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How the U.K. broke its own economy

theatlantic.com

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Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#131

Post by giantg2 »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #125
giantg2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Where do you think coal and oil comes from? It's ok as long as other people's environment is destroyed for non-renewable energy but not your environment for renewable energy?

Lol, they used to mine coal under that very mountain (until it was outsourced). It's not like we have some insular life. The region is economically depressed. People would rather have jobs while destroying the environment than not have jobs while destroying the environment and recreational value simultaneously.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#133

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

BurningFrog wrote: post #101
reverendsteveii wrote: post #4

Everyone who bought into neoliberalism in the 80s is now experiencing economies that are mysteriously failing to thrive. Correlation isn't cause, except when it is.

To some people, everything is still Thatcher's fault, 40 years later.

As one of those people ... it's not so much that everything is (still) Thatcher's fault. Had she not won in 1979, doubtless the UK would be facing a different mix of problems, some the same, some different. But Thatcher set the ball in motion on the tracks it has been on more or less since her first win, and it is those tracks that are the fundamental source of many of the problems in the UK (not all of them, but the biggest ones).

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#134

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Aromasin wrote: post #12
reverendsteveii wrote: post #4

Everyone who bought into neoliberalism in the 80s is now experiencing economies that are mysteriously failing to thrive. Correlation isn't cause, except when it is.

Turns out Thatcherism only works as long as the state still has assets to sell off. The delusion that assets would stay in the hands of the working and middle class, and not end up with the wealthy inheriting class, has to be one of the biggest political failures of our government on the modern era. It's lead to the possible death of the Conservative Party if they fail to fight off Reform and the Liberal Democrats.

> Turns out Thatcherism only works as long as the state still has assets to sell off.

Thatcherism works as long as there are still people receiving state assistance, since their assistance can be reduced even further.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#136

Post by kibwen »

giantg2 wrote: post #131
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think coal and oil comes from? It's ok as long as other people's environment is destroyed for non-renewable energy but not your environment for renewable energy?

Lol, they used to mine coal under that very mountain (until it was outsourced). It's not like we have some insular life. The region is economically depressed. People would rather have jobs while destroying the environment than not have jobs while destroying the environment and recreational value simultaneously.

[flagged]

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#137

Post by dgfitz »

dmoy wrote: post #127
lotsofpulp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this including the use of tax advantaged accounts like HSAs/401Ks/IRAs/etc? In the US, it should be possible to get a 95th percentile household income ($300k, married filing joint) effective federal income tax rate down to 10% to 15%. Including total health insurance costs (employer + employee) plus some amount of deductible/out of pocket maximum for a family of 4 would bump it up to 20% to 25%. And then on top of…

If this is MFJ two similar incomes, then Social security and Medicare is another ~14% (it'll say 7.65% on the tin, but really your wage is lowered to compensate for the 7.65% employer portion, working out to about 14% total). Effective federal income tax on $300k income is 20%+, not including healthcare. State tax is another 8%.. So that's 42%, not including healthcare costs. Which is gonna be easily another 5%+.

State tax is definitely not 8% for many, many states.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#138

Post by laurencerowe »

dmix wrote: post #86
PaulRobinson wrote: post #64

The core argument - that the state is getting in the way of the private sector fixing everything - is clearly false, at least in the case of the UK. If that were the case, public transport (which underwent radical privatisation and deregulation across the UK some 40+ years ago), would be the cheapest and most effective in Europe. In fact, it's the most expensive in Europe. It is all currently being wrestled back into…

I googled the transportation privatization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail So the UK rail network was privatized in the 1990s with tracks and stations remaining under government control and private companies bid for a 'franchise' running train services for whole regions. So basically franchises operate as regional monopolies and meaning passengers don't have any real choice of providers? T…

> So the UK rail network was privatised in the 1990s with tracks and stations remaining under government control and private companies bid for a 'franchise' running train services for whole regions.

The tracks and stations were also privatised as "Railtrack" but they subsequently went bankrupt and had to be brought back into public ownership. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack

> So basically franchises operate as regional monopolies and meaning passengers don't have any real choice of providers?

This is inevitable given many routes operate at the limits of capacity. There are a handful of 'open access' operators outside the franchise system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_operating_tr...

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#139

Post by lesuorac »

nxm wrote: post #123
rounce wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were those prior mistakes?

[flagged]

Seriously?

UK was the only EU member not part of the Schengen Zone as-in it was the only member you couldn't freely immigrate to. As well as it's an island, nobody hoping a boat from Morocco and landing in London.

Pakistani's aren't taking your job. The economy is just stagnating.

Post-Pandemic is a huge anomaly [1] but the article is talking about stuff pre-2019.

[1]: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#140

Post by Chinjut »

orangecat wrote: post #124
sjducb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back to what the western world was doing in the 50’s. High tax and high public spending. In 1950 the US had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. The 50s were great, let’s do that again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/04/26/taxing...

High tax and high public spending. Government spending was a slightly lower percentage of GDP than today ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S ), and a whole lot of that was defense ( https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and... ). The 50s were great, let’s do that again. Assuming you're not a non-white person, or a woman who wants a career. Although getting rid of Medicare would certain…

Is there something intrinsic to the general setup of government spending in the 1950s that makes it incompatible with equal rights for minorities and women? These would seem to be orthogonal issues.
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