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Britain Is a Developing Country

sambowman.co

61–70 of 238 posts

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#61

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…

Argentina. India.

It doesn’t take a lot for a country to go down the tubes.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#62
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is quite the exception... The thing that is supposed to be the next big thing

It might be the next big thing, but there's pretty much a 100% guarantee that the UK will not be the driving force for it.

We might even be, but rest assured that in any case, we will ultimately fail to capitalise on it. It's the British way.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#63

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.

Lots of good engineering talent in the UK - all the good F1 teams are based in the UK for example.

The UK has always been a merchant, trading economy - partly why Brexit was so stupid regardless of the EU's flaws, but nonetheless London is still an extremely attractive legal proposition and so on.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#64
From the article: >>With the exception of a few sectors like AI, we are so far behind the frontier in terms of economic development that worrying about (...)

Considering that computing makes increasing use of neural networks, and that the new phase in capitalism will arguably be based almost entirely on this type of infrastructure, it seems to me, in fact, that the statement is contradictory in itself, paradoxical.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#65

> 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…

When comparing with places like Czech Republic, people often forget that most of this area in "Eastern Europe" (this isn't Eastern Europe really) was very well-industralized until the mid-20th century when things went very wrong.

So it is true, places like the Czech Republic have done well versus the UK...they have good policies in place, they are doing sensible things. For some reason though, the comparison is never made with places like Spain or Italy, most East European countries are now ahead of them and Britain is still ahead of them too. Even more strangely, no-one is suggesting that we should be more like these countries either...that we should be friendly to business, that we should limit immigration...strange, isn't it?

People outside the UK talk a lot about Brexit, the reason why it isn't really mentioned outside Westminster in the UK is because it isn't that important. We don't export much to the EU (we consume far more), it isn't a huge consumer market, it is shrinking, and there has been no real noticeable impact...even in industries that were going to be "decimated" (such as meat processing)...it isn't happened. There has just been no real impact to speak of. The only exception was NI, which was a situation designed by the EU in order to place pressure on voters ahead of the 2019 election...which didn't work, and which has largely been unwound now that the EU has seen sense (and after several terrorist attacks in NI largely due to, well justified, fears that the EU was motivated by Ireland's desire to seize their country). After 2019, all the rhetoric basically disappeared because all the people pushing for a second referendum discovered they didn't have a job anymore (and everyone else who kept their job, said they never really supported a second referendum at all).

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#66

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…

> 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.

From that, I conclude that Mississippi isn’t one of the poorest, but one of the least rich states of the US, not that the UK isn’t pretty rich.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#67

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.

London. London sans the UK is Singapore.

This article is valid for UK-sans-London, but we shouldn't pretend that London is suddenly Warsaw

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#68

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.

The UK actually has a lot of industry: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/list-of-industries/

Most people are ignorant about businesses that are not international consumer brands. However this only represents a tiny fraction of the total number of businesses out there.

This visibility problem goes back to even Napolean's time, when he dismissed England as a "nation of shopkeepers". In a way he was correct, but he failed to appreciate what such a nation was and is capable of.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#69
post #31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The UK has only had a minimum wage act since 1998. So it might be better now, but taking a larger context window… not so much. However, the social benefits around leave etc are definitely better but this is perhaps because of a more homogeneous culture than the US where some states like to work their fingers to the bone, and some states are more relaxed. The UK is definitely work hard, play hard and the only national…

There are more to worker's rights than the minimum wage, and saying that "The UK has only had a minimum wage act since 1998." as if its evidence for poor worker's rights in 2023 (or at least worse than the the US's) doesn't really make sense, firstly because that was 25 years ago and plenty can change in that time, and secondly because we are comparing worker's rights in 2023, not 1998.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#70

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 is not a good salary in London at all.

Some engineering graduates get paid astonishingly low amounts of money but they are also typically the kind of dime-a-dozen grads with no particularly interesting skills.

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