Live data from Hacker News

Britain Is a Developing Country

sambowman.co

121–130 of 238 posts

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#121
post #91

Britain is a failed state. It might be the first truly modern state to properly fail. Many will blame Brexit, but the writing has been on the wall for decades. Most of my friends in Britain have been either biding their time for retirement, trying to go literally anywhere else, or in a deep sort of quiet depression, usually aided by alcohol. These are well to do, white collar workers. It will be interesting to watch…

> Britain is a failed state. It might be the first truly modern state to properly fail.

The UK is nothing like a “failed state” (the monopoly on legitimate violence is not seriously in doubt.) It may be experiencing decline in relative economic condition, but that’s hardly novel.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#122
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired of this ridiculous attitude you see everywhere on the internet, "stopped reading at X" (which may actually be near or at the end of the article), "he said X therefore I can now casually discredit everything he says", "he said something factually incorrect therefore the whole article is wrong and I don't have to engage with it". And the arrogance of it too, as if in your head it's virtuous enough to be so closed…

There are thousands, tens of thousands who compete for our attention on sites like this one via their hip Substack/Medium blogs. Them’s the breaks.

That doesn't make any sense. The point is not whether or not we should dismiss nonsense, it's that often it's the "stopped reading at X" type comments that are the real nonsense

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment benefits exist through UC. Most people who are unemployed, in practice, also claim a number of other benefits that substantially boost your income i.e. housing benefit (so your rent is paid), ESA (another £100/week)...this has created another set of issues where lots of people have become economically inactive rather than "unemployed"...great statistically but not so great for people...but yes, the welfa…

All those benefits require you to have less than £6,000 saved to be eligible, essentially ensuring you are ruined before kicking in. Not only that, they are not available to visa holders, contrarily to most first world countries. Lastly, the amount is still laughable. In Luxembourg I would have had 80% of my salary for a year, without conditions. The UK is not a first world country at all.

No, they don't. And £6k is not ruined because everything else is being paid for you.

Because Luxembourg has a contribution-based welfare state. The money you are being paid is your own money that is being returned to you by the state when certain conditions are met (and yes, if you look at any contribution-based system, there is heavily conditionality, universal systems are the only ones without conditionality). The UK annual benefit bill just for people of working age is larger than Luxembourg's GDP.

The UK has a universal system that everyone can access regardless of circumstances. You just don't understand how it works at all (this is quite typical, Brits do not understand contribution-based systems either because they are used to a system where the state pays out massive amounts of cash to people in excess of the amount they paid in).

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#124

> 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…

I was thinking that exactly these points were what makes a country rich(er) - citizen well-being, delivering on the promises, and such. What are your criteria for a richer country then?

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> we should be more like these countries either...that we should be friendly to business, that we should limit immigration...strange, isn't it? I've run a startup in UK and my family has a company in CZ, Britain is so much more friendly to business from my experience. > there has been no real noticeable impact...even in industries that were going to be "decimated" [by brexit] What is the basis for your opinion? I hav…

Because you have never worked for a large business. It is almost impossible to build anything anywhere, there are massive amounts of regulations if you do get started, interventions from multiple levels of government, it is genuinely mad. Look at mortgages, you have the government telling private banks to bail out mortgage-holders...do you think this would happen in Czechia? Just think about is happening: bank executives were summoned to No.10, they were told they were going to have to lose billions of pounds a year to pay for people's mortgages, they accepted this completely...is this normal?

...what? Stop for a second and think about what you are saying. Do you believe that one of the largest export markets for the EU was suddenly shut down overnight?

The rules with VAT are unrelated to Brexit, and were largely due to the staggering levels of VAT fraud occurring with imports from China. If you are sending things to relatives, you do not pay VAT...that isn't what it is for.

Baffling. I don't even know what to say at this point. You don't understand how any of this stuff works, why rules were change, these points should be obviously wrong to you with even the slightest application of logic.

Okay, you claim your weird points...look at the results of any public company that trades with Europe. You have companies that run cross-border meat processing, something that was supposed to be impossible after Brexit...none reported any impact (because they prepared their documents, and this was something that most of these companies were already doing because...surprise, surprise...the EU does not encompass the whole world, and they traded in and outside of the EU already).

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#126
post #69
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you don’t think that having a shorter history of certain workers rights is also a proxy for current workers rights?

That you can just wave a magic legal wand and go from zero to workers paradise in 25, 50, 100 years?

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£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

No, it comes from living in Pimlico, and knowing how much these people are making.

No, it isn't. Again, this comes from knowing what these people are actually making rather than Googling furiously to prove someone wrong online. You can find endless articles about this though, emergency plumbers make a lot of money, Pimlico Plumbers have been paying these kind of salaries for decades.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#128
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 >

If you imagine all the healthcare workers in another country being unionized, it isn't a surprising outcome.

Both Blair and Cameron said that the BMA are, by far, the most powerful lobbying group in the UK (the savaging that Blair got from the BMA in 2000/01 when the spending increases were being planned caused him massive issues, and the resulting spending increases ended up creating quite a few problems because of this).

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands, tens of thousands who compete for our attention on sites like this one via their hip Substack/Medium blogs. Them’s the breaks.

That doesn't make any sense. The point is not whether or not we should dismiss nonsense, it's that often it's the "stopped reading at X" type comments that are the real nonsense

People don’t have time or won’t make the time. They use heuristics (“nonsense”) to sort out the (in their opinion) chaff.

With the deluge of content that is available it is simply their prerogative.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it comes from living in Pimlico, and knowing how much these people are making. No, it isn't. Again, this comes from knowing what these people are actually making rather than Googling furiously to prove someone wrong online. You can find endless articles about this though, emergency plumbers make a lot of money, Pimlico Plumbers have been paying these kind of salaries for decades.

Ah ok your source is “trust me bro”. Though I admit with it being salary information, it’s not the easiest to cite.

I was trying to find sources, not prove you wrong. I was genuinely curious and very very skeptical at those are huge sums even for a plumber in central London.

Here’s a source of £89k for a plumber doing 60 hours a week and the MD £100k https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/751087/what-happened-when-piml...

Shrug…

I guess if there are endless articles citing £300k you can easily reply with a link?

Post reply on HN