Britain is a poor country pretending to be rich

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'The problem is that it is not even remotely true. In fact, the opposite is the case: Britain is turning into a relatively poor country, and fast. In terms of GDP per capita, the UK is soon expected to fall behind Mississippi, traditionally the worst off state in the US. According to some projections, in less than 15 years we are even set to be overtaken by Poland, the country that used to supply us with an endless army of cheap workers.'

I don't agree with the reasons that the writer of the article gave for the current situation. But I think that it is very stark that even the Telegraph is admitting that we are a poor country. Guardian and FT have admitted that a long time ago.

Doesn’t that prove the point @frozendaisy ? The top 5% of earners and you’re living with an average house and small family car, so what is life like for the other 95%?

She did say they have a "huge travel budget", so very obviously not hard up.

It did say rapidly becoming relatively poor. Not already the poorest place.

The pension situation is a mess.

The UK has several of the top 10 universities in the world. As a country we are financially wealthy, we have a sound legal system, and plenty of opportunity for those who are committed enough to go for it

True on Uni's though that is changing, no not financially wealthy at all, seen guild yields recently getting up toward the Truss levels :( and that means much bigger govt borrowing costs, our risk of default is considered 3x higher than France.

The problem is we value finance, so yes some people can get one but work your arse off in the NHS or education and you'll get no where.

Brexit is wrecking the export economy and will ultimately lead to a smaller FS sector, a huge tax generator.

In diplomatic and soft power terms we are very strong. Militarily, we punch above our weight

Very strong? not anymore, we can't even afford to run the World Service & our military is really run down, in the strike yesterday, the army had 1200 spare soldiers to help! 1200! the infantry will soon be just 18000, a terrible decline.

Interesting thread.
My observation is in the UK the wealth is not evenly distributed and owned by a minority in London and the South East. We have no major manufacturing industry and most people are employed in the service industry or public sector on minimum/ low wages.

The infrastructure in this country has fallen apart. No trains in the North West, A&Es overflowing, shit in the rivers and seas. No money to fix any of this. This doesn't feel like a rich country at all.

Agree with this. The disparity between the south east and where I live is huge.

She may have been referring to me cos i mentioned it earlier. Anyway DH and i live in London, household income is top 5% and we don't have a car. We own a modest 2 bed flat in zone 3 north london. I am doing the sums to see whether we can afford to buy a 3 bed flat in the same area and pay for childcare at the same time and its tight. People tell me to save, save save.

I think there is a huge divide in a sense. People who don't have family help and live in expensive areas are feeling it; they do extraordinary things to balance the books i.e. getting their parents to do equity release to supplement their deposits, free childcare from parents, moving really faraway. Older people don't feel it as much due to huge house price inflation and some have good pensions. But it doesn't mean the more privileged half wouldn't feel it at some point. Even cheaper areas where it was possible in 2019 to buy a modest house on an average income are becoming more expensive relative to earnings as Londoners move there. There is a Chinese saying- zuo chi san kong- even if you had a hill to eat, it would run out at some point. Thats how i feel about the whole thing- if the whole shebang is not sustained by people's wages and productivity, then at some point the money would run out.

saying the UK is a poor country is like those on Mumsnet saying 100k+ annual salary is not relatively rich ( it might not be buy anything you want rich but compared to the rest of the population it is most definitely rich) only about 15 % of people pay higher rate tax ie earn 50K or more
it doesn't matter which way you look at it on average the UK is in the top 10-20% of the world's wealthiest countries someone earlier said it was about 22nd in terms of wealth per capita that means people in 174 countries have less and in 21 countires have more, I believe there are officially 196 countries
whether you are personally in the richest 20% of people in the country, or whether you live in a country in the top 20% calling yourself poor or your country poor is disingenuous

Does GDPR per capita make a difference?

It's also expensive to live here - so people can earn a lot of money but if it costs a fortune to buy a house, pay the bills etc, then that makes a difference.

There is also a disparity between those with wealth and those with no wealth.

But yes - there are many poor countries in the world.

I think we could do better ourselves though - but who are comparing ourselves to.

Exactly what the title of that article says, poor, pretending to be rich. its packaged nicely, so no one knows it's the eyes and the arse of the chicken in that sausage. At least in the poor countries the poster talks about, it might be organic eyes and arse 🤣

it doesn't matter which way you look at it on average the UK is in the top 10-20% of the world's wealthiest countries

No, the SE and London are, the rest of the country are on their arses.

Mr/Mrs Average in the UK has a worse standard of living than Mr/Mrs average in Germany, France, the US, Australia, Sweden etc. And of course the same is true for a person of low income in the UK compared to supposedly similar countries. Meanwhile the top 5-10% in the UK are better off than their counterparts. This is all backed up by statistics.

And the reason for that is pretty straightforward - approx 70% Tory rule since the 1950s, with the only ‘break’ in the last 40+ years being a decade of centrist Labour government.

The UK is a rich country, but the share of wealth is more skewed than most other developed economies.

Trouble is that many brits have never travelled beyond the costas or such like and hardly any of us speak another language proficiently. They don't realise how much better the quality of life is in mainland Europe and because of brexit the opportunity to move there is now massively curtailed.
I also live in the north (not one of desirable places like York or Harrogate). We visited Dps cousin in Surrey earlier in the year. Just driving around, visiting places it was nice to see things not looking decrepit and folk not so bloody ground down.

The problem is that the U.K. doesn’t generate new wealth and instead relies on rent seeking to prop up asset prices owned by the already wealthy. It’s not about the redistribution of existing wealth, it’s about creating the environment in which new wealth can be created. (which is what the article is talking about).
The planning system is the most obvious example of this. It’s next to impossible for entrepreneurs and small businesses to build anything (e.g good luck getting planning permission to build a new factory, workshop, or garage) thanks to onerous and expensive planning requirements.
New infrastructure that would improve our productive capacity is prohibitively expensive thanks to the planning system - e.g Highways England/National Highways spent £265m just preparing its planning application for the Lower Thames crossing (which may still be rejected). These high planning costs means it’s financially prohibitive to invest in, for example, regional and municipal rail networks that would help to unlock agglomeration benefits.
There are too many vested interests that seek to make it difficult to get anything built which are at the root of our poor prosperity. These vested interests are engaged in rent seeking behaviours to boost their own wealth and/or prestige and/or political power at the expense of the rest of society.
I'm looking forward to Labour's solution to this problem, I doubt they're willing to rock the boat of heavily indebted mortgage holders either, yet they can't be seen to rubber-stamp austerity quite so eagerly as Jeremy Hunt. This is going to be an interesting one to watch.

5 chickens slaughtered a day just for the feet is disgusting 🤮

Only someone who was born in the UK would describe it as poor. The poverty a lot of us have seen in our home countries is terrifying and in my humble opinion, cannot compare to anything in the UK.

i wasn't born in the UK! I don't come from a poor country but it is surrounded by a lot of poor countries and I have visited. to be fair, it wasn't that long ago that my country was 'poor', my mum shared a bed with 6 siblings and she wasn't even particularly poor by local standards.

All those comforts: electricity, clean water, consumer options, free schooling shouldn't be taken for granted. They are only a given because we currently have the money to keep it going. What happens if the government can no longer fund pensions? And your pension fund goes bust. You can no longer maintain your house and the electrics will degrade. There are already people who can't afford to run their fridge. The free schooling may become non-functional, much like the NHS. Clean water is also not a given, look at Tunbridge Wells.

Btw there are a lot of middle class people in India, not just the very poorest. I can find you some poor people in the UK who are eating cat food and prostituting themselves for £10 per hour because their Universal Credit payment was delayed. There are lots of examples of extreme poverty in the UK, you don't need to go to India to gawk at them

This sounds very much like competitive poverty mongering. I've grown up with electricity, free schooling and clean water and I'd quite like to keep them, without being guilt tripped because not everyone in the world can access them.

Poverty is subjective depending on your experiences. Let’s not try to outpoor each other 😅but the poverty some of us have witnessed is on another level to anything seen in England thank goodness .

Most other European countries also had colonies. Not as many as we did, admittedly.

If you had said that the majority of PAYE earners are as good as working class 12 years ago people would have laughed at you! I know they laughed at me. If you work for a wage you are working class. 30 years of wage stagnation and 12 years of Tory austerity and here we are.......and pooof no middle class. 14 years ago Elizabeth Warren gave a lecture about how the middle class was being hollowed out in the USA and how some families were not only not thriving on two full time wages anymore, but that it was starting to be barely enough to meet the cost of the basics.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I know plenty of people who are living comfortably in the North and plenty who are struggling in the South. Try being a teacher, nurse or police officer in London. A massive struggle unless you bought a property years ago. My brother lives comfortably as a teacher in the Midlands but he would be fucked if he lived in London or the SE. I’m 40
miles from London and his house would cost three times as much here.

I didn’t say anyone wasn’t living comfortably in the North. I’m in that situation.

But if l go to my city centre, it’s full of homeless people and empty shops. Does Surrey have the same problem?