Scotland’s Independence Vote Shows a Global Crisis of the Elites

[cali]

When you get past the details of the Scottish independence referendum Thursday, there is a broader story underway, one that is also playing out in other advanced nations.

It is a crisis of the elites. Scotland’s push for independence is driven by a conviction — one not ungrounded in reality — that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades. The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone. It is, in many ways, a defining feature of our time.

The rise of Catalan would-be secessionists in Spain, the rise of parties of the far right in European countries as diverse as Greece and Sweden, and the Tea Party in the United States are all rooted in a sense that, having been granted vast control over the levers of power, the political elite across the advanced world have made a mess of things.

The details of Scotland’s grievances are almost the diametrical opposite of those of, say, the Tea Party or Swedish right-wingers. They want more social welfare spending rather than less, and have a strongly pro-green, antinuclear environmental streak. (Scotland’s threatened secession is less the equivalent of Texas pulling out of the United States, in that sense, than of Massachusetts or Oregon doing the same.) But there are always people who have disagreements with the direction of policy in their nation; the whole point of a state is to have an apparatus that channels disparate preferences into one sound set of policy choices.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/upshot/scotland-independence-vote.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

[CJCRANE]

1. Good article, but the Swedish conservatives lost power recently

so the swing there is also to the left.

The Tea Party was nurtured by the MSM and Koch billionaires, the anti-corporate Occupy movement was much more of a genuine grassroots movement.

[underpants]

2. I agree

Why even mention the TeaBaggers? He also only mentions the horrible effects of austerity on Europe once.

[pampango]

5. "It is in continental Europe that the consequences of bungling by mainstream elites are perhaps the

The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone.

It is in continental Europe that the consequences of bungling by mainstream elites are perhaps the most damaging. The decades-long march toward a united continent, led by the parties of the center-right and center-left, created a Western Europe in which there was a single currency and monetary authority but without the political, fiscal and banking union that would make it possible for imbalances between those countries to work themselves out without the benefit of currency fluctuations. When it all came to a head from 2008 to 2012, national leaders were sufficiently alarmed by the risks of budget deficits that they responded by cutting spending and raising taxes.

As such, the imbalances that built up over the years in Europe are now working themselves out through astronomical unemployment and falling wages in countries including Spain and Greece. Even the northern European economies, including Germany, are experiencing little or no growth. As Paul Krugman noted this week, while the Great Depression of the 1930s was a sharper contraction in economic activity initially, the European economy is performing worse six years after the 2008 crisis than it was at the comparable point in the 1930s.

The author of the article spent more time on the effects of austerity in Europe than anything else.

[underpants]

7. Yes

I meant that he only mentioned it once. Thanks for correcting me.

[roguevalley]

12. GO SCOTLAND! AVENGE MY G.GRANNY! and the rest of

them. I hope for good things for Scotland. Everyone should go there once. They have country dancing (highland dancing) in the moat area of Edinburgh Castle two times a week in the summer. (Or they did when I last went a few times). Heads up. Their pizza is ... well, it makes haggis taste good. I may be wrong. They may have improved. (think ritz cracker with ketchup) GO SCOTLAND!

[Sparhawk60]

20. Scottish Pizza??

I never would have thought of it, but now I will have to at least try it when we go over there. I will try almost any thing once.


Sparhawk

[Zorra]

21. Many of the children of my family in the 1800's died young in Ireland, because the British

starved them during and after the potato blight. It wasn't the potato famine, it was the British famine. I have copies of both their Church baptism records and their state death records.

They enslaved hundreds of thousands of Irish, and sold them to plantation owners around the world, many in the US.

The slaves that time forgot

We've all been taught the horror's of the African slave trade. It's in all the school books and in plenty of Hollywood movies.
But for some reason the largest group of slaves in the British Colonies in the 17th Century doesn't get mentioned at all: the Irish.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/27/1265498/-The-slaves-that-time-forgot

My ancestors on both sides of my family were victims of British imperialism and elitism on two continents.

My Grannies need to be avenged as well!

Just say YES!

GO SCOTLAND!

[roguevalley]

22. we have both too

[DallasNE]

17. Can't Overlook The Resentment Of The Oligarchy

As a prime mover in the turmoil in the Middle East and Arabia. The terrorists see it as an American problem and because America has the most oligarch's they get the blame. Same here. They blame the government rather than the ruling class that runs the government. It is a form of class warfare.

[mindwalker_i]

6. I'm not entirely sure, but teabaggers may have the same problem

that we do - that they are getting less and less of the economic pie. However, they're easily mislead into blaming the wrong people.

[Dont call me Shirley]

19. And a majority of austerity was a cause of massive debt schemes by Goldman Sachs

[DallasNE]

18. And Occupy Was Crushed

By the corporate oligarchy that control police departments nation wide.

[pampango]

3. Thanks for posting this, cali. I was just about to do the same.

The details of the policy mistakes are different, as are the political movements that have arisen in protest. But together they are a reminder that no matter how entrenched our government institutions may seem, they rest on a bedrock assumption: that the leaders entrusted with power will deliver the goods.

Power is not a right; it is a responsibility. The choice that Scotland is making on Thursday is of whether the men and women who rule Britain messed things up so badly that they would rather go it alone. And so the results will ripple through world capitals from Athens to Washington: The way things are going currently isn’t good enough, and voters are getting angry enough to want to do something about it.

[Laelth]

4. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[riqster]

8. Kick and rec for the homeland. And the broader message.

[Jester Messiah]

9. I hope they do split.

If I were Scottish, I wouldn't want to bend the knee and kiss the arse of the wrinkled, useless descendent of those who took everything from my ancestors. I know there are more recent and relevant reasons to split, but the very idea of having a monarch in this day and age is ridiculous.

[roguevalley]

13. they hate the tories. :D who doesn't?

[Hari Seldon]

10. K and R

We will know soon,

but I think NO will be the result.

The polls were showed a NO result, and I doubt the "undecideds" will move towards change if they haven't committed to do so already.

But I do have a soft spot for popular revolution, so I hope the result is

YES for Independence!

[Blue Idaho]

11. Difficult Decisions

Untangling Scotland from the UK is both complex and full of possible unintended consequences. Who owns the North Sea oil rigs? What banking system and currency will be used? What will replace the NHS? What about a standing military force and membership in the EU? Can 8% of the UK's population really provide the network of social services the population is clamoring for? difficult decision indeed.

Scotland has been reliably liberal since - well, forever. For that reason part of me wishes they would stay in order to keep the UK from becoming ultra conservative. But there is no doubt that much like America, the english class system has protected the rich few at the expense of the many and Scotland has been given left overs for decades.

As an American, I don't have an opinion but I can see the Scots have spent much time thinking this thing through. Whatever the decision - I wish them well. Their history is filled with great thinkers, heartache, and inspired genius.

slàinte mhòr

[randome]

14. That's the best approach to take from outside the U.K.

I think too many see secession as a way to 'stick it' to Britain without taking into account that Scotland's 300+ year relationship with the U.K. has been both positive and negative.

It's always more complex than it appears at first glance.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

[DallasNE]

15. Many Good Points In The Article

But no mention of the 600 pound gorilla in the room, which is the oligarchy that currently run the various governments. Nothing good can happen until the oligarchies' no longer run the show. But since they own the media we will never hear about the issue outside of the Internet.

[Octafish]

16. ''one not ungrounded in reality''

Nothing like the New York Times' ability to make the important difficult to read.

The conviction the regular people are mopes for the elite to use as cannon fodder is "one grounded in reality."

See "Money trumps peace" which the New York Times failed to mention when uttered by pretzeldent George W Bush at a White House press conference. Like the rest of the press corpse, the NYT reporter there didn't follow up. They just stood there, like highly priced fence posts.