Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Britain Is a Developing Country

sambowman.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 238 posts

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#101

Post by TMWNN »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #78
iLoveOncall wrote: post #9

Having 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…

The problem with the NHS is largely political. If you consider the structure of the NHS within civil/political society, it is clear why reform has been challenging. The Tories are, for obvious reasons, totally unable to reform it. Labour are willing to do so but are inhibited by the fact that the vast majority of funding comes from unions who oppose any reform. Worker's rights aren't "worse" than the US. It also depe…

>The problem with the NHS is largely political. If you consider the structure of the NHS within civil/political society, it is clear why reform has been challenging.

Private Eye on "24 Hours to Save the NHS" https://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee/status/833654730849136641>

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#102

Post by switch007 »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #55
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 cos…

Was your source of those £300k “salaries” the Daily Mail and Express “articles” that came out just before the then company owner announced a bid to become mayor of London in 2021?

I heard that is turnover for the “employee”, not a salary, and you have to account for VAT, paying the company for admin/ marketing and other business expenses etc which are no small sums

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#103

Post by ashconnor »

avgcorrection wrote: post #81
whymauri wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

It’s hard to be a petronation in the Americas.

Norway is probably the best managed petrostate. The key appears to be directing revenues into foreign investment and use the gains to pay for social programs over long periods of time, rather than dumping money into your economy.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#104

Post by johnnyjeans »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #57
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.

My first impressions upon arriving in Bangladesh were notoriously "Wow! This is just like Poland!"

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#105

Post by ideksec »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #88
ideksec wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on how the UK's workers rights are "literally worse than the US"? I would say things like statutory sick pay, mandatory holiday allowance, protection from unfair dismissal and the right to uninterrupted breaks are all pretty progressive compared to the States.

There is no worker protection for the first 2 years of your employment with a company, so you're essentially an at will employee (worse actually, you have less rights and still need to give notice). You also have only laughable unemployment benefits (£85 per week), that don't depend on your contributions.

Again, completely untrue. Automatic unfair dismissal does not have a minimum tenure to be applicable. Here [1] is a handy list of protections that do not require two years. You've also conveniently ignored all the other benefits in that list that are not available in the US.

You've already been corrected by someone else on the unemployment benefits so I'll not waste time repeating that.

The UK has a lot of problems, but downplaying workers rights in comparison to the states is a strange hill to die on.

1) https://www.tribunalclaim.com/unfair-dismissal/automatic-unf...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#106

Post by ClumsyPilot »

aetherson wrote: post #89
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I think that if the UK, for example, is overthrown by/elects a Maoist government or something equally crazy, then sure, they could flush their economy down the toilet. I don't think that "being out of the EU" is in the same category.

The problem is not 'being out of the EU' by itself, its the fact:

1 - for the past 7 years, the government was doing nothing except infighting around brexit. Things like economic policy have been neglected. Straighforward non-political ssues, like the fact that wind farms wait for 10 years to be connected to the grid, are unaddressed.

2 - the current leadership is braindead. They have spent the past few months discussing how they will get rid of all EU laws in one fell swoop, without replacing them or analysing impact.

But they cannot answer basic questions - what happens in areas of economy that rely on EU law?

Like logically, what happens when you repeal EU law about ebikes? Do ebikes become illegal? Do all ebikes, even with 10 horsepower become legal? I hate the EU ebike law but you cant just delete it.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#107

Post by madeofpalk »

tinktank wrote: post #22
madeofpalk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to where? It's a large-ish, English speaking country, with plenty of other countries nearby, that isn't North America.

The rest of the G8 I would presume.

This why it's such a weird question. What does any country "have going for it"?

Where you live is heavily loaded towards your personal preference, rather than any sort of objective economical measure. Personally, I only want to live in an English speaking country (I don't want to be a language-guest in a country). I want to live somewhere where there's "lots" going on - plenty of work opportunities and fun things to do outside of work. I don't want to live in North America because I just don't like the aesthetic.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#108

Post by avgcorrection »

ashconnor wrote: post #103
avgcorrection wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to be a petronation in the Americas.

Norway is probably the best managed petrostate. The key appears to be directing revenues into foreign investment and use the gains to pay for social programs over long periods of time, rather than dumping money into your economy.

In the Americas. Being a petronation on the edge of America’s backyard evidently works fine.

America won’t try to coup that part of the world. (As far as I know.)

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#109

Post by mike_hearn »

Is there something weird going on with that Buc-Ees example? If I search for [buc-ees food service manager salary] on Google then Glassdoor snippets say things like

"The estimated total pay for a Food Service Manager at Buc-ee's is $47,378 per year."

and

"The highest-paying job at Buc-ee's is a General Manager with a salary of $69,776 per year."

which are far off the numbers in the poster which claims a General Manager is earning $150k-$220k/yr.

If we take the Glassdoor data instead, then their Food Service Manager estimated total pay is £36,206.98 which is only slightly higher than the equivalent for McDonalds UK [1]. But I never heard of Buc-Ees before. Are they famous for paying their staff well or something?

[1] https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/McDonald-s-Restaurant-Man...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#110

Post by throwaway72762 »

dahfizz wrote: post #92

> My claim is that 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. The author goes on to never support this thesis, and instead complains about British politics and that UK growth isn't quite as fast as…

GDP per capita is a poor measure. I have seen things this year that I would never have thought I'd see outside of wartime. Ambulances never showing up or taking half a day if they do. Rationing of basic vegetables at the store. The return of diseases of vitamin deficiency.
Post reply on HN