OK, why is this flagged?
Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
311–320 of 344 posts
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
The British voted for Brexit to enjoy poorer standards. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/... Good luck with removing "red tape".
By putting red tape in scare quotes, do you want to express an opinion that every regulation is good and red tape is just a myth? More papers, more prosperity, without any limits or any inflection point?
The UK has argued for the Brexit with red tape removal, in practice this meant less protection.
Standards are useful. To be outside a large population area of standardization and regulation only means, that nobody cares about your small-country standards and that the population gets the worst of both worlds: inferior local standards and very little influence in international standards.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which was the type of unforced error that almost brought together the Molotovian facist-communist tagteam that almost destroyed the entire world.
And Poland got occupied anyway. Truly Metternich-level stuff.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pull the other one. Only some of the tax cuts had been telegraphed in advance. Abolishing the top rate of income tax and cutting the basic rate early hadn’t been. They ignored all the warnings they were given and sidelined the OBR. The Truss/Kwarteng budget directly crashed the economy and trying to pretend otherwise is some serious revisionism. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63229204
You're arguing with the conclusions of the official investigation, not me.
The committee report only looked at the regulator. To be sure, the regulator and the pensions industry should have done more. But the idea that Truss and Kwarteng are blameless innocents in the whole fiasco is ridiculous.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#315Earlier 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…
> 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.
Your first sentence isn’t true and your conclusion isn’t true either. Then there’s the issue that American healthcare is massively disproportionally more expensive than the rest of the world. So even if your first two points were correct, they still don’t account for your cost of healthcare.
> 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 isn’t that they’re unaffordable. The problem is that people don’t want to pay for it. Or more specifically, people in the higher tax bands don’t want to because they view public services as an expense (which for them it is, because they’ll often be using private services instead). But this is another example of the self sabotage I was talking about in my earlier comment.
> 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.
To be honest it doesn’t matter how accurate the comparison, you’re just going to argue that the free market fixes everything. Because that’s exactly what you’ve been brainwashed to believe. Capitalism is Americas #1 religion after all.
To be fair, I don’t think public services are the answer to everything either. There does need to be a balance between government oversight and spend; and of leaning into the private sector. The UK hasn’t found that right balance either. ButAmerica is waaaay of the mark and it’s destroying your country from the inside.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#316Earlier 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.
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.
They are not wrong on that thet just make the same error the socialisys do in thinking that is the solution for all time. The solution foe all time ia to both realize the end state of a free market is monopoly and the end state of a state monopoly is stagnation so one needs to focus the government on being proactive and allowing both to compete and put the finger of government on the scale to favor private when public is stagnating and favor public when private ia monopolizing.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sure whatever minor inconvenience comes to those scientists can be fixed somehow. \1. It's not a "minor inconvenience" at all. \2. Problem started with Starlink 1.0. The fix was Musk promising better shielding and attention to leaks in Version 2.0 and to turn off Starllink sats over Murchison Radio Quiet Area etc. \3. Starlink V2.0 has 30x more noise (Musk lied | didn't deliver) and remains noisy over quiet are…
>It's not a "minor inconvenience" at all. What's your solution? This kind of satellite system is going to get built and improved over time regardless of what you think of it. >It's more due to Musk lying and not delivering. No, it's not. I think you know it too. Biden and a bunch of EU politicians have literally threatened Elon over Twitter, as recently as last month. Everyone was cool with his hype game until they c…
The 2nd generation of starlink satellites is worse than the first one: they leak radio spectrum energy at a massively higher level than the 1st generation.
Why have sympathy for anyone trying to do something stupid? Why do we need autonomous taxis? What problem is this solving, other than helping the already richer get a bit richer?
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I remember these things called taxis. But I'm an old, and I think they've been replaced by something called "Ubers" and "Lyfts". But don't mind me ...
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Your first sentence isn’t true and your conclusion isn’t true either. Then there’s the issue that American healthcare is massively disproportionally more expensive than the rest of the world. So even if your first two points were correct, they still don’t account for your…
>Your first sentence isn’t true and your conclusion isn’t true either. Then there’s the issue that American healthcare is massively disproportionally more expensive than the rest of the world. So even if your first two points were correct, they still don’t account for your cost of healthcare.
My first two points are correct but if you don't agree we can stop talking because I am not gonna sit here and prove the obvious to you. I can't say we pay more for everything on average than literally anywhere else, but we do pay more on average for everything than most other places. As for why our healthcare is expensive, yes some of it is due to regulations and lack of competition. But the simple fact that it costs so much to live well in the US means that people must be willing to pay way more than elsewhere. That translates into higher pay for doctors. If you can pay $8 for a coffee then paying a couple hundred for a doctor's visit is not out of the question. If you can pay $50k for a basic boring car then paying $50k for a life-saving surgery is not unreasonable.
>The problem isn’t that they’re unaffordable. The problem is that people don’t want to pay for it. Or more specifically, people in the higher tax bands don’t want to because they view public services as an expense (which for them it is, because they’ll often be using private services instead). But this is another example of the self sabotage I was talking about in my earlier comment.
No it's not the fault of the rich that we can't afford it. Privately held wealth in the US is only about $130 trillion. Meanwhile there was $210 trillion of unfunded liabilities in the current system: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2017/10/10/your-pen... as of 2017! So even seizing everything from everybody would not solve our problems. It would also destroy our quality of life, make the best and brightest (and richest) people run away, etc. You need to do some rudimentary research before trying to tell people stupid shit like they can enslave the rich to get free stuff.
>To be honest it doesn’t matter how accurate the comparison, you’re just going to argue that the free market fixes everything. Because that’s exactly what you’ve been brainwashed to believe. Capitalism is Americas #1 religion after all.
You're assuming an awful lot here. I haven't been "brainwashed" any more than you have. I just know that lots of things the government does are scams. Free markets do require some regulation to prevent certain breakdown cases involving unfair competition. But letting the government do things instead with no competition won't be an improvement. America is #1 in many things but budgeting and protecting our own interests aren't among those things.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's not a "minor inconvenience" at all. What's your solution? This kind of satellite system is going to get built and improved over time regardless of what you think of it. >It's more due to Musk lying and not delivering. No, it's not. I think you know it too. Biden and a bunch of EU politicians have literally threatened Elon over Twitter, as recently as last month. Everyone was cool with his hype game until they c…
The 2nd generation of starlink satellites is worse than the first one: they leak radio spectrum energy at a massively higher level than the 1st generation. Why have sympathy for anyone trying to do something stupid? Why do we need autonomous taxis? What problem is this solving, other than helping the already richer get a bit richer?
IMO the Starlink interference problem is being overblown to spite Elon for political reasons. In any case, satellites have long existed and other countries are going to build their own version of Starlink with the same problems. If they don't have the same problems then presumably Starlink will learn from them. There are other satellites made to observe stuff from space, and maybe the new SpaceX rockets will facilitate radioastronomy stations built on the dark side of the moon (if that's even important enough to build).
I actually don't want autonomous taxis or autonomous vehicles in general but some people do. When new technology is developed, usually most people experience benefits. It makes sense for some of the spoils to go to investors. Stop hating on people who make money. They are what funds everyone's pensions after all.