well, the opposite of Trump in that respect lol.

Burnwinter We've already had one failed term of Trump and the failure of Brexit. Gotta say I'm confident we'll witness the disintegration of this lot plus the rise and fall of several populist variations across Europe before some start to figure out it's a dead end.

As someone who was against Brexit at the time I wouldn't class it as a failure yet. Too early to say anything yet imo. These things need to be judged over a much longer period, it is still very early days. Looking at the EU right now and the way it is in decline getting out probably one the best things that could happen to the UK. Now getting out is the first step but we've then had a complete and utter idiots in charge since then. I think that was my main worry, that we'd leave which was good but then have idiots in charge who would not have a clue about how to get the best out of it!

The main argument against Brexit seems to be economic but when you look at the EU, this logic that we'd be doing much better if we had remained to me doesn't seem sound to me, not like the EU is booming while we are in decline. We are all in decline lol. We've also had a pandemic which has hit us really hard, supply chains got fucked, we gave out loads of money, printed loads of money and then had the Russia/Ukraine war, the combination of all these things sent inflation through the roof and that is the main reason the UK feels poorer rather than leaving the EU imo.

For me the main reason for leaving the EU is we need to be able to hold or politicians to account, we can't do that with the EU. Here the voters were really unhappy with the Conservatives and punished them at the elections, all signs point toward Labour getting similar treatment next time round. When the EU is shaping a lot of your policy you can't really hold EU officials to account. Though many supported Brexit due to immigration and I get that, we need immigration but clearly people felt too many people were coming. After Brexit seems like we got even more immigration than before which basically sunk the Tories and has for some made them near unelectable right now.

banduan You mean establishment politicians. And you'd be right, except many had the opportunity to vote for such kinds of politicians and failed to do so.

Like, why vote for Farage when you could've gone for say, Corbin's group or Lib Dems? There's only one real answer to that.

Corbyn was simply a very disliked politician, a lot of people on the left online love him but in the real world I've never come across anyone who likes him. My wife's family are from the midlands and die hard Labour voters and they couldn't stand him. I'm sure someone will rush here to tell us that it was the smears from the media, I think it is more he was just an unlikeable man with shit policies....As for Lib Dems, they seem to have become the party for the overly liberal Tories lol. Farage right now is selling himself as the non-establishment figure and nobody else is occupying that space. The Tories kept him away and that has worked in his favour, all their failures are not sticking to him and he can batter them on that.

JazzG As someone who was against Brexit at the time I wouldn't class it as a failure yet. Too early to say anything yet imo. These things need to be judged over a much longer period, it is still very early days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit

Everyone who claims to be serious about any of the related questions seems to agree it's been a fuckup economically.

Jury is arguably out on whether it's resulted in a long term reduced dependence on nett migration, but it hasn't reduced nett migration to date, which was the implicit or explicit promise of the Leave campaign.

So that'd make it a failure on all fronts thus far.

I am no great fan of the EU though … ever since the eurozone debt crisis it's failed to make the fiscal reforms that would give it credibility as an economic federation.

The EU member nations who get structural economic benefits from its existence (most notably Germany) would have had to agree to a system of direct fiscal transfers (probably via a reformed ECB) to subsidise the others.

They have refused this, which is one reason EU politics have become so perennially fucked up. Makes Maastricht look like an elaborate risk and debt long con in retrospect.

I agree too that the EU is dangerously undemocratic. The way in which Greek and Italian sovereignty was crushed by the Eurogroup during the debt crisis was far more worrying than most of the stuff people complain about though.

Oh dear....

Burnwinter Everyone who claims to be serious about any of the related questions seems to agree it's been a fuckup economically.

I saw a paper recently which suggest otherwise, I'll try and dig it up for you. Short term there will be pain but once we start trading more freely with others over a longer term the benefits could outweigh staying, again that depends on political leadership which we are sorely lacking!

Burnwinter I agree too that the EU is dangerously undemocratic. The way in which Greek and Italian sovereignty was crushed by the Eurogroup during the debt crisis was far more worrying than most of the stuff people complain about though.

I agree. I wonder if elections in Germany and France don't go as the mainstream parties hope what happens going forward with the EU?

JazzG I saw a paper recently which suggest otherwise, I'll try and dig it up for you. Short term there will be pain but once we start trading more freely with others over a longer term the benefits could outweigh staying, again that depends on political leadership which we are sorely lacking!

I think there is always a presumption that the UK will get a good deal but every country will ask for something from us that we won't want to give naturally whether it's the US and allowing their farm produce in so they can outcompete UK farmers or some other kinds of concession there will be a cost and in an increasingly divided world standing alone is not a great negotiating position. Brexit has certainly not made anything better as it stands and I think economically it is currently worse. The whole point of it was to improve the UK's lot but it's certainly failed at that right now.

The general performance of the UK economy has more or less been in line with France/Italy and ahead of Germany but well behind the United States. i.e. fairly middling - and where it's been since 2008.

There's undoubtedly been sectors that have been impacted but most of the UK economy is service oriented so circumvented the bulk of the damage in aggregate.

Composition of trade in the UK and the rest of the G7
Within UK trade, there has been a significant and growing divergence between the performance of goods and services since the pandemic (Chart G).

Growth in UK goods trade (exports plus imports) has fallen well behind the rest of the G7. At the end of 2023, UK goods trade was around 10 per cent below 2019 levels, while it was around 5 higher on average for the rest of the G7 in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, UK services trade growth has been the strongest in the G7. It reached around 12 per cent above 2019 levels at the end of 2023, versus around 9 per cent above in the rest of the G7 in the third quarter.

• ONS: https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumptions-performing/

In the long term, the trends are about the same as well: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/uk-economy-will-grow-more-quickly-than-france-in-coming-years-dbr8ltfch

However, the wider point is that this level of growth was achievable within the EU as well and would have saved unnecessary hardship to individuals and saved political capital for real issues.

I don't particularly see how being out of the EU changes this growth trajectory as all major European players are facing the same headwinds. I also think Jazz's point on 'free trade' - a euphemism at the best of times - is wildly optimistic when the the world is increasing protectionist.

I dare say more than economic, the political damage is more significant - the UK is now far less integrated with its neighbours or with their primarily ally, the US at a time when the world is changing rapidly.

awooga83 I think there is always a presumption that the UK will get a good deal but every country will ask for something from us that we won't want to give naturally whether it's the US and allowing their farm produce in so they can outcompete UK farmers or some other kinds of concession there will be a cost and in an increasingly divided world standing alone is not a great negotiating position. Brexit has certainly not made anything better as it stands and I think economically it is currently worse. The whole point of it was to improve the UK's lot but it's certainly failed at that right now.

To me the EU is a bloc in serious decline and the way the politics are going in countries like Germany and France I wouldn't be surprised if there are further problems down the road for them. We saw it with the vaccine roll out how we were able to get out of the blocks a lot quicker and more recently with their policies towards AI. They are strangling themselves in red tape, Mario Draghi talked about this recently saying the EU is doing more harm to itself than any potential American tariffs.

Any trade deal with the US doesn't have to be comprehensive, can be sector by sector.

Mirth I dare say more than economic, the political damage is more significant - the UK is now far less integrated with its neighbours or with their primarily ally, the US at a time when the world is changing rapidly.

I think that dynamic will take shape in the next year or so, either we go closer to the EU or we align with the US. From the sounds of things the US are very open to that and likewise as are the EU. We can't have both though.

JazzG we used to, though. Being a member of the EU and having close ties with the US was pretty much the whole jam.

Anyway, Trump thinks VAT should be considered tariffs. They're not.

@JazzG - do you feel comfortable that Trump can get something so fundamental wrong but is still right about everything else?