Blog Post 5 for March 13 Class

I particularly enjoyed the article we read for this week’s class entitled “Brexit in 7 Charts — The Economic Impact.” I am most definitely a numbers person and a visual learner, so the charts proved quite helpful to me. When looking at all these graphs back-to-back, it seems crazy for people to have voted to leave the European Union. The British economy appeared to have prospered during its EU membership and researchers found no indication that the presence of immigrants reduced wages, one of the hot-button issues driving the Leave campaign. Now, post-Brexit vote, the time-consuming negotiation processes and the guaranteed uncertainty of the next few years loom heavy on the horizon. On paper, the decision to leave does not make much sense.

But, life is not lived on paper. I have never lived in or even visited Great Britain, so I have absolutely zero firsthand knowledge of the true situation there; however, I do not believe it is far off from the situation in my own country, providing me with the opportunity to make a relatively easy comparison. Americans voted for Donald Trump because it was a direct rebuff of the status quo. He promised to “Make America Great Again,” to defend our borders, to help the working class citizens, and to revive nationalism and the American Dream. That does not sound too different from the Leave campaign’s promises. I believe that if the British people had sat down and objectively researched the pros and cons of leaving the European Union, they would have decided to stay. Their frustration with their current situation got the better of them, though; they went to the polls with the belief that anything is better than where they were at right then.

In the longterm, I truly feel their economy will sort itself out and Great Britain will do quite well, but the next few years will undoubtedly be messy. Is it worth it? Only time will tell.