The financial crisis was a specific event and other countries had put it behind them within a few years. The UK's growth inflected around that time and never re

The financial crisis was a specific event and other countries had put it behind them within a few years. The UK's growth inflected around that time and never recovered since. It doesn't make much sense to argue a temporary event changed UK productivity or economic growth permanently, especially as the only reason to think that is rough temporal proximity. There were other things going on at that time too that are equally or more plausible e.g. mass immigration from eastern Europe was kicking into gear around that time as well, which created a glut of cheap labour. Cheap labour always kills productivity growth because there's no reason to invest in automation. > Yes, despite what that British lady said, there is an emergent phenomenon called "society" and if you deny its existence you will get devoured by demons of its own creation. Thatcher was responding to people who asserted that for any given problem, "society" should solve it or pay for it. Her answer made the obvious point: when it comes to taxation, there really is no such thing as society. To complete the quote: "they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families".