Hi NewJudge
and thank you for the courtesy and sensible arguments.
On the trade thing the way I see it is that the UK already has a lot of inter-dependent trade systems in place. In the auto sector there are components such as engines and door panels that move from one State to another. Within the EU, that is transparent and open and promotes all kinds of benefits.
in the Chemical sector it is the same. Paraxylene can be transported form one state to another. The refineries in Fawley and Milford Haven can generate chemical products that can either be further processed in the UK or go across to Rotterdam and other centres of chemical production in the Netherlands and Germany.
Leaving the EU risks much of that trade.
The only thing we appear to be getting in exchange are vague, unfulfilled promised that the Uk will be able to negotiate better deals elsewhere than the EU can negotiate.
Trump is for America First - and his country is a lot bigger than ours. Will we get a better deal from him than we have while being inside the EU?
Xi in China is cut from the same stone - will China offer us good terms once we are outside the EU. I think not.
but now we are in the realms of speculation once more.
My reasons for wanting to remain are largely emotional, as are the feelings that drive the leave camp.
The experience of the last 12 months or so is that the EU is a great deal better at getting what it wants at the negotiating table than the current UK government. Why would we not want them on our side?
My secondary point is that when corporates are larger than governments, they can dictate what governments do.
I think it was Keynes who that unrestrained capitalism is the belief that the Nastiest of Men for the Nastiest of Motives Will Somehow Work for the Benefit of All.
This is what we face as the UK leaves the EU. The hedge fund managers; the newspaper tycoons and others will find it easier to tell our government what to do (otherwise they will threaten to take their headquarters elsewhere, or set up shop in another country).
At present the EU stands up to Google and Apple more than individual governments do.
You use the graphic phrase, grind the workers underfoot.. I see it more as a gradual process whereby the rights of workers gained since the start of the last century are steadily reversed to the point where we end up with a Dickensian split between the wealthy and the impoverished.
Personally, I will be OK. I run a business, we make good money; I have plenty of assets and a generous income.
But I don't want my children or grandchildren to live in a world where the corporates run everything and capitalism is left unrestrained by governments incapable of standing up to corporate greed. In this sense, larger government, with all its faults is a less bad future than government by corporation.
In my view.