In the long run, we are all dead

Tim Hartford on why the UK is braced for a grim Christmas:

Late in 2019, the British people decided that Chaos Kong would make a good prime minister and elected Boris Johnson by a large margin. Johnson has now decided to make a virtue of his own recklessness. After initially claiming that the shortage of truck drivers in the UK was entirely unconnected to Brexit, the government now boasts that the shortage is indeed Brexit-related and was the plan all along. True to the spirit of Chaos Kong, this tough love for the British economy is the only way to get it to shape up.

In preventing the easy recruitment of truck drivers, abattoir workers and care-home staff from the EU, the UK government is actively blocking the most straightforward way to get the economy running smoothly again. (To ensure everyone got the message, Johnson compared immigrants to heroin, complaining that businesses had been able to “mainline low-wage, low-cost immigration”.) The assertion is that if the government deliberately constricts the supply of essential workers, the economy will come out stronger in the long run. Chaos Kong worked for Netflix. Will it work for the UK? 1

One day, we'll look back on all this and laugh. Or cry. One of the two, anyway.

[Via Memex 1.1]