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Why Northern England is poor

tomforth.co.uk

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Re: Why Northern England is poor

#31

Post by matt-p »

jdietrich wrote: post #26

I think there's a fundamental gap in this analysis, which is how hyper-local many of the inequalities are. Manchester has a GDP per capita of £59,000. Tameside, the poorest area in Greater Manchester, has a GDP per capita of £19,000. Leeds has a GDP per capita of £42k; ten miles away, Bradford has a GDP per capita of £23.6k. Those disparities are really difficult to explain in terms of infrastructure or commercial in…

To a certain extent, would making the productive parts of manchester, even just 2X more productive not fix this over time in the same way that it has in London?

If you look back even say 30 years ago in London, you'd of said the same thing about places like Hackney, as you do now about Tameside. Today it houses some of the most desired and valuable real estate not only in London, and by extension the UK, but in the world.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#33

Post by Cumpiler69 »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #30
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking How does one get hired into banking with a physics degree? For what kinds of jobs? Where I live right now you only get into banking with a economics/business degree. Anything else and your resume goes in the bin.

Stem degrees are pretty high rated

That's a vague answer that doesn't answer my specific question. I also have a STEM degree (electrical engineering) but would never be considered for finance roles.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#34

Post by renewiltord »

James_K wrote: post #4
nickff wrote: post #2

Interesting perspective, but it really seems like state capitals just tend to siphon money from far away to invest nearby, and consequently, grow. Selecting a major city as your capital seems to accelerate the process, but even countries which select minor towns as their capitals have had this happen.

The process is quite simple and fairly obvious. Government policy is the bedrock of all economic development. Government officials will always have the most knowledge about the capital, so all policy is tailored to it. It's no surprise that they don't make policies that benefit the North given that they don't live there.

Neither Albany, NY not Sacramento, CA feel like the centers of their states.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#35

Post by Retric »

matt-p wrote: post #31
jdietrich wrote: post #26

I think there's a fundamental gap in this analysis, which is how hyper-local many of the inequalities are. Manchester has a GDP per capita of £59,000. Tameside, the poorest area in Greater Manchester, has a GDP per capita of £19,000. Leeds has a GDP per capita of £42k; ten miles away, Bradford has a GDP per capita of £23.6k. Those disparities are really difficult to explain in terms of infrastructure or commercial in…

To a certain extent, would making the productive parts of manchester, even just 2X more productive not fix this over time in the same way that it has in London? If you look back even say 30 years ago in London, you'd of said the same thing about places like Hackney, as you do now about Tameside. Today it houses some of the most desired and valuable real estate not only in London, and by extension the UK, but in the w…

Simply displacing a population can make an area more wealthy but it does little for the overall population.

So, I don’t think we care about land here but rather people.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#37

Post by ANewFormation »

deltarholamda wrote: post #28
EarlKing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a consequence of companies outsourcing to countries where they can get away with slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulation. There's nothing natural about it.

Exactly this. Don't think of it as "moving to a service-based economy", think of it as "outsourcing manufacturing and resource extraction". They are two sides of the same coin, but people tend to only look at the one shiny side. Like any race to the bottom, it works great until you hit the bottom. Only now you don't have any of the fundamental industry, and you've lost all of the domain knowledge of those industries.…

It also creates this weird power imbalance. 'Advanced economies' are supposed to be just that, yet 'developing economies' cutting off their grain, steel and manufacturing is a far bigger threat than an advanced economy cutting off digital services, luxury goods, and financial markets.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#38

Post by i_don_t_know »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #23
tetris11 wrote: post #3

We also shifted largely into a service based economy, shutdown a lot of mines and mills (for better or for worse) which were primarily more north based. More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking, as there was no relevant industry to pick them up... and as someone with several postdoctoral degrees, yet no house or meaningful assets... who could blame them for going into banking in this…

>More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking How does one get hired into banking with a physics degree? For what kinds of jobs? Where I live right now you only get into banking with a economics/business degree. Anything else and your resume goes in the bin.

I think banks / insurance companies are looking for solid math skills. If you can learn / work with higher math for physics, you can work with financial math.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#39

Post by gostsamo »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #33
jakey_bakey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stem degrees are pretty high rated

That's a vague answer that doesn't answer my specific question. I also have a STEM degree (electrical engineering) but would never be considered for finance roles.

data. stem people can do math and data analysis.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#40

Post by dambi0 »

skrebbel wrote: post #10

> Limited success such as in Manchester, whose economy has nearly kept up with East German cities while the rest of North England falls behind, Woa is this a typo? I know little about England, and I hadn't realized that "keeping up with East German cities" is considered a success. I mean isn't East Germany rather well known for not keeping up all that well with the rest of Germany either?

I think it's a bit more subtle than that. For one the author tells us they think this is an example of success story. Although I guess it depends on when you are measuring from, and they may be being somewhat tongue in cheek with their choice of East Germany

I think the point is that we would expect East German cities to have reasonable relative growth post-unification because we are taking a relatively structurally deprived area within a wider more successful economy.

That Manchester has kept up with areas where you'd expect to see reasonable growth, is positive. I suppose there's also the hint that this suggests that this has been allowed to happen by central government, but I could be making that up.

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