Britain poorer than Mississippi

Mississippi overtook the UK in 2023, towards the end of the Tory's 13 years in power and before Labour were elected...

Apparently France is the same so not Brexit!

Illegal immigrants.
You can dance around it all you like, but we can't support all these extra people who have no real need to be here.

Oh look another UK bashing thread.

I agree with @Persephonia1966 . I’ve not been ‘up North’ for a very long time, but I’ve seen documentaries which provide stark images of the divide. It must be utterly bleak and hopeless to live in some of the communities that have been left behind. Regenerating them and giving those populations a purpose and a way of contributing should be as important a part of the political agenda as ‘saving the NHS’.

It's not good for London and it's not good for the rest of the UK either.
London and the South East have all the investment/money and absurdly high house prices. Other areas suffer the effects of deindustrialization and resentment. I don't think the argument is that London should be subsidising the rest of the UK in the form of handouts. Rather that the rest of the UK want jobs, growth, the things you mentioned.

The UK is much more imbalanced than other countries in terms of it's economic geography.

Part of the problem is London. Our whole economy is set up to privilege London and our financial sector. It acts like a cancer on the UK. Growing bigger and stronger while sucking the life out of the rest of the UK.

"Thatcher instigated a load of reforms that were necessary because the country was in a shit state (maybe 10 years more of what we are doing at the moment will lead to the same).
Blair rode the back of that and rather than moderating the Thatcher reforms where necessary instead rode off the back of them. This helped contribute to the credit boom and the GFC in 2008.
The Tories were pretty much forced to implement austerity after 2008 to deal with the consequences of the credit boom."

There is so much wrong with this analysis. Like to day the Wilson Government came in to power inheriting a messed up economy. The Thatcher reforms caused the mess we are in today. Cast your eyes around. Are the water, electricity, gas, industries in a better condition than when they were under state control? Are the Royal Mail, the railways, or the NHS offering better services? Are any of the previous cheaper?

The big problem is privatisation which while there might be less official taxation but have resulted in a hypothecation of tax earmarked for private investors. So the real tax burden has increased and mainly upon the majority who do not have large savings.

That's the least of it. Idiots just blame the weakest in society.

Here come the mugs blaming labour. They are crap but not the greatest offenders.

It's simple. Stop following right wing policies and invest in people, not billionaires and uncaring corporations. It will be a whole lot worse under reform.
People are so ignorant when it comes to politics and reality.

The tax on farmers, the heating allowance, the increase in employers ni contributions ... all the u turns damaging investment...yes in one year labour did much much more damage than the tories in 14 years. Now we have defence non spending (Britain has lots of companies in that area), a leadership despute...lots of corruption over the last 18 months...

Yes, but the meaningful change involves asking the middle classes to give up their property portfolios and share resources. And why would they? I obviously agree they should but why from their perspective? Make it advantageous to them and they'll do it. What's the incentive? Can't even get working classes to give up shopping on Amazon as a protest regarding their working conditions and data mining, so if you can't change yourself, how will you change anyone else? And I wouldn't worry too much about the next gen. Humans are dying out anyway.

Getting people off benefits where possible and into jobs would negate the need to import people to do jobs nobody here can be arsed doing as well as negate the additional housing etc.

And maybe the Government would like to build some actual social housing and get people out of B&B's and into houses so they can rebuild their lives, live their lives, get jobs etc.

Party Politics aside.

The UK has poor productivity, even though we work longer hours than many of our neighbours we are less productive during those hours. Unfortunately our answer is always to work harder rather than smarter, or to have business invest in human resources. We are a nation of busy fools basically.

We have massive regional inequality. London and it's commuter hinterland dominate our economy. We have a handful of other wealthy, productive cities, mostly in the south. Parts of the North and the Midlands are as poor as the Balkans, never mind Mississippi.

Property prices hoover up people's incomes, worse ing the COL crisis and crowding out more productive investment.

We are bad at infrastructure investing, and our infrastructure is antiquated and collapsing as a result. It costs twenty times the amount to build a tramway in the UK than it does in France. Our governments (and voters) are short-termist, investment decisions change at the last minute due to changes in the political weather, and the world and it's Aunt are allowed to object to pretty much any change and obstruct any kind of progress.

I haven't read the article yet but I bet it says at least some of this.

I mean, that's just breathtaking. The Tories were in for 14 whole long years. The economy, schools, the roads, public safety, immigration, unprecedented waiting lists for the NHS (you name it) was in a glorious shit fest spiral of decline. They even managed to actually tank the economy wiping thousands off ordinary people's pensions. And as if that wasn't enough they delivered their ultimate piece de resistance, cutting us off from our largest and most lucrative trading partners who also happened to be on our doorstep. All whilst smugly assuring us that selling cheese to Vietnam would offer a brave new world! You must be wearing some very rose tinted glasses.

Quite different.

Working and paying taxes is how society works.

Working and more and more of your income being syphoned off to billionaires so everyone's cost of living goes up and living standards go down, shrinking the middle income band so there is only low income and poorly protected low earning employment and a very very high income for those who own everything, and a small pool of super rich get richer to the sort of living standard disparity we haven't seen since the late 1800s. Farage wants unfettered early Victorian capitalism basically.

Yes, that's a very good point. It also seems that many young people don't want to do trade jobs. My friend's 41 year old son is a bricklayer and it's not uncommon for him to be the youngest brickie on the job. The others are in 0their 50s and 60s.

Another friend's husband is nearly 61 and he is still working manually in construction at the age of nearly 61. That must be really gruelling. Plus, he often has to drive quite a way to wherever he is working, so that makes it a very long day! My friend isn't in the best of health, so he often has to come home, cook dinner and help her shower etc. Personally, I don't know how he does it!

"Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"

I can't believe anyone thinks crashing house prices would be a good thing! We're still suffering from 2008!

From: https://www.newsweek.com/are-people-mississippi-really-richer-people-europe-2066233

^However, experts say these statistics may be misleading because of the extent of the government-provided social services that Europeans rely on, while Americans pay higher premiums on health care and car transportation on average.

While in America, people tend to take home more on paper, they also pay directly for health care, retirement savings and cars, which often brings along significant debt, Thompson said. That debt is likely to remain higher than Europeans on average in the coming years.

"When you factor in those real-world costs, the "disposable income" advantage all but disappears," Thompson said. "Higher disposable income doesn't feel real when your paycheck has to cover things others receive through public programs. In the U.S., much of what Europeans fund through taxes, we fund through personal debt."^

I can't read that Atlantic article, it's paywalled, but I've seen people talk about this. Personally the quality of life actually matters more to me than whether I'm earning as much as the poorest person in a poor state in another country.

The problem is trade jobs are well paid if there is a shortage as that creates demand. If all the other jobs go then everyone will want to do a trade job. Plus a lot of trade jobs are in the services sector (plumber going to someone's house for example). Service jobs need other people doing different jobs and paying for services or the system breaks down.

I don't think AI will take all the jobs. It's not a productive line of thought to say it will. But I think the bubble is doing weird things to a lot of previously in demand jobs eg in tech. So in the short term it's going to be bumpy.

I always advise young people these days to get a trade. AI is going to have a massive impact on most office type jobs, and many others too.