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And AMD were founded in 1969, so they’re not a new entrant and run against Malmesbury’s hypothesis.

That's debatable, AMD in its current from only dates to 2009. They started design work on the Zen architecture, which saved them, in 2012.

If you take an established company, spin-off almost all of it, sack most of the staff and bring in new management you have something that's not too far away from a start-up. They have no baggage and not much left to lose.

So, that shows how an established company can be successful, so it still goes against Malmesbury’s hypothesis.

Question is - what counts as an established company? Mine is 222 years old this year, but I bought it as a dried up husk on the verge of bankruptcy. We have some plant and machinery accrued in the previous 200 years (we still use a big hydraulic press built in 1900, bought second hand by the business in 1946), but are effectively running as a startup in the growth phase (we're at 6 employees from January, 4 years ago when I took over, it was me and two sub contractors).

I completely reinvented and fixed one of our main processes about 18 months in - the previous owners would never have taken that risk (it was pretty hairy at the time, basically burning all the cash I had, and some I probably didn't, on R&D, and relying on it coming good), but I realised that without fixing it we were finished. Having done that it's made us profitable enough to gradually grow and pick up staff and market share.

iain watson
@iainjwatson

And Your Party backs ⁦@zarahsultana’s preferred option to allow members also to be members of other left wing parties and groups - subject to the agreement of the party executive.

https://x.com/iainjwatson/status/1995084398559900105

I see Your Party have agreed that neither Corbyn nor Sultana will be party leader but instead it will be led by a panel of members. So if Your Party won the next general election would we then be led by a panel of Prime Ministers?

More likely, we would have a nominal (one might also say Constitutional) Prime Minister, but they would be required to defer to the leadership panel for any actual decision-making.

Like Benn's model for early 80s Labour, only far worse.

They could get a people carrier to take them to the Palace

I would have thought something like this would be more ecologically responsible;


(Actually, The Goodies would be a pretty appropriately self-righteous name for a political party. Instead, the nitiwts seem to have gone with Your Party.)

"hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty"
very Brownian spreadsheet thinking and talking

Though that is money that gets recycled quickly in our economy.

Much of our economy is driven by consumer spending. If consumers are skint then there is no growth.

There’s a large amount of money tied up in savings. Try freeing that up.

Saving money does free it up, unless saved in an old sock in notes and coins. Few would be able to buy a house but for the savings of others. All investment - new buildings, machinery, fleets of vehicles - comes from money not used for some other purpose. The general term for such money is 'savings'.

Yeh, I know how it works but thanks anyway 👍

Point being many consumers aren’t skint and choose not to spend.

Couple of factors there, I reckon.

The easy one is that everyone who can is squirrelling away more rainy day money than is collectively helpful. The feeling that the welfare state will only help in the most grudging sense if things go wrong (means testing, 2 child limit) doesn't help.

The harder one to solve is that the more you have, the harder it is to justify spending more on other stuff. Partly needs shading into wants, but also Sam Vimes's boots. Once you can spend more upfront, it's cheaper over a lifetime. Good for the individual, less good for the economy.

What I found so difficult to get into my head when I retired was the mindset that I am no longer a saver. I’m, effectively, asking myself for permission to spend what I’ve put aside. It’s an incredibly hard mindset to get out of and I should spend more.

I’m still saving, and annoyed with myself that I’m not saving as much as when I was working. When I first retired, I spent much more, doing all the things I didn’t have time for when I was working. Now I’m spending less, because of worrying what will happen to my SIPP if there is another 2008 crash, coupled with the knowledge that if I invest more cautiously, it won’t grow as fast over the longer term. The children have their own homes, and don’t really need an inheritance. I am trying desperately to convince myself to spend more, but it goes against the grain.

I’ve found giving it away solves that problem - it’s not really “spending” but you can find a local cause that you like and put something back into the community

My extended families need a fair amount of support which happily I'm in a position to supply. I may not spend much myself but everything I give away goes straight into the economy immediately. What makes me feel badly is the nest egg which I look on as there for maintaining the house and funding my latter years. It's small by many standards, but huge by others, and I wonder if it's really right to hang on to it.

It is - generosity is a good thing but not at the cost of destitution

A low birth rate is a consequence of greater wealth, and greater female choice. It isnt to do with the cost of having children. There isnt any civilised area in the world that has managed to materially reverse the trend.
Women when given the choice choose to do something else.

The evidence is that people in the UK are now having fewer children than they want. That doesn't mean a return to pre modern birth rates but with lower housing costs and better economic prospects the fertility rate would be higher than 1.4.

That matches with what I’ve seen from personal experience - you can bring up a single child in a 2 bed flat. Even a 3 bed flat - let alone a house - is a big jump in price. Then you have al the other costs. Plus (usually) the mother taking a career hit for each child.

All the childless women I know regret it - and those with 1 nearly always wish they’d had more. And are quite upfront that the cost & space issue was a big factor.

Just as with housing, this is an issue where you face the fewest barriers if you are in the richest or poorest groups in society. If money is no object OR you get taken care of by the state.

It's always those in the middle who have to make difficult choices and sacrifices, and who generally get the poorest value from life.

It's something I noticed as a child, and it contributed to my personal politics in a big way. My sociology teacher didn't like it when I argued that 'stable poverty' was a somewhat preferable state to 'volatile middle classness'.

AJP Taylor used to argue that the Uk avoided revolution because the ruling classes made sure that middle classes had *just enough* of a stake in society that it made sense for them to support the status quo rather than risk revolution.

It’s not clear to me that the condition holds for an increasing segment (age band) of the population.