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The strange case of Britain’s demise

economist.com

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Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#501

Post by hermitcrab »

dfawcus wrote: post #271
hermitcrab wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have no idea how you measure fluency, but most of the population we are concerned with learned a foreign language until the age of 16. I live in the UK and I am struggling to think of more than 1 or 2 British born people I know personally that speak anything other than English with any fluency.

From the 2011 census, around 30% of Scots are fluent in a second language. https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/census-results/at-a-glanc... (We don't yet have the results for the 2022 census)

I don't see a 30% figure on that page.

Also the figures on that page include people born abroad. I know a few people who can speak 5+ languages. But they weren't born in the UK.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#502

Post by Jochim »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #356
namdnay wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you’re talking about London? I doubt that 70k£ is top 10% in London

Google search found "Median annual earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2022 (in GBP), by percentile" here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gr... Data on the average annual gross salary percentiles in the United Kingdom in 2022 showed that the bottom ten percent of full-time workers earned an average of 19,403 British pounds a year, with the top ten percent of…

The BBC say it's ~£86k in 2020. Not too far off.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53628115

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#503

Post by prof-dr-ir »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #464
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to stress that the gap I speak of is not about stupidity or competence in itself; instead it is about being oblivious to one's own incompetence. For example, I think that people like Trump, Berlusconi, Cheney, etc. are not in the same class. They are certainly bad leaders, but largely because they are selfish grifters who care little about their country. On the other hand people like Cameron, Rees-Mogg,…

I want to be clear about the argument you're making, as I think this is where our difference arises. You think Trump, Berlusconi, and so on are selfish grifters but do not believe they are truly destined for greatness? And you think Cameron, Rees-Mogg, Johnson and Truss are _not_ selfish grifters but are in it for the "greatness"? I think you should do more research on both groups. Trump and Berlusconi (and many othe…

What would be a politician's ideal outcome of a stint in politics?

I think that Trump and Berlusconi and Cheney and Netanyahu all aim for maximal wealth (and minimal imprisonment) for them and their buddies - and they do very well on this front! So are you sure they are unable to make "good decisions" from that perspective?

On the other hand, I think that people like Macron and Merkel, but also May, Truss and probably even Johnson, are more motivated by their legacy and truly would like to improve the status quo of their country - and they believe that that is their path to greatness.

So I think this sets apart the UK politicians from the "real" grifters. But at the same time I think they are also easily distinguished from people like Macron and Merkel and even Von der Leyen, because the British leaders are just so spectacularly bad at it. Starting at least with Cameron's referendum decision we have witnessed a remarkable sequence of massive unforced errors by UK politicians, the likes of which I have not seen in other "Western" countries or the EU (despite your insistence to the contrary).

Maybe "terrible governing by people who nevertheless care" captures it well.

So I guess where you see "evil" I see "haplessness" as a defining factor among UK leaders. A competence gap was my way to explain its origins.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#504

Post by alvah »

int_19h wrote: post #466
alvah wrote: post #412

"Britain seems trapped in a doom loop of superannuated governments which, after a term or two of charismatic leadership and reformist vim, wind up bereft of talent, sinking in their own mistakes and wracked by backbench rebellions; in office but barely in power" That's not just Britain, the entire West has this problem. IMO the rise of professional politicians who've never worked outside of politics is a major cause…

When was it ever different?

Allegedly, long before my time, politics was seen as a calling, a way of giving back after a successful career. Not sure how much of that is based in reality, but from what I’ve read the option of politics as an entire career, without doing something productive first, has only existed for the last ~40 years

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#505

Post by Jochim »

hermitcrab wrote: post #200
reducesuffering wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have the left getting 35% of the vote, the centrists getting 19%, and the right getting 30%, the right isn't working, by all means, compromise and try the centrists for a change. Why the left/Labour is unable to understand this, (throwing their weight to the centrists closer to their aims) and instead getting the right elected is astonishing.

The left of the Labour party seem to hate the centrists in the Labour party far more than they hate the Conservatives.

The centrists of the Labour party conducted literal purges after intentionally smearing their own party with fabricated allegations of homophobia and anti-semitism which they spread through the media[0]. Not to mention sabotaging campaign activities by directing resources away from swing seats.

There is certainly animosity from the left but largely due to the ironically Stalin-esque tactics employed by Labour centrists.

I find it frankly perplexing that people can characterise the leftist elements of the Labour party as the aggressors in these circumstances.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-files-forde-repo...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#506

Post by rayiner »

wizofaus wrote: post #426
rayiner wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a real democracy the big challenge should be how to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Protection of minorities has nothing to do with democracy, and is often anti-Democratic. In the west, minorities are increasingly being invoked by elites as pretexts for strengthening anti-Democratic institutions and overruling majorities.

Can you give an example? I'd suggest protections against "tyranny of the majority"/"mob rule" are a cornerstone feature of any successful democracy. The point is to ensure that it's not possible simply by force of numbers alone to elect governments who then enforce laws and implement policies that could significantly disadvantage any minority group.

The US Supreme Court is a good example. It sits as an elite Guardian Council that over the last century has overruled the public on numerous issues, ranging from contraception to abortion to same sex marriage to the death penalty. These rulings are not based on law but rather moral philosophy—specifically the libertarian moral philosophy of elites.

Protection of minorities is not a necessary feature of democracy. It’s a feature of a specific type of democracy. In the American system, it’s a feature that initially arose because elites sought to protect their property rights from the masses through constitutional checks on democracy.

Shadi Hamid at the Brookings Institute has done excellent work distinguishing “democracy” from “liberal democracy.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/us-democra...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#507

Post by gpderetta »

matkoniecz wrote: post #152
recuter wrote: post #38

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes…

> Like lemmings off a cliff. I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Contro...

While the real lemming do not jump off a click, famously the characters of the eponymous games will indeed happily fall of the cliff if not stopped.

So the meme lives on.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#508

Post by gpderetta »

recuter wrote: post #259
matkoniecz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like lemmings off a cliff. I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Contro...

Meanwhile, actual lemmings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2-vPg1_nw

What an absolute masterpiece!

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#509

Post by gghhzzgghhzz »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #456
cauch wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging what is "worse" is tricky. Of course, if the alternative is proposing policies that don't fit with your ideology, you are going to judge them badly ("how can they be good politicians, they haven't even understood what is obvious to me"). But it does not mean they are worse, it just means that they are not representative of your ideology. In a healthy democracy, the community should accept that there will be p…

Except pretty much everyone agrees, even within Labour, that Corbyn was unelectable... in part because his team and policies where squarely on the far left. A repeat of the Micheal Foot days in the 80s. So, yes, in the end people may have had issues with the sitting government but they concluded that they were the "least bad" option. A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition.

The manifesto in 1983 included unilateral nuclear disarmament, leaving the EEC.

The 2017 / 2019 Corbyn manifesto were more aligned with the SDP-Liberal alliance manifestos of 1983.

Don't take my word for it, here is one of the members of SDP at the time who split from the Labour party because of Foot.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#510

Post by alvah »

nxmnxm99 wrote: post #486
uejfiweun wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the West really stagnating? If anything, I'd say it's at the peak and continuing to climb. The bulk of the West's power is united under a single language, on a continent that's practically invincible, and it has constructed a system in which the brightest minds from around the world come to the US to work for Western companies and study in Western universities. Sure, China is catching up quickly, but that's becaus…

I mean - you’re wrong. 20 years ago America and Europe dominated the world - today the US is growing increasingly perilous politically and Europe is little more than a museum, irrelevant by the day. The collective economies of Canada, Europe and Australia haven’t grown since 2008. 15 years. The US is the only “western” economy which has actually shown real GDP growth. A staggering number of academics and researchers…

If it's basic math, how come China and India haven't ruled the world forever, since they have the largest populations? There's a lot more to it than what you say.
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