And this is just one of many ways the US is currently shooting itself in the foot (or, if you prefer, cutting off its nose to spite its face). Thanks, Elon! Putin and Xi must be cheering...
> Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.
...until the extreme-right populists (supported by the current US administration) come to power there too?
Given that European countries and the EU except a few outliers runs on proportional representation it is way harder for the extreme right to win a majority.
We’ve been dealing with our own extreme right parties for the past 20-30 years. They generally bounce between 10-25% of the vote depending on where in the political cycle they are. Like all parties do.
Never enough to dictate policy, but enough to influence when at the top of their cycle.
Compare with the US where only ~25% is needed to take over a party due to abysmal turnouts and electoral system.
These 25% can then win an election allowing the extreme right to dictate policy, as we now see in the US.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the US party systems.
The "parliamentary party" is probably to which you refer. The elected congressfolk and legislators.
The political party, the people who run the party, is often elected at the precinct and county level. No idea how European parties work, but I suspect something similar (the UK Conservatives are similar).
Americans may realize that they're a party member and they've never once voted for a party officeholder, and don't even know they can or should be. Whatever percent it is to take over a party, we actually don't know because there is rarely a public vote. They are able to because the leftwing propaganda (NPR etc) have made their consumers dumb as hell. It's a twisted self-perpetuating system with which we have little visibility much less participation.
> Given that European countries and the EU except a few outliers runs on proportional representation it is way harder for the extreme right to win a majority.
Harder, but it still happens. That's why Trump is a big fan of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party:
Fidesz won a supermajority in the 2010 election, adopted national-conservative policies, shifted further to the right and became Eurosceptic. The 2011 adoption of a new Hungarian constitution was highly controversial as it consolidated power with Fidesz. Having set Hungary on a path of democratic backsliding, its majority of seats remained after the 2014 election, and following the escalation of the migrant crisis, Fidesz began using right-wing populist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Following the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, it currently holds a majority in the National Assembly with 135 seats. It has also held the presidency since 2010, has endorsed the election of every president since 2000, and it enjoys majorities in all 19 county assemblies, while being in opposition in the General Assembly of Budapest. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidesz)
Let's see how the United States will look like in 15 year's time...
Populism requires that you're popular. Brexit clones were extremely popular for the right across Europe right up until Brexit actually happened, and then suddenly they all remembered they'd never wanted anything to do with such a stupid plan and began scrubbing praise for it from their materials, back to "reform" and tinkering at the edges.
The trick is to be First. You can sell "Just do X and it'll be great" unless the people have already seen what a disaster X is.
Well, the AfD wants Germany to withdraw from the EU, and the only reason why ruling right-wing populist parties in eastern Europe (e.g. Hungary) don't do it is because it's the hand that still feeds them money (despite them continuously biting it).
TBF, Brexit was a particularly bad idea because of the Northern Ireland situation, so others can still feed the illusion that their *exit would be "cleaner"...
What makes you think the UK is doing better? Most reports have found the opposite, with costs in the hundreds of billions range versus where the economy would otherwise have been:
One potential confound is that the UK was starting with a strong position so if you just compare it to, say, Portugal it’s still looking better but that doesn’t tell you the gap wouldn’t have otherwise been even wider.
That’s one metric but it’s not enough to answer the question and misleading in key ways. Average GDP is not the same as the average person’s income, and you can’t say whether that’s good or bad without also looking at the cost of living. If your income is not going up at the same rate as your expenses that positive trend turns out to be a mirage and that’s where much of the reported pain for Brexit has been since introducing trade barriers makes goods and services more expensive.
Some trade barriers have also been lowered since Brexit, reducing costs - e.g. EU protectionist tariffs and quotas on things such as oranges and rice which reduces the cost of living.
The effects of Brexit are tiny compared to the lingering effects of Covid, and the increase in global prices caused by the invasion of Ukraine.
Er... that chart shows the UK GDP per capita about on par with France's (even slightly higher) until 2018, and from then on it has been consistently below France - not by a lot, but still noticeable...
A tiny difference and the big difference was that the UK fell back more during covid in 2020. the difference fluctuates from year to year it was only $300 (a 0.5% difference) in 2022.
> Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.
...until the extreme-right populists (supported by the current US administration) come to power there too?