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Of course there's no appetite for that. Can't really imagine people looking at what's going on in Argentina and saying "Where do we sign up?" The big story in

by hakfoo 3y ago

Of course there's no appetite for that. Can't really imagine people looking at what's going on in Argentina and saying "Where do we sign up?" The big story in first-world politics in the next 50 years is finding a way to stop the slippage in quality of life for the bottom 90%. No amount of 12% paper GDP growth, cheaper tech products, or dousing the economy in credit will paper over this problem forever. It might not even be about "liberalize the economy to restart growth"-- it could come from massive tax-and-spend projects (the UK has plenty of crumbling infrastructure to deal with) that actually get real salaries rising.

mike_hearn 3y ago
The UK has tried that. Infrastructure mostly means transport when it comes to government, but can occasionally mean airports or sewers. Anything that involves forcing people off land in order to dig it up, basically. Crossrail, Thames Tideway and HS2 are all attempts at creating wealth through infrastructure spending. The link between these things and wealth is very weak. There's been no noticeable uplift from Crossrail, HS2 is semi-stalled and Heathrow Runway 3 has been stalled for decades, because the incredible costs can't really be justified even with very optimistic modeling. The other issue is these are invariably funded by borrowing. Even the current levels of taxation aren't sufficient to pay day to day costs, so capital projects definitely can't be. So it just leads to a vicious cycle in which the infrastructure crumbles today thanks to the borrowing of yesterday consuming all the taxes.