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Although she also massively increased the wealth of the working class by opening up more property ownership. UK wealth inequality is amongst the lowest in Europ

Although she also massively increased the wealth of the working class by opening up more property ownership. UK wealth inequality is amongst the lowest in Europe.

darkclouds 3y ago
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kranke155 3y ago
You mean her political jiu jitsu of making council homes available for sale? Yes it created a new owner class that was enamoured with her, but the end consequence of it is probably the housing crisis/asset bubble that the UK has been living with for 15 years or so. Buying a council home did make a lot of new owners rich, but it's likely it harmed the long term prospects for the whole country. That was a lot of Thatcher. Deindustrialization annihilated the working middle class. In Germany industry was never destroyed for the sake of the service sector.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  I don't disagree at all, and I never said I didn't. That said, I do think the UK is quite well placed to export services as opposed to goods - English-speaking, favourable timezone, strong body of corporate law, and a very good tertiary education system all favour services over goods. I'd also say the UK is more comparable to France, which deindustrialised to a similar degree.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  >In Germany industry was never destroyed for the sake of the service sector. Until they ran out of cheap Russian gas. Germany also has a high level of wealth inequality. Buying a home there is a luxury for the rich now. Yeah, rent protections and what not, but good luck to the average German affording rent and utilities in 30 year on a pension.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    The fact that you think Germany is anywhere near as deindustrialised as the UK, because of the increasing cost of energy, is a bit funny to me. The UK was brutally deindustrialised. The UK manufacturing output is 8.69% of GDP. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/uni... German manufacturing output is 18% of GDP in 2022. That's over twice the UK. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?locations=DE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location... Look at data, stop reading sensationalistic news articles. I doubt that Germany has lost over half its industrial capacity since 2022.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      Worth seeing that the UK figure is comparable to the France, the US, Canada, and way higher than Australia. Germany is the outlier here.
      - kranke155 3y ago
        Absolutely Germany is the outlier. That's reason I mentioned it. From visiting and talking to people, it's one of the healthiest economies I've ever seen.
kranke155 3y ago
Unfortunately I can't read this paper, but it seems to have the opposite conclusion that you have. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622815000351 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01436... "This paper concentrates on the 1% richest households in the UK in a comparison with the other four large Western European countries: Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In the European context the UK is an outlier of extreme inequality. " "The UK sits half way between the USA and mainland Europe in economic space. The UK levels of inequality are now huge by normal European standards, but not so huge when compared to the average levels of economic inequality experienced within the USA."
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  The quite literal title of that paper is "Income inequality in the UK". I said "wealth inequality". They are different things.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    I think focusing on the one indicator that props up a certain POV can be deceiving.
kranke155 3y ago
One more data point: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk So the wealth gini coefficient is indeed lower I expected. The income gini coefficient however is among the highest in Europe, just as I expected. Is it possible you're cherry picking statistics?
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  No it isn't - I'm well aware UK income inequality is high, whereas wealth inequality is quite low. That's why I said "wealth inequality", and that Thatcher improved it. Right-to-Buy basically made home ownership vastly more accessible to the working class in a way that hadn't happened before. It's bad that it coincided with an economic reworked that we're still recovering from, but I can't discuss everything in every comment.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I'm not sure how much the right to buy directly increased wealth vs. the lack of subsequent council house construction which changed supply vs. demand and drove up the market prices for all houses. To me, house price inflation feels like all other inflation: the number may be going up, but people aren't actually better off for it.
    - kranke155 3y ago
      Pretty much. Right to Buy made her popular, and made a single generation of people richer, but at the cost of destroying the housing market in the long term.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  In the link you shared according to 2022 Gini wealth inequality[1] the UK is right in the middle, not too high, not too low. Who's the one cherry picking statistics? The highest wealth inequality according to that, is in Sweden. [1] https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/hero/giniwealth2022.png?s512311d1675709262 https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/hero...

Although she also massively increased the wealth of the working class by opening up more property ownership. UK wealth inequality is amongst the lowest in Europe.

darkclouds 3y ago

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kranke155 3y ago

You mean her political jiu jitsu of making council homes available for sale? Yes it created a new owner class that was enamoured with her, but the end consequence of it is probably the housing crisis/asset bubble that the UK has been living with for 15 years or so. Buying a council home did make a lot of new owners rich, but it's likely it harmed the long term prospects for the whole country. That was a lot of Thatcher. Deindustrialization annihilated the working middle class. In Germany industry was never destroyed for the sake of the service sector.

dukeyukey 3y ago
I don't disagree at all, and I never said I didn't. That said, I do think the UK is quite well placed to export services as opposed to goods - English-speaking, favourable timezone, strong body of corporate law, and a very good tertiary education system all favour services over goods. I'd also say the UK is more comparable to France, which deindustrialised to a similar degree.
Rinzler89 3y ago
>In Germany industry was never destroyed for the sake of the service sector. Until they ran out of cheap Russian gas. Germany also has a high level of wealth inequality. Buying a home there is a luxury for the rich now. Yeah, rent protections and what not, but good luck to the average German affording rent and utilities in 30 year on a pension.
- kranke155 3y ago
  The fact that you think Germany is anywhere near as deindustrialised as the UK, because of the increasing cost of energy, is a bit funny to me. The UK was brutally deindustrialised. The UK manufacturing output is 8.69% of GDP. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/uni... German manufacturing output is 18% of GDP in 2022. That's over twice the UK. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?locations=DE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location... Look at data, stop reading sensationalistic news articles. I doubt that Germany has lost over half its industrial capacity since 2022.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    Worth seeing that the UK figure is comparable to the France, the US, Canada, and way higher than Australia. Germany is the outlier here.
    - kranke155 3y ago
      Absolutely Germany is the outlier. That's reason I mentioned it. From visiting and talking to people, it's one of the healthiest economies I've ever seen.

kranke155 3y ago

Unfortunately I can't read this paper, but it seems to have the opposite conclusion that you have. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622815000351 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01436... "This paper concentrates on the 1% richest households in the UK in a comparison with the other four large Western European countries: Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In the European context the UK is an outlier of extreme inequality. " "The UK sits half way between the USA and mainland Europe in economic space. The UK levels of inequality are now huge by normal European standards, but not so huge when compared to the average levels of economic inequality experienced within the USA."

dukeyukey 3y ago
The quite literal title of that paper is "Income inequality in the UK". I said "wealth inequality". They are different things.
- kranke155 3y ago
  I think focusing on the one indicator that props up a certain POV can be deceiving.

kranke155 3y ago

One more data point: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk So the wealth gini coefficient is indeed lower I expected. The income gini coefficient however is among the highest in Europe, just as I expected. Is it possible you're cherry picking statistics?

dukeyukey 3y ago
No it isn't - I'm well aware UK income inequality is high, whereas wealth inequality is quite low. That's why I said "wealth inequality", and that Thatcher improved it. Right-to-Buy basically made home ownership vastly more accessible to the working class in a way that hadn't happened before. It's bad that it coincided with an economic reworked that we're still recovering from, but I can't discuss everything in every comment.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I'm not sure how much the right to buy directly increased wealth vs. the lack of subsequent council house construction which changed supply vs. demand and drove up the market prices for all houses. To me, house price inflation feels like all other inflation: the number may be going up, but people aren't actually better off for it.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    Pretty much. Right to Buy made her popular, and made a single generation of people richer, but at the cost of destroying the housing market in the long term.
Rinzler89 3y ago
In the link you shared according to 2022 Gini wealth inequality[1] the UK is right in the middle, not too high, not too low. Who's the one cherry picking statistics? The highest wealth inequality according to that, is in Sweden. [1] https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/hero/giniwealth2022.png?s512311d1675709262 https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/hero...