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Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

economist.com

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Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#61

Post by epicureanideal »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #57
convolvatron wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could try raising the level of education. breeding a whole bunch of people and hoping some of them teach themselves to be useful isn't really a great way of maximizing intellectual output

certainly education is vital to a modern economy (and society), but I suspect that you hit diminishing returns at our current levels - not many more can really benefit from e.g. post graduate studies. Sending ~50% of school leavers to uni in the UK has arguably been counter productive, as instead of a path for the talented to rise, uni has become more a rubber stamp for entry into the middle class and course content…

> but I suspect that you hit diminishing returns at our current levels

I think there are plenty of uses for another million bioengineering grads. Combine the grads with R&D funding and we’d see a regular cadence of medical miracles.

Similar for materials scientists, robotics engineers, etc.

Also on a low tech side, a million more teachers, teaching much smaller classrooms, might pay for itself many times over.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#62

Post by adjav »

roca wrote: post #31

The "problem" here is only that life expectancy has not continued to increase at the rate it was increasing up to around 2010. I see no reason to assume that life expectancy would continue to increase indefinitely at a linear rate. Most interventions that increase life expectancy (e.g. mitigating major causes of non-age-related death) are subject to diminishing returns.

Britain did significantly worse than it's peer nations in that decline, though. Clearly the rate doesn't have to be this low.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#63

Post by Quarrelsome »

actuator wrote: post #12
krysp wrote: post #9

As a Brit I can't help but notice that on every axis, our country appears to be in decline at the moment. Even before Brexit, things hadn't been going well, as this article shows. It's making me seriously consider moving away. I want to have hope that as a country we can turn around this societal regression, but I fear it's a deeper problem than just the current government. The class system and an unhealthy nostalgia…

I am not sure how in a totally integrated free market world, a country like UK can compete with US or China. The amount of funding US can put into new areas like green energy and the internal market and capital it offers is something UK can't compete with. This is why UK origin founders are one of the biggest cohort of immigrant unicorn founders in US. Although, I am not sure where a Brit would move to, if they want…

> Most of the EU also seems on the path to decline as well.

Far from it, the EU is at the forefront of many things, especially when it comes to regulation. The influence reaCh has had on manufacturing worldwide demonstrates that it remains one of the three big players on the global stage. Its commitments to social democracy and privacy of its citizens gives it a unique edge in some respects over the US.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#64

Post by [deleted] »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #55
perardi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what country you could move to that isn’t co-opted by the wealthy and powerful. Sure isn’t Canada. Sure isn’t anywhere in the EU. Super-duper-sure it isn’t anywhere in Asia.

I don't know honestly, never been to any of these places and after moving around several times within the US I realize how nice it is to just be setted in one place, but here's what I would consider: Netherlands (I really like biking), Germany (Cologne seems like a nice vibe), France (Probably Paris, Food obviously, but I also really appreciate people's willingness to protest stuff)

[deleted]

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#65

Post by yeuxardents »

londons_explore wrote: post #35

In my district in the UK, there were occasions when average wait times for an ambulance for a Category 1 incident (eg. person not breathing) reached 48 hours last month. The target is 90% of patients reached in 15 minutes. Yet the reality is the average wait was 48 hours. I can't see any way that kind of thing isn't contributing to a shorter life expectancy.

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the UK in just 15 or so hours...

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#66

Post by somewhereoutth »

epicureanideal wrote: post #61
somewhereoutth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

certainly education is vital to a modern economy (and society), but I suspect that you hit diminishing returns at our current levels - not many more can really benefit from e.g. post graduate studies. Sending ~50% of school leavers to uni in the UK has arguably been counter productive, as instead of a path for the talented to rise, uni has become more a rubber stamp for entry into the middle class and course content…

> but I suspect that you hit diminishing returns at our current levels I think there are plenty of uses for another million bioengineering grads. Combine the grads with R&D funding and we’d see a regular cadence of medical miracles. Similar for materials scientists, robotics engineers, etc. Also on a low tech side, a million more teachers, teaching much smaller classrooms, might pay for itself many times over.

Depends whether there are another million that have the natural ability/inclination to become these bioengineering/etc grads.

Absolutely agree on more teachers though.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#67

Post by rayiner »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #24
krysp wrote: post #9

As a Brit I can't help but notice that on every axis, our country appears to be in decline at the moment. Even before Brexit, things hadn't been going well, as this article shows. It's making me seriously consider moving away. I want to have hope that as a country we can turn around this societal regression, but I fear it's a deeper problem than just the current government. The class system and an unhealthy nostalgia…

FWIW As a US citizen I feel similarly. The switching cost feels too high to move, as I can't really see myself living somewhere other than the West Coast (family, friends etc) It's a shame humans don't have more empathy and sympathy for each other, and that governments have been so obviously co-opted by the wealthy and powerful for their own benefit. One of the things that does make me feel better is being more invol…

Where would you move, and for what? The “wealthy and powerful” enjoy similar if not better corporate and investment tax rates in most of Western Europe as on the west coast of the US.

The social services those countries have that we don’t are largely paid for by the middle and upper middle class, not the “wealthy and powerful.”

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#68

Post by markdown »

yeuxardents wrote: post #65
londons_explore wrote: post #35

In my district in the UK, there were occasions when average wait times for an ambulance for a Category 1 incident (eg. person not breathing) reached 48 hours last month. The target is 90% of patients reached in 15 minutes. Yet the reality is the average wait was 48 hours. I can't see any way that kind of thing isn't contributing to a shorter life expectancy.

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the UK in just 15 or so hours...

Concerted efforts by the Tories over decades to defund public health so that they can raise a generation of people who sincerely believe that it's best for the country for the government to get out of Healthcare and leave that to the more efficient private sector.

It's a very slow process that requires first the defunding, then some brainwashing via television. The American model.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#69

Post by anonporridge »

yeuxardents wrote: post #65
londons_explore wrote: post #35

In my district in the UK, there were occasions when average wait times for an ambulance for a Category 1 incident (eg. person not breathing) reached 48 hours last month. The target is 90% of patients reached in 15 minutes. Yet the reality is the average wait was 48 hours. I can't see any way that kind of thing isn't contributing to a shorter life expectancy.

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the UK in just 15 or so hours...

My understanding after reading this article is that the problem has nothing to do with ambulances or medics. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/world/europe/uk-ambulance...

First order problem, the hospitals have no beds. This means that ambulances end up waiting for hours and medics twiddling their thumbs at the ER until the staff can finally take the patient. Medics can't just abandon the patient because there legally needs to be a proper handoff. So your emergency can't be responded to quickly because we can't trivially spin up thousands of new medic units to spend all their time waiting in line at the hospital.

Second order problem, the hospitals have no beds because of a lack of long term care services. From the article...

> There is an acute lack of beds in the accident and emergency department, or A&E, as emergency rooms are called in Britain, which are overcrowded because of an inability to find room for patients elsewhere in hospitals. That is because patients ready to be discharged from the hospital often have nowhere to go as a result of dwindling social services — which have been hobbled by a lack of government funding and severe staffing shortages.

Now the question is why aren't there enough non hospital care services? Could be many reasons, but I'd speculate that it's a combination of a) an increasing population of old, sick people who need care in a society whose demographics are beginning to turn upside down, and b) because Brexit means it's drastically harder to import poor, foreign workers willing to do the shitty job of elder care for low wages. If this prognosis is correct, it starts to beg the question of whether Britain's world renowned health care system was only possible because it could extract excess, cheap labor from poor countries to take care of their old people, when Britain's own young people were never going to do that work for the wages offered.

Re: Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

#70

Post by rippercushions »

screye wrote: post #43
epicureanideal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel all have much lower populations than the UK and yet remain important global influencers. It isn't all about population. The USA has 1/4 the population of China and yet technologically is a peer competitor. Japan had less than 1/2 the population of the USA in the 1980s and was a technological peer competitor. With wise investment in capital equipment, education, and technology, even sma…

The problem is labor exploitation & work culture. SK & Taiwan have working hours that would be considered hellish in West. At the top level & for immigrants, US working hours are similarly hellish. The British may be just as productive per hour, but they could never keep up on time. Personal life in SK/Taiwan is non-existent as demonstrated by the countries having the 2 lowest fertility rates in the world. On the con…

Israel's high fertility rates are driven by Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews (haredim), two groups that, by and large, do not drive entrepreneurship and the tech sector. Quite the opposite, in fact, the haredim are exempted from military service and around 60% of them live off welfare.

And the only country in Scandinavia with real (universal) conscription is Finland.

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