Last Thursday, the people of Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union (EU). Most commentators view Britain’s exit (“Brexit”) from the European Union as bad news for economic growth in the UK and the eurozone. As a result, it is argued, the growth rate in the rest of the world will be also badly affected.

It is more likely that, whether the pace of real economic growth over time will weaken or strengthen is going to be set by the pace of expansion in the pool of real wealth.

Yesterday, we looked at how the European Union functions on a model of “democracy” that is based on very large constituency sizes, thus reducing access to policymakers, and reducing the ability of ordinary taxpayers to influence the lawmaking process. (The more residents there are for each elected official, the larger the constituency size.)

On Tuesday, during a somewhat raucous session of the European parliament, Nigel Farage gave his post-Brexit “victory speech”. Besides his trademark taunting of his pro-EU colleagues, Mr Farage made an important point, suggesting:

[Editor’s Note: This essay is forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Modern Entrepreneurship (Routledge, 2017), edited by David B. Audretsch and Erik E. Lehmann.]

Few books have as misleading a title as Hard Choices. For Hillary Clinton, as this tedious memoir of her years as Secretary of State makes evident, there are no hard choices. The Solutions to all political and economic problems are easy. We must always rely on the directing hand of government, guided by the superior wisdom of our moral and intellectual betters, Hillary Clinton foremost among them.

Last week’s UK vote to leave the EU may have come as a shock to many, but the sentiment that led British voters to reject rule from Brussels is nothing unique. In fact it is growing sentiment worldwide. Frustration with politics as usual, with political parties that really do not differ in philosophy, with an economy that serves the one percent at the expense of the rest of society is a growing phenomenon throughout Europe and in the United States as well.

One of the biggest weaknesses in the EU’s argument against secession from the EU is the fact that the EU is so very undemocratic. Whatever one thinks of democracy, the fact remains that Europeans tend to favor it, so the EU’s significant deficit on democratic representation in EU institutions has been a big problem in selling the EU to the masses. The EU recognized this in the Brexit debate, which is why EU supporters have focused almost entirely on economic claims. 

The night after the vote for an independent United Kingdom from the European Union had concluded I found myself at dinner with my wife trying to explain why the world portrayed by many financial analysts and news outlets was so filled with doom and gloom. “Why does the UK leaving the EU necessitate a global or UK financial meltdown?” she asked. And then it hit me, this was the question the world’s largest financial publications were failing to ask, or at the very least to answer honestly.

It has now become abundantly clear that the bureaucrats at the EU are doing everything they can to punish the UK for voting to leave the EU. 

Even before the referendum, German finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble threatened the UK and claimed it could never get single-market access to the EU. In other words, the UK would never be granted the sort of access that non-EU members Norway and Switzerland already have.