Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you consider tanking the UK economy to the tune of hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds, then yes, absolutely.
How could they possibly do that?
They are referring to the liz truss budget.
Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
241–250 of 344 posts
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#242This 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…
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.
Their solution is to allow private funds to fund essential infrastructure, it seems.
Which to me just rings hollow, or at best, only a part of the answer. They're correct on some aspects of it, other parts they just gloss over. IE They say that there has been an "erosion" of the industrial base in the UK, while actually the blame could be laid at the feet of Thatcher's service-led policies.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#243"It may have been the greatest rapid expansion in a given economic sector in British history, and it was the key reason we didn’t experience a Great Depression while Germany, the USA, and France did. " But Great Britain (as it was then) did experience a great depression. 3.5 million people were unemployed in 1932. Ok - one could say that the depression in GB was less pronouced vs. the situation from 1918 on, but I th…
It appears to have been produced by a right wing think tank, justifying its seeming lack of focus on how public funds could help build infrastructure vs the author's seeming obsession with private financing.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it seems obscene to spend all that money in so small an area Greater London has a population nearly three times that of Wales. So the bang-for-buck in this small area is much greater. I completely agree that we under-invest in areas like Wales. But that doesn't mean that under-investing in the most productive part of the country is a good idea.
> most productive part of the country is a good idea. In what sense is London productive? What are the products?
Tax revenue
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why are we obsessed with restricting discussion to ICS? The bureaucracy is not just that, but extends throughout the entire service sector these people rely on, such as banking, schooling, transportation, manufacturing management and There is no plausible mechanism by which these people could have effected a radical change in the general British culture or the culture of the British civil service. The culture of th…
> There is no plausible mechanism by which these people could have effected a radical change in the general British culture or the culture of the British civil service. These people were somehow capable of running India and yet at the same time could not cause a change in the UK if they returned en masse? > They weren’t different enough from the British population to have any noticeable effect You have a very odd vie…
>> They weren’t different enough from the British population to have any noticeable effect
>You have a very odd view of life in the UK if you believe this.
If all 250,000 Britons in the UAE returned to the UK in the next three months I would expect it to have no noticeable effect a year from now. By the same token I wouldn’t expect much from 100,000 Brits moving from India to the UK in 1947. West Indian migration starting in the 1960s or Ugandan Indians in the 1970s are movements of people who are genuinely different in important ways.
Those had no great effect on the civil service culture either.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it seems obscene to spend all that money in so small an area Greater London has a population nearly three times that of Wales. So the bang-for-buck in this small area is much greater. I completely agree that we under-invest in areas like Wales. But that doesn't mean that under-investing in the most productive part of the country is a good idea.
> most productive part of the country is a good idea. In what sense is London productive? What are the products?
Financial services? Software? Scientific research?
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man blackout != energy starved, you can have blackouts cause your infrastructure is attacked or just random natural disaster, look at energy prices compare it to China or even US not even speaking about oil rich countries. Finance in UK is indeed legacy it is mostly big old banks there is still a bit of fintech and ofc. head funds, but UK is bleeding both talent and market share to CN and US. Not even speaking about…
> Finance in UK is indeed legacy it is mostly big old banks there is still a bit of fintech Many fintech b2c innovators come from the UK. Revolut and Monzo provide features with a UX and API that US banks couldn't even dream of. > Man blackout != energy starved, you can have blackouts cause your infrastructure is attacked or just random natural disaster, look at energy prices compare it to China or even US not even s…
I mean isn't UK starving? it can't produce enough energy, it cost is extremely high to produce anything and it can't get proper industrial/manufacture power base cause of that? (and a lot of other stupid reasons)
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#248I loved this paper, it's full of new ideas. My main question/challenge would be: if the problems have been constant since the 1950s-1980s - e.g. planning and failure to build - then how come we were doing so well until 2008? Why did problems only start biting then?
Probably a decline in North Sea oil revenue
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#249The 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…
Worth pointing out that not only is the UK more American-style entrepreneurial than the rest of Europe (London gets about as much VC investment as France and Germany together), but that UK wealth inequaslity is low by European standards.
Like, there's work to do here, but by European standards the UK is doing pretty well.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to understand how people view the NHS. Some people claim it's the national treasure, but how does that work if service is as abysmal as what you describe ?
It's because the experience you get is completely random and heavily weighted towards the fatal. If you show up with something life threatening they're actually pretty good. But your experience of non-life threatening can be anything from good, to indifference/boredom to aggressive dismissal. This also applies to things that could be markers of something fatal, analogy would be they do little when smoke is coming out…
The issue is that underfunding the NHS has become so bad that even very serious cases can't be handled appropriately. I know it's an anecdote, but I've had a fairly bad experience recently after a serious bike incident in the middle of a workday, and they took over an hour to send an ambulance, about an hour to be checked, and over 7 hours in the Royal Hospital waiting for treatment.
Legitimately was a worse and slower service than I would have had at my grandparents' place in Eastern Europe, it's a disgrace. It still makes me angry that it's the experience I get after paying 1000s of £ in NHS contributions.