Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Isn’t Warsaw on the up and up?
Yea for sure, just not London yet
Britain Is a Developing Country
151–160 of 238 posts
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
To be honest I'm so baffled by the idea that the US has better worker's rights than the UK that I scarcely know where to begin. For what it's worth, Sweden and Denmark do not have minimum wages even today. So no, it's not a hugely useful proxy, otherwise according to you the US may have better worker's rights than Denmark (trivially false).
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Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The past UK standard of living was based on pillaging the colonies, then after divestment of Empire it was briefly propped up in the 80s by North Sea oil and in the 00s by financial deregulation. No shit we're not going to have the same standard of living as the past.
And how did the UK acquire the strength needed to take those colonies? Would-be conquerors are a dime a dozen, empires as successful as the British not so much
Good topic for a book me thinks.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, but that comparison literally underpins the main point of the article (Britain becoming like Poland is bad). Been to Poland recently? It's... kinda nice! He says in 10 years Britain (currently nice) = Poland (up and coming?) = Bangladesh (not as nice)
> Been to Poland recently? It's... kinda nice! 2 decades of EU largesse and cross-Europe migrant remittances will do that. Does the UK have a similar windfall coming?
> 2 decades of EU largesse and cross-Europe migrant remittances will do that. Does the UK have a similar windfall coming?
But don't other countries have more than two decades of reimttances yet are still stuck at 10x lower gdps than poland?
Could it simply be that good policy and hard work are the reasons why poland is developing?
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Argentina. India. It doesn’t take a lot for a country to go down the tubes.
I'm sorry, on what timeline has India gone down the tubes?
Devil's advocate, but India did see a significant collapse in quality of life during Covid and in it's immediate aftermath.
This is party independent as this collapse was seen in all states.
Based on HDI (both Niti Aayog and UNDP calculated), India regressed to the same developmental indicators as in 2015.
Silver lining is that institutions still exist, and if managed correctly in the next decade, could ensure rapid economic development. That said, if this is mismanaged, we'd be in a similar boat to the Philippines - strong fundamentals and institutions but horrible execution leading to it lagging well behind it's peers.
The next 10 years are crucial for India's development.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Been to Poland recently? It's... kinda nice! 2 decades of EU largesse and cross-Europe migrant remittances will do that. Does the UK have a similar windfall coming?
> 2 decades of EU largesse and cross-Europe migrant remittances will do that. Does the UK have a similar windfall coming? But don't other countries have more than two decades of reimttances yet are still stuck at 10x lower gdps than poland? Could it simply be that good policy and hard work are the reasons why poland is developing?
Good policy and hard work go a lot further when there's steady funding and guaranteed market access to support that. I'm not attributing all of Poland's advances to the EU, just mentioning that Poland's trajectory was upwards due in part to these factors. Factors that the UK does not currently have in its favour.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
The past UK standard of living was based on pillaging the colonies, then after divestment of Empire it was briefly propped up in the 80s by North Sea oil and in the 00s by financial deregulation. No shit we're not going to have the same standard of living as the past.
And how did the UK acquire the strength needed to take those colonies? Would-be conquerors are a dime a dozen, empires as successful as the British not so much
What you refer to as strength is not potent anymore: you can surprise uncontacted peoples only once, and nowadays there's UN, the Geneva Convention etc. to stop such dehumanization that enabled the colonizations.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#158Does 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.
Compared to Australia, NZ, and Canada (the traditional bellweathers), the UK seems to have a lower QoL with much higher prices and much lower wages.
That said, even when I was a kid on Vancouver Island (the 2000s), we always had plenty of UK transplants working at VIHA, schools, corporate jobs, and blue collar jobs, and I've heard similar stories from coworkers of mine in Australia and NZ (eg. our head of Sales for ANZ was a First Class Honours LLB grad from a Russell's Group uni, but felt the wages and opportunity working for a Magic Circle firm were less than that if he went to Australia)
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#159Does 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 past UK standard of living was based on pillaging the colonies, then after divestment of Empire it was briefly propped up in the 80s by North Sea oil and in the 00s by financial deregulation. No shit we're not going to have the same standard of living as the past.
Colonies were always irrelevant to metropolitan standards of living. See how Norway, Sweden and Denmark with tiny or non-existent empires did as well as Britain, or how Germany and Austria-Hungary were no less wealthy than France. Developing makes a country rich. Looting a non-developed country is a one time thing. Developing is ongoing.
Re: Britain Is a Developing Country
#160> 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?
> What are your criteria for a richer country then?
Uh... Having more money?
Country A is richer than Country B if and only if Country A has more money. Country B may have a great QOL, low obesity, low inequality, etc etc. But its not richer unless it has more money. That's kinda what the word means.