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It's a political issue. There are things the UK is good at - finance, culture/media, software and yes hardware innovation, legal services, tourism. But since th

It's a political issue. There are things the UK is good at - finance, culture/media, software and yes hardware innovation, legal services, tourism. But since the GFC especially, none of these things are considered "right" by the electorate. Instead we romanticise unproductive legacy stuff, and an NHS which, while its staff are in many cases heroic, spends most of its vast budget cleaning up the mess of a population who thinks eating a sensible diet and enacting basic public health policy is "woke". It's a good thing we banned indoor smoking in public buildings in the early aughts, there's no way you'd get that through in today's political climate.

pjbster 2y ago
You're not thinking like an economist :) Here's something I saw on Twitter (no source): The bicycle is the slow death of the planet. General Director of Euro Exim Bank Ltd. got economists thinking when he said: "A cyclist is a disaster for the country's economy: he does not buy cars and does not borrow money to buy. He does not pay for insurance policies. He does not buy fuel, does not pay for the necessary maintenance and repairs. He does not use paid parking. He does not cause serious accidents. He does not require multi-lane highways. He does not get fat. Healthy people are neither needed nor useful for the economy. They don't buy medicine. They do not go to hospitals or doctors. Nothing is added to the country's GDP (gross domestic product). On the contrary, every new McDonald's restaurant creates at least 30 jobs: 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietary experts and nutritionists, and obviously, people who work at the restaurant itself." Choose carefully: cyclist or McDonald's? It is worth considering. P.S. Walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy bicycles.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Author hasn't been to SW London on a sunny weekend then. £5K bikes strapped to the top of £70K cars as far as the eye can see.
ta1243 2y ago
Vast majority of NHS expense is keeping an aging population alive. A lot of the rest of government spending (nearly 80% of my council tax for example) goes on social care for that same aging population. The NHS spends less per capita than the US spends on medicaid. Not less per person covered, less overall.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  How do poorer countries manage to avoid getting outright bankrupted by social care? Why is it such a black hole money-pit in the UK particularly?
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    It’s a black hole money-pit everywhere. There is no return on spending money for people who will never be productive again. The only way that kind of wealth transfer works is with a growing proportion of workers, but that has long not been the case in many developed countries. The solution for all these countries (even the US) is to dismantle all wealth transfer to old people. It might be the only way to incentivize production of families that raise productive children. Or tell old people to expect declining quality of life (faster than it already is).
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Transferring away from older voters is not going to happen, other than very gradually.
    - naijaboiler 2y ago
      The west is caught in a web of its own creation. We have basically incentivized the countries to get older by taxing the young to subsidize the rich. Unfortunately, there's no easy way for democracy to correct this. older people vote and are wealthier. Both of those mean they have large political power.
    - Earw0rm 2y ago
      Doesn't this create a situation where the old rely on their own younger generation to support them? And therefore inequality between older people who have families (or have families that care about them) and those that don't? I can see this particularly being a problem for countries like the UK which has long encouraged "upwardly-mobile" people to move away from their towns of origin in pursuit of economic opportunity, leading to families being widely dispersed across a country which, despite its fairly small size, is not especially fast to travel around.

pjbster 2y ago

You're not thinking like an economist :) Here's something I saw on Twitter (no source): The bicycle is the slow death of the planet. General Director of Euro Exim Bank Ltd. got economists thinking when he said: "A cyclist is a disaster for the country's economy: he does not buy cars and does not borrow money to buy. He does not pay for insurance policies. He does not buy fuel, does not pay for the necessary maintenance and repairs. He does not use paid parking. He does not cause serious accidents. He does not require multi-lane highways. He does not get fat. Healthy people are neither needed nor useful for the economy. They don't buy medicine. They do not go to hospitals or doctors. Nothing is added to the country's GDP (gross domestic product). On the contrary, every new McDonald's restaurant creates at least 30 jobs: 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietary experts and nutritionists, and obviously, people who work at the restaurant itself." Choose carefully: cyclist or McDonald's? It is worth considering. P.S. Walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy bicycles.

Earw0rm 2y ago
Author hasn't been to SW London on a sunny weekend then. £5K bikes strapped to the top of £70K cars as far as the eye can see.

ta1243 2y ago

Vast majority of NHS expense is keeping an aging population alive. A lot of the rest of government spending (nearly 80% of my council tax for example) goes on social care for that same aging population. The NHS spends less per capita than the US spends on medicaid. Not less per person covered, less overall.

Earw0rm 2y ago
How do poorer countries manage to avoid getting outright bankrupted by social care? Why is it such a black hole money-pit in the UK particularly?
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  It’s a black hole money-pit everywhere. There is no return on spending money for people who will never be productive again. The only way that kind of wealth transfer works is with a growing proportion of workers, but that has long not been the case in many developed countries. The solution for all these countries (even the US) is to dismantle all wealth transfer to old people. It might be the only way to incentivize production of families that raise productive children. Or tell old people to expect declining quality of life (faster than it already is).
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Transferring away from older voters is not going to happen, other than very gradually.
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    The west is caught in a web of its own creation. We have basically incentivized the countries to get older by taxing the young to subsidize the rich. Unfortunately, there's no easy way for democracy to correct this. older people vote and are wealthier. Both of those mean they have large political power.
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    Doesn't this create a situation where the old rely on their own younger generation to support them? And therefore inequality between older people who have families (or have families that care about them) and those that don't? I can see this particularly being a problem for countries like the UK which has long encouraged "upwardly-mobile" people to move away from their towns of origin in pursuit of economic opportunity, leading to families being widely dispersed across a country which, despite its fairly small size, is not especially fast to travel around.