Stidmatt

One reason a lot of people support Brexit has been for the United Kingdom to create a European Union-like organization among its commonwealth realms, and they argue this will increase the United Kingdom’s power projection.

Let’s compare what this will be compared to the European Union which the United Kingdom has left.

What is the Commonwealth Realms?

From what we can see here, the commonwealth realms are significantly smaller than the European Union.

Of these 15 realms, only 4 are significantly wealthy large democracies, those are the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The only other countries with over a million people in the Commonwealth Realms are Papua New Guinea, which has a GDP per capita of just under $4000, and Jamaica, which has a $9000 GDP per capita. The rest of the Realms are small island nations and Belize. While some have high GDPs per capita (like the Bahamas) they don’t have the population to project power globally. Most of the Commonwealth Realms are not going to significantly increase the power projection of the United Kingdom from where it is today.

Over 40% of the population of the Commonwealth realms is in the United Kingdom. Over 80% of their population is located in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

What this is really about is deepening economic relationships between the United Kingdom and Canada. This is going to run into a massive problem however because the United Kingdom doesn’t even appear in the top 5 largest trading partners of Canada. Over 70% of Canadian exports and over 50% of Canadian imports are with the United States, so anything which moves trade from Canada from the US to the UK will probably hurt the Canadian economy, and cost jobs overall. Not only that but 7% of exports and 11% of imports are with the European Union, so if trade with the EU is harmed through this agreement, it will kill Canadian jobs. Given the choice between over 700 million people in the US and EU together or 67 million in the United Kingdom, the Canadians are going to pick the economy which is over 10 times the size of the United Kingdom. The fact is that Canada borders the United States, we already have a free trade agreement with them, and millions of Canadian jobs are dependent on keeping trade with the United States as open as possible. If this threatens trade with the United States… forget it.

Canada has no reason to join CANZUK if it harms the vast majority of its trade with the US and EU. CANZUK is bad for Canada.

Australian trade is more diversified, with China as its major trading partner. While the United Kingdom does generate 4% of Australian imports, this pales in comparison to the 32% of exports and 19% of imports from China, along with 5% of exports and 12% of imports from the United States. While they’re not nearly as highly dependent on one other country as Canada, the United Kingdom is not a major trading partner of Australia. Also, the overall impact of deepening UK-Australia ties is unlikely to have much of an impact on the United Kingdom. While Australia is massive in area, its population is less than a third of that of the United Kingdom. The average Briton in Sheffield will probably think about trade with Australia less than a cattle farmer in Enid, Oklahoma thinks of trade with Canada. Never. The United Kingdom and Australia signed a free trade agreement last year. We will see if it deepens their relationships, but Australia’s population is going to be the major barrier to having a significant impact on the British economy.

Canada won’t threaten its existing relationships with the United States and the European Union, and there is very little benefit to deepening already fairly open trade relationships between the United Kingdom and Australia.

The remainder of the Commonwealth will have no impact on the United Kingdom economy. New Zealand is smaller than London, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Jamaica are poor, and every other member is smaller than Cardiff and on the other side of the world.

You should not expect anything more than a standard Free Trade Agreement between the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth Realms in terms of economic integration.

On top of this, the European Union already has free trade agreements with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, so leaving the European Union will provide no benefit regarding the CANZUK relationship.

Future growth of the Commonwealth

This is where things become significantly different… the commonwealth realms have been steadily shrinking since Queen Elizabeth became Queen. When she became the Queen, she was not just the queen of the 15 current commonwealth realms but also Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa, The Gambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malta, and Fiji. Most of these countries left the Commonwealth Realms in the 1950s and 1960s, but Fiji left in 1987, Malta in 1974, Ceylon in 1972, Trinidad and Tobago in 1976, Mauritius in 1992, and most recently Barbados in 2021. The Commonwealth realms have been shrinking over the last 50 years, and are not going to grow. They will probably continue to shrink in numbers as more members gradually decide they don’t want to be a constitutional monarchy anymore.

The United Kingdom could set up free trade agreements with any country it wants, but this would not provide any real benefit to them which outweighs leaving the European Union.

Could former British colonies which would have a significant positive impact on the British economy decide to join the Commonwealth Realms and form a new institution that would deepen their relationships with the United Kingdom?

First of all, we cannot include any countries which are already part of existing free travel agreements, so India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh could not unilaterally join an EU-like Commonwealth organization without disturbing its existing free trade area.

Nigeria could potentially join if that is of any interest to the British public.

Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda are part of the East African Community.

South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana are part of the South African Customs Union.

Malaysia is part of ASEAN.

The remainder of the countries in the Commonwealth Realms are smaller than Canada, and most are extremely poor. There would be no impact on the British economy from the remainder.

The Commonwealth of Nations is not a place where the British government is going to see any progress in building deeper relationships like what they had with the European Union unless it wants to be the central pillar of a bunch of small and poor island nations most people have never even heard of.

The Commonwealth is not going to grow either.

The United States?

Could we see a deepening relationship with the United States? I highly doubt it because the State Department hasn’t mentioned it in its last press briefing, and there have been no meetings regarding the proposed free trade agreement for two years now. It might be picked up, but I don’t anticipate a free trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom any time soon. If we don’t even have a free trade agreement, don’t expect anything deeper.

China?

Forget it. Most people in the UK have very unfavorable views of the People’s Republic of China.

Japan

Japan and the UK already have a free trade agreement, just like they had when they were in the European Union. This is merely a continuation of what was the status quo.

Russia

Don’t make me laugh. Russia is poor and currently invading Ukraine, and failing at it.

South Korea

The EU has a trade agreement with South Korea. This provides no benefit to leaving the European Union.

Besides these countries, there are no other economies with a GDP over a trillion dollars… except for…

The European Union

The one foreign move which is likely to work and provide a benefit is undoing Brexit and rejoining the European Union. There are no countries of significance that are likely to do more than a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom, which means that the United Kingdom is likely to become more isolated. Being part of a larger bloc creates advantages in trade, and anytime you ask for reasons you end up with a few examples, which usually range from nonsensical blabbering about tea bags to ridiculous claims the EU is undemocratic (despite having direct elections in Parliament, of which all power is derived),  downright ethnonationalism of Nigel Farage, or flat out lies about how much money the UK sends to the EU (it adds up to about a pound per day per person). For this pound per day which pays for European Union institutions, the UK received (and hopefully will again receive) massive economic benefits with less trade friction, and a more fluid labor market increases wages for everyone in the United Kingdom according to all data-based economic theories.

The only foreign policy move which has a snowball’s chance in hell of happening and will improve the economy for the average Briton is rejoining the European Union.

If you look at the Russian population pyramid, there are several important places to remember which are clear in this population pyramid as I have clearly marked.

Russia didn’t have to have its current baby bust. If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine and focused on upskilling Russians, growing their domestic economy, and improving the quality of life for average Russians they would have continued to grow. But Vladimir Putin made a massive miscalculation when he invaded Ukraine.

source: tradingeconomics.com

Following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine the Russian economy went in a 3 year decline, at exactly the same point when the Russian economy declined. The Russian economy started to grow finally in 2018, and they had 2 years of growth until the COVID epidemic in 2020, followed by a massive recovery in 2021.

But this year Russia is on track to see its economy decline, according to internal sources.

source: tradingeconomics.com

Putin has led Russia into a depression with his war in Ukraine.

There are only a few ways this can end.

1. The Russian people finally get fed up with their economy having regular severe recessions which correspond almost perfectly to Putin’s foreign invasions. There is a revolution and he is replaced with a democracy.
2. Enough soldiers die in Ukraine that the baby bust becomes even more severe and it causes further economic hardship that a revolution comes in the next 10 years.
3. Putin is replaced by another oligarch, but this won’t end the sanctions from the West, and there will be a revolution of the people.
4. Russia continues to stagnate for the foreseeable future, with millions of young men killed by vodka, and their people will continue to be poor.

If you don’t think Russians will revolt in the face of economic hardship… you really need to learn about Russian history.

Putin had one job. If he had just kept Russia to itself, kept trading with other countries, and developed local industry and developed Russian brands, Russia could have been an emerging tech power. Russia has a literacy rate of 99.7%, and 54% of Russians have a tertiary degree, the highest in the world, on par with only Canada, 10% higher than the United States. By these metrics, Russia should be a tech super power with global brands based in their country.

But the government of Russia has continuously decided that invading foreign powers is more important than building domestic companies. They have prioritized the coddling of local oligarchs who make shoddy off-brand copies of foreign countries. Their government have decided that their only strategy is to dominate other countries and kill people instead of building up the Russian people. It’s an absolute tragedy.

If Russia were to be able to develop in a way which developed their economy and start to deal with their horrible vodka addiction which is literally killing their people, it would become a major power which could trade with other countries instead of seeing the domination and enslavement of people as their only way forward. But the Russian government is stupid and unable to learn this.

So the Russian people will continue to suffer until they stop being led by extreme racist, homophobic leaders who destroy their economy and their people.

So, for the people of Russia, you have a choice between being a poor people with laws which persecute against LGBT people and are outcasts from the rest of the world, or being a country fully integrated with the rest of the world with a vibrant economy.

It’s your choice.

Going from smallest to largest…

We’ll use the Capitol Building of the United States of America as our reference point, because a large percentage of Americans have visited it at least once in their lives, and if you haven’t, you need to.

LEVEL 0: Private cars

First of all, we will always have cars. 20% of Americans live in rural areas, and sometimes a car really is the only way to get around. Cars create traffic and take a lot of room to store in cities. If they use an internal combustion engine they are noisy at any speed and always polluting. Cities should be designed in ways that make car usage the least convenient way to travel, and frankly unnecessary as much as possible. Neighborhoods should be built in ways that allow people to live, work, play, and shop, within a 1-mile radius of their home as much as possible. This builds community, and also encourages healthy activities like walking, which is the best form of transit. Car usage is a necessary evil for some trips and should be generally discouraged by making car trips unnecessary.

LEVEL 1: Walking

The best way to travel is walking. Walking takes practically no space, it is healthy, and it’s better than free because of its health benefits. You should do it. Cities should be built to encourage walking, and it should be the obvious and best way to get around as much as possible in as many places as possible. Walking is great for trips under 2 miles.

Example route:

Walking from the US Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial is a reasonable walk.

LEVEL 2: Biking

Biking is fantastic. Practically no space is needed in order to store a bike, they don’t pollute, they are extremely quiet, and they are reasonably fast. When I bike around my city I can sometimes go up to 50 KM/h anyways, so biking is frequently just as fast as driving. Biking also can be just plain fun. For trips of up to 40 KM bikes really should be the preferred method of travel. Our cities need to be designed so that for every arterial there should be a convenient path that can serve bikes and pedestrians so they can safely travel around the city. This eliminates congestion, saves space in the city which doesn’t need to be used for parking, and helps generate livable, walkable cities.

Example route:

Anywhere in the District of Columbia or Arlington.

LEVEL 3: Buses

Buses are the best form of travel for routes that are either low demand or extremely local. Frequency, price, and speed all impact ridership. Running buses on local routes is their best use case. Buses start to fall apart when the route is in very high demand and go a longer distance. Bus lanes cost about the same amount to build as tracks, for lower speeds, less capacity, and less frequency. They should always be avoided. When buses are frequently backing up in the downtown of your city (Seattle)… your system is failing, and it’s time to move to level 4.

Example route:

Capitol building to Mount Vernon, relatively low demand, and too far to reasonably bike. Take the blue line first, and then take the bus the rest of the way.

LEVEL 4: Local trains

Local trains are critical to the infrastructure of any city greater than 500,000 people. Trains are best used on high-demand, medium to long-distance routes. Local trains should provide easy, fast, frequent, and high-capacity access to all large areas of the city. Buses will bring people from the train stations to their local neighborhoods. Working together, buses and trains create a powerful system that efficiently moves people around their city. Local trains focus on the entire metropolitan region.

Example routes from our capitol building:

• Dulles international airport
• Downtown Baltimore

LEVEL 5: Regional/high-speed rail

You will have trains which bring people to other cities around your city. There will be limited stops inside of a metropolitan area, and those stops will be transit hubs for local rail (in big cities) or bus terminals (in medium-sized cities with fewer than a million people). Regional rail connects both large and small cities. Rail works best for distances under 1000 km.

High-speed rail should be built when the capacity of the line requires lots of trains to be moving in order to fulfill demand. These are easy to spot because there is a lot of competition for flights on these routes. The faster the train, the longer the distance can be served until flights become more time economical. Estimate that each trip takes 2 additional hours when sitting for a plane compared to a train when a high-speed rail line should already be around 500 km away by the time the plane takes off.

When initially building regional rail (which is where the US is today) it makes sense to focus originally on the high-demand routes, but in the long run, it should be connecting the whole country.

Example routes from the capitol building:

• Boston
• New York
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Richmond
• Charlotte
• Atlanta
• Chicago

LEVEL 6: Flying

Flying will always be part of our system. It should be limited to overseas flights and extreme coast-to-coast routes. Flying should be discouraged as much as possible since it is more expensive, carries fewer people compared to a train per vehicle, and is worse for the environment.

Example routes:

• Seattle
• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Denver
• Miami

The Network effect

There are several critical parts of any transit system. Speed, fares, and delays impact ridership because there will always be competition from cars and airlines. But by building a strong network, we can end up with a solid system that works as a single organism.

Local governments have the responsibility to set up a transit network that works for them. Overcrowding will be minimized. A good city is where the wealthy use transit. Once people arrive in your city, there needs to be an easy way to move around it without using a car.

But local governments can only do so much. How do you get to your main city? After I move to North Carolina this month, how am I going to visit Washington, DC? This is where having great regional rail is critical to a functioning system. People are more likely to use transit after they reach their destinations if it was easy to get there using transit in the first place.

State governments can only do so much as well. California is building HSR, and someday it will be completed. But California is unusual in terms of how many people it has, and how it has two major cities just the right distance away to make a highly valuable high-speed rail route. Almost every other high-quality route (outside of Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio) requires interstate cooperation in order to be feasible.

The Federal government has a critical role to play in ensuring our infrastructure serves both freight and passenger mobility. Federal money is and should continue to be used to improve local transit links. Federal money can be used to densify and improve neighborhoods, but just densifying neighborhoods and making them walkable isn’t enough. We also need to look at it in a holistic fashion, and this means we must build good transit so moving around cities is convenient, fast, affordable, safe, and environmentally friendly. This needs to be a national priority. We cannot have good local neighborhoods without good transit, because without good transit, everyone will still have a car, and that jams our cities up with unnecessary cars, making densification difficult. In order to build the best transit system, we need to have neighborhoods that are built in a way that makes it easy to serve them to get around their cities. It needs to be easy for people to get to their closest bus stop in order to increase ridership.

Americans love false choices, it seems to be a national sport.

We can have both walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and good transit at every level, or we can have neither.

That is our choice.

The presidency of Donald Trump was one of the worst America ever had. Even though he had few legislative accomplishments, America won’t be safe until the courts are unstacked from what he did.

Donald Trump didn’t even win the popular vote, but reduced turnout and a lack of campaigning in three states gave him a victory which came down to fewer than 100,000 votes. If more people who had voted for Obama had simply voted for Clinton in 2016 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump could have become president.

The courts didn’t have to become stacked. That was not inevitable. It became stacked because Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell denied President Obama his court pick after Antonin Scalia died.

Mitch McConnell became senate majority leader despite the Democrats winning the popular vote for the Senate in 2012 and 2014, but due to how the votes were spread out they didn’t win the Senate.

A major part of how the Republicans were able to win was due to voter discrimination being passed in many states around the country. This was due to Republicans picking up a large number of governorships in 2010.

The reason why Republicans did so well in 2010 was the DNC under Tim Kaine’s leadership did not invest in a large number of swing states. This is the core reason which directly led to Trump being elected. The democrats decided local areas were mostly on their own, while republicans supported local party organizations. That mismatch led to reduced democratic turnout and a victory for the GOP.

The abandonment of the 50-state strategy in 2010 is the reason why Donald Trump became President.

On the surface, to someone who doesn’t understand macroeconomics, sending surplus money back to taxpayers sounds like a great idea. It sounds like a benefit to taxpayers to give them relief and helps people out. Right?

But in reality, it is not a good policy.

This creates a pro-cyclical fiscal policy which means people pay more taxes and get fewer services during recessions, as well as pay a lower tax rate and get more services during times of economic growth. During times of economic growth, this will exacerbate inflation, and create significantly higher growth rates during boom times.

During recessions, however, this means state governments have to rely on federal government spending in order to keep their economies afloat, and if the federal government is someday unwilling to stabilize the economy by not subscribing to Keynesian economics, this will exacerbate recessions.

There are decent arguments for using rainy day funds to help pull people out of poverty during times of significant economic growth, but the more prudent answer would be to save that money so that states have money to use during times of recession to help the economy keep an even keel.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/08/25/states-have-historic-amounts-of-leftover-cash

• Vaccine mandates everywhere we can, no vaccine, no fly.
• If someone forges a vaccine card, that’s a forgery of a government document. That’s a felony. Prosecute this crime, take it seriously.
• No insurance coverage if you are unvaccinated and catch COVID. Let’s use economics here for once.
• Mask mandates, let’s nip this virus in the butt.

We need to take care of this virus. This is serious. It’s costing us too many lives. Let’s eliminate it, and the sooner we eliminate it, the sooner we can go back to our lives as they were in 2015.

But pretending a problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. We have wishful thinking as federal policy, and I’m sick of it.

Despite all of these rollbacks with COVID because people are tired of them, the NSA still peruses our communications without a warrant, there are still body scans at airports, and many other things which are relatively new and have dubious if any evidence that they actually protect lives. But here with COVID we had rules which actually DO save real people’s lives today, far more than any rule passed in the first term of George Bush’s presidency has saved over the last 20 years. I highly doubt the PATRIOT ACT has saved over 1,000,000 lives, but that’s what we are looking at in terms of the number of people who have died from COVID.

People are going to die from this decision, and that’s unethical.

Here’s a useful calculator which you can use to understand how COVID policies impact public health: https://www.microcovid.org