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How the U.K. broke its own economy
641–650 of 784 posts
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#642Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is the answer always more real estate, and not private ownership of housing? If you don’t live in it you can’t have it.
>> Why is the answer always more real estate Because as the population grows, we need an equivalent amount of new housing. Short of that, we compete for limited inventory and prices rise.
>Because as the population grows, we need an equivalent amount of new housing.
In the UK (but also most elsewhere), population no longer grows. If censuses say differently, it's because immigrants are being imported from overseas, not from any organic growth. To believe that this is righteous is a strange thing, one has to accept that British people should suffer so that immigrants can gain.
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big part of the problem is the UK used to let in about 100 thou immigrants yearly, that figure is now over a million per year. That means putting up a new house every few minutes. Unless you let Lagos or Caracas-style slums flourish, that’s not going to happen.
If you can't get local population to grow, you have to bring in your labor from somewhere else. And of course, like most wealthy nations, the British birth rate has been in the toilet since the 70s. This is also a reason that Brexit happened. Arguably the reason, even. There are a lot of working-class people whose families have been in the British Isles for centuries who look at the lack of progress relative to what…
>If you can't get local population to grow, you have to bring in your labor from somewhere else.
Self-fulfilling prophecy... local populations can't grow when they're starved of housing, energy, and most importantly of all, jobs.
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big part of the problem is the UK used to let in about 100 thou immigrants yearly, that figure is now over a million per year. That means putting up a new house every few minutes. Unless you let Lagos or Caracas-style slums flourish, that’s not going to happen.
If you can't get local population to grow, you have to bring in your labor from somewhere else. And of course, like most wealthy nations, the British birth rate has been in the toilet since the 70s. This is also a reason that Brexit happened. Arguably the reason, even. There are a lot of working-class people whose families have been in the British Isles for centuries who look at the lack of progress relative to what…
Countries will have to adapt to lower or even declining birth rates and deal with it. The world cannot just keep on growing indefinitely, unless we populate Mars or whatever. The UK, Korea, El Salvador, Israel, Netherlands, Rwanda, etc., will have to learn to make their economies work with a steady state workforce even a shrinking workforce ala Japan.
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
You haven’t, which is why you have no citation just a ridiculous, unproven anecdote. There are literally hundreds of turbines in my area, there are not and have never been “birds piling up under them.” Your own link further down estimates 4-18 per year. 1 bird per month would be gone before you had a chance to collect it, much less have a chance to “pile up”.
I am honestly surprised - you should see dead birds at-least a couple of times a week. Not annually or monthly, but weekly esp for a full wind-farm like what you are stating. Which part of the world do you live in ? It is possible that the location of the farm was chosen wisely. Are you also sure someone is not clearing the corpses ? There are laws mandating the collection of corpses in many western nations. My perso…
The entire US? I’ve been to Hawaii and hiked under turbines, no dead birds. I’ve been hunting in the midwest in fields, no dead birds.
I’ve been hiking in Europe, no dead birds.
Again, where is your citation? If birds are “piling up” they’re should be countless articles on it. Hell BP alone would GLADLY fund studies showing all these birds deaths to justify selling more oil.
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#646The 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.
I see a lot of irrational online hate for wind power - even going as far as wanting to dismantle offshore farms. I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvious place to look here is the fossil fuel industry - they have the means, the motive and a track record of flexible morals. A lot of currently very rich and powerful people lose in a world where most countries and even people can generate most of the power they…
>I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvious place to look here is the fossil fuel industry
Yeh, maybe. But then there is a certain class of people who live lives of wealth and leisure who like to go boating on their $10 million yachts, for whom windmills "spoil the view". And I think their opinions are somewhat consistent regardless of whether they are heavily invested in fossil fuels or not.
If it were just about windmills, the gigantic oil companies are flush with cash to invest in them and don't much care where the profits come from as long as they keep rolling in.
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#647"These problems are obvious to many British politicians. Leaders in the Conservative and Labour Parties often comment on expensive energy and scarce housing. But their goals haven’t been translated into priorities and policies that lead to growth." I can't find this mentioned anywhere in the article, but the current imbalance of supply and demand and the resulting high prices is quite beneficial for parts of the real…
It does mention a previous instance of the Thatcher government failing because the insider had this exact mindset...
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the complaints have also been that people close to the wind farms don't see much economic benefit from them, and only get the negative (noise, loss of countryside, etc.). I believe that's changing though https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-672...
So now I wonder if they could be built if you promised (and delivered) those people cheap electricity.
Take a portion of the profit and send it to the council to reduce everyones taxes?
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans in the UK killed and ate over 111,000,000 birds just in January 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/poultry-and-poultry...
They also raised about 110,000,000 birds that otherwise would never have been born. This is completely irrelevant to wind turbines or any other power generation tech - the impact on wild birds is what is of concern, because, by definition, we're not able to raise any number of wild birds we'd like to have.
> "by definition, we're not able to raise any number of wild birds we'd like to have."
(but we can; the UK has 30 million homes; if 500,000 of them put up wild bird feeders, that would lead to more wild birds. Again the context of the comment was the shock value of $bignum not a comment on specific species or habitats or desired outcomes).
Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Why is the answer always more real estate Because as the population grows, we need an equivalent amount of new housing. Short of that, we compete for limited inventory and prices rise.
>Because as the population grows, we need an equivalent amount of new housing. In the UK (but also most elsewhere), population no longer grows. If censuses say differently, it's because immigrants are being imported from overseas, not from any organic growth. To believe that this is righteous is a strange thing, one has to accept that British people should suffer so that immigrants can gain.
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