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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

#221

Post by gottorf »

olddustytrail wrote: post #132

There was plenty of housing before the Thatcherite "right to buy". Pretending it was socialist politics that broke it is moronic.

Insofar as "socialist politics" make it harder for the supply of housing to rise to match demand, it is not moronic at all. Places in the UK where housing stock grows with population don't have it as bad as places that don't[0], i.e. London.

Thatcher left office in 1990. The population of Greater London has grown by 44% since then. I don't think there has been a single decade since where the growth of housing stock kept up with the growth of people. Why blame Thatcher for this?

[0]: https://ifs.org.uk/articles/england-has-poor-record-building...

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

#222

Post by lotsofpulp »

walthamstow wrote: post #205
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…

American taxes are so complicated. Let's add another 1-2% for the mental cost of having to know all this stuff, or pay someone else to know it. It's just crazy.

It’s incredible the US has any other economic output, considering the effort spent on taxes.

At one of my businesses, we remit 4 separate sales taxes to 4 separate governments, and each has to be itemized, so receipts are multiple pages long for no reason.

Then there are myriad possibilities for being exempt from either all or some of the taxes, and those records have to be kept in case of an audit.

There must be enormous amounts of tax evasion too, the attack surface is so great no one can audit it all. The most tax advantaged account, a Health Savings Account, lets people set money aside today, invest it, and let it grow for however long they want, and then withdraw it for healthcare expenses, all tax free.

But the healthcare expenses can be from any point in time in the past. A 30 year old can save their receipts for purchases ranging from over the counter painkillers to childbirth bills from the hospital, and then reimburse themselves when they are 80 years old.

How can it even be possible to audit someone’s healthcare expenses that happened 50 years ago? The counter party will surely no longer have the records to cross reference, so it’s basically the government taking people’s word for it.

And that’s just simple personal taxes.

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

#223

Post by WeylandYutani »

cupcakecommons wrote: post #213
bryanlarsen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheapest source is accurate. It may not eliminate the need for expensive LPG, but reducing the amount needed is still a massive benefit to the economy.

[flagged]

This is why the Netherlands builds them out in the sea. Just far enough so that you cannot see them. Even the biggest reactionary NIMBY has no complaints.As for wildlife come on man who the fuck cares?

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

#224

Post by thrance »

gottorf wrote: post #210
thrance wrote: post #106

60 years of tories and tory-lites slowly but surely cutting "waste", privatizing, deregulating, pushing for austerity... Let that be a lesson to the US, seeking government efficiency is a non-goal. Good, well-funded public services make productive citizens and a strong economy. Austerity leads to a dead country.

> Good, well-funded public services make productive citizens and a strong economy. Austerity leads to a dead country. Most Western European nations have a government expenditure as a percentage of GDP of roughly 50%; half the economy is government. Singapore, a famously productive country, is around 15%.

Can you seriously compare a very wealthy city-state to actual countries? Do you not see why you can't run the UK like you would Monaco?

You really went out of your way to pick the only "country" you could find with both low government spending and high quality of life, despite the data proving a strong correlation between these two in actual countries. Wow.

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

#225

Post by cycomanic »

cupcakecommons wrote: post #213
bryanlarsen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheapest source is accurate. It may not eliminate the need for expensive LPG, but reducing the amount needed is still a massive benefit to the economy.

[flagged]

Yes it is true, study after study has shown that LCOE for renewables (in particular wind) is the lowest. It is also quite obvious from the fact that wind and solar installations are what investors are actually investing in, in contrast to nuclear which nobody wants to invest in even with large government guarantees.

E. G. See this article on a Lazarus report. https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-power-half-the-co...

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

#226

Post by owenversteeg »

>Per capita electricity generation in the U.K. is now roughly one-third that of the United States, and energy use per unit of GDP is the lowest in the G7. By these measures, at least, Britain may be the most energy-starved nation in the developed world.

Yikes. Housing is the big issue that gets everyone’s attention, but this is huge. Cheap energy drives economic growth at all levels. It’s incredible that the various British governments have let it get to this level. Maybe it’s time to import a few Chinese or Soviet technocrats?

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

#227

Post by dontlaugh »

walthamstow wrote: post #184
cr__ wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like em.

People forget that the natural landscape of Britain is forest. The enclosed fields people think are natural countryside are in fact an entirely human creation.

Ecologically, it is basically barren.

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

#228

Post by blibble »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #80

The last government intentionally banned the cheapest source of energy, onshore wind, from being built in England, by making it so that a single complaint could stop a project. I cannot believe this article talks about planning constraints and energy prices and doesn't mention that.

wouldn't have mattered

due to the screwed up energy pricing system, if there's a single watt of electricity in the grid produced by burning gas, we pay for the entire grid output as if it was gas

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

#229

Post by kjaleshire »

mulmen wrote: post #186
lenkite wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't these also massive mass bird slayers ? The last I read, over half a million birds were killed (official under-estimate) by wind turbines in UK alone every year

I doubt that wind turbines are the only power source that kills birds. Marginal bird deaths per unit of power production is the interesting statistic. This MIT post [1] links to a 2009 study [2] which provides that comparison: Wind/nuclear: 0.3-0.4 birds/GWh Fossil: 5.2 birds/GWh So if you’re pro bird you’re pro wind power. [1]: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds [2]: https://www.sciencedirec…

4.98 birds/GWh in the fossil fuel estimate comes from unrealized climate change expectations. They also only looked at two coal power plants for the remainder of the study.

The nuclear source bird death estimates are extrapolated from one bad weather incident over two nights from a single plant on the Florida coast.

This is not a serious or rigorous study. Is there anything more recent?

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