4 ms·

Are you actually suggesting Socialism is the cause of this? Do you think Britain has been a socialist country in the last 50 years?

mikhailfranco 7y ago
When you read The Guardian, you know that every question they ask about the current ills of the world, will have the blame directed toward "Thatcher and neoliberalism", except occasionally when it is the fault of "neoliberalism and Thatcher". The Guardian has good journalism, but it is not a useful place to get interesting or insightful discussions of such topics. You are either already in the choir it is preaching to, or outside the church and completely bewildered that people can believe in such a strange world view. As to whether Britain has been socialist, my preferred measure is the fraction of govt 'control' to GDP. The 'control' means normal govt spending plus the production of nationalized (hence often also unionized) industries. Just looking at govt spending to GDP shows the chaotic socialist 1970s, the Blair-Brown escalation early this century, and the inexorable growth of welfare spending: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5326/economics/government-spending/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5326/economics/government... Any country where the govt controls ~40% of national production is certainly socialist. Obviously countries like France are much worse, where direct govt spending is >55% plus all their ownership shares in industries, including railways, utilities, banks, engineering and newspapers: https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-g...
- mikhailfranco 7y ago
  TL;DR - Government consumption crowding out private saving that would otherwise support investment and prosperity, see the last two graphs: https://mises.org/wire/malthusian-trap-keynesian-trap-british-economy-1810-2019 https://mises.org/wire/malthusian-trap-keynesian-trap-britis...

mikhailfranco 7y ago

When you read The Guardian, you know that every question they ask about the current ills of the world, will have the blame directed toward "Thatcher and neoliberalism", except occasionally when it is the fault of "neoliberalism and Thatcher". The Guardian has good journalism, but it is not a useful place to get interesting or insightful discussions of such topics. You are either already in the choir it is preaching to, or outside the church and completely bewildered that people can believe in such a strange world view. As to whether Britain has been socialist, my preferred measure is the fraction of govt 'control' to GDP. The 'control' means normal govt spending plus the production of nationalized (hence often also unionized) industries. Just looking at govt spending to GDP shows the chaotic socialist 1970s, the Blair-Brown escalation early this century, and the inexorable growth of welfare spending: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5326/economics/government-spending/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5326/economics/government... Any country where the govt controls ~40% of national production is certainly socialist. Obviously countries like France are much worse, where direct govt spending is >55% plus all their ownership shares in industries, including railways, utilities, banks, engineering and newspapers: https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-g...

mikhailfranco 7y ago
TL;DR - Government consumption crowding out private saving that would otherwise support investment and prosperity, see the last two graphs: https://mises.org/wire/malthusian-trap-keynesian-trap-british-economy-1810-2019 https://mises.org/wire/malthusian-trap-keynesian-trap-britis...