A new social Scotland?

I love to debate politics and in Scotland I particularly love to debate the coming referendum. As such I do it quite often with anyone who is willing to do it (surprisingly, many people aren't). Now, as I wrote before, most people here do not give the nationalist arguments one in more hot-blooded countries might expect.

I came to realize that the most common argument is that of a “social Scotland”. So, people look at what they grew up knowing was the reality in the Nordic countries and they want the same for Scotland. The reality as they perceive it is a good welfare system, with great free education, good free public health system, etc.. This is actually a great objective in my humble opinion. The question is how to do that?

Nordic countries adopted a welfare state in a time in which the economy in the Western world was growing rapidly. That was also a time when the population was growing so it was expected that the then babies would contribute in the future for the maintenance of the welfare state and would have more babies doing the same… World without end, amen! 

Problem is... That's not reality in Scotland nowadays. Nor is it in those countries anymore. It's an economic joy if the economic growth gets to 2% in one year. And as for babies: where are they?

Now, the money to finance this new social state will need to come from somewhere and it's not merely the savings of not having a nuclear armed country that will do it. Petrol is not the solution, like in Norway, because not only it was never as abundant here as there, it's becoming even more scarce now. There might be a huge raise of taxes but that would bankrupt the economy... 

Basically the Scottish social state is the new Panama. It's generally a good idea (as at the time it was generally a good idea for every European nation to have its own colonies). The Scottish want it as much as they wanted Panama. And now, like then, they prefer to ignore the obvious consequences of their actions and that will bankrupt their economy. That could be OK but... What they have to think is that the rest of the UK is not living a golden era of colonial expansion and world trade as it was three centuries ago. Like most countries in Europe, the rest of the UK is also just making ends meet. As such if by pursuing this new Panama the Scots bankrupt their country, the rest of the UK will not welcome them back open-armed as the prodigal son of the Union.