Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Northern England is poor

tomforth.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 164 posts

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#71

Post by matt-p »

James_K wrote: post #50
matt-p wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What policy would benefit the north, without (even further) subsidising it? If we could invest £10Bn and get £20Bn back for the economy with our money back over time then not a single politician would turn that down, there's actually been a load of support over the past ~5+ years for "levelling up" (AKA investment in the north) but we've not invested much because the returns are abysmal. Meanwhile there's a whole sta…

The reason for investing in the North is pretty simple: people live there. We have three options: do something productive with he area, do nothing and continue to pay for its decline, or move all the people to London and let house prices rise accordingly. What you said about first mover advantage rings true here. We can either pick the most developed city and devote resources elusively that area, or we can accept a p…

Good luck with the "but people live there, thier lives can be improved who cares about a poor ROI" argument.

I mean that kind of genuinely, I see your point, but good luck trying that argument on the treasury.

It's a fact that they're subsidised. They have regional mayors, do you think a devolved solution for each northern city is really reasonable or desirable? If we think it's desirable and will stop them being subsidised then why hasn't it worked for Scotland, Wales or NI? All of which take more than they put it.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#73

Post by James_K »

matt-p wrote: post #71
James_K wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for investing in the North is pretty simple: people live there. We have three options: do something productive with he area, do nothing and continue to pay for its decline, or move all the people to London and let house prices rise accordingly. What you said about first mover advantage rings true here. We can either pick the most developed city and devote resources elusively that area, or we can accept a p…

Good luck with the "but people live there, thier lives can be improved who cares about a poor ROI" argument. I mean that kind of genuinely, I see your point, but good luck trying that argument on the treasury. It's a fact that they're subsidised. They have regional mayors, do you think a devolved solution for each northern city is really reasonable or desirable? If we think it's desirable and will stop them being sub…

Luckily you don't need to convince the treasury, just the electorate. And they are desperate for it. As you said, Bojo's levelling up scheme was like electoral crack. Perhaps some day we will achieve the level of democracy where the government enacts policies which are universally popular. Maybe it will happen soon if Reform UK actually follows through on proportional representation. Though it's a sorry state that those racist cretins are our best shot. Though I don't know if PR alone would be enough, we'd have to do something about the media as well and they're pretty buddy-buddy with Farage.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#74

Post by matt-p »

LexGray wrote: post #67
marssaxman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent my teen years in backwater Sacramento, I can confirm that it did not feel much like the center of anything. Adding a few more examples to your list, neither Olympia (WA), Salem (OR), nor Carson City (NV) are economic or social centers of their respective states.

This may stumble on a solution to the problem. London combines government and financial centers. Axe parliament and 10 Downing Street and rebuild government infrastructure from scratch in some inland port where it can drag influence north. Sacramento may not be exciting, but it is self-sustaining with fairly high property costs and a huge commuter population. I think one of the things that makes California successful…

Agree, chuck parliament and number 10 in a office building in Leeds or something. It really would be transformational, but will it happen? Not a hope in hell.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#75

Post by EarlKing »

graemep wrote: post #45
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.

Its not that simple. The UK experts a lot of manufactured goods to exactly those sorts of countries, and imports a lot from the EU and the US. What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers... Its othe…

Are you sure you want to get into everything else? Because I could've sworn we just had a major controversy with Vivek Ramaswamy running his mouth about the supposed laziness of American workers to justify racial discrimination against them through mass hiring of H1B workers... a stance so obviously wrong it forced his exit from the Trump administration. He certainly wasn't referring to people employed producing "cheap consumer goods", and there's nothing natural about the shift to the use of H1B labor. Just to be clear, though: This phenomenon is not unique to the United States. Imperialists everywhere try to pit one people against another to maintain power and extract maximum value for minimum input. Just once I'd like the bourgeoisie-adjacent to acknowledge political reality.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#78

Post by bowsamic »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #63
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 This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.

I think another big difference is that in the UK higher education is not really valued. In Germany people get PhDs because then they can get into much higher paying jobs, even if the PhD is not in a topic related much to the job. For example because I have a physics PhD I was able to get an entry level software dev position with a wage of 73k where someone with a bachelors may get only 40-50k. I don’t think that dynamic exists in the UK

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#79

Post by pastureofplenty »

ceuk wrote: post #55
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…

100% I live down the road from OP in Harrogate and it's an incredibly desirable and affluent place Also while I'm commenting. I know OP isn't saying the North is shit. Just poor(ish). Nevertheless I just want to say I love the north of England and genuinely think it's one of the best places in the world. We've already established that I'm in one of the better areas so my perspective might be a little skewed, but I ho…

You guys certainly have some of the nicest accents in the Anglosphere, imo.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#80

Post by WorkerBee28474 »

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.

I think there's truth to that, it seems like every state has 1 major city. Possibly not always the capital (e.g. Toronto vs Ottawa, Albany vs NYC vs DC).

I've heard that the book Cities and the Wealth of Nations [0] might talk about this more. I've been meaning to read it.

[0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-cities-and...

Post reply on HN