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Britain Is a Developing Country
11–20 of 238 posts
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#12What the UK has going for it is that its population speaks the technology and science lingua franca, by default.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#13> the UK is now a lot more like Poland than it is like the United States in terms of the kinds of growth it needs to do – driven by improved use of existing technology and inputs, and accumulation of capital, rather than driven primarily by technological advancement. With the exception of a few sectors like AI, we are so far behind the frontier in terms of economic development that worrying about technological progre…
That is quite the exception... The thing that is supposed to be the next big thing
The trouble with things that are supposed to be the next big thing is that, statistically, they are usually not.
Even if it is, the UK has a history of fumbling such things. There was a time when the UK was fairly clearly the world leader in civil nuclear energy (MAGNOX, AGR), airliners (in particular the Comet), and civilian computers (LEO-1), more or less all at the same time. This... didn't last.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#14> In the UK, the preoccupations of the “elite” – by which I mean the people, left and right, in politics, government and media whose views shape those of the country – are with things like Net Zero (above all), inequality, obesity, delivering Brexit, regulating Big Tech, data ethics and privacy, cutting immigration, gender and racial pay gaps, and other priorities that are either unrelated to, or diametrically oppose…
Fixing inequality obviously makes the country richer since wealth is concentrate amongst so few, redistricte that wealth to those who can't participate.
All of these things make people better off somehow.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#15Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.
Compared to where?
It's a large-ish, English speaking country, with plenty of other countries nearby, that isn't North America.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#16[flagged]
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#17Having lived in multiple western EU countries and in the US, and now living in the UK, I can say that it's not developing, it's regressing. It is baffling how bad everything is, from public services (8 months of average waiting time in the NHS for something as benign as a lumbar puncture) to worker's rights (it's literally worse than the US). And now they of course committed economic suicide with the Brexit. I simply…
> worker's rights (it's literally worse than the US)
This seems very incorrect given that the UK has stricter laws around dismissal (the bar for losing your job is much higher), better minimum wage laws, more legally mandated holidays per year, paid time off for sickness, parental pay etc. - very basic things that the US doesn't have, at least not uniformly across states and industries.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#18In order for a country to be developing, it has to develop itself first. If we look at the pace UK develops, a better term would be a stagnating country.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#19Having lived in multiple western EU countries and in the US, and now living in the UK, I can say that it's not developing, it's regressing. It is baffling how bad everything is, from public services (8 months of average waiting time in the NHS for something as benign as a lumbar puncture) to worker's rights (it's literally worse than the US). And now they of course committed economic suicide with the Brexit. I simply…
Most people in the UK who are 30 or over remember.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#20Britain isn’t a developing country, it’s a regressing one.
Public services and government that used to work well now don’t, and opportunities that everyday folk used to have they now don’t.
It’s still a nice place if you’re in a good career, but the long term prospects don’t look good.