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Britain Is a Developing Country

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Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#141

Post by rchaud »

mhh__ wrote: post #63
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

Lots of good engineering talent in the UK - all the good F1 teams are based in the UK for example. The UK has always been a merchant, trading economy - partly why Brexit was so stupid regardless of the EU's flaws, but nonetheless London is still an extremely attractive legal proposition and so on.

> London is still an extremely attractive legal proposition and so on

Yes, the libel laws have been especially helpful in allowing despots and oligarchs to move their wealth into the country and build contacts with No. 10 while suing journalists reporting on it. Chelsea FC, major football club, was owned by a Putin pal for 20 years. He was forced to sell only in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.

Prigozhin, Wagner CEO, was able to hire a UK law firm to sue a journalist for reporting on his link to Wagner. This was after sanctions were placed on him by the UK government [0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jan/31/russia-ukraine-w...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#142

Post by twixfel »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #125
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be more like these countries either...that we should be friendly to business, that we should limit immigration...strange, isn't it? I've run a startup in UK and my family has a company in CZ, Britain is so much more friendly to business from my experience. > there has been no real noticeable impact...even in industries that were going to be "decimated" [by brexit] What is the basis for your opinion? I hav…

Because you have never worked for a large business. It is almost impossible to build anything anywhere, there are massive amounts of regulations if you do get started, interventions from multiple levels of government, it is genuinely mad. Look at mortgages, you have the government telling private banks to bail out mortgage-holders...do you think this would happen in Czechia? Just think about is happening: bank execut…

Overall your comment is basically unreadable, wanted to make that clear to you.

> something that was supposed to be impossible after Brexit

Checks on food products coming into the UK from the EU haven't even started yet, but will soon. So yeah, pretty bad for you to not know that.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#143

Post by theironhammer »

grej wrote: post #42
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

The UK still has a strong military, a particularly strong Navy, plus whatever remains of their portion of North Sea oil and gas. But they missed their window after Brexit to strike the trade deals they needed, and now any trade deal they make will probably be under quite unfavorable terms.

Re: no trade deals post Brexit.

That was always going to be the case. Brexit fantasists thought they were going to recreate the empire with UK at its center. They also thought they could do a deal with USA. What does UK offer USA if they're not in Europe?

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#144

Post by rchaud »

madeofpalk wrote: post #107
tinktank wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the G8 I would presume.

This why it's such a weird question. What does any country "have going for it"? Where you live is heavily loaded towards your personal preference, rather than any sort of objective economical measure. Personally, I only want to live in an English speaking country (I don't want to be a language-guest in a country). I want to live somewhere where there's "lots" going on - plenty of work opportunities and fun things to…

> What does any country "have going for it"?

Military importance is a big one. Part of the reason Japan and Korea industrialized so quickly after 1950 was because the West supported them economically as they were needed as a reliable bulwark against Communist expansion. The US also tolerates dictatorships worldwide (incl S Korea until 1988) if the regime is friendly to the US.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#145

Post by theironhammer »

curiousllama wrote: post #67
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

London. London sans the UK is Singapore. This article is valid for UK-sans-London, but we shouldn't pretend that London is suddenly Warsaw

Agreed. There are two UKs: London and the rest, like u said. Just like USA. There's Silicon Valley and NYC plus some other enclaves and there's the "flyover".

UK has become like USA with yawning gaps between the have and have nots.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#146

Post by rchaud »

grej wrote: post #42
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

The UK still has a strong military, a particularly strong Navy, plus whatever remains of their portion of North Sea oil and gas. But they missed their window after Brexit to strike the trade deals they needed, and now any trade deal they make will probably be under quite unfavorable terms.

They didn't miss the opportunity, it was never offered. Trading partners like the US advised them to stay in the Bloc, which is the same as saying "there's no bilateral deal coming if you leave".

Trade deals are multi-year projects and the terms you can get depends on how much leverage you have. Its noy the kind of thing you jump into after leaving a bigger trade bloc. The UK wasn't going to be able to negotiate anything without the bargaining chip of duty-free access to 500m customers.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#147

Post by alephnerd »

avgcorrection wrote: post #131
alephnerd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada and Denmark (Greenland) would have a word with you.

What point are you trying to make besides being a contrarian? Tell me.

1. The foreign policy decisions made by administrations during the Cold War are no longer implemented anymore. The Cold War is as distant in 2023 as WW2 was in 1980.

The world in 2023 is different from the world in the 1970s which is different from the world in the 1940s.

2. The institutional changes that caused Venezuela's dramatic slide only really began to take hold in the 2000s, and were exacerbated by the global collapse in commodity prices in the 2012-15 period.

3. Plenty of petro-states across South and Central America have in 2023 reached a state of development comparable to eastern members of the EU (ie. In the 0.7 or high development range).

4. GDP per capita is a crummy metric to compare economic development. GDP (and ergo per capita GDP) are metrics to benchmark production, not social development, which are better measured when looking at metrics such as HDI, Life Expectancy, Literacy Rate, Median Income, Childhood Mortality Rate, etc.

Even though Venezuela had a very high GDP per capita in the late 1970s/early 1980s, it was extremely unevenly distributed. In fact, in the time period that Venezeula had the 4th highest GDP per capita, it's Gini Coefficient (the metric for wealth inequality) was 0.500 [0]. This is in line with Angola and Zimbabwe today, and was much worse than other nations across South America.

By that time period, the kind of interventions you saw in Chile, Guatemala, etc were not as vogue, with the Iran-Contra Scandal acting as the final nail in the coffin for any direct clandestine intervention.

Venezuela's problems today are caused by Venezuela's leaders mismanaging the economic dividend in the 2000s and elites on both sides of the aisle in Venezeula working to undermine institutions to their benefit.

[0] - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-05147-2_...

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#148

Post by rchaud »

secondcoming wrote: post #34
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

It must do since people are risking their lives to get here. It has problems for sure, but other EU countries have the same problems. Seeing the continental Europe is currently being baked dry, I'm kind of glad that the weather in Scotland is miserable.

I come from a developing country. Our football league recruits players from African countries. That doesn't mean that things are good in my country, just that they're less bad than some other places.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#149

Post by gumballindie »

Tade0 wrote: post #112
twixfel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired of this ridiculous attitude you see everywhere on the internet, "stopped reading at X" (which may actually be near or at the end of the article), "he said X therefore I can now casually discredit everything he says", "he said something factually incorrect therefore the whole article is wrong and I don't have to engage with it". And the arrogance of it too, as if in your head it's virtuous enough to be so closed…

I'm Polish and I had trouble figuring out why would the two countries be put side by side like that, but this: > If the UK continues with the same rate of growth it has enjoyed over the last decade, then Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time. I find unlikely. I mean, we're doing good economically wise, but not that good. We're going to catch up to Greece and Portugal soon enough - just like the C…

> I'm Polish and I had trouble figuring out why would the two countries be put side by side like that,

Because the author is firmly in the camp that fails to aknowledge any and all progress made by east european countries, and by Poland in particular. Wouldn't fit the narrative of a brexit campaign focused on slandering those nations and their citizens.

Furthermore, putting it next to Bangladesh, or India, the author thinks, may make the damage done to former colonies of west european "powers" less obvious. The reality of east europe, and poland in particular, being significantly more developed than the rest of the world - much of which has suffered at the hands of said "powers" - is irrelevant.

That particular line of text discredits the whole article, which in my view, doesn't belong here. It belongs at most on the dailymail, or perhaps the guardian - another library of content that tirelessly portrairs east europeans as some sort of underclass worthy of pitty and scarecrow.

But you know, in Poland, a country with an ever growing economy, eggs are not rationed. So perhaps the author is right in way that Poland may overtake the UK, sooner rather than later. Personally I have full confidence it will.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#150

Post by rchaud »

curiousllama wrote: post #94
twixfel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired of this ridiculous attitude you see everywhere on the internet, "stopped reading at X" (which may actually be near or at the end of the article), "he said X therefore I can now casually discredit everything he says", "he said something factually incorrect therefore the whole article is wrong and I don't have to engage with it". And the arrogance of it too, as if in your head it's virtuous enough to be so closed…

Yea, but that comparison literally underpins the main point of the article (Britain becoming like Poland is bad). Been to Poland recently? It's... kinda nice! He says in 10 years Britain (currently nice) = Poland (up and coming?) = Bangladesh (not as nice)

> Been to Poland recently? It's... kinda nice!

2 decades of EU largesse and cross-Europe migrant remittances will do that. Does the UK have a similar windfall coming?

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