Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
Eh? Some of us were discussing the point earlier today that the young continentals are no longer flocking en masse to London, with real damage to the economy. I have not been recently, so can't comment from personal observation.
Actually, they still are. At the one German bank I have personal knowledge of, they stopped trying to expand the IT function in Germany. Because they can’t hire the people they want there. They all seem to be in London.
Yet no f****r wants to live in Ashington. Therein lies the issue.
Plenty of people appear to want to live in Blyth however. Leading to its partial transformation from declining industrial town to mixed industrial town/seaside commuter town over the past 20 years. Ashington will follow.
They do? Blyth still ain't great, unless you're a heroin addict. Although it has, as always, magnificent beaches. Whitley Bay is a better example of your entirely reasonable and arguable point.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
Yes. It is a problem. I am not denying we have many socioeconomic problems. But then, this is true of much of the developed world, tho the problems vary. I am right now sitting in Phoenix Airport - the bustling airport of one of America’s boom towns - and about half the people are obese and their average life expectancy is now 76 - and still going down
And on the bald figures America is one of the richest countries in the world
Take out the billionaires from the average and it doesn’t look so exceptional
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
You might be interested in a program on radio 4 this morning about the Treasury. It featured Osborne Balls and several Civil Servants. Apart from being a fascinating insight into among other things the reasons for the OBR involvement it also (to me at least) helps answer the question why Truss got it all wrong. 'The Treasury Under Siege'
The University of York has dropped students' initials from the email addresses it assigns people in a trans-friendly move.
The university traditionally used the first letters of a students' first name and surname to create their email and username for the duration of their time at the institution.
But it has now scrapped the practice to accommodate those who want to change their email addresses part way through their course because they changed their gender, or got married or divorced, and therefore changed their name.
Other reasons students wanted to change their email addresses from their original initials included adopting a Western name, or having "difficult" family relationships that meant they did not want to be associated with their surname.
The university has now said it will simply use randomly generated letters with no relation to the people involved.
What so hard with if somebody changes their name just give them a new email address (and the old one just silently forwards if people keep sending the wrong address).
Cambridge assigns email addresses based on initials then an incrementing number. These numbers started from 1, though there were a few years when a sequence starting from 1000 was used (hence, I assume, rcs1000; I was of the same generation).
A few years before my time, someone decided to change their name by deed poll simply to “mathew” (no surname) in order to get the ultimate email address.
Unfortunately, the Computing Service was and is staffed by malevolent sociopaths, who took great delight in informing him: “We have issued you with the new email address xxm10@cam.ac.uk.”
I preceded the 3 digit shift, and was mwa12. I know one ancient and venerable individual who has a 1 digit username.
I'm old enough to have picked anyname@ that I wanted.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Yes, and yes. Also look at Bilbao, Pittsburgh, Dresden, Leipzig, etc It’s v hard to turn around an industrial city but it has been done.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
Yes. It is a problem. I am not denying we have many socioeconomic problems. But then, this is true of much of the developed world, tho the problems vary. I am right now sitting in Phoenix Airport - the bustling airport of one of America’s boom towns - and about half the people are obese and their average life expectancy is now 76 - and still going down
And on the bald figures America is one of the richest countries in the world
US has always been inequality cubed...if you make it in the US, life of Reilly. Being poor you are absolutely screwed and trying to get out of that is just insanely hard, as being poor can often cost you way more, more for food, more for gas, you need a car to access where you can get cheaper food etc,
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
Yes. It is a problem. I am not denying we have many socioeconomic problems. But then, this is true of much of the developed world, tho the problems vary. I am right now sitting in Phoenix Airport - the bustling airport of one of America’s boom towns - and about half the people are obese and their average life expectancy is now 76 - and still going down
And on the bald figures America is one of the richest countries in the world
Take out the billionaires from the average and it doesn’t look so exceptional
The US is exceptional - for 75% of the population. For the other 25%, not so much. What makes the USA an outlier is that being poor is seen as a moral failing.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
You might be interested in a program on radio 4 this morning about the Treasury. It featured Osborne Balls and several Civil Servants. Apart from being a fascinating insight into among other things the reasons for the OBR involvement it also (to me at least) helps answer the question why Truss got it all wrong. 'The Treasury Under Siege'
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
We are all going to come round to the view that borrowing to fund tax cuts is sensible?
Now you are spinning it, as you are good at, because the too much that was unfunded was Truss mistake, i agree. But that doesn’t change the fundamental point, because the economic truth is it didn’t have to be unfunded did it? If properly funded those tax cuts would still have been politically explosive, but that doesn’t change or should not reflect on the economics in anyway should it, the political assessment and economic assessment should rightly be separate.
So how about this, we are in a new place now, just like when Sunny Jim gave his “I can tell you in all candour” the levers we usually pull are now not working speech - call Truss growth policy right wing Keynesianism, call it what you like, the alternative is you are unbothered by the need for growth aren’t you? You feel we can borrow or raise taxes instead? Well, I can tell you in all candour… 😁
Truss tax cuts could have been funded by cuts,
prediction one: Just like Sunak’s and Starmer’s tax cuts will be funded by cuts.
Prediction two: 7 years of shrinking the state to pay for a push for growth lie ahead for UK now - Sunak and Starmer don’t have a say in that, nor the voters of this country, the markets have decided for us that we are now in a new orthodoxy, wherein we have to repay the bill for years of cheap credit.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
Not for the first time, I don't agree at all.
So called "Trussnomics" (your term, not mine) or if you prefer good old fashioned supply side economics failed partially because of the way it was done but it also failed because it's not what people want and it's not how people think any more.
It's not 1980 - waving tax cuts like a magic wand might have worked then but the world now is predicated on a notion (some may call it strange or "woke") of fairness. The ideology of trickle-down (if you make the rich much richer you'll make the poor a little richer) no longer resonates on any level. Perhaps it's a result of the 1980s experience or the pandemic or a myriad of other factors but it's a product which can no longer be sold.
If anything and there's extensive polling supporting this, the mood is, yes, cut income tax for the poorest but tax the actual wealth of the richest. Some on here may find that repellent or impractical or both but that's where the majority is - if you like, the Robin Hood Tree (as the Magic Money Tree has been cut down ad its stump pulled out and burnt).
In short, you make everyone richer by making the rich poorer - that's quite appealing as a notion for all its issues.
The question is how will this Government and its Labour successor seek to re-balance the public finances and the inevitability is a mix of higher taxes and spending cuts. In 2010, for every £5 cut from spending, £1 was raised from higher taxes - it will be interesting to see if Sunak, once the protege of Osborne, seeks to follow a similar direction but the notion of a bloated public sector just doesn't fit the facts.
Given that the rich are inherently mobile, and there seems to be little desire on the part of Monaco, Jersey, Belize or Dubai to repatriate our wealthy exiles, such a policy, whilst superficially appealing, is clearly quite stupid. God forbid we really get behind it, or we will be putting the pedal to the floor on decline.
If the wealthy elites want to f*ck-off to Monaco, Jersey, Belize or wherever, to avoid taxes, let them go. If they love money more than they love their country well so be it.
But don't let them expect to remain British citizens or be able to come and go whenever they want, or own property here and not pay UK taxes.
Then they won't. This is a situation (like so many) where we seem to want to enforce our notions of fairness on a world that doesn't work that way. So we're going to get annoyed with it and break it. Surely it is better (if we want to be successful) to understand how the world works and go with that grain.
I believe most wealthy Brits want to remain British citizens but we let them have the best of both worlds, British citizenship and tax-free offshore residence.
The other thing is taxing wealth, especially property, would help address this and mop up a decent revenue from the non-British owners of large chunks of the country.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
To me part of the problem is that the minimum wage and benefits rates are set at the national level, which then creates problems in both the north and south (too low in the south, cost of housing; too high vs benefits in the north, discourages work).
I would set the minimum wage at a regional level (in consultation with the devolved assemblies) and then peg benefits at a proportion of the regional minimum wage. This would hopefully encourage people on benefits to move into work and more investment in the poorer regions.
The other thing you have to questions about poverty in the UK is whether family structure plays a part. The politicians are I suspect too scared to go there after the 90s but let's be blunt a large proportion of the time that the TV news goes to talk to people in poverty, they are single mothers.
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
A preview of the potential flash points ahead. Jayne Ozanne resigned as an equalities advisor to the govt over Kemi Badenoch’s approach to LGBT+ equality and the delayed ban to conversion therapy.
She probably highlighted that the way it was worded meant compulsory convertion therapy for young kids who would probably turn out to be gay or lesbian, and the ban of all non affirmation treatment. Given the draft NHS England guidance this week it looks like she was correct.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
Yes. It is a problem. I am not denying we have many socioeconomic problems. But then, this is true of much of the developed world, tho the problems vary. I am right now sitting in Phoenix Airport - the bustling airport of one of America’s boom towns - and about half the people are obese and their average life expectancy is now 76 - and still going down
And on the bald figures America is one of the richest countries in the world
Take out the billionaires from the average and it doesn’t look so exceptional
The US is exceptional - for 75% of the population. For the other 25%, not so much. What makes the USA an outlier is that being poor is seen as a moral failing.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
To me part of the problem is that the minimum wage and benefits rates are set at the national level, which then creates problems in both the north and south (too low in the south, cost of housing; too high vs benefits in the north, discourages work).
I would set the minimum wage at a regional level (in consultation with the devolved assemblies) and then peg benefits at a proportion of the regional minimum wage. This would hopefully encourage people on benefits to move into work and more investment in the poorer regions.
The other thing you have to questions about poverty in the UK is whether family structure plays a part. The politicians are I suspect too scared to go there after the 90s but let's be blunt a large proportion of the time that the TV news goes to talk to people in poverty, they are single mothers.
I don't think anybody would if they could start again devise the system we currently have. The problem is trying to change it in anyway is incredibly difficult and politically suicidal....
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
To me part of the problem is that the minimum wage and benefits rates are set at the national level, which then creates problems in both the north and south (too low in the south, cost of housing; too high vs benefits in the north, discourages work).
I would set the minimum wage at a regional level (in consultation with the devolved assemblies) and then peg benefits at a proportion of the regional minimum wage. This would hopefully encourage people on benefits to move into work and more investment in the poorer regions.
The other thing you have to questions about poverty in the UK is whether family structure plays a part. The politicians are I suspect too scared to go there after the 90s but let's be blunt a large proportion of the time that the TV news goes to talk to people in poverty, they are single mothers.
You think the minimum wage is too high in the north v benefits? You should meet my school full of TA's. Most who'd be better off on UC.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
I think it was the hubris and incompetence that spooked the markets, not any particular policy.
Trussonomics was soundbites plus magical thinking. Don't think it really merits much analysis tbh.
It was the lack of forecasts, and/or forward projections of what the proposals would supposedly deliver and what they would mean for public finances. Along with the general "we don't care what the markets do, we're doing it anyway, suck on that". So they did.
It wasn't that they didn't care. They didn't countenance at all the possibility. See also the next day's headlines and comments from the right wing commentators. It was a spectacular triumph to be repeated as soon as possible by all governments envious they hadn't thought of it first.
Like I said when I described it on topic, my view is running contrary to the perceived wisdom at this time. But imagine it’s a history programme in 2062, just like we get history programmes describing politics in the seventies. There’s Labour winning two general elections in a year - they didn’t New Labour high fiving supporters all up Downing Street in 70s, nor podium speeches largely fluff and bullshit, but still this history programme will show cockahoop Labour supporters celebrating the win, but the voiceover kicks in “but the economy would be in the wrong shape for the expensive policies of the next two years” cue Healey going around a revolving door in at an airport, cut to Sunny Jim delivering post IMF bailout conference spoech in the face of hecklers (IMF loan terms were based on monetarism in those days).
Today we had Truss not backing down that Trussism is right. Minutes later Sunak standing in same street saying she’s wrong. But like in 74 and 75, who was saying Labours splurge of spending was wrong?
Have you heard of the Barber Boom and the three day week and blackouts?
Yes I have. I think I was first to post on PB flagging similarity between Kwasi Mini Budget and 1972.
The Tories were on one for growth. When Labour got in everything was over heating - but they had promises to keep and mindset to spend. This is the truth of it.
Boom Bust is story of sixties and seventies.
The moral of the story in my opinion - going for growth is a bit like nuclear fission, it’s going to get hot so you need to be ready with boron rods to control it.
Been trying to comment on here for ages. Does this username / password (that I will never remember) work?
Hello Jeff! Would you like to introduce yourself? Which bit of Wales is yours?
Hello Cookie! Thank you for speaking to me. I am in South Wales, young Mr Kinnock’s constituency - and about as far from his politics as is possible.
So you are a Socialist then? Good stuff!
(And welcome!)
Indeed,
Young Mr Kinnock sends his daughter to private school; is married to someone who -- when she ran Denmark -- locked the teachers out when they went on strike; and is very scrupulous in not over-paying his tax bill.
He is also a good deal stupider than his wife, his mother and possibly his father as well.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Yes but my point is neither Lyon, Lille and Marseille are massively more delightful than they were a generation ago. (To be fair, Lille has made quite good progress.) Whereas British secondary cities have. In the 80s British secondary cities were jokes. I remember the easy laughs that were had when Glasgow was made City of Culture. I had a guide to the Cheshure Ring canal loop from 1985 which advised you to get through Central Manchester on daylight as quickly as you could and under places to eat could only recommend Spudulike. Employers avoided our large secondary cities. It wasn't obvious in the 80s that the likes of Manchester woukd grow more than, say, Stockton on Tees. Our big cities have been transformed since then. Britain isn't the only place to do this - Gardenwalker identifies Bilbao, among others - but Britain has been among the most successful in transforming its secondary cities.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
At least you read it! That quote is from the economics correspondent for the Economist…
So definitely wrong then!
(I haven’t read it yet but it is saved to read on my flight)
Seriously, though, cheap grey-market labour reduces the RoI from investment in capital equipment like automated car washes
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Yes but my point is neither Lyon, Lille and Marseille are massively more delightful than they were a generation ago. (To be fair, Lille has made quite good progress.) Whereas British secondary cities have. In the 80s British secondary cities were jokes. I remember the easy laughs that were had when Glasgow was made City of Culture. I had a guide to the Cheshure Ring canal loop from 1985 which advised you to get through Central Manchester on daylight as quickly as you could and under places to eat could only recommend Spudulike. Employers avoided our large secondary cities. It wasn't obvious in the 80s that the likes of Manchester woukd grow more than, say, Stockton on Tees. Our big cities have been transformed since then. Britain isn't the only place to do this - Gardenwalker identifies Bilbao, among others - but Britain has been among the most successful in transforming its secondary cities.
It really hasn’t. They are still economic sinkholes.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
Problem is London is a top 3 city in the world for skilled workers, whereas yer Paris is in the top 5 if you speak French and nowhere else in Western Europe contends.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
All large cities have major social problems.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
Not for the first time, I don't agree at all.
So called "Trussnomics" (your term, not mine) or if you prefer good old fashioned supply side economics failed partially because of the way it was done but it also failed because it's not what people want and it's not how people think any more.
It's not 1980 - waving tax cuts like a magic wand might have worked then but the world now is predicated on a notion (some may call it strange or "woke") of fairness. The ideology of trickle-down (if you make the rich much richer you'll make the poor a little richer) no longer resonates on any level. Perhaps it's a result of the 1980s experience or the pandemic or a myriad of other factors but it's a product which can no longer be sold.
If anything and there's extensive polling supporting this, the mood is, yes, cut income tax for the poorest but tax the actual wealth of the richest. Some on here may find that repellent or impractical or both but that's where the majority is - if you like, the Robin Hood Tree (as the Magic Money Tree has been cut down ad its stump pulled out and burnt).
In short, you make everyone richer by making the rich poorer - that's quite appealing as a notion for all its issues.
The question is how will this Government and its Labour successor seek to re-balance the public finances and the inevitability is a mix of higher taxes and spending cuts. In 2010, for every £5 cut from spending, £1 was raised from higher taxes - it will be interesting to see if Sunak, once the protege of Osborne, seeks to follow a similar direction but the notion of a bloated public sector just doesn't fit the facts.
Given that the rich are inherently mobile, and there seems to be little desire on the part of Monaco, Jersey, Belize or Dubai to repatriate our wealthy exiles, such a policy, whilst superficially appealing, is clearly quite stupid. God forbid we really get behind it, or we will be putting the pedal to the floor on decline.
If the wealthy elites want to f*ck-off to Monaco, Jersey, Belize or wherever, to avoid taxes, let them go. If they love money more than they love their country well so be it.
But don't let them expect to remain British citizens or be able to come and go whenever they want, or own property here and not pay UK taxes.
Then they won't. This is a situation (like so many) where we seem to want to enforce our notions of fairness on a world that doesn't work that way. So we're going to get annoyed with it and break it. Surely it is better (if we want to be successful) to understand how the world works and go with that grain.
I believe most wealthy Brits want to remain British citizens but we let them have the best of both worlds, British citizenship and tax-free offshore residence.
The other thing is taxing wealth, especially property, would help address this and mop up a decent revenue from the non-British owners of large chunks of the country.
We need to make it easier to start businesses and create operating profit here, and more costly to flog the business off to the US at the first opportunity. Lower taxes on investment, profits, higher taxes (imo) on capital gains. We also need a culture that inculcates the importance of philanthropy, and honours that behaviour. You get more flies with honey than vinegar.
I almost stopped reading this silly piece when he quoted Fintan O'Toole, but I'm glad I didn't, because we get to this gem:
"Although British media worry about robots taking everybody’s jobs, the reality is closer to the opposite. “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs."
Zero awareness that the "men with buckets" are mostly either Romanians under FoM or subcontinental visa-overstayers.
If that's the level of research in this article, it can be safely ignored.
Would love to read an analysis of similar scope by someone capable and open-minded though.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
Eh? Some of us were discussing the point earlier today that the young continentals are no longer flocking en masse to London, with real damage to the economy. I have not been recently, so can't comment from personal observation.
Actually, they still are. At the one German bank I have personal knowledge of, they stopped trying to expand the IT function in Germany. Because they can’t hire the people they want there. They all seem to be in London.
Yet no f****r wants to live in Ashington. Therein lies the issue.
Plenty of people appear to want to live in Blyth however. Leading to its partial transformation from declining industrial town to mixed industrial town/seaside commuter town over the past 20 years. Ashington will follow.
They do? Blyth still ain't great, unless you're a heroin addict. Although it has, as always, magnificent beaches. Whitley Bay is a better example of your entirely reasonable and arguable point.
The one time I visited the beach at Blyth it was covered in washed up sanitary towels. Lovely.
(But this does raise the question of why people flush them down the bog.)
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
That's also bullshit.
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
Very little. Services encompasses all sorts of stuff, little of which will interest billionaires. It's 80% of the UK economy, people sneer because "they don't make anything" but we have world leading services businesses across the board. Telecoms, pharma, legal, finance, shipping, security, media, and on, and on.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
Not for the first time, I don't agree at all.
So called "Trussnomics" (your term, not mine) or if you prefer good old fashioned supply side economics failed partially because of the way it was done but it also failed because it's not what people want and it's not how people think any more.
It's not 1980 - waving tax cuts like a magic wand might have worked then but the world now is predicated on a notion (some may call it strange or "woke") of fairness. The ideology of trickle-down (if you make the rich much richer you'll make the poor a little richer) no longer resonates on any level. Perhaps it's a result of the 1980s experience or the pandemic or a myriad of other factors but it's a product which can no longer be sold.
If anything and there's extensive polling supporting this, the mood is, yes, cut income tax for the poorest but tax the actual wealth of the richest. Some on here may find that repellent or impractical or both but that's where the majority is - if you like, the Robin Hood Tree (as the Magic Money Tree has been cut down ad its stump pulled out and burnt).
In short, you make everyone richer by making the rich poorer - that's quite appealing as a notion for all its issues.
The question is how will this Government and its Labour successor seek to re-balance the public finances and the inevitability is a mix of higher taxes and spending cuts. In 2010, for every £5 cut from spending, £1 was raised from higher taxes - it will be interesting to see if Sunak, once the protege of Osborne, seeks to follow a similar direction but the notion of a bloated public sector just doesn't fit the facts.
Given that the rich are inherently mobile, and there seems to be little desire on the part of Monaco, Jersey, Belize or Dubai to repatriate our wealthy exiles, such a policy, whilst superficially appealing, is clearly quite stupid. God forbid we really get behind it, or we will be putting the pedal to the floor on decline.
If the wealthy elites want to f*ck-off to Monaco, Jersey, Belize or wherever, to avoid taxes, let them go. If they love money more than they love their country well so be it.
But don't let them expect to remain British citizens or be able to come and go whenever they want, or own property here and not pay UK taxes.
Then they won't. This is a situation (like so many) where we seem to want to enforce our notions of fairness on a world that doesn't work that way. So we're going to get annoyed with it and break it. Surely it is better (if we want to be successful) to understand how the world works and go with that grain.
I believe most wealthy Brits want to remain British citizens but we let them have the best of both worlds, British citizenship and tax-free offshore residence.
The other thing is taxing wealth, especially property, would help address this and mop up a decent revenue from the non-British owners of large chunks of the country.
We need to make it easier to start businesses and create operating profit here, and more costly to flog the business off to the US at the first opportunity. Lower taxes on investment, profits, higher taxes (imo) on capital gains. We also need a culture that inculcates the importance of philanthropy, and honours that behaviour. You get more flies with honey than vinegar.
Sod it! You've just made a post I entirely agree with.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
On thread, when you "crash the economy" is it solely the fault of the driver of the time? Or maybe also the fault of the mechanic who failed to service the car properly.
So who was to blame: 1. Sunak who was Chancellor for two and a half years until July 2022? 2. His immediate successor who trod water while the country was in limbo between PMs? 3. The last but one Chancellor who announced measures in late September only for nearly all of them to be reversed three weeks later?
Sunak's attempt to blame it all on Kwarteng doesn't hold water. The UK economy was in a pretty febrile state by this summer, and Kwarteng's ill judged measures had a disproportionate effect only because they opened the eyes of investors to that fact. If the genie is going to be hard to put back in the bottle, it's not just Kwarteng's doing, because he inherited an economy that was already borrowed up the hilt.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
We are all going to come round to the view that borrowing to fund tax cuts is sensible?
Now you are spinning it, as you are good at, because the too much that was unfunded was Truss mistake, i agree. But that doesn’t change the fundamental point, because the economic truth is it didn’t have to be unfunded did it? If properly funded those tax cuts would still have been politically explosive, but that doesn’t change or should not reflect on the economics in anyway should it, the political assessment and economic assessment should rightly be separate.
So how about this, we are in a new place now, just like when Sunny Jim gave his “I can tell you in all candour” the levers we usually pull are now not working speech - call Truss growth policy right wing Keynesianism, call it what you like, the alternative is you are unbothered by the need for growth aren’t you? You feel we can borrow or raise taxes instead? Well, I can tell you in all candour… 😁
Truss tax cuts could have been funded by cuts,
prediction one: Just like Sunak’s and Starmer’s tax cuts will be funded by cuts.
Prediction two: 7 years of shrinking the state to pay for a push for growth lie ahead for UK now - Sunak and Starmer don’t have a say in that, nor the voters of this country, the markets have decided for us that we are now in a new orthodoxy, wherein we have to repay the bill for years of cheap credit.
Any questions?
'Shrinking the state' is not going to help the push for growth one iota.
There are things we can do to encourage growth for sure*. Austerity is certainly not one of them. If you'd paid any attention during the 2010s you'd know that.
(* E.g. Re-joining the Single Market; ensuring that the poorest get income increases at least in line with inflation).
And the central point, where are you getting new money to invest in growth from? Borrowing? Nope. Putting up taxes? Nope. Axing stuff. Yep.
Hence I called it right wing Keynesianism.
Trying to keep gilts and interest rates down has become doom loop economics, low interest rates creates debt, QE creates inflation - instead of that defunct system the Markets now want an era of 2-4% interest rates and higher gilt markets than they have been for much of this century as a fair return on their investment in a country maxxed out on tax take and borrowing.
The penny hasn’t dropped for you yet Ben, but wether you like the sound of it or not, do you at least see the point I am making?
Keynes was a right winger - a highly successful fund manager in the City
He called for a balanced budget over the economic cycle. None of this deficit financed growth malarkey
On thread, when you "crash the economy" is it solely the fault of the driver of the time? Or maybe also the fault of the mechanic who failed to service the car properly.
So who was to blame: 1. Sunak who was Chancellor for two and a half years until July 2022? 2. His immediate successors who trod water while the country was in limbo between PMs. 3. The last but one Chancellor who announced measures in late September only for nearly all of them to be reversed three weeks later.
Sunak's attempt to blame it all on Kwarteng doesn't hold water. The UK economy was in a pretty febrile state by this summer, and Kwarteng's ill judged measures had a disproportionate effect only because they opened the eyes of investors to that fact. If the genie is going to be hard to put back in the bottle, it's not just Kwarteng's doing, but because he inherited an economy that was already borrowed up the hilt.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
To me part of the problem is that the minimum wage and benefits rates are set at the national level, which then creates problems in both the north and south (too low in the south, cost of housing; too high vs benefits in the north, discourages work).
I would set the minimum wage at a regional level (in consultation with the devolved assemblies) and then peg benefits at a proportion of the regional minimum wage. This would hopefully encourage people on benefits to move into work and more investment in the poorer regions.
The other thing you have to questions about poverty in the UK is whether family structure plays a part. The politicians are I suspect too scared to go there after the 90s but let's be blunt a large proportion of the time that the TV news goes to talk to people in poverty, they are single mothers.
You think the minimum wage is too high in the north v benefits? You should meet my school full of TA's. Most who'd be better off on UC.
Sorry what I mean is that benefits are higher in the north vs. the cost of living, while the minimum wage is not high enough in London and parts of the south.
What I would do is abolish employers NICs and then use the savings to business to increase the minimum wage overall, then gradually start to deviate benefits and minimum wage in the different areas of the UK
On thread, when you "crash the economy" is it solely the fault of the driver of the time? Or maybe also the fault of the mechanic who failed to service the car properly.
So who was to blame: 1. Sunak who was Chancellor for two and a half years until July 2022? 2. His immediate successors who trod water while the country was in limbo between PMs. 3. The last but one Chancellor who announced measures in late September only for nearly all of them to be reversed three weeks later.
Sunak's attempt to blame it all on Kwarteng doesn't hold water. The UK economy was in a pretty febrile state by this summer, and Kwarteng's ill judged measures had a disproportionate effect only because they opened the eyes of investors to that fact. If the genie is going to be hard to put back in the bottle, it's not just Kwarteng's doing, but because he inherited an economy that was already borrowed up the hilt.
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
That's also bullshit.
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
It's such a ridiculous claim that I would like to know what exactly makes Matt Klein an "economic analyst" because that statement appears to have no analysis whatsoever behind it.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
If we've been 'playing catch up ever since' the GFC. we've not been playing very well - because we've not been catching up.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
Austerity is complicated, but the view is now that it went too far and has contributed to a slump in growth.
Brexit, too, given its effects on trade and investment.
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
That's also bullshit.
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
It's such a ridiculous claim that I would like to know what exactly makes Matt Klein an "economic analyst" because that statement appears to have no analysis whatsoever behind it.
Its sounds like something Steve Bray would come out with.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
Except we haven't been playing catch up. We have fallen further behind.
Peter Kyle Labour attack line on Sunak is his comments re diverting money from poor urban areas to richer areas . This got a little media attention in the summer but didn’t have legs when Truss became PM .
Yvette Cooper earlier going after Bravermans appointment with security concerns and her breaking the ministerial code .
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
This is effectively saying that the median UK household is worse off relative to other European countries due to higher house prices, which is surely not right, on the contrary, most households gain from higher house prices because they get housing equity that they can liquidate for spending in retirement, unlike the typical German renter who needs to invest in ultra-safe pensions.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
No, it’s because if you want a career the vast bulk of professional jobs are in London.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
That's also bullshit.
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
It's such a ridiculous claim that I would like to know what exactly makes Matt Klein an "economic analyst" because that statement appears to have no analysis whatsoever behind it.
Its sounds like something Steve Bray would come out with.
I might start calling myself an economic analyst, because judging by the stuff that regularly gets served up as some sort of insight I can only conclude that the job itself is piss easy and any fool can do it.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
All large cities have major social problems.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
But that’s more to do with climate, topology and historic architecture than economic policy. France is better than us at preserving its old towns, via the clever method of immediate surrender to invaders
Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
That's also bullshit.
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
It's such a ridiculous claim that I would like to know what exactly makes Matt Klein an "economic analyst" because that statement appears to have no analysis whatsoever behind it.
Its sounds like something Steve Bray would come out with.
I might start calling myself an economic analyst, because judging by the stuff that regularly gets served up as some sort of insight I can only conclude that the job itself is piss easy and any fool can do it.
One saving which could be made is that all employees of the government either directly or indirectly shouldn't have to be paid UC. They should be paid a wage by their department. Which shouldn't have to be topped up by another department.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
No, it’s because if you want a career the vast bulk of professional jobs are in London.
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
All large cities have major social problems.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
But that’s more to do with climate, topology and historic architecture than economic policy. France is better than us at preserving its old towns, via the clever method of immediate surrender to invaders
Yes, and all those second tier cities have actual jobs. With certain caveats that you have already mentioned, you are going to have a more comfortable life in Marseilles than Manchester; Lille than Leeds; Nantes than Newcastle.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
This is effectively saying that the median UK household is worse off relative to other European countries due to higher house prices, which is surely not right, on the contrary, most households gain from higher house prices because they get housing equity that they can liquidate for spending in retirement, unlike the typical German renter who needs to invest in ultra-safe pensions.
When you have a situation where younger people are often paying half their salaries on rent I’m surprised the gap isn’t more .
One saving which could be made is that all employees of the government either directly or indirectly shouldn't have to be paid UC. They should be paid a wage by their department. Which shouldn't have to be topped up by another department.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
No, it’s because if you want a career the vast bulk of professional jobs are in London.
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
Who said 80%? By the way, l never worked beyond 55+ hours after my 20s.
One saving which could be made is that all employees of the government either directly or indirectly shouldn't have to be paid UC. They should be paid a wage by their department. Which shouldn't have to be topped up by another department.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
If we've been 'playing catch up ever since' the GFC. we've not been playing very well - because we've not been catching up.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
All large cities have major social problems.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
But that’s more to do with climate, topology and historic architecture than economic policy. France is better than us at preserving its old towns, via the clever method of immediate surrender to invaders
Yes, and all those second tier cities have actual jobs. With certain caveats that you have already mentioned, you are going to have a more comfortable life in Marseilles than Manchester; Lille than Leeds; Nantes than Newcastle.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
No, it’s because if you want a career the vast bulk of professional jobs are in London.
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
Who said 80%? By the way, l never worked beyond 55+ hours after my 20s.
You said the vast bulk, which has got to be in the 70-95% range. If it's in line with population, that wouldn't be a vast bulk.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
The UK is not “the poorest country in Western Europe”. It’s obviously richer than Italy, Portugal and Spain for a start. Maybe just behind France. It is notably poorer than Denmark, Austria, and other smaller rich countries
What the UK is, is more unequal
In the UK the rich are richer, esp in London. And the poor are poorer
The other problem we have in the UK compared to say Germany and France is just how dominant London / SE, it literally sucks all the talent, which then just drive more demand for housing etc etc etc. Other European countries, people go to Frankfurt for some jobs, Munich for other types of careers etc.
Here, pretty much everybody comes straight out of uni, I want a grad job in London....its seen as second best if you get sent to the Manchester office instead.
We have had government after government try to change that, putting public sector jobs in other parts of the country etc to try and drive the blue chip private sector to go there, all with very limited success.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Might be the case in England? Only one of my close uni friends has ended up in London, gets paid twice what I do and lives in a box room with a mouldy roof (this might be more to do with what he spends his money on, though...)
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Edinburgh is somewhere I can see the attractiom of the quality of life being enough to counterbalance the unaffordabilility of life. London, for me, is absolutely not. Yes it's an amazing city, but not enough to exchange a large house in a nice suburb of a secondary city for a bog standard house in a down at heel suburn of London. But others do, because they value things differently. I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
No, it’s because if you want a career the vast bulk of professional jobs are in London.
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
Who said 80%? By the way, l never worked beyond 55+ hours after my 20s.
You said the vast bulk, which has got to be in the 70-95% range. If it's in line with population, that wouldn't be a vast bulk.
If I had to guess, I’d say 60% Population share is more like 30%
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
For many of the biggest companies they will have a London office, with the best paid and "most important" jobs, but the bread and butter work is done in regional offices. I doubt there are many big companies that only employ people in London, or London and the South East.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
If you don’t like these facts, EPG has others?
ONS: "Median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in financial year ending (FYE) 2021, which covered the first year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic".
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
What that chart shows is a country which was doing really well, chiefly out of finance - better than its peers - but then collided with the great global financial crisis of 2007-2010 so we suffered more than our peers
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
If we've been 'playing catch up ever since' the GFC. we've not been playing very well - because we've not been catching up.
From my vantage point in the more deprived end of the northeast, that we are poorer than France is pretty obvious by taking a short walk. Course London and the SE are doing OK as ever. But that isn't the UK by a long chalk
Which bit of France though? Try the bits of Paris where TSE was in May. Try rural France. What goes in the U.K. happens elsewhere too.
France still has quite large rural areas that are indeed relatively poor. But the secondary cities, which is where French people actually live if not in Paris, shit all over Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool etc.
Get your head out of the sand.
France's secondary cities have nothing like Britain's secondary cities' legacy of the industrial revolution. From where it is a long way back. But has there really been more progress in the last 40 years in Lyon, Marseille, Lille than there has in Mamchester, Glasgow, Newcastle?
Lyon is an absolutely delightful city.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Lyon is lovely - in the centre
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
All large cities have major social problems.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
But that’s more to do with climate, topology and historic architecture than economic policy. France is better than us at preserving its old towns, via the clever method of immediate surrender to invaders
Yes, and all those second tier cities have actual jobs. With certain caveats that you have already mentioned, you are going to have a more comfortable life in Marseilles than Manchester; Lille than Leeds; Nantes than Newcastle.
Glib and simplistic
Well, it’s your funeral. Not literally, you live in Camden.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
This is effectively saying that the median UK household is worse off relative to other European countries due to higher house prices, which is surely not right, on the contrary, most households gain from higher house prices because they get housing equity that they can liquidate for spending in retirement, unlike the typical German renter who needs to invest in ultra-safe pensions.
But this is the problem ffs! In very simple terms, everyone on high incomes AHC in the UK tends to be a no-mortgage Tory with no dependents. Huge wealth and disposable income. And nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, someone like me has to chuck a huge amount of our salary into a mortgage or rent. We don't then have the money left over to go for a Masters degree or Further education, lowering our productivity. Or we don't have the spare cash to move to another part of the country to match our skills with a better job.
Some of us, like me, get a big chunk of money off our parents for the flat and/or the Masters. This entrenches generational inequality, further disincentivising people who are high-performers from even bothering to make something of themselves.
Productivity growth dies. No one has money to have kids, so the fertility rate drops. There is reduced working-age population which gets squeezed harder and harder to serve an older generation which, due to technological advances and an increase in chronic conditions, requires a huge number of carers (further reducing the working population).
The UK enters a death spiral and everyone sensible moves to somewhere that isn't going to get fucked by climate change.
Peter Kyle Labour attack line on Sunak is his comments re diverting money from poor urban areas to richer areas . This got a little media attention in the summer but didn’t have legs when Truss became PM .
Yvette Cooper earlier going after Bravermans appointment with security concerns and her breaking the ministerial code .
The Braverman appointment has legs. It follows the narrative of Tory sleaze. The Tories are oblivious to the rules. This should suit Starmer (and Cooper) down to the ground. A
An inexplicable appointment by Sunak unless he really does see himself as Master of the Universe and where rules are for the little people.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
If you don’t like these facts, EPG has others?
ONS: "Median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in financial year ending (FYE) 2021, which covered the first year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic".
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
For many of the biggest companies they will have a London office, with the best paid and "most important" jobs, but the bread and butter work is done in regional offices. I doubt there are many big companies that only employ people in London, or London and the South East.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
We are all going to come round to the view that borrowing to fund tax cuts is sensible?
Now you are spinning it, as you are good at, because the too much that was unfunded was Truss mistake, i agree. But that doesn’t change the fundamental point, because the economic truth is it didn’t have to be unfunded did it? If properly funded those tax cuts would still have been politically explosive, but that doesn’t change or should not reflect on the economics in anyway should it, the political assessment and economic assessment should rightly be separate.
So how about this, we are in a new place now, just like when Sunny Jim gave his “I can tell you in all candour” the levers we usually pull are now not working speech - call Truss growth policy right wing Keynesianism, call it what you like, the alternative is you are unbothered by the need for growth aren’t you? You feel we can borrow or raise taxes instead? Well, I can tell you in all candour… 😁
Truss tax cuts could have been funded by cuts,
prediction one: Just like Sunak’s and Starmer’s tax cuts will be funded by cuts.
Prediction two: 7 years of shrinking the state to pay for a push for growth lie ahead for UK now - Sunak and Starmer don’t have a say in that, nor the voters of this country, the markets have decided for us that we are now in a new orthodoxy, wherein we have to repay the bill for years of cheap credit.
Any questions?
'Shrinking the state' is not going to help the push for growth one iota.
There are things we can do to encourage growth for sure*. Austerity is certainly not one of them. If you'd paid any attention during the 2010s you'd know that.
(* E.g. Re-joining the Single Market; ensuring that the poorest get income increases at least in line with inflation).
And the central point, where are you getting new money to invest in growth from? Borrowing? Nope. Putting up taxes? Nope. Axing stuff. Yep.
Hence I called it right wing Keynesianism.
Trying to keep gilts and interest rates down has become doom loop economics, low interest rates creates debt, QE creates inflation - instead of that defunct system the Markets now want an era of 2-4% interest rates and higher gilt markets than they have been for much of this century as a fair return on their investment in a country maxxed out on tax take and borrowing.
The penny hasn’t dropped for you yet Ben, but wether you like the sound of it or not, do you at least see the point I am making?
Keynes was a right winger - a highly successful fund manager in the City
He called for a balanced budget over the economic cycle. None of this deficit financed growth malarkey
Deficit financed growth malarkey isn’t Trussnomics on the basis she thought she could get money through borrowing without cutting public spending just yet.
You are getting confused between a mistake she made trying to do it, not what she is trying to do 🙂 partly my mistake for the confusion calling it Trussnomics instead of something else, if you think of the mistake how she did it not actually what she was trying to do.
Instead of Trussnomics let’s call it the new orthodoxy - what you are trying to do defined as cut state, tax take, and create growth.
And let’s define the mistake as trying to deliver the new orthodoxy first growth budget via borrowing, and not getting away with it.
Does that make sense now?
Two other things were going on. The incredibly cost of the Energy Freeze was in the same basket she was trying to cash out on government credit card, so why does the tax changes in budget get all the blame? Simple answer is politics. Let me explain it like this, if Hunt and Sunak could have taken the cost for all Truss energy freeze out the basket and got the mini budget checked out at the till, would they have done that? It’s economic hypothetical if that would have worked, how much money we could still borrow, but if Hunt and Sunak and the Tory Party, on conhome and on PB could have removed the expensive borrowing for Truss energy freeze out the basket and got the mini budget checked out, would they have done so? The answer is a categorical no. So the market reaction was used to discredit the budget and kill it, played some part in this.
I suggest we try trickle up. Ditch Council Tax (£1500 for a Band A here. Huge disincentive to work). Pay real Living wage. Abolish NI below the IT threshold. See if that works for a change. Probably won't. But give it 40 years just to be sure. Like trickle down
I'd be stunned if, say, 80% of professionals in the UK are in the South East. Rather, I imagine the most productive companies where you get the best training are in the South East. You go there for a few years to train with the best of the best, and apply your skills in a normal region where houses are cheaper. Or maybe you stay if you are a type A personality who actually wants to work 55+ hours a week in exchange for lucrative reward.
For many of the biggest companies they will have a London office, with the best paid and "most important" jobs, but the bread and butter work is done in regional offices. I doubt there are many big companies that only employ people in London, or London and the South East.
True, but if you are in the global strategy unit for BigCo, you are not creating the same roles in London as in even Manchester. Rents alone militate against it. As a caricature, the London office will do global business while the northern office will deal with the northern or Scottish plcs who hate London.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
If you look at the graph, the real divergence happens before 2010. The problem was that much of the apparent growth the UK experienced before 2007 was fictitious and based on unsustainable asset inflation.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
If you don’t like these facts, EPG has others?
ONS: "Median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in financial year ending (FYE) 2021, which covered the first year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic".
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
If you don’t like these facts, EPG has others?
ONS: "Median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in financial year ending (FYE) 2021, which covered the first year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic".
The numbers from the RF were PPP.
That's why I'm saying trust in the adjustment is crucial, because the adjustment seems to be doing the majority of work in generating the statistic. Housing costs is a bit controversial because most people's housing costs are also an investment in an asset; if you excluded Germans' savings, their incomes would also be lower.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
It's PPP by the Resolution Foundation. They know what they are doing.
When I used to this analysis we used equivalised income after housing costs (weights income by number of adults and dependents). It's even worse for the UK if you do that.
The SE vs the rest. I don't think anybody is saying no work of any value goes on in Birmingham, Manchester etc.
It was more the best jobs, the best talent, etc, across the vast majority of sectors gets overwhelmingly tractor-beamed there. The same happens in Italy (albeit the North) and they have very similar problems.
France / Germany for a number of reasons, different sectors are located in different areas of the country.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
If you look at the graph, the real divergence happens before 2010. The problem was that much of the apparent growth the UK experienced before 2007 was fictitious and based on unsustainable asset inflation.
That seems to be the obvious point - and the ONS figures are rather different.
I am really unclear why the Conservatives should get the blame for the decline from 2007-10.
A preview of the potential flash points ahead. Jayne Ozanne resigned as an equalities advisor to the govt over Kemi Badenoch’s approach to LGBT+ equality and the delayed ban to conversion therapy.
The tide is going out on Stonewall dogma and trans activist bullies and fanatics.
They're losing.
The final defeat of rainbow lanyards is in sight.
You think? Not where I work it isn’t.
It's an ultra-cheap signal to encourage a percentage of legacy staff to shuffle off into early retirement.
:-)
It's interesting how the symbol of the rainbow is getting used so much. Not just to mean we all love gay and bisexual people, and not only them but people who have gender dysphoria too, and people who are "queer" whatever that might mean, and we want so dearly to show it to the world, but also during the lockdowns and afterwards - in almost every school, and in many windows both at workplaces and at private homes - the rainbow was used to symbolise submission hope during the pandemic.
It's almost as if ... a FLOOD is coming.
You could say the pandemic was like a flood, but nope, it wasn't really - or not much.
Rainbow lanyards might be falling out of the picture, but I think the symbol of the rainbow has a lot more "value" in it as a brand manager or book agent might say.
Meanwhile the usage "rainbow baby", to denote a baby born to a couple after they have had a miscarriage or a neonatal death - a term which often indicates some genuine respect for people and psychological understanding - probably won't spread far.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
This is effectively saying that the median UK household is worse off relative to other European countries due to higher house prices, which is surely not right, on the contrary, most households gain from higher house prices because they get housing equity that they can liquidate for spending in retirement, unlike the typical German renter who needs to invest in ultra-safe pensions.
But this is the problem ffs! In very simple terms, everyone on high incomes AHC in the UK tends to be a no-mortgage Tory with no dependents. Huge wealth and disposable income. And nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, someone like me has to chuck a huge amount of our salary into a mortgage or rent. We don't then have the money left over to go for a Masters degree or Further education, lowering our productivity. Or we don't have the spare cash to move to another part of the country to match our skills with a better job.
Some of us, like me, get a big chunk of money off our parents for the flat and/or the Masters. This entrenches generational inequality, further disincentivising people who are high-performers from even bothering to make something of themselves.
Productivity growth dies. No one has money to have kids, so the fertility rate drops. There is reduced working-age population which gets squeezed harder and harder to serve an older generation which, due to technological advances and an increase in chronic conditions, requires a huge number of carers (further reducing the working population).
The UK enters a death spiral and everyone sensible moves to somewhere that isn't going to get fucked by climate change.
This is what I did. Moved somewhere else where I got paid 60% more for the same job I did in the UK.
1. It’s sensible to remove London from the equation to some extent, because it’s a world city and it’s competitors (to the extent it has competitors) are global, not domestic. It will always be a huge draw within the UK and Europe, and is by some distance the greatest city in the world.
2. The core cities - the eleven major UK cities outside London and Edinburgh, have not reached anything like their potential for various reasons. Parochialism is one: the ludicrous charade that the Gatesheads of this world are somehow different places to the Newcastles; transport investment is another - relying on buses in cities the size of Leeds; a failure to maintain and innovate in urban regeneration after the initial boom in the early Blair years.
We need a new prospectus for these places: powerful metropolitan government with leaders who can attract investment.
I am still researching what actually happened and piecing it together for lessons learned. And I’m coming to the opposite take to what the generally accepted wisdom is here.
The hugely expensive Energy Freeze bucking the market for two years, that is now history, was actually the cuckoo in Liz Truss IEA designed nest of policies - Trussnomics is actually closer and more on the ball with the change markets have moved to now two decades of economic orthodoxy is coming to an end, and where markets are now certain to move UK government, than Sunak, Hunt and Starmer all are.
I think it is almost certain to happen that your header TSE will date, history books will tell it completely the other way around. if people feel Truss crashed the economy (she certainly did not crash the whole thing) this view will change when those who told her she was wrong, properly crash the economy themselves.
To what degree Truss is vindicated as ahead of the game depends to what degree Sunak and Starmer (I still think change of government nailed on as voters have already made their minds up) adopt Trussnomics. If they don’t at all then a proper crash of the economy, Greek Style, is definitely going to happen in the UK at some point, the markets have decided on that.
But more likely we will get two short lived austerity governments now. Especially painful for Labour out of office for so long, face five years basically implementing austerity 2.0 and then thrown out for being hated for that.
We are all going to come round to the view that borrowing to fund tax cuts is sensible?
Now you are spinning it, as you are good at, because the too much that was unfunded was Truss mistake, i agree. But that doesn’t change the fundamental point, because the economic truth is it didn’t have to be unfunded did it? If properly funded those tax cuts would still have been politically explosive, but that doesn’t change or should not reflect on the economics in anyway should it, the political assessment and economic assessment should rightly be separate.
So how about this, we are in a new place now, just like when Sunny Jim gave his “I can tell you in all candour” the levers we usually pull are now not working speech - call Truss growth policy right wing Keynesianism, call it what you like, the alternative is you are unbothered by the need for growth aren’t you? You feel we can borrow or raise taxes instead? Well, I can tell you in all candour… 😁
Truss tax cuts could have been funded by cuts,
prediction one: Just like Sunak’s and Starmer’s tax cuts will be funded by cuts.
Prediction two: 7 years of shrinking the state to pay for a push for growth lie ahead for UK now - Sunak and Starmer don’t have a say in that, nor the voters of this country, the markets have decided for us that we are now in a new orthodoxy, wherein we have to repay the bill for years of cheap credit.
The SE vs the rest. I don't think anybody is saying no work of any value goes on in Birmingham, Manchester etc.
It was more the best jobs, the best talent, etc, across the vast majority of sectors gets overwhelmingly tractor-beamed there. The same happens in Italy (albeit the North) and they have very similar problems.
France / Germany for a number of reasons, different sectors are located in different areas of the country.
Birmingham and Manchester both seem fairly prosperous whenever I'm there.
UK median disposable income is £31k. The chart says £15.5k. A heroic amount of adjustment is happening to cut incomes by half, and you have to trust that the Resolution Foundation is being equally rigorous across all those countries rather than settling on the story.
If you don’t like these facts, EPG has others?
ONS: "Median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in financial year ending (FYE) 2021, which covered the first year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic".
The numbers from the RF were PPP.
That's why I'm saying trust in the adjustment is crucial, because the adjustment seems to be doing the majority of work in generating the statistic. Housing costs is a bit controversial because most people's housing costs are also an investment in an asset; if you excluded Germans' savings, their incomes would also be lower.
As I explained above, this is the core problem. If working people are chucking most of their incomes at their housing, they don't have the spare cash to invest, to educate themselves, to have kids.
The SE vs the rest. I don't think anybody is saying no work of any value goes on in Birmingham, Manchester etc.
It was more the best jobs, the best talent, etc, across the vast majority of sectors gets overwhelmingly tractor-beamed there. The same happens in Italy (albeit the North) and they have very similar problems.
France / Germany for a number of reasons, different sectors are located in different areas of the country.
Not true for France. Paris there is as dominant as London here. Germany and Italy have much more luck due to the fact they had regional capitals due to late unification.
The obvious solution to this is to move the British government to a new city every 20 years to build up regional cities.
Pity it's clearly nonsensical, migrants aren't camping in Calais because they want to flee a rich country to get to a poor country, nor do young Spaniards and Italians flock to London because the streets of Lisbon are paved with gold.
You didn’t read it, did you?
Go on, tell us why Britain is much poorer than France, then.
Well, it’s got you in it for a start. Apart from that, just read the piece.
Not a lot of cold, hard facts there. The rise of hand car washes is surely more to do with unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe than a failure to automate car washes.
That the UK has lower productivity than peers in Europe and is falling behind further is well documented. UK median incomes after housing were amongst the highest in Europe before the GFC, now in the lower half and falling further relatively. This is directly attributable to two Conservative government policies: Cameron/Osborne austerity and Brexit. I would say the article is spot on.
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
This is effectively saying that the median UK household is worse off relative to other European countries due to higher house prices, which is surely not right, on the contrary, most households gain from higher house prices because they get housing equity that they can liquidate for spending in retirement, unlike the typical German renter who needs to invest in ultra-safe pensions.
But this is the problem ffs! In very simple terms, everyone on high incomes AHC in the UK tends to be a no-mortgage Tory with no dependents. Huge wealth and disposable income. And nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, someone like me has to chuck a huge amount of our salary into a mortgage or rent. We don't then have the money left over to go for a Masters degree or Further education, lowering our productivity. Or we don't have the spare cash to move to another part of the country to match our skills with a better job.
Some of us, like me, get a big chunk of money off our parents for the flat and/or the Masters. This entrenches generational inequality, further disincentivising people who are high-performers from even bothering to make something of themselves.
Productivity growth dies. No one has money to have kids, so the fertility rate drops. There is reduced working-age population which gets squeezed harder and harder to serve an older generation which, due to technological advances and an increase in chronic conditions, requires a huge number of carers (further reducing the working population).
The UK enters a death spiral and everyone sensible moves to somewhere that isn't going to get fucked by climate change.
This is what I did. Moved somewhere else where I got paid 60% more for the same job I did in the UK.
Comments
Whitley Bay is a better example of your entirely reasonable and arguable point.
Lille and Marseille are shit holes.
Edinburgh is a very popular choice in grad schemes, and a large chunk of my cohort (including me!) worked hard to get a placement here.
I had a lot of fun trying to model a scenario where you are not allowed to discriminate by geography - a grad job in Bradford must pay the same as in London. Was unable to provide any coherent results.
Also look at Bilbao, Pittsburgh, Dresden, Leipzig, etc
It’s v hard to turn around an industrial city but it has been done.
But much, much better at half term.
The other thing is taxing wealth, especially property, would help address this and mop up a decent revenue from the non-British owners of large chunks of the country.
I would set the minimum wage at a regional level (in consultation with the devolved assemblies) and then peg benefits at a proportion of the regional minimum wage. This would hopefully encourage people on benefits to move into work and more investment in the poorer regions.
The other thing you have to questions about poverty in the UK is whether family structure plays a part. The politicians are I suspect too scared to go there after the 90s but let's be blunt a large proportion of the time that the TV news goes to talk to people in poverty, they are single mothers.
I wonder to what extent the prosperity of Greater London is due to offering services to oligarchs? Others will no better than me but it's quite a striking claim.
But it too has major social problems. As ever with France they are hidden away in Les banlieus or strange concrete dormitory towns
The kids come in to the middle at night and riot
https://twitter.com/danceswithgoths/status/1585015633447555072
Paying tax is part of the social contract.
(And welcome!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Gdp_versus_household_income.png
You should meet my school full of TA's. Most who'd be better off on UC.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/13/average-uk-household-8800-a-year-worse-off-than-those-in-france-or-germany
DIsclosure: I thought austerity was necessary back in 2010. I now realise I was mistaken
However, Rishi never wanted to fund it, and Boris wasn’t really that interested in apart from as a political gimmick.
The Tories were on one for growth. When Labour got in everything was over heating - but they had promises to keep and mindset to spend. This is the truth of it.
Boom Bust is story of sixties and seventies.
The moral of the story in my opinion - going for growth is a bit like nuclear fission, it’s going to get hot so you need to be ready with boron rods to control it.
Young Mr Kinnock sends his daughter to private school; is married to someone who -- when she ran Denmark -- locked the teachers out when they went on strike; and is very scrupulous in not over-paying his tax bill.
He is also a good deal stupider than his wife, his mother and possibly his father as well.
In the 80s British secondary cities were jokes. I remember the easy laughs that were had when Glasgow was made City of Culture. I had a guide to the Cheshure Ring canal loop from 1985 which advised you to get through Central Manchester on daylight as quickly as you could and under places to eat could only recommend Spudulike. Employers avoided our large secondary cities. It wasn't obvious in the 80s that the likes of Manchester woukd grow more than, say, Stockton on Tees. Our big cities have been transformed since then. Britain isn't the only place to do this - Gardenwalker identifies Bilbao, among others - but Britain has been among the most successful in transforming its secondary cities.
(I haven’t read it yet but it is saved to read on my flight)
Seriously, though, cheap grey-market labour reduces the RoI from investment in capital equipment like automated car washes
They are still economic sinkholes.
Lyon is - relative to Marseille and Lille - wealthy, and with low levels of unemployment. Of course it has shit bits: but given a choice, most people would prefer to live in Lyon to Marseille or Lille or Rochdale.
"Although British media worry about robots taking everybody’s jobs, the reality is closer to the opposite. “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs."
Zero awareness that the "men with buckets" are mostly either Romanians under FoM or subcontinental visa-overstayers.
If that's the level of research in this article, it can be safely ignored.
Would love to read an analysis of similar scope by someone capable and open-minded though.
(But this does raise the question of why people flush them down the bog.)
London has made good money off of oligarchs, but "the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree" is clearly utterly ridiculous.
That will never do ;-)
Austerity and Brexit are trivial in comparison. We we’re screwed by the GFC and have been playing catch up ever since
So who was to blame:
1. Sunak who was Chancellor for two and a half years until July 2022?
2. His immediate successor who trod water while the country was in limbo between PMs?
3. The last but one Chancellor who announced measures in late September only for nearly all of them to be reversed three weeks later?
Sunak's attempt to blame it all on Kwarteng doesn't hold water. The UK economy was in a pretty febrile state by this summer, and Kwarteng's ill judged measures had a disproportionate effect only because they opened the eyes of investors to that fact. If the genie is going to be hard to put back in the bottle, it's not just Kwarteng's doing, because he inherited an economy that was already borrowed up the hilt.
He called for a balanced budget over the economic cycle. None of this deficit financed growth malarkey
What I would do is abolish employers NICs and then use the savings to business to increase the minimum wage overall, then gradually start to deviate benefits and minimum wage in the different areas of the UK
Brexit, too, given its effects on trade and investment.
I suspect for a grad, the attraction of London over Bradford is principally, when it comes dowm to it, all those other grads.
Yvette Cooper earlier going after Bravermans appointment with security concerns and her breaking the ministerial code .
Blaming the Conservatives for the sharp drop in income in the two years prior to their taking office seems perverse.
They should be paid a wage by their department. Which shouldn't have to be topped up by another department.
By the way, l never worked beyond 55+ hours after my 20s.
It's a nonsense they aren't.
Population share is more like 30%
Not literally, you live in Camden.
Meanwhile, someone like me has to chuck a huge amount of our salary into a mortgage or rent. We don't then have the money left over to go for a Masters degree or Further education, lowering our productivity. Or we don't have the spare cash to move to another part of the country to match our skills with a better job.
Some of us, like me, get a big chunk of money off our parents for the flat and/or the Masters. This entrenches generational inequality, further disincentivising people who are high-performers from even bothering to make something of themselves.
Productivity growth dies. No one has money to have kids, so the fertility rate drops. There is reduced working-age population which gets squeezed harder and harder to serve an older generation which, due to technological advances and an increase in chronic conditions, requires a huge number of carers (further reducing the working population).
The UK enters a death spiral and everyone sensible moves to somewhere that isn't going to get fucked by climate change.
An inexplicable appointment by Sunak unless he really does see himself as Master of the Universe and where rules are for the little people.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2021
The rise in mean incomes is much less, but the mean is distorted by very high salaries.
You are getting confused between a mistake she made trying to do it, not what she is trying to do 🙂 partly my mistake for the confusion calling it Trussnomics instead of something else, if you think of the mistake how she did it not actually what she was trying to do.
Instead of Trussnomics let’s call it the new orthodoxy - what you are trying to do defined as cut state, tax take, and create growth.
And let’s define the mistake as trying to deliver the new orthodoxy first growth budget via borrowing, and not getting away with it.
Does that make sense now?
Two other things were going on. The incredibly cost of the Energy Freeze was in the same basket she was trying to cash out on government credit card, so why does the tax changes in budget get all the blame? Simple answer is politics. Let me explain it like this, if Hunt and Sunak could have taken the cost for all Truss energy freeze out the basket and got the mini budget checked out at the till, would they have done that? It’s economic hypothetical if that would have worked, how much money we could still borrow, but if Hunt and Sunak and the Tory Party, on conhome and on PB could have removed the expensive borrowing for Truss energy freeze out the basket and got the mini budget checked out, would they have done so? The answer is a categorical no. So the market reaction was used to discredit the budget and kill it, played some part in this.
Ditch Council Tax (£1500 for a Band A here. Huge disincentive to work).
Pay real Living wage.
Abolish NI below the IT threshold.
See if that works for a change.
Probably won't. But give it 40 years just to be sure.
Like trickle down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity
Frankly that chart up thread looks dodgy to me. About as accurate as Mark Carney's recent claim about GDP (he was totally wrong).
When I used to this analysis we used equivalised income after housing costs (weights income by number of adults and dependents). It's even worse for the UK if you do that.
It was more the best jobs, the best talent, etc, across the vast majority of sectors gets overwhelmingly tractor-beamed there. The same happens in Italy (albeit the North) and they have very similar problems.
France / Germany for a number of reasons, different sectors are located in different areas of the country.
I am really unclear why the Conservatives should get the blame for the decline from 2007-10.
It's interesting how the symbol of the rainbow is getting used so much. Not just to mean we all love gay and bisexual people, and not only them but people who have gender dysphoria too, and people who are "queer" whatever that might mean, and we want so dearly to show it to the world, but also during the lockdowns and afterwards - in almost every school, and in many windows both at workplaces and at private homes - the rainbow was used to symbolise submission hope during the pandemic.
It's almost as if ... a FLOOD is coming.
You could say the pandemic was like a flood, but nope, it wasn't really - or not much.
Rainbow lanyards might be falling out of the picture, but I think the symbol of the rainbow has a lot more "value" in it as a brand manager or book agent might say.
Meanwhile the usage "rainbow baby", to denote a baby born to a couple after they have had a miscarriage or a neonatal death - a term which often indicates some genuine respect for people and psychological understanding - probably won't spread far.
1. It’s sensible to remove London from the equation to some extent, because it’s a world city and it’s competitors (to the extent it has competitors) are global, not domestic. It will always be a huge draw within the UK and Europe, and is by some distance the greatest city in the world.
2. The core cities - the eleven major UK cities outside London and Edinburgh, have not reached anything like their potential for various reasons. Parochialism is one: the ludicrous charade that the Gatesheads of this world are somehow different places to the Newcastles; transport investment is another - relying on buses in cities the size of Leeds; a failure to maintain and innovate in urban regeneration after the initial boom in the early Blair years.
We need a new prospectus for these places: powerful metropolitan government with leaders who can attract investment.
The obvious solution to this is to move the British government to a new city every 20 years to build up regional cities.