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Britain Is a Developing Country

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Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#51

Post by twixfel »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #45

> But there is one problem. There is virtually no recognition of how bad things are among British elites Not just elites - ordinary british people too. I've been saying for 10 years that britain is falling behing the rest fo Europe. I give real examples from my life, "In Czech republic I/anyone has access to Proton therapy and housing is better built, but in Britain protin therapy is missing (was first built last yea…

I am British and the best one is: "we are the 6th richest economy in the world". Absolutely thought terminating nonsense.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#52

Post by whymauri »

sdsd wrote: post #27
retrac98 wrote: post #20

Britain 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.

>Britain isn’t a developing country, it’s a regressing one. There's so much research on developing countries, but I find deteriorating countries more interesting. There are many countries that used to be first world, and simply are not anymore. Argentina is the classic example, South Africa is the most heated example.

The fact my dad grew up in Venezuela when it was the 4th wealthiest nation in the world per capita (granted, Europe was recovering from WW2) blows my mind. It was still top 20 by the 70s. [0]

[0] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/GDP-...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#53

Post by noodlesUK »

I think one of the things that’s missing from these conversations is that whilst UK wages are far lower than the US, median wealth is actually way higher [1]. I would argue that this means that the UK is very much a country that is on a backslide, rather than a developing one. The other issue is that so much of our economy is limited to London. This would be less of a problem if we were a country like Greece where basically everyone lived in the major city, but the bulk of the population is spread throughout the rest of the UK. The UK has significant ongoing political issues that will take a long time to resolve, and it will take a long time for our relationship with the EU to return to some stable arrangement.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#54

Post by hattmall »

Pointing out the salary of a car wash manager at an Alabama Buc-ees is cherry picking to the extreme. There are exactly 3 of those jobs in Alabama. It's not like it's a common job. The actual median income in Alabama is 27K almost 50% less than UK median income.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#55

Post by skippyboxedhero »

ecshafer wrote: post #30

Growing up I assumed the UK was pretty rich. But then when you look at the stats, the UK is about as wealthy as Mississippi, one of the poorest states. Learning that people with college degrees in the UK make 25k GBP, and that is considered good, sure isn't that bad when GBP was worth 2x USD. But people are living in London for those salaries. The big expensive cities in the US, like NYC pay you much more to compensa…

£25k/year isn't good, most social science grads from lower-ranked unis will make more than this. The only exceptions tend to be jobs that select heavily from groups with inherited wealth (journalism, PR, politics, etc.).

There are plumbers in the UK who don't work full-time and make £300k/year (Pimlico Plumbers, notoriously, pay massive salaries because they do a lot of on-call work in central London). It doesn't cost a million to buy a house in most of London, they just built the Elizabeth line which goes fairly deep outside central London so you can live outside and work inside quite easily.

This is not to say that there aren't issues with wages, with house prices but they are significantly more complex than people outside the UK think...who will often compare tech salaries outside London with those in SF, as if people working in tech in WV are earning the same as in SF (this is particularly strange because most of the companies in SF have offices in London where they pay the same amounts).

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#56

Post by happymellon »

26fingies wrote: post #21

This article is missing an important part in the relationship between the developed world and the developing world which is exploitation. When companies start offshoring to the UK for cheap labor or taking its resources for pennies on the dollar we can start calling it a proper developing country.

Hate to break it to you, but that's already started.

I know of a number of US companies that have started hiring UK employees because you can get principal engineers for £80k.

It's really hard in this country to find anyone who is willing to break that 6 digit ceiling, our regressive tax policies keep it that way.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#57

Post by amadeuspagel »

gumballindie wrote: post #16

[flagged]

There are two categories of countries. There's the richest country on earth, which actually has to innovate to grow even richer, and then there are countries that merely have to catch up. The UK, Poland and Bangladesh are in the latter category.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#58

Post by ClumsyPilot »

aetherson wrote: post #44
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does 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.

This seems like a deeply off-the-wall take. Why would the UKs living standards increase? Because the world continues to get richer. Is the UK going to regress to developing world status? That's a heck of a claim. Has any country that was among the richest in the world regressed to developing nation status? This is supposed to happen on the basis of being marginally disadvantaged in trade negotiations? Get real. This…

> Is the UK going to regress to developing world status?

Lexically, tats an oxymoron, if you are regressing you are clearly not developing.

Empirically, living standards have been falling in UK for a decade, while developing countries are developing. Clearly, eventually they will intersect.

Logically, you seem to claim that a developed economy cannot collapse no matter how badly it's mismanaged?

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#59

Post by mhh__ »

tommypalm wrote: post #26
spenczar5 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top UK universities are still globally elite. I don’t know how important that is.

But most people in the UK can afford to go to them, which is maybe by design.

In normal circumstances everyone can afford to go to university. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a profitable decision but the scheme we have at moment basically taxes you if you do well and not if you don't.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#60

Post by iflint »

ecshafer wrote: post #30

Growing up I assumed the UK was pretty rich. But then when you look at the stats, the UK is about as wealthy as Mississippi, one of the poorest states. Learning that people with college degrees in the UK make 25k GBP, and that is considered good, sure isn't that bad when GBP was worth 2x USD. But people are living in London for those salaries. The big expensive cities in the US, like NYC pay you much more to compensa…

Important to keep in mind that it has a per capita income similar to Mississippi, not wealth.

Wealth can mean many things, but it is often associated with your savings more than your income. If you go by median wealth per adult, the UK is still wealthier than the US as a whole (#11 globally vs #21). The mean is another story, but that is no doubt influenced by the fact that there are many extremely wealthy people in the US.

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