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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

#771

Post by linksnapzz »

teamonkey wrote: post #428
linksnapzz wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story of British Leyland is enough to scare anyone w/ even half a brain away from ever allowing British politicians to have even the least bit of influence over a company that competes anywhere near the consumer space.

You mean how it was successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised, following its near-collapse as a private company? Or how in the Thatcher era, the government began to privatise and divest the most valuable parts of the company (and arguably a huge amount of British soft power) for little return to the taxpayer? Notably it sold Mini to BMW, Leyland to DAF, Jaguar and Land Rover to Ford. Private…

successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised,

"successful" and "profitably run", taking into consideration the recommendation to Tony Benn that the Wilson gov't provide 1.2 billion pound investment; plus the buyout of existing BL shareholders at 1/5 the value of their shares, plus the pre-existing tariff regime, without even touching the product and manufacturing issues that had dogged them since the Austin-Morris days.

Pigs can fly, if given enough thrust...Labor didn't fix BL, it just kept the shambolic structure upright, albeit canted at a weird angle.

Jaguar was privatized in '84 (and nobody at BL was going to pony up money for new models) and only in '90 did Ford purchase it, for as it turned out, way too much. "Nothing wrong with this that a bulldozer couldn't fix" said a Ford exec after first touring the Jaguar plant on Brown's Lane in Coventry.

Neither BMW nor Ford were ever able to make Land Rover work as a reliably profitable company.

Also, Ford was never bailed out in 2008. Alan Mullaly hocked almost all of the company to get liquidity before the crash, which was prescient. After that, the entirety of the former Ford "Premier Automotive Group" (save for Lincoln) was jettisoned, as it was in the long term a money-loser. Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata, Volvo to Geely, and Aston-Martin to ...some Saudis.

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

#772

Post by gadders »

sdenton4 wrote: post #770
gadders wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And the OBR's other working assumption" - Assumptions no more weight than forecasts.

The obr is not the only source here, but one among many. You seem very invested in ignoring evidence that before wasn't a great idea. This suggests you're more interested in ideology than evidence-based reasoning. It's distressing that "free thinking" has become an excuse to ignore evidence and pursue vibes-based policy.

[dead]

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

#773

Post by triceratops »

zdragnar wrote: post #714
triceratops wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many ideal locations for windmills...happen to also be ideal places for threatened or endangered large raptors. The person I replied to was making a quantity-of-birds argument. Not an endangered species argument. > there's the (unproven) connection with noise generated by offshore wind farms disturbing wildlife migration and movement Do they make a lot more noise than giant cruise ships? Luxury yachts? I don't see…

> Bringing up bird welfare to oppose wind turbines is bullshit. If people cared about birds or wildlife we wouldn't be in this mess at all. Your comment seems to be a blanket opposition to bird welfare in general, not a limited critique of quantity harmed. I do think the distinction remains important, hence why I made my post. > Do they make a lot more noise than giant cruise ships? Luxury yachts? Given that the ship…

> I imagine the scale is something...

Do you have sources for this scale?

> Windmills take the top spot for being a constant barrage over a large area.

They're also static, so animals can just avoid them. Their blades spin a hundred feet above the water.

Ships move around so their sounds can be anywhere. Their propellers spin in the water. And there are way more large ships than offshore windmills.

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

#774

Post by [deleted] »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #765
Manuel_D wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have already given you all that but you keep dodging No, you have not. The quotes you posted just list various storage systems and don't bother to set specific capacity requirements. I'll ask again: How many TWh of battery storage are provisioned in your hypothetical 100% renewable world? How many TWh of pumped hydro? How many TWh of other storage? And what are these alternative storage systems? The posts you lin…

Open the study. It provides a Sankey diagram showing the entire energy flow of the Danish energy system. You know, all those TWh you want. Why do you keep dodging? Because you truly can't bring yourself to read anything that would disprove your nuclear fanboyism? You truly keep tumbling strawmen instead of disproving the studies. Pathetic. I'll add the studies without any picked out quotes: See the recent study on De…

[deleted]

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

#775

Post by teamonkey »

linksnapzz wrote: post #771
teamonkey wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean how it was successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised, following its near-collapse as a private company? Or how in the Thatcher era, the government began to privatise and divest the most valuable parts of the company (and arguably a huge amount of British soft power) for little return to the taxpayer? Notably it sold Mini to BMW, Leyland to DAF, Jaguar and Land Rover to Ford. Private…

successfully and profitably-run for over a decade part-nationalised, "successful" and "profitably run", taking into consideration the recommendation to Tony Benn that the Wilson gov't provide 1.2 billion pound investment; plus the buyout of existing BL shareholders at 1/5 the value of their shares, plus the pre-existing tariff regime, without even touching the product and manufacturing issues that had dogged them sin…

I mean, sure, it failed eventually, obviously.

But it was part-nationalised in 1974 following a private-sector failure. It was a big manufacturer, letting it collapse would have led to thousands of jobs lost, but the government went for a 1.2bn buyout instead of simply a cash injection.

It was not badly run in the ‘70s. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately it was very stable. It really started to collapse in the ‘80s. Lots of reasons for this, including a changing market, recession and poor management decisions. Toyota’s lean production processes became a thing and BL failed to evolve, such is the way of business. It was most certainly a mess by the late ‘80s.

Remember, it was part-nationalised: essentially run as a private corporation that the government had a major stake in, not directly run by the government, though of course the govt could not help but meddle and the Thatcher govt was ideologically opposed to such a structure existing.

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

#776

Post by sjducb »

orangecat wrote: post #124
sjducb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back to what the western world was doing in the 50’s. High tax and high public spending. In 1950 the US had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. The 50s were great, let’s do that again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/04/26/taxing...

High tax and high public spending. Government spending was a slightly lower percentage of GDP than today ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S ), and a whole lot of that was defense ( https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and... ). The 50s were great, let’s do that again. Assuming you're not a non-white person, or a woman who wants a career. Although getting rid of Medicare would certain…

Obviously I’m talking about re-creating the economic policies of the 1950s, not the equality policies.

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

#777

Post by bumby »

ethbr1 wrote: post #239
bumby wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the artificial constraint of assuming technology is constant? In not necessarily one to hope that tech will automatically bail us out, of the growth in the previous decades has been from tech innovations like automation.

Technology has a ceiling for a given time, across the world, which is really what you're competing with in a globalized economy. Which is to say that more technology isn't a solution out of a demographic hole, when you're competing with a country that has the same technology and better demographics.

That point assumes technology is evenly distributed. I think it’s clear it is not.

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

#778

Post by bossyTeacher »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #642
TuringNYC wrote: post #589

Earlier 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.

You think the population is not growing in China or India? What a weird take.

Also, any resident is part of the population.

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

#779

Post by bossyTeacher »

lenerdenator wrote: post #626
mc32 wrote: post #537

Earlier 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…

Ironically, once "free" from Brussels, none of the conservatives have actually stop the migration rate or reduce it to nearly zero and they have not been honest about it either

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

#780

Post by bossyTeacher »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #709
lenerdenator wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Those things are supplied in the required quantities

What makes you think that. The UK does not have soviet style socialism. The only supplied products and services come from the free market which right now is dysfunctional

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