In the United Kingdom on Thursday, a
slight 52-48 majority of voters decided to take the UK out of the European
Union. The process will take about two years.
The thing is, more than 1 out of 3
grownups in the UK didn’t bother to vote.
I don’t know what they were thinking. It’s
a bit hard to imagine a more momentous nonviolent event that will affect the
entire population of Britain, and much of the population of Europe.
For example, almost 50% of Britain’s
exports go to the countries of the European Union.
After the vote result was announced,
the British currency (English pound) immediately traded lower on world
financial markets to its least favorable value in the last 30 years.
It is widely believed that the British
economy will suffer in the wake of being cut off from EU financial and
commercial activities.
Older voters in Britain strongly
favored getting out of the European Union, while younger voters gave a large
majority of their votes to staying in.
Sadly, it seems that this vote was more
about immigration fears than economics.
p.s. A lot of folks in the UK
apparently didn’t know too much about what was going on with this vote. After
the “NO” decision was announced, the most popular EU-related Google search in
the United Kingdom was:
“What does it mean to leave the EU?”
The next four most popular were:
“What is the EU?”
“Which countries are in the EU?”
“What will happen now we’ve left the
EU?”
“How many countries are in the EU?”
“How many countries are in the EU?”
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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