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When British people go to other countries that got wrecked in the war, like Japan or Germany, they will sometimes look around them and comment "How did they do
by kochikame 8y ago
When British people go to other countries that got wrecked in the war, like Japan or Germany, they will sometimes look around them and comment "How did they do it? How did they build and keep all this manufacturing capacity? Why do they have this awesome infrastructure that we don't? What did they do differently?"
For Germany, this article provides the answer. For Japan, it's a little different, of course, but the principle of judiciously using post-war investment holds for Japan too.
This should be more common knowledge and hopefully it will stop the rumors like "Germany was flattened so they could start from a blank slate". This obviously holds no water as this advantage would have been entirely eroded within 10-20 years as new technologies came in anyway.
The UK squandered Marshall Aid. The UK squandered North Sea oil revenue. The UK ripped up and threw away an advantageous membership of the world's largest free trade bloc.
The UK has an unenviable track record in this area.
- sgt101 8y agoWell, causality is hard to establish here. Note, post north sea oil the UK had an economic boom that saw it move ahead of both Italy and France on many measures. The UK did not use Marshall aid for industrial investment, but it did build a welfare state, and did eventually pay off its debts of 200% gdp.
- kochikame 8y agoI do agree to some extent, but when you look at the sovereign wealth fund that Norway has that still generates huge amounts of revenue and then look at what the UK has left... it does seem like the word "squander" is appropriate.
- sgt101 8y agoWell - currently the UK has the City of London, which makes much more money than the Norwegian fund. Now, you could argue that The City will be swept away by global forces and brexit - this is possible, and you could argue that The City was here before north sea oil, and you would have a point. On the other hand I would say that the flood of money through London from north sea oil played a significant role in providing capital for speculation and investment and without that The City might have lost out to Paris or Frankfurt in the 1980's and 90's.
- ionised 8y ago> Well - currently the UK has the City of London As a UK citizen I'm not sure that's such a good thing for the average Brit.
- newsgremlin 8y agoDoesn't have to be, people just want numbers on the paper showing how great everything is, until you move further north / west of the city to see the reality of the other 90%
- sgt101 8y agoYup, agree. I think we need the long term view to decide, and I think that we need a big range of perspectives to decide. Unfortunately the people who get the money from it tend to have the loudest voice. Even quite a lot of those might reflect that their lives would be better spent doing other things than standing on the tube or arguing about spreadsheets.
- kochikame 8y agoYOou could have the City AND a sovereign wealth fund. It's not like they are mutually exclusive choices. The rise of the City was more to do with loosened regulations, privatization and the leveraging of historical factors like trade links and banking presence globally than anything else AFAIK
- growlist 8y agoA fund generated via sale of a commodity the use of which according to consensus will bring about global catastrophe.