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Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

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Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#201

Post by physicsguy »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #38

I’ll need to sit down and read this properly, but I would say there is a real stench of decline in England at the moment and pretty much everyone here would agree. It’s readily apparent the new government won’t save us already. Public services in particular: 2 weeks to see a Dr, a year for an operation, unlikely for the police to attend your call out, stagnant economy, high cost of living and low wages. And all whils…

> And all whilst we have one of the highest tax burdens in our history.

It's easy to have a low tax base when you subsidise the state spending with North Sea Oil from the 80s onwards... Prior to that we had really bad balance of payments crises from the Second World War onwards as the empire fell apart.

Low and middle earners in the UK pay pretty much the lowest taxes in Western Europe. We've eroded our tax base all over the place and somehow expect European services.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#202

Post by bloak »

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...

Also surnames like d'Urberville?

(Alec d'Urberville in "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is a nouveau riche person who adopted the name rather than a descendent of the original d'Urbervilles. Probably that happens in real life, too, though I expect the people who did the study have taken that into account and have done the best they can in the absence of reliable public ancestry data.)

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#203

Post by GordonAShumway »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #177
nmadden wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the authors is from the Centre for Policy Studies. Another is from the Adam Smith Institute. These are the gang of shady right-wing think tanks that brought us Truss and Kwarteng. That tells you everything you need to know about their economic competence.

What is shady about them? Are they criminals?

Hats. The fedoras they wear shades their faces from view, m’lady

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#204

Post by cscurmudgeon »

glomph wrote: post #140

This website makes some claims about what has caused both growth and decline that are pretty contentious. I think that many would argue that the growth following the second world war was the result of massive state investment in public services like creating the NHS and the building of council housing. They baffelingly attribute yhat growth to the Conservative Govrernment of the 1930s rather than the post war labour…

Water quality by country.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/water-qua...

US is good while countries with more left leaning setups do bad.

It is not as black and white as you imply.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#205

Post by logicchains »

The reason that Britain has stagnated is the same reason most of western Europe has stagnated (in that GDP per capita hasn't increased for around a decade): continuously increasing debt and an aging population. It's a classic empirical economic result that a high enough level of government debt leads to reduced growth rates, and it's also well-known that growth rates decrease as the average age of the population increases. Over the past couple decades the UK population has been getting older and older on average and the national debt has been getting higher and higher.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#206

Post by nmadden »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #177
nmadden wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the authors is from the Centre for Policy Studies. Another is from the Adam Smith Institute. These are the gang of shady right-wing think tanks that brought us Truss and Kwarteng. That tells you everything you need to know about their economic competence.

What is shady about them? Are they criminals?

As rjsw says, they refuse to disclose who funds them. See https://www.monbiot.com/2022/10/07/thinktanking-the-country/ for some background.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#207

Post by ajross »

glomph wrote: post #140

This website makes some claims about what has caused both growth and decline that are pretty contentious. I think that many would argue that the growth following the second world war was the result of massive state investment in public services like creating the NHS and the building of council housing. They baffelingly attribute yhat growth to the Conservative Govrernment of the 1930s rather than the post war labour…

Indeed, this is spun nonsense. The problem with the UK right now is brexit. You can see it on a GDP graph: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/uni...

It's growing steadily through the 60's-2000's, has a notable dip[1] at the 2008 financial crisis, then starts growing again until just about 2015. And it's been flat since.

The UK had found a profitable niche as the transatlantic hub of finance and commerce, and threw it out the window in a fit of nativist pique over the wrong languages being spoken on street corners.

[1] More pronounced than comparable nations, to be fair. The UK was always more dependent on finance.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#208

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #204
glomph wrote: post #140

This website makes some claims about what has caused both growth and decline that are pretty contentious. I think that many would argue that the growth following the second world war was the result of massive state investment in public services like creating the NHS and the building of council housing. They baffelingly attribute yhat growth to the Conservative Govrernment of the 1930s rather than the post war labour…

Water quality by country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/water-qua... US is good while countries with more left leaning setups do bad. It is not as black and white as you imply.

I'm confused at your point - I look at the countries we typically view as more left leaning and both Canada and Europe as a whole has better water quality. If anything, it seems to be a delineation of first world status.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#209

Post by feedforward »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #204
glomph wrote: post #140

This website makes some claims about what has caused both growth and decline that are pretty contentious. I think that many would argue that the growth following the second world war was the result of massive state investment in public services like creating the NHS and the building of council housing. They baffelingly attribute yhat growth to the Conservative Govrernment of the 1930s rather than the post war labour…

Water quality by country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/water-qua... US is good while countries with more left leaning setups do bad. It is not as black and white as you imply.

> US is good while countries with more left leaning setups do bad.

Huh? This is a map of the industrialized countries - western Europe, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. Not sure how "left leaning setups do bad", the Scandinavian countries seem to have good water.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#210

Post by thedrbrian »

ajross wrote: post #207
glomph wrote: post #140

This website makes some claims about what has caused both growth and decline that are pretty contentious. I think that many would argue that the growth following the second world war was the result of massive state investment in public services like creating the NHS and the building of council housing. They baffelingly attribute yhat growth to the Conservative Govrernment of the 1930s rather than the post war labour…

Indeed, this is spun nonsense. The problem with the UK right now is brexit. You can see it on a GDP graph: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/uni... It's growing steadily through the 60's-2000's, has a notable dip[1] at the 2008 financial crisis, then starts growing again until just about 2015. And it's been flat since. The UK had found a profitable niche as the transatlantic hub of finance and…

>The UK had found a profitable niche as the transatlantic hub of finance and commerce, and threw it out the window in a fit of nativist pique over the wrong languages being spoken on street corners.

But we’ve imported millions of people that speak different languages since 2015 , why hasn’t line gone up?

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