It’s not just after independence that we’d be poorer, it’s now
There is always going to be a problem with the predictability of the future. I think it is for this reason that the SNP can essentially say what it likes about Scottish independence. It will give us each an extra £500 pounds assuming we don’t have to join the Euro. It will give us free travel throughout the former UK and the EU assuming there are no eh international borders. It will make us rich even though exactly the same firms and workers will be in Scotland as before only they will make greater profits and have bigger salaries because we eh no longer send MPs to Westminster.
Those who want independence anyway for emotional reasons, hatred of Tories and because they are Scottish and not British, will believe anything about the future, because after all the future is uncertain. But the present is different. We can be quite sure of the present.
But that means that it is no longer necessary to argue rather abstractly that if the SNP ever was granted and won a second independence referendum, or if it won a de facto referendum/General Election or if it unilaterally declared independence that this would make Scots poorer. We don’t have to rely on making predictions about things that are at most a long way in the future. Instead, we need merely point out that the Scottish Government wants to make us poorer now.
Everything is more expensive this year. A packet of oatcakes that used to cost a pound now cost a pound fifty. But don’t worry the SNP wants to make everything else more expensive too. Scot cannot live on oats alone.
