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Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

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Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#291

Post by amadeuspagel »

PolygonSheep wrote: post #285
regularfry wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK emerged from WWII massively indebted to the US. That's not entirely unrelated to the UK's position post-war.

That security guarantee to Poland turned out quite expensive in the end.

You know, if you put it this way, it's really a miracle that britain as an independent country still exists at all, that it's not been conquered from the continent since 1066, and that has been in no small part thanks to a british foreign policy of making sure that no country in europe becomes so dominant that they might take on britain, a foreign policy which included that security guarantee to Poland.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#292

Post by amadeuspagel »

langsoul-com wrote: post #23

How can there be a 360, 000 page document to build something. That number seems so outrageously high. Is the font size massive or something?

The environmental report itself requires an environmental report -- how many trees have to be cut down to print it?

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#293

Post by amadeuspagel »

nmadden wrote: post #158
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…

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.

> From 2010 to the summer of 2024, Britain was run by Conservative-led or Conservative Governments. The Conservatives are the traditional party of business, and in the 1930s and 1980s they pushed through reform programmes that successfully renewed Britain’s economy. Virtually any Conservative minister from the past fourteen years would speak warmly about that heritage if asked, and would express the hope of being its inheritor. And yet, with honourable exceptions, the governments of the last fourteen years failed in this vocation. Failing systems remained unreformed, continuing to stifle Britain’s prosperity. Today Britain is ruled by a Labour Government that recognises this failure to build, and which has articulated high ambitions for changing this. But it remains doubtful that they will be any better at delivering on those ambitions than the Conservatives were.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#294

Post by SpecialistK »

otoburb wrote: post #168
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your description of the NHS sounds exactly like the Canadian healthcare system. >> Keep begging my parents to just go private [...] Except for this difference as we don't have the option to choose private care except for a out-patient services (e.g. physical therapy) and certain drugs & therapies. I'm speaking primarily about Ontario and British Columbia, but I think the other provinces and territories are similar. H…

It's the case nationwide in Canada due to rules in the Canada Health Act: if a service is provided by provincial governments (so MSP in BC or OHIP in ON) then it cannot be offered privately.

There have been some workaround attempts in BC (such as the Cambie Surgery Centre, which lost a court case recently-ish) and AB's recent move to give contracts to Catholic health care providers, but the only true "private" option in Canada is the airport.

I could go on about this at length and how it makes me a pariah amongst a flood of anti-American conspiracy theories, but this is a thread about the UK (of which I'm also a citizen) so I'll resist.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#295

Post by SpecialistK »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #258
hnlmorg wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s common to travel between European counties by rail instead of plane. In fact I’ve done this myself.

In the US southwest, it's not the distance, it's the very small numbers of people who are moving around that is the problem.

Not to mention the other issue: even if it's easy to get into another city via rail, how do you get from the train station to your final destination? Very few cities have public transit anywhere close to NYC's. Of course flying has the same issue, but the airport has a car rental desk.

Or avoid that entirely by driving your own car.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#296

Post by kevinmchugh »

tptacek wrote: post #286
apwell23 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 weeks to see a Dr, a year for an operation Its the same in USA if you want to see a specialist. There is a worldwide shortage of qualified doctors. I waited about 1.5yrs to get a routine endoscopy at northwestern hospital in chicago. We've gone to northwestern in downtown for decades and have never seen waits this bad.

Endoscopy wait times are kind of a notorious worst-case, right? There's something weird going on with them here. I had specialist care in Chicago (at Rush, not NWU) booked and delivered inside of a couple weeks.

Rush has gotten me in for endoscopy twice this year with two-three months notice.

It took 6 months to get into neurology there, and they rescheduled my 6 month follow-up to be a 14 month follow-up

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#297

Post by tptacek »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #296
tptacek wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Endoscopy wait times are kind of a notorious worst-case, right? There's something weird going on with them here. I had specialist care in Chicago (at Rush, not NWU) booked and delivered inside of a couple weeks.

Rush has gotten me in for endoscopy twice this year with two-three months notice. It took 6 months to get into neurology there, and they rescheduled my 6 month follow-up to be a 14 month follow-up

OK so ignore me, I'm definitely wrong. Though: my wife is a Rush neurology pt (migraines, super problematic migraines) and she's gotten scheduled p. quickly (but for probably simple appointments).

(I don't know why I hadn't placed you as a Chicago person before; you should come out with us sometime!)

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#298

Post by wakawaka28 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #260
wakawaka28 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let’s also not forget the railroad problems you face. You’re probably the only country that makes Britain look good for its rail infrastructure. You give the US a pass on roads due to great distances, but not on rail? Rail is even more expensive than roads. On the subject of roads, it is important to remember that US roads vary greatly in quality based on geography, weather, and economic conditions. Every state gets…

If you want to argue about distances then let’s talk about Europe as a wider entity rather than just one country. And Europe still comes out on top for quality of infrastructure. The problem with the NHS is due to the amount of budget cuts from the Tory government. The problem with the American health system is the exact opposite, it costs too much because private entities are greedy. Government intervention would be…

Everything costs more in the US except for imported stuff. It's not because of corporate greed. It's because labor costs so much here, primarily.

>The problem with the NHS is due to the amount of budget cuts from the Tory government.

I don't know all about UK politics but I know that the current social programs and government spending are unaffordable. The US and other Western countries can't afford it either. The problem is not that spending is not enough, the problem is that our countries are not competitive or productive enough on the world stage for this exorbitant spending.

You can consider Europe all together but it is still a smaller and denser area than the US as a whole. You need to look at places with similar population densities (and perhaps geography) to have an accurate comparison.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#299

Post by wakawaka28 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #226
wakawaka28 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let’s also not forget the railroad problems you face. You’re probably the only country that makes Britain look good for its rail infrastructure. You give the US a pass on roads due to great distances, but not on rail? Rail is even more expensive than roads. On the subject of roads, it is important to remember that US roads vary greatly in quality based on geography, weather, and economic conditions. Every state gets…

> the current administration interfered with it for petty political reasons I'm not entirely sure that doubts about handing fistfuls of cash to a corporation headed by an increasingly politically extreme CEO whose 2nd generation satellites are leaking so much radio energy that radio astronomy in that band of the spectrum looks doomed is "petty".

The persecution of Elon Musk is entirely political, and he is not "extreme" just for disagreeing with the entire media/corporate/state establishment and supporting basic human rights like freedom of expression as enshrined in the FIRST Amendment of the US Constitution. The persecution has nothing to do with the costs or merits of his products, which vary but are generally the best in class or very competitive. He was the darling of the libs until he dared to point out the insanity of their recent policies.

If you watch the video, you'll see they replaced Starlink with a solution that cost 10x as much. I'm sure whatever minor inconvenience comes to those scientists can be fixed somehow. We have far bigger things to worry about in any case.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#300

Post by defrost »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #298
hnlmorg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to argue about distances then let’s talk about Europe as a wider entity rather than just one country. And Europe still comes out on top for quality of infrastructure. The problem with the NHS is due to the amount of budget cuts from the Tory government. The problem with the American health system is the exact opposite, it costs too much because private entities are greedy. Government intervention would be…

Everything costs more in the US except for imported stuff. It's not because of corporate greed. It's because labor costs so much here, primarily. >The problem with the NHS is due to the amount of budget cuts from the Tory government. I don't know all about UK politics but I know that the current social programs and government spending are unaffordable. The US and other Western countries can't afford it either. The pr…

The UK ran the NHS as a high quality first tier health service for 50 years or more, during times when the UK was still making debt repayments to the US to cover costs from WWII.

Once Thatcherite neoliberalism (specifically: market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.) took hold and wealth transfer from the many to the few became increasingly common the Conservative contributions to the NHS steadily decreased and eroded the service.

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