5 ms·

don't forget the 700 billion on lockdowns and the rona.

by thedrbrian 4y ago

seventytwo 4y ago
This is nothing compared to Brexit, and didn’t hit the UK uniquely.
atoav 4y ago
Yeah, had that one too in Germany.
rhaway84773 4y ago
The UK didn’t lockdown as much or spend as much as neighbors on COVID. In fact, they were famously late to locking down with Boris Johnson opting for a “let her rip” strategy until much later. And its continental neighbors are way more exposed to Russian gas than the UK is. And yet the UK is doing significantly worse than its European neighbors. It’s the only major European country whose economy has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. What the UK is facing right now is uniquely UK. The most likely culprit is Brexit. The other possible culprit could simply be the absolutely corrupt and unstable governments it has had over the past couple of years. We know, for example, that Liz Truss’s month or so in charge cost the UK at least 50 billion dollars simply through immediate effects of the terribly I’ll-advised mini budget.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  "the UK is doing significantly worse than its European neighbors" No it isn't. This impression is created by the long stream of headlines posted here from the pro-EU part of the UK press (the pro-Brexit outlets tend to get systematically flagged), but it isn't actually true. UK performance last quarter: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua... "The British economy expanded 2.4% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022, the lowest reading since the contraction in Q1 2021, but slightly above market expectations of 2.1%, preliminary estimates showed. Household spending slowed sharply (0.8% vs 4.3% in Q2), business investment rose less (3.5% vs 5.2%) and government expenditure stalled. Meanwhile, exports jumped 18% and imports increased at a slower 7.2%" Growth is normal-ish for this sort of west European economy, though below the USA, both imports and exports are up but exports are up more. How about Germany, historically considered an economic power? https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth-annual "The German economy expanded 1.3% year-on-year in Q3 2022, slightly better than a 1.2% rise in the preliminary estimate, and following a downwardly revised 1.6% growth in Q2. It is the smallest annual growth rate in three quarters" Oh. Significantly lower growth than the UK. Just a few days ago a very similar story was posted to HN about food price inflation, and once again all the top voted comments immediately blamed Brexit and claimed the UK is in unusually dire straits, even though inflation in the UK is no different to other similar countries in western Europe. Many posts made extremely strong factual claims about the supposedly terrible performance of the UK that were just made up and when this was pointed out people started retreating to positions like "there must be something worse and it'll definitely be because of Brexit". I spent some time on that thread pointing out false claims, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33682546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33682546 One of the comments in that thread asks, "Is the OBR's own analysis of Brexit evidence enough for you?". Their cited OBR report didn't contain any analysis - just an assumption that Brexit would reduce trade intensity by 15%. No working or sources were given for that number, it was just made up. This is typical for the topic. EU-related economics is just a large pile of confirmation bias. Now take this story. It's paywalled so most people are going to be riffing on the headline. The headline is phrased as fact but it's actually just reporting on a prediction - economic modelling - once again from the OBR. This is presented as if it's unquestionable, but it's actually very questionable. The FT reports it because it's an extremely pro-EU biased outlet so it's telling their readers what they want to hear (the FT offices were literally flying the EU flag in the past, maybe still do). Governments in general have a poor track record of economic prediction, and the UK civil service and OBR specifically have made unusually poor economic predictions for anything related to Brexit. It's not a neutral collection of dispassionate experts by any means. They keep being proven wrong by events, like when they said half million job losses would occur immediately after the referendum if Leave won, yet they don't engage in any kind of public post-mortem or learning processes. Nor, sadly, do too many HN commenters. If you're reading about the UK economy on HN at the moment then lots of the comments will be factually wrong. There are many people who are ideologically committed to EU rule, and that colors their perceptions of everything.

don't forget the 700 billion on lockdowns and the rona.

seventytwo 4y ago

This is nothing compared to Brexit, and didn’t hit the UK uniquely.

atoav 4y ago

Yeah, had that one too in Germany.

rhaway84773 4y ago

The UK didn’t lockdown as much or spend as much as neighbors on COVID. In fact, they were famously late to locking down with Boris Johnson opting for a “let her rip” strategy until much later. And its continental neighbors are way more exposed to Russian gas than the UK is. And yet the UK is doing significantly worse than its European neighbors. It’s the only major European country whose economy has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. What the UK is facing right now is uniquely UK. The most likely culprit is Brexit. The other possible culprit could simply be the absolutely corrupt and unstable governments it has had over the past couple of years. We know, for example, that Liz Truss’s month or so in charge cost the UK at least 50 billion dollars simply through immediate effects of the terribly I’ll-advised mini budget.

mike_hearn 4y ago
"the UK is doing significantly worse than its European neighbors" No it isn't. This impression is created by the long stream of headlines posted here from the pro-EU part of the UK press (the pro-Brexit outlets tend to get systematically flagged), but it isn't actually true. UK performance last quarter: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua... "The British economy expanded 2.4% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022, the lowest reading since the contraction in Q1 2021, but slightly above market expectations of 2.1%, preliminary estimates showed. Household spending slowed sharply (0.8% vs 4.3% in Q2), business investment rose less (3.5% vs 5.2%) and government expenditure stalled. Meanwhile, exports jumped 18% and imports increased at a slower 7.2%" Growth is normal-ish for this sort of west European economy, though below the USA, both imports and exports are up but exports are up more. How about Germany, historically considered an economic power? https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth-annual "The German economy expanded 1.3% year-on-year in Q3 2022, slightly better than a 1.2% rise in the preliminary estimate, and following a downwardly revised 1.6% growth in Q2. It is the smallest annual growth rate in three quarters" Oh. Significantly lower growth than the UK. Just a few days ago a very similar story was posted to HN about food price inflation, and once again all the top voted comments immediately blamed Brexit and claimed the UK is in unusually dire straits, even though inflation in the UK is no different to other similar countries in western Europe. Many posts made extremely strong factual claims about the supposedly terrible performance of the UK that were just made up and when this was pointed out people started retreating to positions like "there must be something worse and it'll definitely be because of Brexit". I spent some time on that thread pointing out false claims, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33682546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33682546 One of the comments in that thread asks, "Is the OBR's own analysis of Brexit evidence enough for you?". Their cited OBR report didn't contain any analysis - just an assumption that Brexit would reduce trade intensity by 15%. No working or sources were given for that number, it was just made up. This is typical for the topic. EU-related economics is just a large pile of confirmation bias. Now take this story. It's paywalled so most people are going to be riffing on the headline. The headline is phrased as fact but it's actually just reporting on a prediction - economic modelling - once again from the OBR. This is presented as if it's unquestionable, but it's actually very questionable. The FT reports it because it's an extremely pro-EU biased outlet so it's telling their readers what they want to hear (the FT offices were literally flying the EU flag in the past, maybe still do). Governments in general have a poor track record of economic prediction, and the UK civil service and OBR specifically have made unusually poor economic predictions for anything related to Brexit. It's not a neutral collection of dispassionate experts by any means. They keep being proven wrong by events, like when they said half million job losses would occur immediately after the referendum if Leave won, yet they don't engage in any kind of public post-mortem or learning processes. Nor, sadly, do too many HN commenters. If you're reading about the UK economy on HN at the moment then lots of the comments will be factually wrong. There are many people who are ideologically committed to EU rule, and that colors their perceptions of everything.