"How the UK became one of the poorest countries in Europe"

[user1471452428]

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/uk-economy-disaster-degrowth-brexit/671847/

Article in The Atlantic. When people post about declining living standards, they're often shouted down- but I think it's pretty clear that it is real and here to stay.

The Irish won't back down on the corporate tax rate.

We’ve discussed Ireland but the thing is, I look around the Uk and can’t see anyone thriving.

Germany is very pessimistic about their own economy (mini jobs, energy supply). France is hardly an example of dynamism, same goes for Italy. Sweden is dealing with its own social problems.

Maybe Denmark? Portugal?

I’m not familiar with Eastern Europe. Hungary and Poland have had high GDP growth in recent years. Also the Baltic estates.

Norway has oil and gas and getting richer thanks to rising gas prices but that’s very specific to them obvs.

ISTM that the UK has really been lagging since the GFC. Not that I'm suggesting that Brexit isn't a massive issue but the UK was massively exposed to the GFC and left it carrying a lot more debt, something that was a contributing factor to Truss's big mess.

What does ISTM mean?

Nowhere is really booming now. The UK is overexposed though.

ISTM= it seems to me

Ah, ok.

Britain has never joined the EURO.
Britain has had idiot after idiot in government.
Britain has most of their eggs in one basket.
Britain isn't really capable of being humble. They're the last of the big spenders.
A lot of the money in Britain isn't held by British people if you get me?

It's hard to know why they have lagged behind.

A fucked up NHS system doesn't help. That's a massive drain.
The other expenditure that never gets questioned is Defence.

Technically, we should be doing better.

I am really fascinated to know what exactly (and for whom) we spend so much on Defence. How much? On what?
Because I think the answer to that question might reveal a lot.

The NHS is an utter shambles. They need to invest in primary care rather than acute care.

Defence? Is that classified?

Not a fan of googling, but this graph is interesting.

www.statista.com/statistics/298490/defense-spending-united-kingdom-uk/

So about £42 billion on defence per annum.

Then another 153 billion on the NHS

www.england.nhs.uk/publications/business-plan/our-2022-23-business-plan/our-funding/#:~:text=The%20central%20administration%20budget%20for,envelope%20of%20%C2%A32.5%20billion.

We're not really bringing in the kind of money. There is a massive population in the UK for the size of it but I dunno. I'm never going to make the sums add up.

*the kind of money we need

While people earn money here, they don't necessarily spend it here. Does that make sense?

Whole per head our GDP may be ok, it is not actually distributed that way.

Things have gone wrong since the late 1970s. A big part of that is the deregulation of banking meaning wealth has exploded in a minority of the population. Incentives to invest in manufacturing and innovation are not there as money is to be made in financial services.

Money is made by making up dubious lending schemes at the expense of investment and public services.

Look at the NHS as an example. The NHS is spending billions servicing PFIs. Invented by the Tories, exploited by New Labour. People are decried as “socialist” for wanting a more simple funding model.

The same in the railways. They’ve created bizarre funding models where millions (perhaps billions) is borrowed to fund train stock. So millions of pounds in interest is drained out to the private sector.

Local authorities are falling victim to similar schemes as their traditional funding is cut.

So the government will say “we are investing in the public sector” and we don’t see the results because it’s being paid out again in interest.

That is the problem with our economy. It has been mortgaged to the hilt. There’s no money left to pay decent wages as we owe the bankers too much.

This is actually the scariest pie chart I've seen.

www.statista.com/statistics/298524/government-spending-in-the-uk/

WHAT? Who is getting that money? I'm referring to the biggest slice of pie!

Who the fuck is getting that money and how? I fancy a bit of that pie.

And I will add, taxing is only part of our way out of this. The government has to massive regulate the financial services sector again and put back credit controls.

It won’t happen though because our PM and his advisors come from the very sector which will stand to lose if they do.

There’s a reason why investment bankers/hedge fund owners etc either go into politics or lobby politicians - because they don’t want the status quo to change. And why would they? They’ve made a killing and when they last broke things in 208, they got a $trillion support package to carry on as they were.

Social protection = biggest chunk is pensioners

Health = a big chunk with be paying for PFI

We have 66 million people in the country. Of course the numbers are big.

What do you mean, scary?

Are you referring to social protection - it says above what it’s spent on. What were you expecting wrt those costs?

The funny thing is, is that what we apparently spend our money on, makes no sense - it just doesn't look real?

We've a low rate of unemployment, so how the actual fuck, is over a quarter of all UK spending deemed to be on Social Protection? That doesn't add up! It's not like you've people raking in hundreds a week?

I don't buy a lot of this shit.

Yes, that's the slice I'm referring to! There is NO FUCKING WAY that that figure can be accurate?

Article on PFI costs <www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr#:~:text=The%20NHS%20has%20so%20far,taken%2C%20according%20to%20the%20report. here>

it should be an outrage.

They don't spend much of their billions here though.

Why not? Pensions are included. And benefits

But you can see why the government face the issues they currently are wrt inflation matching rises. The expenditure is high and takes up a lot of tax payer money.

40% of it is on pensions

4/10 people on universal credit are already working but are underpaid.

It makes sense to me. What do you expect in a low wage economy? Where workers protections have been stripped and pensions gouged?

Why isn’t it? Seems odd that it’s not talked about much.