The UK can go back to being the richest country in the world

> The construction of the Bridgewater canal provided regular, cheaper coal supplies to power the new machinery and improved transport links to Liverpool. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 proved crucial in shaping Manchester’s future.

And then because a lot of the raw cotton was supplied from slave plantations it implies the slavery caused the cotton gins, whereas I expect it was the other way around. If there had been no slavery they probably would still have got cotton from paid farmers overseas with much the same effect.

For the non-British readers here, Eton is a boarding school [0] west of London. It's where nearly all the elite members of British politics and society attend from ages 13 to 18. Like, all the royalty go there. And Harry Potter is like just cribbing from what these boarding schools do. When you hear some British actor in a movie or something say '... Old Boy, ...', they are referring being very wealthy and graduating from one of these boarding schools.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, they are nearly all child abuse nightmare zones, Eton especially. Like, there's a wiki page dedicated to the controversies there [1].

I got into looking into Eton when I was researching the history of the various football codes. Eton was the birthplace of two of the nascent footballs: The Field game [2] and the Wall game [3]. I'll skip the history lesson here and the rules briefing. The thing that stood out to me about the Wall game was the ceremony around it. Specifically, that it's played on St Andrew's Day (November 30th) by the Collegers (rich boys) and the rest of the school (slightly less rich boys). Now, the Collegers have this tradition (500+ years old) where they all get roaring drunk the night before and are trying to play this wall game really hungover, which makes it all a bit more 'fair'. They traditionally get so drunk that the little headmater-y person in charge just up and leaves for the night. So, you have 13-18 year olds, all drunk as hell, all alone, all night long, and they all kinda hate each other. Like, come on dude.

That little bit alone is just astounding to my non-British eyes and condemn the whole enterprise. But then you read a bit more about the place and it's just ghastly. Then these tortured and abused kids go on to repeat the cycle onto each other, for like hundreds of years, because tradition.

Oh, and then they all go on to run Britain.

So, next time you see some mention of Eton, just imagine Hogwarts but with just brontosaurs levels of abuse and abusers.

Britain is mental my dudes.

[0] The Limeys call them 'public schools', because something something Anglican (?) church something

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_College_controversies

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_field_game

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_wall_game

That is how it feels to the rest of the world when they hear UK thinking they want to reclaim the top spot again.

Is there any doubt? If you spend less than you earn (for example by running a current account surplus) you naturally accumulate capital, and vice versa.