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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

#701

Post by WalterBright »

smcl wrote: post #692
WalterBright wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From one year ago: https://x.com/60Minutes/status/1762205898217283781

The link in that tweet leads to an article: U.S. ambassador on why China competition must be managed while keeping "the peace" Did you click the tweet or did just spend thirty minutes looking for a source to support the "ghost cities" claim, then rush to paste it here without looking that closely at it?

But you don't like that one, though it did talk about massive insolvency in the real estate. Here's another from 2022:

https://uschinatoday.org/features/2022/01/11/cities-lost-in-...

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

#702

Post by WalterBright »

keybored wrote: post #699
WalterBright wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google "vacant cities in china"

I guess you would trust Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g... Or via Wikipedia since it’s paywalled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_... Google "critical media analysis".

The ghost cities have attracted residents over time, but they're still mostly empty. Constructing buildings that sit vacant for a decade or more is not very efficient - and the buildings depreciate with age whether they are occupied or not.

Gluts and shortages are endemic to centralized economic planning.

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

#703

Post by Symbiote »

mantas wrote: post #678
Symbiote wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU parliament is elected with a much fairer system than the British one, half of which isn't even elected but nominated in return for bribes or being a bishop.

Common theme in EU parliament seems to be that people send politicians who shit the bed on national level for an expensive vacation to do next to nothing. Or being a celebrity in an unrelated field.

This is still better than the British system, where wealthy politicians who get voted out by their own constituents then get put in the House of Lords. It's then almost impossible to remove them.

See Zac Goldsmith for a recent example.

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

#704

Post by sgt101 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #680
sgt101 wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect the private sector to fix it spontaneously if left to it's own devices. This is (as you flag) a specifically political problem - not a commercial one. There are political fixes which are available, but have not been taken. There are planning reforms, and fiscal reforms, that could change the housing market very significantly - without enabling a free for all that would simply result in the creation of…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Australia does sort of have a land constraint problem too, insofar as there aren't a lot of places in Australia where anyone would really want to live. Agriculture in Australia accounts for about 55% of land use.[1] About 70% of Australian land is arid or semi arid.[2] About 87% of the population lives within 50 kilometres of the coast.[3] About 0.5% of Australian land area is used…

I understand the points you are making above and can see that they are backed by the data. I was clearly thoughtless identifying Australia as the opposite of England in terms of available land.

In England I believe that low rise apartments are a big part of the solution. Currently almost all apartments in England are one or two bedrooms, and additionally the buildings are aimed at the luxury single market. If planning laws made four distinct rooms at least 3m * 3m mandated in 50% of new build apartments then they would become viable for family living. After Grenfell it's simply impossible for England to use high rise apartments to solve this problem, but I have stayed with friends in Germany who lived in a block of large apartments on four stories in Saarbrücken and they seemed ideal and worked for them as a family.

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

#705

Post by rich_sasha »

JackYoustra wrote: post #249
patrickdavey wrote: post #81

Fascinatng that `brexit` isn't mentioned once in that article. Making trading harder with your closest neighbour can't be a great move for the economy.

It's not great, sure, but it's only something like a long-run 2% drag. 2% is a lot, don't get me wrong! But the loss from planning is pretty high double digits, well over 10% in the US, to say nothing about the gains from liberalizing migration

A recent estimation puts the cost of Brexit as 6% of GDP, since 2020 - because that's when the UK actually left. So over 5 full years. That's a lot. And it's not a one-off either.

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

#706

Post by keybored »

WalterBright wrote: post #702
keybored wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you would trust Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g... Or via Wikipedia since it’s paywalled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_... Google "critical media analysis".

The ghost cities have attracted residents over time, but they're still mostly empty. Constructing buildings that sit vacant for a decade or more is not very efficient - and the buildings depreciate with age whether they are occupied or not. Gluts and shortages are endemic to centralized economic planning.

You’ve moved the goal post/claims from “completely vacant” to being vacant for a long while and depreciating.

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

#707

Post by chgs »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #470
chgs wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not for someone thinking their £2m house will “lose value” There are a lot of rich people in the U.K.

Of course, but I think a country can't survive long term if it's focused on raising the property prices of those with already expansive houses especially given the demographic slowdown/collapse. Or am I crazy?

Of course not. But that’s right change the nimby or indeed banana viewpoint

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

#708

Post by chgs »

roenxi wrote: post #464
chgs wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive is to produce 99 Units at £1 and 1 unit at £100 and sell 100 for £10,000, rather than producing 100 Units at £1

The incentive is to sell all 100 units for £infinity. The incentive for the seller to sell at a high price isn't relevant. They don't have the ability to act on it. If they did, they wouldn't stop at £10,000. I'd pick numbers like £1,000,000,000,000 at a minimum if I was a seller and could truly set my own price based on my incentives.

That’s the beauty. The same company owns both the cheap cost one and can limit the supply just enough to keep the profit maximised.

There isn’t an ideal free market in electricity generation.

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

#709

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

lenerdenator wrote: post #694
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the current system of capital distribution wasn't providing those things adequately. But that'd be silly.

That would be silly. Those things are supplied in the required quantities... but there's an oversupply of people to take them. People who don't even have a reason to be in the countries that we're discussing. Implementing marxism won't change anything anyone cares about.

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

#710

Post by notTooFarGone »

Manuel_D wrote: post #667
notTooFarGone wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is you can calculate when there will be short falls and you can amount to that perfectly. We now know the weather pretty much 1 day before it happens. adjusting that 1% of course amounts to maintaining natural gas facilities but it's really not that big of a deal.

Using natural gas means climate change still progresses. Not to mention you'll be paying all of the overhead cost of maintaining natural gas plants, but only use them for a fraction of the time. So net cost per watt hour will be very high.

And it will still be cheaper than any other alternative.
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