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Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

ukfoundations.co

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Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#11

Post by gmac »

JCM9 wrote: post #4

The 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…

> Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal

Are you in the UK? The monarchy and House of Lords are an obvious anachronism and they need abolishing [1], but I would say it's a very small minority who care who you parents are/were (mainly people who think their own parents are/were a big deal) — and a similar small minority who might also ask "which school did you go to?".

[1] e.g. https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#12

Post by misja111 »

steve_gh wrote: post #5

Long essay. TL;DR the UK planning system is too restrictive and is stopping investment. However, some of the comparisons made don't really stack up. Yes. France has a better housing supply, and roughly the same area. But France has over twice the area, and under half the population density, even before you account for the almost uninhabited mountainous areas in Wales, Northern England and Scotland. So our populations…

It's hard to find any European country that didn't have any government projects that went wildly over budget or were very much delayed. So I don't think this is a UK specific problem, and it doesn't explain why Britain has stagnated compared to most of the EU.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#14

Post by Dalewyn »

JCM9 wrote: post #4

The 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…

>Passing off wealth and prestige by lineage has long been shown to be a bad idea. The next generation typically just screws it up.

In Japan there's an old saying that the success of a family is determined with the third generation.

The first builds the family empire. The second grows up seeing the first build it up and thus knows how to maintain it. The third grows up already having the empire and doesn't know how to maintain it, whether he can pass it on is essentially a dice roll. The fourth generation onwards, if the third succeeded, can refer to the family records and keep things going mostly indefinitely or realizes it's time to hand it off to different blood at that point.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#16

Post by inglor_cz »

steve_gh wrote: post #5

Long essay. TL;DR the UK planning system is too restrictive and is stopping investment. However, some of the comparisons made don't really stack up. Yes. France has a better housing supply, and roughly the same area. But France has over twice the area, and under half the population density, even before you account for the almost uninhabited mountainous areas in Wales, Northern England and Scotland. So our populations…

As for Wales ... This pattern repeats itself all over Europe. Only a few places "made" the transition from industrial settings to current economy.

I am from a former mining city of Ostrava, CZ. It is not completely dead, and it has been slowly improving lately, but it sorely needs something like high-speed rail to become relevant again. (The location is favourable: almost equidistant from Prague, Vienna, Warsaw and close to Krakow; a major railway hub.)

But the pattern really repeats itself all over Europe. Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Czechia, Poland - former heavy industry hotspots tend to collapse in a very similar fashion. As far as I have seen, Bilbao (ES) and Katowice (PL) were able to rebuild and reinvent themselves the best. Everyone else struggles or gave up the fight entirely.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#17

Post by misja111 »

ivanbakel wrote: post #7
dist-epoch wrote: post #2

> With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison, France has double the area of UK, and more of it is usable.

But the UK is nowhere near full in terms of housing. The Netherlands is the densest large country in Europe, and rocks double the population density of the UK. Despite this, the two countries have a roughly equal ratio of people to homes (~2.2). It's not as if a country actually needs that much land to build homes - humans simply don't take up that much space in terms of housing.

But the Netherlands are in a huge housing crisis at the moment.

If you want to compare the UK against the Netherlands, you'd have to compare the numbers in the article: how many Dutch own houses, how many have second homes. And adjust the numbers to be relative to population size of course. I'm not sure how well the Netherlands would come out of that comparison.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#18

Post by benrutter »

Really interesting and well researched read. The main take away seems to be that Britain has seen a lack of state funded infrastructure development and it's paying the price for this, especially in the energy sector.

I'm obviously oversimplifying, but I think that's an ok rough summary. I think it's well argued and evidenced in the article, but I'm interested in this question: why isn't the US stagnating?

My understanding is that it has had a similarly low infrastructue development, but conversely is doing well economically. What's the deal?

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#19

Post by docdeek »

JCM9 wrote: post #4

The 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…

One of the exceptions in the US seems to be around the White House. For a while, when Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2008, it was possible that the US would have had a member of the Bush or Clinton families as either VP or President every year from 1981 thorough to 2017. Such political families are not unique to the US, of course, and the UK has a fair few, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_family

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#20

Post by seanhunter »

dist-epoch wrote: post #8
misja111 wrote: post #6

The list of issues that the article list seems very ad hoc. Some are compared to EU countries, but apparently only where this makes the UK come out worst. It also ignores the fact that the UK might do better in some area's than other countries, it would be fair to lists these as well. Otherwise you could make a list like this for any country in the world. Also some issues seem irrelevant. E.g. the crime rate was give…

The fact it's a whole site dedicated to this article means there's some angle to it. Would be interesting to know who paid for this.

One of the authors is from the center for policy studies, which is a thinktank that was founded by Margaret Thatcher and 2 others. The other two authors seem to be the founder and one of the main contributors to https://worksinprogress.co/ which describes itself as "a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world."

So I'm going to guess it's gonna be that sort of thing. Someone with a neoliberal economic perspective who stands to benefit from government investments in largescale infrastructure projects.

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