Eh. They joined back in the days with a completely shot economy. WWII, then the loss of the colonies, all that coal+steel industry failing on the world market and getting further gutted by Thatcher, etc. Then they joined, and their economic situation improved. Then they left, and it has reverted to its shot state.
What Portugal has less off is absurdly rich people, but don’t think for a second that the median Portuguese is worse off than the median Brit: London is a financial hub surrounded by a third-world country and it wasn’t really that different when they were still in the EU: It was EU structural funds which kept the British periphery somewhat afloat.
Thinking of it, that was probably the reason the nobs wanted to leave: Looking at the balance sheets they didn’t see “oh we’re paying in, and we’re getting stuff out”, they saw “oh, we’re paying in, and the plebs are getting stuff out”. Can’t have that.
I don’t think Britain ever got out of being poor, and that at least had something to do with Brexit happening. Sure, there’s London with it’s finance people doing things that make money without actually needing to do any work, and other big cities do OK, but the rest of us scrape by. Former mining towns, former manufacturing towns… None of these places came back to life. They’re not anything now. Just former something towns. And by and large, they voted for Brexit to happen. It wasn’t a particularly sensible decision, but there you are. More of a protest vote that got out of hand.
That said, I think Portugal is still poorer by a long way. I lost count of the number of times I clicked Brazil while playing Geoguessr and it turned out it was Porto or something. It’s an East Europe country that happens to be in the west.
Eh. They joined back in the days with a completely shot economy. WWII, then the loss of the colonies, all that coal+steel industry failing on the world market and getting further gutted by Thatcher, etc. Then they joined, and their economic situation improved. Then they left, and it has reverted to its shot state.
What Portugal has less off is absurdly rich people, but don’t think for a second that the median Portuguese is worse off than the median Brit: London is a financial hub surrounded by a third-world country and it wasn’t really that different when they were still in the EU: It was EU structural funds which kept the British periphery somewhat afloat.
Thinking of it, that was probably the reason the nobs wanted to leave: Looking at the balance sheets they didn’t see “oh we’re paying in, and we’re getting stuff out”, they saw “oh, we’re paying in, and the plebs are getting stuff out”. Can’t have that.
I don’t think Britain ever got out of being poor, and that at least had something to do with Brexit happening. Sure, there’s London with it’s finance people doing things that make money without actually needing to do any work, and other big cities do OK, but the rest of us scrape by. Former mining towns, former manufacturing towns… None of these places came back to life. They’re not anything now. Just former something towns. And by and large, they voted for Brexit to happen. It wasn’t a particularly sensible decision, but there you are. More of a protest vote that got out of hand.
That said, I think Portugal is still poorer by a long way. I lost count of the number of times I clicked Brazil while playing Geoguessr and it turned out it was Porto or something. It’s an East Europe country that happens to be in the west.