Live data from Hacker News

How the U.K. broke its own economy

theatlantic.com

61–70 of 784 posts

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

#61
post #5

Aren't higher energy prices exactly what we need to combat climate change though?

Only high oil and gas prices specifically. And honestly, low gas prices is good if it helps move away from coal. But unfortunately, even the most liberal political groups have walked back any interest in solving climate change at the margin. You see this with the endless life of the "100 companies cause climate change" misinformation.

The deeper problem might be that they gave up on fighting inequality; which would give regular people enough breathing room to make changes on the margin.

Without that, the argument is basically "We know that life is barely worth living, but we aren't going to help with that. Instead we want to make your life even worse to save the environment!"

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

#62
post #5

Aren't higher energy prices exactly what we need to combat climate change though?

Not necessarily. You could argue that you want coal and gas to be expensive so that people build out renewables. But the places with the cheapest electricity generally have hydro, nuclear or wind, which are all zero carbon.

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

#63
post #3

British economic dysfunction is an old, old story. My favorite quip: "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time." - Aneurin Bevan, British Labour politician, in a speech at Blackpool, 24 May 1945

>British economic dysfunction is an old, old story. My favorite quip:

That doesn't mean it's not an existential problem. You can have a growth forever before the cancer gets bad enough to notice.

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

#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 public hands through bus and rail fixed franchises, because Stagecoach (they own Greyhound in the US, you might be familiar with their work), have driven public transport into the ground in the name of profits for themselves.

On housing, the Thatcher government in the 1980s gave social housing tenants the right to buy homes, and created laws that prevented local authorities from building new public sector housing projects: the market, after all, would be more effective. That's led to a situation where private developers own land they won't build on until prices rise - they're artificially shortening supply. The houses they do build are small and expensive, and most people actively look for non-new build homes, to the extent that the government had to introduce tax breaks (Lifetime ISA), and incentives (help to buy), for people to buy new builds they didn't really want.

This isn't breaking news. People have been pointing out the problems and obvious drawbacks to the libertarian "private corporations can fix it all" nonsense that drove Thatcherism from the first moments it was conceived in the 1980s, and were hand-waved away as relics of the past by the centre right who took control of the country and destroyed it.

Yes, the public sector has problems too. Nobody is arguing that the right solution is to nationalise everything (except in the case of monopoly markets like public transport and utilities, where the UK is markedly behind the rest of Europe in the sectors which it has left to private sector utilisation). It's about balance. It always was, for many years, and for many years it was successful, as it has continued to be across Europe.

TFA suggests that the real problem is that the private sector has been leashed by red tape, but that's just not true. The government has given the private sector ample opportunity: to build houses, and they've refused to do so; to build nuclear power, and they keep coming back and asking for more money to fix problems of their own making; to run utilities as they wish, and they pollute rivers and raise bill prices.

In most of Europe (with almost identical regulations and rules, thanks to the power of EU frameworks the UK was entirely aligned to until very recently), the public sector has been able to retain a larger part of these critical economic components, and these problems have not arisen to the same extent.

As an aside, it's not lost on most that it is ironic that the French public sector is allowed to invest in UK transport and energy sector companies, but the UK public sector is not, due to EU law that we're still trying to get rid of.

TFA is therefore philosophically, intellectually and factually flawed at every level based on the actual data and lived experiences of the people suffering this - and yes, I am one of those people. I'm sick of this utterly absurd libertarian agenda being pushed like this, claiming that the private sector is somehow a victim. I believe so are most UK citizens who see it for the propaganda it is.

There is an increasing, and deepening sense of unease at private capital in the UK, much of it unfounded. Right-wing libertarian agitprop nonsense like this article doesn't help: it's toxic, and harms the private sector in those areas where it can make a real difference.

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

#65
post #5

Aren't higher energy prices exactly what we need to combat climate change though?

The issue is there is currently no mechanism for end consumers to moderate their behaviour based on energy related emissions.

Currently if users as a group demand more power than clean can provide, dirty gets turned on and everyone pays the highest cost.

We need a way for a consumer to be able to commit to only clean power, potentially at a lower cost but with limited supply.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal immigrants from the EU were not the only source of migrants to the UK. Many come from elsewhere, legally and otherwise. Guess what: we have Brexit but we still have immigrants - impossible?! Plus it was never about immigration, it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it.

> Plus it was never about immigration, It was partly about immigration. According to these surveys 43% of people that voted leave think immigration should be reduced. https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE9?:... > it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it. Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a…

> Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a particular political issue they must have fooled somehow?

politicians sometimes lie…?

the £350 million a day bus springs to mind as one example. the amazing trade deals which will unleash our new economy were another.

like, those things sound great. people wanted those promises to become real and believed the people who were saying those things could implement them.

turns out implementation is sometimes a lot harder than waving your hands and making a bunch of promises.

edit —

especially when the advertised numbers are factually wrong, and people know they are wrong — i.e. they lied.

> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was partly about immigration My view is it’s actually about people being racist

My view is there needs to be a version of Godwin's law related to client of supposed 'racism', i.e. the one who claims ${issue} is caused by/related to 'racism' thereby loses the argument unless he comes with solid proof. I see no proof, spurious claims of 'racism' do not count as such so it actually was about immigration.

It's disingenuous to pretend Brexit wasn't at least partially motivated by in-group preference. Almost as disingenuous as implying that there's anything wrong with having said preference. I don't open up my house to people I don't know regardless of their potential to contribute to it economically. Why is this treated as immoral when the same reasoning is applied to the immigration system?

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

#68
post #3

British economic dysfunction is an old, old story. My favorite quip: "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time." - Aneurin Bevan, British Labour politician, in a speech at Blackpool, 24 May 1945

I never heard this one before, and made my day... haha Thank you.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal receipts as a % of GDP has gone up and down by a few % but is basically unchanged from the 1950’s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ockN Meanwhile the income tax burden, specifically, has gotten considerably more progressive: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxe...

The NTU only goes back to the 1980s and does not actually include any analysis of the 1950s. Looks like NTU also is positing their stance on the ideology that the 1% are the only ones that create jobs but they are the ones to most likely invest in large corporations. There seems no prospect to help the mom and pop shops or small companies that have stronger solutions beyond what large corporate tunnel vision provides…

The majority definitely benefits from being able to buy cheap Chinese goods and go on cheap Europe trips while $BIGCOMPANY vacuums up money from the rest of the world to prop up the USD. In which other country can a guy cutting hair (out of many examples) afford so many international vacations?

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

#70
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what was the alternative? Continue with the disaster of central planning. Which is the actual thing that destroyed British industry.

Central planning is likely going to be a feature of all manners of world-leading governments, whether we're talking about dictatorships, theocracies, or democratic republics. Imagine, for example, a country that wants to get into the chip game at this point.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN