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Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

theguardian.com

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Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#71

Post by sleavey »

goodcanadian wrote: post #58
sleavey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not tax the merely rich too? I'm probably going to be one of them in a few years. I want to pay more tax to help benefit the society that let me get to where I'm going, but I absolutely want everyone else in my position to pay too. Anyway, I agree with your idea about the south east. As the article points out, Thatcher's policies focused on the south east and ignored the "North" (part of the problem being no one…

Ideas like HS2 pushed by the new Tories are also just making it possible to live in the north and yet still work in London . . . I would also argue that it allows businesses and industry to operate in the north without the location penalty. In other words, it effectively brings the areas served closer together. I won't argue whether it is the best solution, but it isn't as harebrained as some of the detractors try to…

I don't get this "location penalty" idea. We have the internet. Businesses already operate globally without the need to constantly fly upper management around the world. The problem is that the talent live in the south east because that's where the jobs are. It's not about the transport links between the south and the north, it's the lack of well compensated jobs in the north to attract business there because of all the other reasons.

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#72

Post by goatinaboat »

sleavey wrote: post #71
goodcanadian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas like HS2 pushed by the new Tories are also just making it possible to live in the north and yet still work in London . . . I would also argue that it allows businesses and industry to operate in the north without the location penalty. In other words, it effectively brings the areas served closer together. I won't argue whether it is the best solution, but it isn't as harebrained as some of the detractors try to…

I don't get this "location penalty" idea. We have the internet. Businesses already operate globally without the need to constantly fly upper management around the world. The problem is that the talent live in the south east because that's where the jobs are. It's not about the transport links between the south and the north, it's the lack of well compensated jobs in the north to attract business there because of all…

And the only way to break the cycle is to stop building more houses in the South East.

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#73

Post by fulafel »

blululu wrote: post #14

Just to add to the complexity of the issue: Part of the problem for the UK lies in the strength of the pound. The financial sector is so strong that it drives up the value of the pound beyond the demand for anything made in Britain. This makes it hard to compete on price in pounds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Nitpicking but - Framing this in terms of exchange rate sounds iffy. It can have an effect only in the short term while prices adjust.

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#74

Post by pjc50 »

lazyjones wrote: post #62
pjc50 wrote: post #41

> Pearson Engineering's Tom Clark has a good story about how the firm's previous owners used to handle industrial relations. Every time the workforce went on strike, which was often, one of the Pearsons would buy a new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and drive through the picket line, waving two fingers at his own staff. That does rather sum up 1970s industrial relations. Can you imagine managers like that implementing the…

> Can you imagine managers like that implementing the Toyota Production System? Or anything else where the workers have an individual autonomous contribution? Of course not. So that's why the remaining large car factories are foreign-owned. I'm not convinced that what you apparently feel is a fair outcome, is an actual logical consequence. Where did manufacturing go? To SE Asia. What is the industrial relations and i…

I mentioned Toyota for a reason. Car manufacturing did not go to China. And the whole basis of Japanese manufacturing style after W Edwards Deming's influence is very different from sweatshops.

I don't know about "fair", but Nissan Sunderland being Japanese-run is not a bad outcome compared with the other possibilities of the 60s and 70s labour relations problem which included fears of both left and right wing coups. In the end we got moderate state violence and mass unemployment. That does need to be put right, but we can't go back to the 70s.

Much of what we now import from China did not exist in the 1950s and was developed as a technology in America, so it's not so much "went to China" as "failed to develop here". And there we do need to have a discussion about business and tech development in the UK.

(Textiles also worth considering, but that was always a sweatshop from industrialisation onwards. The brief attempt to run it with SE Asian (Bangladeshi largely) workers in Britain didn't stave off the flight to cheapest.)

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#75

Post by pjc50 »

JanSt wrote: post #64
dash2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general point that the Euro will be controlled by the ECB, which must balance the priorities of all member states, is true. It’s also true that this generates some well-known public goods problems. And it is widely accepted among economists that ECB policy has been better suited to Germany than to e.g. the PIIGS countries of the Mediterranean. Hence the anger about European austerity in Italy, Greece.... Seriousl…

No, you are wrong. The ECB does not have to balance interests. It‘s independent and it‘s job is monetary stability, not economic interests. It‘s also not widely accepted that it‘s in Germanys interest. In fact it is against it. Germans hold most of their wealth in cash. They received interest for it. That‘s hundereds of billions now gone. Germans are poorer than most other Europeans (even than Spaniards and Italians)…

> Germans are poorer than most other Europeans (even than Spaniards and Italians)

er, citation needed? Or is this due to the former DDR?

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#76

Post by pjc50 »

goatinaboat wrote: post #23
sleavey wrote: post #17

All of the main parties in the UK keep skirting around the start of the solution to "rebalancing" the economy: massively increased taxes on the rich to pay for the required investment. This is not a new idea; low taxes for the wealthy are a relatively modern phenomenon yet the social mobility gap has been getting wider. There is surely enough support for it among a properly informed plebiscite, but they are never giv…

That’s one possible approach. The one I favour is a total moratorium on new building work in the South East. That’s the only way to force both workers and companies to look to the North. The problem with “tax the rich” is that the numbers of truly rich are tiny and you could swallow their entire fortunes and they’ll be gone in a week. Exercise for the reader, how long would Richard Branson’s entire wealth run the NHS…

Much of the problem is that so much of the problem-causing wealth sloshing around the country is from overseas, and often from questionably lawless petro-states like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The most basic start would be to have a proper non-capped property tax. Let's copy socialist New Jersey and charge people 1.89% of their property value a year.

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#77

Post by goatinaboat »

danmaz74 wrote: post #56
achamayou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking about what would be good for the UK. Countries that never had strong exports definitely wouldn’t benefit.

Italy had very strong industrial export. It's still not bad.

Yes Italy is very strong in the machine-tool industry and the luxury-goods industry. They do plenty of exports.

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#78

Post by kwhitefoot »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #35
harryf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the biggest reason. The pound has been over-valued for entire generation, making hard to export. The second biggest problem - my opinion - is the class / education system in the UK suppressed the possibility of the type of talent you need in upper and middle management to enable companies to scale. You need professionals that worked their way up on the basis of merit and ability and are used to self-learning…

It's hard to see that changing when the political and media classes are filled with Oxbridge graduates.

It's not that they are Oxbridge but that they are PPE graduates. Oxford and Cambridge both produce plenty of innovative people, ideas, and technologies. Unfortunately the also do a lively trade in PPE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy,_politics_and_econo...).

Re: Why doesn't Britain make things any more? (2011)

#79

Post by goodcanadian »

sleavey wrote: post #71
goodcanadian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas like HS2 pushed by the new Tories are also just making it possible to live in the north and yet still work in London . . . I would also argue that it allows businesses and industry to operate in the north without the location penalty. In other words, it effectively brings the areas served closer together. I won't argue whether it is the best solution, but it isn't as harebrained as some of the detractors try to…

I don't get this "location penalty" idea. We have the internet. Businesses already operate globally without the need to constantly fly upper management around the world. The problem is that the talent live in the south east because that's where the jobs are. It's not about the transport links between the south and the north, it's the lack of well compensated jobs in the north to attract business there because of all…

Why does ycombinator want applicants to move to the Bay area? Whether it makes sense or not, the location effect is real. Improving transport links increases the size of the "local" area allowing the network effects to reach farther.
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