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Britain Is a Developing Country

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Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#231

Post by dan-robertson »

stuaxo wrote: post #14
laputan_machine wrote: post #10

> 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…

Fixing inequality obviously makes the country richer since wealth is concentrate amongst so few, redistricte that wealth to those who can't participate. All of these things make people better off somehow.

The uk has less inequality than the US but middle class (and somewhat poor) Americans can still have better living standards in many ways just by being richer. Reducing inequality may improve median incomes a bit, but growing the economy could have a bigger impact (ideally the growth would benefit people at least reasonably equally in relative terms). Achieving net zero is much easier if you are richer and can therefore spend more on new energy generation, batteries, interconnects, car fleets, etc.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#232

Post by theironhammer »

Tycho wrote: post #161
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.

UK has the highest real GDP growth among its European peers since 2010.

Ireland has a very high GDP yet the majority of people are not well off .

If all that GDP growth is going into the hands of just a few players what's the point?

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#233

Post by theironhammer »

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.

Hmm...Lizz Truss came pretty close.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#234

Post by twixfel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #229
twixfel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly stable countries don’t have attempted coups at all, then, if you really insist on being pedantic.

Now that you clarify it, I just disagree with your asserted definition.

No idea what you're talking about.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#235

Post by Tycho »

dan-robertson wrote: post #230
Tycho wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK has the highest real GDP growth among its European peers since 2010.

Based on world bank data and taking into account PPP[1], UK real gdp rose 14% from 2010 to 2021. Belgium, Germany, Netherlands were up 15%. Norway 18%, Switzerland 19%, Denmark 20%, Sweden 25%. The UK was close to the EU average. Results are similar if you ignore PPP. [2] I’m not really sure where your numbers came from but I assume the ranking is a bit sensitive to the time boundaries (ie recovery from gfc and pande…

The data is from IMF. It’s to 2023 not 2021. The Treasury tweeted about it. https://twitter.com/hmtreasury/status/1683866075224571905

The peers are Germany, Spain, Italy, France. Ie other large countries.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#236

Post by ben_w »

nradov wrote: post #180
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discus…

Why can't they just delete certain laws? At some historical point in time that law didn't exist, and most people somehow managed so survive. In a Common Law system, as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal.

Same reason I can't "just delete" lines of code and expect my app to compile, even though there was a time before I put the line in and where it did compile.

Although in this context, common law is more like an interpreted language like JavaScript, so the app will keep running and then randomly just stop because of the missing lines.

For e-scooters, or whatever? Might be fine, might be nobody will insure them, which means they can't be legally on the road, which might be fine (because the police just assume it is) right until someone has an accident and it gets to a court case for driving without insurance…

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#237

Post by ben_w »

nradov wrote: post #187
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal. Good, good, so now that you have deleted 50 years of law from UK, what are those things you've just legalised? Certainly some types of Money laundering, probably a few types of financial fraud, carcinogens in food, and driving high-powered electric motorbikes without any kind of training or licence? > Most people somehow managed so survive Most people s…

Come on, lose the hyperbole. The UK wasn't even an EU member for 50 years and removing some of those laws isn't going to increase child mortality.

I'm of the opinion that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" should also command the law-makers to keep it simple enough that the average person understands the rules that bind them, and also their own options if someone wrongs them. As such, I would be in favour of getting rid of every law we can.

Thing is though, lots of politicians have shared similar sentiments, and completely failed to achieve this in office. That makes me think it's harder than it sounds to avoid undesirable consequences — figuring out which laws are in the set of "some" that won't increase child (or indeed adult) mortality, for example.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#238

Post by ben_w »

aetherson wrote: post #86
Georgelemental wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFR 1.53 and falling fast: https://www.statista.com/statistics/284042/fertility-rate-in... I don't see how you propose to maintain the same level of prosperity when fewer productive workers need to support more unproductive seniors.

Allow immigration? Seems like there are tens of millions of people in the world who would be overjoyed to have a chance to move to the UK.

Probably, but allowing it doesn't change the surprisingly difficult time that even the middle class families in the UK are having economically (which will probably put off a lot of migrants and asylum seekers if they believed it).

Immigration may or may not help the current shortage of labour in the UK in various aspects of the economy that's likely to get worse as the population ages (more pensioners) with insufficient replacements (making the things and doing the services the pensioners might buy), given that's already a weird combination — not sure how the UK is managing to get both of these wrong at the same time, but, somehow, it is.

UK definitely needs more homes though, whatever else. Too much as a faction of income going to landlords like me…

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