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Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

ukfoundations.co

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Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#81

Post by fidotron »

gadders wrote: post #70
fidotron wrote: post #68

I left the UK almost 20 years ago, and cannot imagine returning for any length of time. My personal take on this is the UK got so used to having an empire, and specifically India, which could absorb more British bureaucrats than the UK could possibly produce. Consequently when Indian independence occurred this massive pipeline of producing people for running colonies had nowhere to go, and a large number moved back t…

We ran the empire with a lot less civil servants than we have now: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uk-government-did-we-ru...

In the census in 1921 there were over 150000 British Subjects in India. Over 40000 of them were women, so we are not talking just army.

In 1891 there were 238,409 with english as their mother tongue (before the census broke this out).

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#82

Post by roenxi »

lvoudour wrote: post #64

On a tangent, what is astonishing to me as an outsider is the cultural stagnation. Even in times of economic decline Britain was a cultural powerhouse. Modern music, theater, cinema, tv, literature, sports, etc. were permanently shaped by post-war Britain (especially in Europe). Whatever the cultural norm dictated by the behemoth that is the USA, Britain always had something new, something fresh to give. There's no p…

I'd expect the cultural stagnation to lead the economic. The article is clearly political but it is pointing out some really obvious long term trends. The fact that the UK elite haven't been able to grapple with them at any point in the last few decades showcases that, as a culture, they've lost the spark of competence.

The UK media and upper class have failed to identify energy, housing or infrastructure more generally as requiring serious responses too. Their entire system appears to be off the rails. Their failure relative to countries like China really is quite astonishing, although it doesn't set them far apart from the greater western bloc. It makes sense that we aren't seeing cultural leadership out of them; where would they lead us too? Nowhere good.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#83

Post by fidotron »

barry-cotter wrote: post #77
fidotron wrote: post #68

I left the UK almost 20 years ago, and cannot imagine returning for any length of time. My personal take on this is the UK got so used to having an empire, and specifically India, which could absorb more British bureaucrats than the UK could possibly produce. Consequently when Indian independence occurred this massive pipeline of producing people for running colonies had nowhere to go, and a large number moved back t…

The Indian Civil Service was always tiny. There were so few British in India that in 1950 when the Indian government surveyed the populace to try and see if they knew the British had left they discovered the average Indian wasn’t aware there had ever been a British Empire. The British Empire in India and the British Army in India at all but the most rarefied levels were staffed by Indians and there weren’t even that…

It takes more than the civil service to run a colony.

It is quite curious both you and the other replier jumped to that conclusion, and says quite a lot about the current British malaise.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#84

Post by flir »

gadders wrote: post #75
flir wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest this exercise: Pick a random person from Queen Victoria's court. Look up where their descendants are today. Chances are, they're still running the country in some capacity. (The example I'm thinking of was a Duchess. Her descendant was a beak at Eton who taught Boris and the haunted pencil).

Try Norman times: People with Norman names wealthier than other Britons People with "Norman" surnames like Darcy and Mandeville are still wealthier than the general population 1,000 years after their descendants conquered Britain, according to a study into social progress. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/842...

If you read that paper carefully (it's been a while so I might have this wrong), I think you'll see that while they're using Norman vs not-Norman surnames, the comparison is between Victorian and contemporary wealth and life expectancy data.

(Obviously the discrepancy has to start with the Conquest, I'm just saying that strictly speaking you can't use that paper to support that conclusion).

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#85

Post by barry-cotter »

noja wrote: post #73
barry-cotter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French are richer than the British. They have more stuff and a higher quality of life. It would be good for more British people to have more stuff and a higher quality of life. Building more housing allows both for more people to afford a (better quality of) primary residence, and for more people to have a holiday home. Those are all good. Focussing on utilisation is Green Party, NIMBY, degrowth, pro-poverty thin…

> Building more housing allows both for more people to afford a (better quality of) primary residence As long as residential homes are a vehicle for investors rather than _living in_ (by the owner) you will have a problem.

Agreed. Thankfully we know what it takes to make housing a crappy investment vehicle. Build more housing. Build so much housing that returns on capital invested are flat, live Tokyo since 2000, or negative, like Seattle over the last five years.

Make building housing legal again.

Also. Renters deserve housing too. Restricting housing to the owner occupied is a great way to hate things by social class but I see no reason to further favour a population that’s richer and more powerful than the rest of the population already.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#86

Post by willtemperley »

We have fully embraced the parasite economy in the UK, however unlike big American tech we feed on one another. The safest business for a long time has been property, poor quality reno-flips and rentals, which adds nothing except burden to the people who might bring foreign income through being entrepreneurial.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#87

Post by relaxing »

docdeek wrote: post #19
JCM9 wrote: post #4

The UK was, and to some senses still is, a culture that strongly values who your parents are vs what you’ve personally accomplished. The head of state is the child of the previous head of state. The House of Lords is still a thing. Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal. In the US and other parts of Europe it’s very different. People value you a lot more because of what you’ve done vs who you are a…

One of the exceptions in the US seems to be around the White House. For a while, when Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2008, it was possible that the US would have had a member of the Bush or Clinton families as either VP or President every year from 1981 thorough to 2017. Such political families are not unique to the US, of course, and the UK has a fair few, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_f…

Hillary is not linked hereditarily to Bill, so really you’re talking about 3 people- Bush Sr and his 2 kids.

Political dynasties in the US are notable because they’re uncommon, rather than part of the law as in the UK.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#88

Post by socksy »

seanhunter wrote: post #20
dist-epoch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact it's a whole site dedicated to this article means there's some angle to it. Would be interesting to know who paid for this.

One of the authors is from the center for policy studies, which is a thinktank that was founded by Margaret Thatcher and 2 others. The other two authors seem to be the founder and one of the main contributors to https://worksinprogress.co/ which describes itself as "a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world." So I'm going to guess it's gonna be that sort of thing. Someone with a neoliberal economic…

This section really shows where they're coming from:

Privatisation, tax cuts, and the curbing of union power fixed important swathes of the UK economy. Crucially, they tackled chronic underinvestment in sectors that had been neglected under state ownership. Political incentives under state ownership encouraged underfunding – and where the Treasury did put money in, it tended to go on operational expenditures (e.g., unionised workers’ wages rather than capital investments). This problem has immediately reemerged as the Department for Transport has begun to nationalise various franchises (which it promises to do to all of them).

It is bizarre to me that they can claim that under government ownership the incentives were towards underfunding, implying that somehow the incentives are any different under private ownership (although admittedly, there's been great investment in ticket barriers...)

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#89

Post by Fernicia »

seanhunter wrote: post #20
dist-epoch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact it's a whole site dedicated to this article means there's some angle to it. Would be interesting to know who paid for this.

One of the authors is from the center for policy studies, which is a thinktank that was founded by Margaret Thatcher and 2 others. The other two authors seem to be the founder and one of the main contributors to https://worksinprogress.co/ which describes itself as "a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world." So I'm going to guess it's gonna be that sort of thing. Someone with a neoliberal economic…

This is one of the worst comments I've read on HackerNews and engenders the decline in critical thinking that has become so pervasive here in recent years.

You find a bunch of ways to frame the authors as the out-group, then cast a totally baseless aspersion. Presumably so you don't have to engage with any of the actual points in the article.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#90

Post by geye1234 »

Fernicia wrote: post #89
seanhunter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the authors is from the center for policy studies, which is a thinktank that was founded by Margaret Thatcher and 2 others. The other two authors seem to be the founder and one of the main contributors to https://worksinprogress.co/ which describes itself as "a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world." So I'm going to guess it's gonna be that sort of thing. Someone with a neoliberal economic…

This is one of the worst comments I've read on HackerNews and engenders the decline in critical thinking that has become so pervasive here in recent years. You find a bunch of ways to frame the authors as the out-group, then cast a totally baseless aspersion. Presumably so you don't have to engage with any of the actual points in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
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