Labour utterly failed to hold anyone to account because of the problem they facilitated. They should have increased income tax for people who worked in the finance industry because the rest of the economy bailed their sorry arses out and they only have a job because of us. They had years to get things right and because they didn’t they were thrown out and rightly so. The austerity was the correct choice but brexit stopped everything going forward and you are right they failed to take advantage of low interest rates for investment in infrastructure. The problem is that Gordon Browns tax raid on the pension companies shifting a very large amount of investment away from the tax efficient uk because he hit them with a tax raid. No point in investing in uk companies if you get the same tax efficiency and better returns by investing in the USA.
Did nothing with it? Is this a joke? The interest payment on our debt was nearly 100% of GDP I.e. we've borrowed so much the debt is growing due to interest rate increases faster that we can pay it off.
@@mrscreamer379 The civil service and NHS need to be large, but there is nothing wrong with that. However, the conservatives did the opposite of what you claim.
The government put all there focus on the city and just let manufacturing fall into decline for the last 60 years. That has worked well. We are just a service economy.
@@NoOne-kx7zs A worlds issue, manufacturing in Europe (And UK) was the best in the world at one point. As wages rise bosses didn't like that so they moved it to China, now that the Chinese want more pay its moving to SEA and India, Rise and repeat. They are saving and making billions, at some point no ones going to have money to buy anything made anyhow. Its only really the Western world that buys a lot of the nonsense companies make. Bring back manufacturing, make it high quality goods, like clothing, fuck it we have a lot of sheep get the Brit sewing spirit back.
UK has not much things to sell to developing and rising economies like China or India. No much new business or industry or machines or parts, raw material, or some "toys" or "luxury" or "dream" to sell to them. To grow UK economy, make something to sell to new emerging middle class of China or India, be it car, handbag, cosmetics, or movie or anything. Ask them what they want from UK. Nothing to sell, no money to earn.
Well sell a lot to China and India, just not in the forms of physical items. We are very good at financial services, legal services and insurance etc. People moan about the City of London yet it’s our goose that lays the golden egg.
@@trent3727It used to outproduce those countries because it used to economically and militarily suppress those countries in particular . Otherwise those countries outproduce England throughout any era of history , it's just things returning to an equilibrium before the age of colonization
@@SherlockHolmesb-kp4ruSorry but you're just plain wrong. If both China and India out produced the UK, they would have had more money and therefore larger military 's than the UK. And therefore the UK would not have been able to suppress them.
We are the second largest service exporter in the world. Our authors sell world wide, our insurance and financial firms service the entire world. We just need to get out of this self depreciating doom loop.
We could start by saying that the UK made a "genius" decision to not take full advantage of the biggest market on its doorstep, because "forins are comin to my town".
I must agree. Your video is well researched, well executed and visually attractive but that background humming sound is not avant garde or clever. It just sounds like an old analogue appliance about to go bad and quit working.
The strength of the German economy does not mainly stem from the economic might of its major cities (Berlin is heavily taxpayer subsidised) or the influence of its well-known multinational corporations. Instead, it is driven by a vast network of SMEs that benefit from a highly skilled workforce, nurtured by Germany’s robust education system. Many of these SMEs are family-owned, characterized by high levels of vertical integration, and employ from a few hundred to a few thousand people. They specialize in producing high-end niche products that are in demand globally, including in China, where, crucially, they (still) cannot be cost-effectively replicated. A good start would be to revamp the higher education system so it's as accessible as it is in the EU (no tuition fees).
the rampant spread of higher education as an umbrella goal is part of the problem, people studying useless shit like gender studies instead of picking up a trade and contributing to society
The same system is integrated in a close network of similarly decentealized SME (producers, but also shippers etc.) that extends into norther Italy, Austria, Poland etc.
The key here is that the UK "could" have profited from Brexit by re-localizing and taxing the rich to pay for it. But they blew it. Instead, the Tory governments worked hard to siphon off even more public resources, both natural and manufactured. It also didn't help that London has been draining the rest of the country for decades. The Labour government is just Tory-lite so they are not likely to fix things either.
They can’t keep taxing ‘the rich’ , as they will leave. They will take their companies with them. Who are ‘the rich’ ? The royal family ? They’re rich. I can agree with you there, unfortunately that will not happen
@@adamp8765 yes and there are ways to avoid this also. People are leaving the U.K. in droves and these people are treated better in other countries. They then pay tax ( lower rates) on those countries and those countries benefit from this. Business owners employ people that pay tax, their company pays tax and this is what is happening. Labour’s No1 commitment is allegedly to increase private investment, but over- taxing will have the opposite effect. People in other countries see the wealthy as someone they aspire to be but here in the U.K. people want to tear them down and they blame them for their own and the country’s problems. Tear down the people that are contributing the most ? Not a good idea
A decision was made in the 1980s to deindustrialise and financialise our economy which favoured London and South East whilst decimating the North and Midlands. The civil service (London based) ensured the majority of investment went to London and SE. Meanwhile the education system failed to educate the population in the skills required for the new jobs created. Low skill poorly paid jobs were filled by migrants instead of investing in automation. Housing in London and S/E became too expensive to allow movement of Labour reducing social mobility, particularly for those based outside ths M25. Since 2008 we've lived off credit which is/has run out.
Housing, textiles, cars, bikes, software development these are the sectors that provide highest amount of jobs but UK does not have any of these industries Its young people can't afford homes, it imports its textiles from other parts of the world, its car industry is under foreign control, it has no it industry nothing without these industries uk has no future
Very intelligent/educated population, prestige which brings tourism and a bustiling financial sector positioned in the middle of Europe and the US. We could be good, but the out of touch private school kids in charge of our country will not loosen financial policy or put money where it’s needed, instead lining they’re mates pockets with contracts we can’t afford.
I don't agree that it can't, but I also don't think it will. Gov policy that focuses on pensions, expensive energy and mass low skilled immigration coupled with aging demographics don't bode well.
They are but it’s the super rich that you don’t tend to see or know about. Rich people are leaving and not investing in the U.K.. they are needed to invest in the economy and business.
@@chrissmith3587 ‘ the rich’ what rich are they? Do you mean Lloyds Bank that stated it wanted to be the largest landlord holding in the U.K.? Yes, good luck to tenants with a bank as your landlord 😄
I pray that UK's middle class and good folks find a better alternate for their livelihood. They are not responsible for all this madness their elites have imposed on them.
The weather is shit most of the year and it’s not worth staying here with low vitamin d while not being able to afford a holiday to Spain, Goa or Thailand
As an American, what is this...holiday...you speak of? I've worked for 28 years - never had one. 2008 and then the pandemic left me with nothing. I'll never get one.
@@Mix1mum we get 25 days a year excluding bank holidays here in the UK for vacation. Its a cultural thing, we’ve been travelling the world since the 1500s
@@AMen-yw9cr It's not really a cultural thing. Industrial action during the 1900's won workers a great deal of the employment rights that we enjoy today, including statutory holiday entitlement. The average Briton largely did not travel abroad between the the 1500's and the 1990's and holiday/vacations were overwhelmingly domestic. "Travelling the world" was done mostly by the armed forces of the British Empire for the purpose of empire, slavery and subjugation. Since their decline in the 1980's under Thatcherism, we Britons woefully underestimate the role that industrial action and trade unions have played in fighting for the comparatively comfortable lives we live today.
English weather is one of the few things I like about this country. I'd hate to live somewhere that is hot all the time, couple of months a year of hot sun is plenty for me.
Nothing wrong with the size of the UK economy, its plenty big enough, it doesn't need growth it needs a different shape and better priority's. At this rate no matter how "productive" people are, their basic needs, work options and quality of life of most will continue to be squeezed until people stop playing this silly game most of us didn't ask to be playing.
You don't seem to understand. Your standard of living is declining because your population is growing from immigration yet the overall economy is not growing and even declining. The UK doesn't import productive workers, it imports welfare recipients.
@@pringle239 Convenient term to throw around is "real terms" but what do you think you actually mean? What "shrinks?" Perhaps your confusing the "size" of the economy with something like "inflation," which has to do with the supply of money in circulation relative to the "size" of the economy? Elaborate.
@@pringle239 So your indeed conflating inflation with the size of the economy. There's no need to inflate the money supply, nor is there necessarily a need not to. Depends where currency is issued too and where it's taxed from at what rates, both political choices that don't necessarily affect the size of the economy either way.
It's measured in current USD. The world bank adjusts for the change in the value of the USD when publishing GDP data for different countries. Interestingly, if you look at CVM SA GDP data (which is one way of accounting for inflation for the pound), then the economy has grown 1.43% since Q4 of 2007 compared to Q1 of 2024. That's over the entire time period and not an annual rate, so pretty awful.
I totally get the point about uk previously being an export hub. We dont make anything to sell any more because manufacturing anything other than niche specialist items is uneconomic because of salary expectations. The UK economy has been stuck in a 'maintenance mode' for at least the timeframe you mention. Whats making matters worse if the needless handing of major contracts to foreign co's eg EDF building the Hinkley Nuclear plant, and selling us electricity for a profit which goes to France. In the US namely silicon valley there are VC's desperate to invest in new starts, while in the UK new start tech co's get the cold shoulder from banks and end up having to list on the dodgy AIM market for funds. When anyone does get a successful co going it just gets sold off to foreign investers or predatory US corporations. These problems all go back to Thatcherism where she truly believed we would ONLY need the financial services sector, UK would become like Switzerland ! It has taken about 40 years to get here but now the issues are accelerating and its unlikely Labour will make it anything but worse.
Recessions liquidate bad investments and recapitalise the system by diverting remaining capital into more profitable investments. If you don’t allow the economy to deflate, you just end up with a zombie economy where everyone is indebted. Central banks did rounds of QE and re-inflated the GFC bubbles, so not a surprise that productivity remains low.
Yes, I think this is the main problem. Not much will change until there is a real deflationary depression, as then people will actually have a better idea of the finanicialized or subsidized deadweight holding the economy down.
We don't need growth. The benchmark should be how well an average person lives. One thing that will definitely happen is mass collapse of pension systems.
The government itself can do the investing, which for some reason you think isn't possible, despite it being done many times throughout history by all sorts of countries, including the UK itself. Unfortunately, we have a neoliberal chancellor who seems to share your opinion that the government's hands are fiscally tied and we just have to throw up our hands in despair and hope for the best. There wasn't much or any mention of inequality, which is associated with poor productivity. Our infrastructure projects are relatively very costly. This is only a speculation, but I suspect it's because the UK is actually very corrupt, and our governments have been happy to give out excessively lucrative contracts to companies whose chairmen are party donors.
Traditionally liberal economies such as the UK and the US have a strenghts that eventually become a weakness. And that is flexibility. The UK dismantled the industry, leaving thousands of unemployed in order to transition to a service-based economy. They did the same in the industrial revolution dismantling the peasantry in order to industrialize. This allowed a rapid change but at the expense of economic decline in the long run. Other countries like Germany value continuity (it is in their DNA), and with that they preserved their industry to some extent
GDP per person is not a measure of how efficiently we work. It's more a measure of how much is paid for the work we produce. Other factors affect the price paid for our work.
@@موسى_7 Thank you for that information, but it is still the case that it is the money paid for our output that is measured by GDP, not the amount of goods and services we produce.
The US has private equity, FDI but low public investment. The UK has little private equity and falling FDI and similar poor public investment. To vote for Brexit in the aftermath of 2007 was the coup de grace. The UK will remain in limbo until investment changes and an industrial policy, with investment, starts to yield results. The UK mindset is so againt taxes and so for short termism, it's hard to see how the UK avoids stagnation and decline
Secondary cities are doing bad because no HS2. England should have built every HS plan they had (1-4) and then created more HS projects and built them. Then connected to Ireland and N. Ireland by HS rail tunnels.... Then create laws that make it better to invest out of London for housing so those cities grow, because with HSR citizens could work far from home, and travel to lesser populated places to spend money.
Britain has imported the third world. British productivity is regressing toward a mean that reflects its modern population. Everything seems to be working out the way you would expect it to. The investment issue is a chicken and egg problem. Investors don't invest in populations with declining productivity.
If Brexit was such a critical factor in cutting investment, why was productivity levelling off from 2008? Do you think steering clear of the Belt and Road Initiative was actually bad move? Has any nation involved in that, including China, seen anything but corruption and disaster?
I think Brexit is a factor but it's one among several. The productivity starts to level off in 2008 because that's the global financial crisis and a lot of people lost their jobs (which will lower average output). We never really recovered from that, Brexit along with Austerity, COVID lockdowns, and low private sector investment all played a role in that. BRI isn't cure-all either but it would have been a source of foreign investment. Our relationship with the US limits how much we can look to China as a source of investment.
@EconSupport any investment from China carries with it political baggage and the liklihood of even more technology theft. I'd rather be a few percent poorer than be under the thumb of China's dictator.
Interesting video. Incidentally,the UK stagnant productivity growth stems from the hydrocarbon energy resources to return in investment. For example, little to no wage increases and inadequate investment are merely symptoms of an inevitable exorable decline in EROI Energy returns on investment from hydrocarbons towards economic expansion. Lastly, there is a divide towards more niche, specialised higher paid services as the world's second largest services exports now drive the UK economy growth in 2024.
Finally! I've watched any number of these 'Why is Britain Failing?' videos and you are the first to mention CITIES! 'Britain's feeble cities' should be the subject your next video. Investment in Britain is doubly discouraged - short-term, by mispricing; long-term, by adverse feedback. The root cause both is that the UK has a national currency, the pound. Mispricing: The composite valuation of the pound, with London lumped in with the rest of the country causes everything imported or exported to be mispriced. Imports from abroad to the North, Birmingham, for example are made cheaper than they would be otherwise,, whilst exports are made dearer. This puts the North at a persistent competitive disadvantage, thus discouraging investment. Londoners, on the other hand, deprived of the benefits of a stronger currency, are poorer. For them, imports are more expensive than they should be, whilst exports bring in less foreign exchange. Adverse feedback is the long-term cause of Britain's feeble cities. The UK chose to stay out of the Euro precisely because the government - correctly - recognized that the British economy is not fully synchronized with that of Europe (really, Germany), whilst retaining a national currency, incorrectly assuming that there is a fully synchronized NATIONAL economy. It is no accident, therefore, that the UK mirrors the dysfunction of the Euro-zone, that Newcastle mirrors Greece, and London mirrors Germany. They reflect the same dynamic. That dynamic was described by Jane Jacobs, the author of 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities,' in her book 'Cities and the Wealth of Nations.' Her points were, first, that city economies are not interchangeable. Rather, city economies are interconnected but competitive. Britain, for example, is composed of a collection of city-economies subject, of course, to national guide-lines, but each developing along its own path. National economic growth is better thought of as the sum of the growth of individual cities. Glasgow is not interchangeable with Birmingham. Second, that cities grow by going through cycles of 'explosive growth' followed by quiescence. These growth spurts start with the replacing of city-imports by products and services produced in-city, which process frees up funds to import new items, which are in turn adapted, produced in-city and exported, the proceeds from which are in turn used to pay for still newer imports and more adaptations, continuing the cycle until all possibilities are exhausted. An example is Manchester, which learned how to produce its own spun cotton goods in place of those formerly imported from Bengal. Third, cities' economies naturally decline, as other cities learn how to produce the same goods and services for themselves. See the spread of Cotton-textile production from Manchester to cities in New England, then to cities in the South, and so on. Fourth, cities require monetary feedback in accord with their stage of growth, just as athletes require a supply of oxygen in accord with their level of activity. Growing cities need a high-valued currency to pay off the costs of innovation and to be able to afford the imports they will go on to adapt and replace. Stagnating cities need low-valued currencies to discourage foreign imports and to encourage in-city production. Fifth, NATIONAL currencies, like the pound - much less international currencies like the euro - do not and cannot provide proper feedback. The reason is that city growth cycles are not synchronized. Each city follows its own distinct trajectory. While one is growing explosively, another is quiescent. Moreover, some cities only ever go though one cycle of explosive growth. Others, like London, experience repeated cycles. We owe Shakespeare and the rest of the 'Elizabethan Ecstasy' to one of London's first explosive growth cycles. National monetary policies will therefore consistently favor the likes of London and retard cities like Newcastle (equally, the policies of the European Central Bank will always favor Germany and retard Greece, Portugal, etc.) Conclusion, per Jane Jacobs, if the UK wants increased investment, London should have.a separate currency. Lacking this, incorrect pricing will discourage investment, resulting in continued stagnation in t'North, persistent political instability, unintegrated immigrants, etc., etc. P.S. How about the US? The exception proves the rule. The US economy is huge and the absolute value of its international trade is correspondingly large. However, as a *proportion* of the total, international trade is much smaller for the US (27%) than for the UK(69%). Thus the value of the dollar vis-a-vis other currencies plays a correspondingly smaller - though not negligible - role in US local economies.
A separate currency within the nation. Sounds ridiculous, but I don't know why it does. Nobody has come up with this other than Jane Jacobs. Not surprised, because if I remember correctly, Jabe Jacobs is an urban planner who talks about car infestation and the lack of walkability and public transportation. She isn't a financial economist. But she makes a powerful argument which I don't want to ignore.
Because they have become extremely influential in British politics (e.g. Lord Lebedev), own a great deal of assets in the UK, and have affiliations to the Russian state. They feasibly represent a threat to (what remains of) the British democratic* system as foreign influence.
On a per capita basis it's shrinking. I think you miss the concept of growth. A big portion of growth is renewal of things that are worn out and failing. Time to reassess your simplistic misconception of growth.
Public/private investment is a waste of money until planning regulations are overhauled. *It will involved some amount of cruelty.* A farmer losing his land, a pensioner being forced out of their home. It won't be pleasant but is has become necessary. Needs of the many.
You make some great point but do not considere the effects of unskilled migration. If you import workers that earn less than the GDP per capita then is it a suprise that the GDP per captica would decrease?
Hi, economist here It is likely that British GDP and productivity will begin to grow by next year as a constant "Why hasnt it grown since 2008?" Good question, the answer is britain has been extremely unfortunate Economics requires something called economic certainty to allow for investment, in 2010 the UK had a coalition and 2008 was only 2 years ago so productivity and gdp basically stalled for 5 years, THEN david cameron mentioned he would begin a brexit vote, which meant that britain was difficult to invest up until 2020, which uh.... you know what happened then of course ukraine So basically these are what you need for productivity and gdp growth to happen: - A governmental majority and unity - Clarity on policy - somewhat stable state With these met you will obtain the growth you need and FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ABOUT 16 YEARS we have
Growth is very modest. I’m not an economist but a manufacturer and can report lots of companies closing, friends and colleagues, customers and suppliers giving up, moving abroad or retiring early. There’s a lack of investment in infrastructure, too much bureaucracy and regulation, too high taxes and little to no incentive to invest
The problems of Britain are much more foundational. A few modest years of growth in an overall pattern of decline will not change anything. Modern Britons are not comparable to the Britons that built the country. Britain is a different country with different religion and culture to the one that led the world.
If you’ve ever been in a customer facing role in the UK, you understand why productivity is low. I promise you, organisations and companies want to be productive, but the culture of the country is to punish those who do well.
Agree. There’s more incentive to operate a subsidiary’ in the U.K. if needed to sell there and have the base in say Dubai. Or just manufacture abroad. Taxes are too high now with warnings they will increase. So what’s the point?
#1 issue is our self-imposed ability to build housing, infrastructure and production of electricity remains at 1980s levels. Low investment and productivity are subsequent impacts of refusing to meet our core economic needs and value for debate / 10,000 page dossiers. It's expensive, time-consuming and therefore a risky investment to build in the UK with many chances projects are refused planning. Decentralise planning, provide councils with tax incentives to approve projects and apply Agglomeration - Britain can grow and catch up with the world but, it's near on impossible to produce anything here nowadays!
GDP per Capita reflects a stagnant economy where economic growth has been outpaced by inflation and population growth concurrently - these core effects are deep rooted in limiting our ability to build! Considering the Empire was reliant on free exports to London and we outsourced / privatised our very own to foreign countries - it becomes all the more bizarre and systemically broken. It does appear Britain is shifting to the new 'Green Economy' (scary).
You can improve UKs efficiency easily, plenty of companies talk about it but the minute you talk concrete actions you are met with, no budget, no money. That and businesses being sold off to America doesn't help.
There’s no incentive to not sell. No incentive to keep going when it’s so difficult. Too much tax, too little incentive, too many regulations. Other countries don’t have these problems, so it’s easier and more profitable. Goodbye U.K.
@@bonditltd5346 Couldn't agree more, there is next to no regulations in my wife's country and the rich are multi billionaires many times over. But the poor are in a really bad way, trying to survive on less than 100 dollars a month
@@larkop6504 I think that’s too far the other other way. Bulgaria has a flat income tax for all at 10% and I think that’s fair. Having excessive tax or tax too low or lack of regulations will hurt the country and population.
@@bonditltd5346 I understand your point as it's logical and is the best of both world's. The country I'm talking about is booming and will be top 5 countries in the world within a decade so they are doing something right. I wouldn't mind 10% income tax but in the UK we have a myriad of taxes, tariffs, duties, levies etc on almost everything required to live. It's so bad my sister is preventing suicides on a daily basis in the UK, it's disgusting because of the greed of the few.
@@larkop6504 which country is the one booming that will be in the top 5? Yes, people in the U.K. are desperate and most can’t leave - they don’t have the option. There is a fall guy - blame it on the rich, the previous Gov etc. I have to say, it’s not a good start. It’s more like a dystopian forecast like ‘1984’ . Not good
Now I’m really cheerful! Stimulating building and infrastructure plus some sort of mitigation fur Brexit such as joining the common market or customs union seem like a sensible first step. Tech sector could be incentivised to set up and invest more outside London, Green tech was also a great promise. I should also look at renewing my Australia passport too.
No reasons given for de-indutrialisation, how about exorbitant power costs, and as you say lack of investment infrastructure, no new prisons, no new reservoirs despite increasing populations. Pass planning law that allows construction/installation of SMRs on the site of any previous power station.
Globalisation was the reason to de industrialise. Lack of competitive companies when they are subsidised abroad eg China. Containers, pallets, container ports and ships all played a role as well.
The price of climate religion is that you can never have cheap energy. Without cheap energy, you can never be a world player. Climate religion is a modern British value instilled in the population by modern pop culture catechism. It will take generations for any real change to happen.
@@marcv2648 yes, in the meantime, the main CO2 contributors are cashing in by ignoring it. We’re only wrecking our economy by forcing climate change so quickly imo, whilst other countries take full advantage. America with its abundance of natural gas and oil will likely prosper more.
At the start of the video, but my guess is that the answer is that our industries are all sold to foreign nations and companies that are more interested in stripping wealth than maximising potential, - with more and more spent on housing and utilities than on products and services. No?
Normally a country makes it's self far better off by finding a large market to export the things they make. The UK doesn't have things they make to export. That's probably going to be a huge part of the problem. In order to bring in value one has to make and deliver value. Services just aren't enough. After a while, an economy that relies too much on services, ends up being entities simply trying to peel more and more off the top as a pernicious way to expand their income because as you said, in those sectors you really can't get more productive, so you have to get creative. The balance between services and manufacturing is just that, a balance. The UK seems like it mostly only has half that equation and maybe it's time to grow that area to restore some sense of balance.
I always think that there's so many unemployed people in English seaside towns, just a few industrial estates and a few new docks could make a huge difference
Isn't quoting in USD distorting things a bit? If the UKP devalues relative to the USD, doesn't that make things look worse than they are? I'm not suggesting that the UKP devaluing against the USD is a good thing, but surely the devaluation is separate from GDP?
There’s the problem of Goodhart's law, that once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure. Politicians try to game it. When Tony Blair was PM, the government started including the profits of drug dealers and prostitutes in the GDP figures, just to make them look better. I think GDP per capita (PPP) is the most useful economic measure right now.
@@georgesdelatour No, HDI is a better measure of economic development, while GDP is a good measure of the economic weight a nation has to throw around, and per capita is for measuring if the nation is wasting potential economic weight
Hey! Not a dumb question. The World Bank publishes its GDP figures for this year and previous years using the current value of the USD. Those figures are updated each year to account for inflation in both the USD and the pound. Basically, they're factoring inflation in so that you can easily compare real economic output across different years.
There was a sizeable entrepreneurship sector in Britain but this got hit by Brexit, effectively reducing its potential market by 90%. Coupled that with the mentality of “what is your exit-strategy?” by which innovative companies are sold to private equity firms or big American corporations which milk them to death and you have a recipe for perpetual decline. The incentives are too high not to sell to the highest bidder and actually this is often encourage by the State. Deep Mind which is owned by Alphabet is a perfect example. Started here by British nationals with British ingenuity is now completely diluted in the guts of that monster called Alphabet. Decisions are made in California, thousands of miles away. How is that taking back control? The worst aspect of this is that certain political parties prone to libertarianism bs will see this as a success story. This will be unthinkable in France where key companies and sectors are protected. Productivity can only increase with the right investment. It’s not about capital only but where it’s invested. Conglomerates only see the bottom line often at the expense of their golden gooses. Britain has been in this cycle for nearly 50 years now. The model is clearly broken and there is no money to revamp it
@@anab0lic The American economy is outperforming everyone else right now and the US dominates in the tech industry. Only its global influence is diminishing, but nothing consequential.
Hey! Not quite, World Bank GDP data factors in inflation - all of the years are measured in current USD, so the figures account for changes in the value of the pound and of the dollar. Since 2007, the UK economy has grown by around 1.4% in total (not per year).
It’s all about investment - government tax receipts aren’t high enough and no one is prepared to take a risk on the UK. So we have loads of uber drivers doing low productivity work, and not enough FTSE100 companies
*GDP is Grossly Distorted Propaganda* Is there something about Capitalism that precludes mandatory accounting/finance in high schools? Is the miseducational system just designed to produce brainwashed workers? Marx mentioned 'depreciation' 35 times in the first two volumes of his major work. Adam Smith died in 1790 and Marx in 1883. Neither of them ever saw planned obsolescence that started in the 1920s. Where is the data on the annual depreciation of automobiles purchased by consumers since Sputnik? If everything we buy is designed to depreciate it is just an endless treadmill with television producing mindless suckers.
Unhealthy people are an economic drain. Britain's food pyramid modeling diet advice being to blame focusing on carbohydrate consumption of low quality, but cheap foods.That and an obsession on covering backsides on form filling safety exercise's making worksite production inefficient, and uncompetitive if it's anything like NZ.
Britain should accept it is not a world power and should sell colonies like Gibraltar and the Falklands and even leave the Cyprus military bases. In this way Britain could drastically reduce its military budget while keeping the nuclear deterrent. Then it should look to cut expenses and have a surplus budget for years to come. It should invest its surplus in start up companies based in the UK especially in new technologies. In this way it could grow its economy based on new technology from which the government will earn each year not only taxes but also part of the profits which it will reinvest renewing the cycle. Britain should also avoid vanity projects and big infrastructural projects that cost billions which usually end up being too costly, take a lot of time to build, include various change of plans and cause scandal and controversies.
Great video btw. I'm wary of totally economic explanations for reasons Rory Sutherland recently articulated in a good video tackling the same topic. Yes investment is missing. There's a broader cultural "imagination stagnation" that causes people to be utterly jaded about the magic available to us through the simple compounding effects of growth, and through adopting cultural values closer to the Americans (i.e. not stewing in envy over other people's success). It may run through every part of society, from the school system where people's natural creativity and industrious energy is suppressed, to of course the legal structures that constrain growth by forcing its bureaucratic apparatus onto everything that it can control (in lieu of the hard and scary tasks of actually policing the 1% of society that needs it, because they actively cannibalize the commons).
Several problems with this video. Build build build simply can't go on forever. There's a point at which we have enough infrastructure. The British value their dwindling natural and agricultural environments. We must find a way to drive prosperity without endless growth. Since the UK is the oldest and therefore most developed economy, every other economy will eventually run up against these buffers.
No Growth? At least that is sustainable, now we need to learn how to manage a no growth economy and teach the rest of the world to do the same before it is too late.
Simple matter of fact is if we can’t build HS2 we are not a modern country. It should be a point of national shame that the country that invented the railway can’t build a high speed one
Too many liabilities and not enough assets. The government can fix this but they are driving assets away and encouraging more liabilities to enter the country. Energy needs to be cheaper
Does anyone stop to consider that growth is not the ideal metric anyway……why not focus on health and contentment……reducing life’s goals to achieving an economic advance is pretty short sited.
A very negative analysis that is not in line with EY’s analysis and forecasts ! “The UK remains second in EY’s annual ranking of European countries by their ability to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects and was the only country in the top three to see project numbers increase year-on-year. France ranked first in Europe for the fifth consecutive year, while Germany followed in third place, according to the EY 2024 UK Attractiveness Survey. “
The reason for this is that people realise were just working slaves. Ill put it simply. I have worked for 23 years since leaving school, worked my way up through construction with no recognition for discussing being paid any more. Add to that the rising cost of everything and you soon lose that "productivity" Theres no incentive when the rich dont want to pay fairly for your productivity.
The UK has grown more than Germany since 2008. Sounds like we need to increase investment, funded by cuts in the (bloated and inefficient) welfare state. I would also suggest corruption probes into the mismanagement of our major recent infrastructure programmes.
The answer is that since Tony Blair this country simply has not had one single competent leader but no one wants to admit it just because of the Iraq war its time to move on from that decision and admit we need a New Labour style of government back in power not these incompetent fools on both sides.....
