The New Yorker's "silly" BREXIT cover

[underpants]

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-2016-07-04





On edit - sorry if this was already posted. I did look first...unlike the Brits

[pampango]

1. Agreed. Brits are entering the unknown but not walking off a cliff. n/t

[Bucky]

3. It won't be as bad as Venezuela... they won't starve

But five years from now there may not be a "United Kingdom" in a recognizeable form. If Scotland and Northern Ireland go, there won't even be a rationale to call it Great Britain. What will they call it, The United Kingdom of England, Gibralter, and the Faulkand Islands? Nope, it'll just be the KofE.

[DemMomma4Sanders]

9. Venezuelans are not starving!

Drinking hibiscus tea instead of coke doesn't mean you're dying of thirst does it? Can't import coke.....drink what grows in your backyard.

It just means they don't have access to junky western microwavable crap.....GOD FORBID!

[Hortensis]

11. That's not quite the situation, DemMomma.

That relatively few have died from malnutrition and some have access to plenty of food does not mean that a large part of the nation is not malnourished and hungry all the time now.

From Foreign Policy:

The food shortage, precipitated by Chávez’s economic policies and a precipitous drop in oil revenue, is the worst in the country’s history. It has led the government to limit purchases of basic foodstuffs and set their prices. Nonetheless, basic goods such as coffee, sugar, rice, milk, pasta, toilet paper, hand soap, and detergent remain impossible to find. According to Datanalisis, the country’s leading polling agency, over 80 percent of regulated foodstuffs have vanished from store shelves. As a result, many Venezuelans now make do with a single meal a day, or resort to rustling through garbage bins to find food. Others have begun hunting pigeons, dogs, and cats, ...
...
Soaring inflation only makes matters worse. On May 1, Maduro raised the country’s monthly minimum wage by 30 percent to 15,050 bolivars (about $1,500). That sounds like a big raise, but consider: Inflation is raging at more than 400 percent. For perspective, the average family of four needs 256,146 bolivars (about $25,700) a month to buy just the essential foodstuffs, according to the Documentation Center for Social Analysis. That works out to over 17 times the monthly minimum wage.

?w=960&h=460&crop=1

[DemMomma4Sanders]

13. Foreign Policy? Jeesh thats so right wing I have a hard time believing the photo is even

relevant to the topic.

Sure that picture wasn't taken after the US attempted coup to Overthrow the democratically elected Chavez?

Us media says Venezuelans are starving, meanwhile Venezuelans laugh at goofy Americans who believe you're starving if you're eating homegrown food!

Truth is there are more homeless and starving people in America who have no access to real food or shelter.

[Hortensis]

14. Well, you sound very sincere in your beliefs.

Certainly can't argue that we don't have people suffering right here in America from starvation, although what that has to say about what Venezuelans are going through I don't know.

Have a nice day.

[leveymg]

5. China will snap up whatever isn't already owned by the Saudis, you mean.

I wonder what the Oil Kingdom's take on this is? Perhaps, they see another fire sale buying opportunity, like the one in 1997.

[leveymg]

7. They still have a $2.5 trillion Diversification fund, much of which will be FDI.

They will be rolling in cash once they start auctioning off ARAMCO's upstream crude supplies. See, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2016/04/24/Analysis-Saudi-s-2-trillion-megafund-is-a-sign-of-changing-times.html

[KPN]

10. The flaw in that thinking -- making an example --

is that it will only further fuel the distrust of the anti-austerity popular forces that are already over-running Europe. Austerity does not work when it tangibly hurts the majority. Neoliberal economic policy that benefits corporations and the 1% while harming masses and leaving the remainder in a treading water mindset does not work.

The EU will have to come to grips with and somehow change this if it is going to survive. If a government does not take care of its own first, it is not of any value to the people. The EU will have to find a way to tangibly affect the average person's life for the better across its union in order to avoid further Brexits and survive.

Punishing does not work as a motivator. It gets compliance for a while only.

[longship]

8. Here's the original.

R&K

[Hortensis]

12. Great cover. England has plenty of assets,

including us. That this is going to cost them far more and for far longer than most who voted yes realized seems unavoidable, but these doomsday imaginings are overblown and completely fail to consider whatever offseting advantages will come from this.

I feel sorry for all the young people who were browsing all of Europe as they considered where to go to college and now realize those doors are all closing. Their lost opportunities symbolize many others, of course.