The Scottish National Party (SNP) is Naive and Short-Sighted

My talk today is regarding the debate over Scotland's independence, and why a yes vote would be the most regressive and small-minded act of exile in the 21st century. I won't mince words, because, as an economist, I can see the disaster looming. 

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They have very few natural resources. Once the oil runs out, what does Scotland have that will sustain its future? It has whiskey. That's small potatoes. The ability to attract major industries –manufacturing, IT, finance–to the country would be diminished by independence, for all the reasons listed below.

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Thanks to mismanagement, Scotland's banks have become examples of chaos and catastrophic losses, after the hubris of the 1990s turned into the near-collapse of the mid-200s. They've been barely scraping by with massive rescue packages, and this would mean taxpayers throughout the UK would continue to bail out Scottish banks, despite them being an "independent country".

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In 1999, SNP Leader Hank Salmond described the pound as a "millstone around Scotland's neck". Today he's desperate to keep it, because he knows that an independent currency would be volatile and problematic and threaten to turn Scotland into an economic backwater. And the euro? That won't be happening there for many years. 

YOU SHOWING THE SHEEP AND  ME MAKING A DUMMY OUT OF VARIETY MEATS ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, DR. WILKINSON

The North Sea rigs that the SNP wants to own? A fool's dream! No amount of careful stewardship is going to magically turn that $5.5 billion of revenue into the $40 billion they are going to require. The rigs are at the end of their life and production levels are still falling!

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So you can see their logic is flawed at best–at worst, perverse. Instead of building and maintaining the UK empire, they seek to become...what? The new Slovakia? At least SLovakia is part of the European Union, with all the benefits that brings. An independent Scotland could not even guarantee its citizens would be able to live and work in the rest of the UK. Dicks. 

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