It is time for the UK to think like an emerging market

[CliffEdge]

Interestingly, those "diversity coordinators and street play organisers" got the NHS its biggest public approval rating in years. Still, they must have gone now, which is why the NHS is proving so much more "efficient" these days.

Terrific. So the only way we can have the public services we want, is to borrow from future generations to pay for them. Looks like the public wants a whole lot more than we can afford. No surprise there.

Just stop trying to sell us the lie that all this government spending will "boost the economy" and pay for itself. It never has. It never will.

NHS cash demands have increased by 3% above GDP for the last 75 years. How much longer do you think that can continue? Under any colour government.

Gryff

Forever if we're lucky

[Tedx]

The deep rooted problem holding back the UK economy

Productivity innit?

And part of the problem in the 21st century is the lack of automation. I recall seeing a chart last year showing the UK as bottom in the 'number of robots per 10,000 workers'

Not just bottom. But BOTTOM - i.e. almost off the page. And compared to the likes of South Korea, we're a microdot.

So one option is to lament the failure of UK policy to move with the times and have the press splash headlines about how appalling we are. I'm not sure what the other option is.

....of course, one could say that the UK has enormous potential?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66937239

[Dod101]

The deep rooted problem holding back the UK economy

Productivity innit?

And part of the problem in the 21st century is the lack of automation. I recall seeing a chart last year showing the UK as bottom in the 'number of robots per 10,000 workers'

Not just bottom. But BOTTOM - i.e. almost off the page. And compared to the likes of South Korea, we're a microdot.

So one option is to lament the failure of UK policy to move with the times and have the press splash headlines about how appalling we are. I'm not sure what the other option is.

....of course, one could say that the UK has enormous potential?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66937239

Thanks for that article. Faisal Islam seems to me to be one of the better journalists and I am sure he is correct about the lack of productivity.

Dod

[Adamski]

The UK productivity "puzzle" has economists mystified as to why we're so unproductive.

We were the first to industrialise and first to de-industrialise. Plus I think a lot of Brits are lazy and simply don't want to work hard. Which is why we're addicted to immigration to fix constant labour shortages.

Although our income has stagnated a long time, there's a portion of very wealthy ppl who've built up wealth over generations, a squeezed middle, and a portion who are on benefits and working the system. Un-fortunately not easy for any politicians to fix.

[Lootman]

Plus I think a lot of Brits are lazy and simply don't want to work hard.

A big part of why I got into both stock market investing and buy-to-let landlording was due to the perception that both were "easy". You can mostly do both from an armchair.

So I think laziness isn't necessarily a bad thing. It motivates you to find easier ways of achieving a goal, for instance. My father used to always say: "If you want to get something done, ask a busy man". I knew what he meant but my version might be: "If you want to get something done, ask a lazy man". He will figure out the simplest and quickest method, so he can get back to the pub, or to his TV show or sports coverage.

Perhaps the British are lazy, certainly when compared to Germans and Japanese. But we tend to be better at using money to make more money, outside of work, through investments and property. And I am not sure that official productivity and growth measures capture that.

[SalvorHardin]

Plus I think a lot of Brits are lazy and simply don't want to work hard.

A big part of why I got into both stock market investing and buy-to-let landlording was due to the perception that both were "easy". You can mostly do both from an armchair.

So I think laziness isn't necessarily a bad thing. It motivates you to find easier ways of achieving a goal, for instance. My father used to always say: "If you want to get something done, ask a busy man". I knew what he meant but my version might be: "If you want to get something done, ask a lazy man". He will figure out the simplest and quickest method, so he can get back to the pub, or to his TV show or sports coverage.

Perhaps the British are lazy, certainly when compared to Germans and Japanese. But we tend to be better at using money to make more money, outside of work, through investments and property. And I am not sure that official productivity and growth measures capture that.

Productivity is, like GDP, a highly flawed method which unfortunately has taken on something akin to a holy writ when it comes to describing the economy. I suspect that very few people have ever calculated productivity; the formula is Productivity = Output / Input which means that it's ideally suited to an economy where the vast majority of outputs and inputs are things which can be easily measured (and not so good when measurement is difficult or impossible).

The problem is that it excludes a lot of knowledge-based inputs and outputs, such as human capital (skills and improvements). Like GDP, productivity calculations include lots of things because they can be measured and omits things which are difficult to measure (in particular things which create intangible assets).

As always a major omission which under-estimates both productivity and GDP is what the economist Gary Becker calls "z-goods"; the production of goods and services within households. I have generated a lot of z-goods in the past couple of weeks, notably gardening, decorating, motorcycle repairs, designing spreadsheets and giving some free tuition in maths and economics. My measurable contribution to both productivity and GDP for these things is zero (and I have very slightly reduced the demand for paid services by doing these things myself), though a considerable amount of economic utility has been created by my actions.

As to why France's productivity is higher than Britain's, France encourages businesses to substitute machines for people by making it so expensive to employ people thanks to the various mandatory social security contributions.

[Lootman]

As always a major omission which under-estimates both productivity and GDP is what the economist Gary Becker calls "z-goods"; the production of goods and services within households. I have generated a lot of z-goods in the past couple of weeks, notably gardening, decorating, motorcycle repairs, designing spreadsheets and giving some free tuition in maths and economics. My measurable contribution to both productivity and GDP for these things is zero (and I have very slightly reduced the demand for paid services by doing these things myself), though a considerable amount of economic utility has been created by my actions.

Yes, I had thought about also mentioning the British enthusiasm for DIY, including gardening, remodeling their homes themselves, fixing their own cars, and so on. People in other countries seem less interested in doing that and are more likely to pay someone else to do those things for them. The latter of course gets measured in GDP; the former does not but is every bit as valuable.

I used to live in an area where the neighbours all bartered their services and skills, fairly informally. Again, no trace of all that productivity and value in the official stats.

[Tedx]

Of course, the fact remains that we are the least automated of all the developed nations by a mile.

Think of the potential!. All we need is a government not stuffed with crinkly old self preserving rich people.

[tjh290633]

Of course, the fact remains that we are the least automated of all the developed nations by a mile.

Think of the potential!. All we need is a government not stuffed with crinkly old self preserving rich people.

No, it needs cooperative unions,

TJH

[scotview]

I think the UK needs a hard reset. We have a lot of unresolved issues but we also have a lot of potential.

We need to get solutions to :

Net Zero, including a workable, secure, energy policy.

Illegal immigration and immigration in general, in the face of pending massive global movement of peoples.

Firm up our National identity.

Quality healthcare at the right price, whither the NHS.

Our kids future, quality UNI courses and good, technical apprenticeships.

Exploit our Scientific excellence.

Defend our natural heritage in woodland, moorland, mountains and rivers.

Address the changing demographic, look after our old and encourage old style, nuclear families.

Have mothers stay at home to look after our kids. Reverse our current maternal work ethic.

[Adamski]

We need to get solutions to :

Net Zero, ..
It'll be case of kicking can down the road, as impossible or very, very expensive, could bankrupt us.

Illegal immigration ..
More likely to increase under Labour.

Firm up our National identity.
Opposite will happen, as we get more diverse

Quality healthcare at the right price
NHS funding should increase under Labour, but taxes need to pay for it

Our kids future, ...Exploit our Scientific excellence.Defend our natural heritage .. changing demographic etc..
Expect pretty much stay the same

The UK is in managed decline and would continue under Labour, the structural issues are too big, it would require a dictatorship or equally unpalatable to achieve a turnaround.

[TUK020]

I think the UK needs a hard reset. We have a lot of unresolved issues but we also have a lot of potential.

We need to get solutions to :

Net Zero, including a workable, secure, energy policy.

Illegal immigration and immigration in general, in the face of pending massive global movement of peoples.

Firm up our National identity.

Quality healthcare at the right price, whither the NHS.

Our kids future, quality UNI courses and good, technical apprenticeships.

Exploit our Scientific excellence.

Defend our natural heritage in woodland, moorland, mountains and rivers.

Address the changing demographic, look after our old and encourage old style, nuclear families.

Have mothers stay at home to look after our kids. Reverse our current maternal work ethic.

Build some houses

[Tedx]

There are too many people who want to keep things just as they are.

I'm alright Jack and all that.

[servodude]

There are too many people who want to keep things just as they are.

I'm alright Jack and all that.

I believe they're what's known as "small-c" c-words

[RockRabbit]

I think the UK needs a hard reset. We have a lot of unresolved issues but we also have a lot of potential.

We need to get solutions to :

Net Zero, including a workable, secure, energy policy.

Illegal immigration and immigration in general, in the face of pending massive global movement of peoples.

Firm up our National identity.

Quality healthcare at the right price, whither the NHS.

Our kids future, quality UNI courses and good, technical apprenticeships.

Exploit our Scientific excellence.

Defend our natural heritage in woodland, moorland, mountains and rivers.

Address the changing demographic, look after our old and encourage old style, nuclear families.

Have mothers stay at home to look after our kids. Reverse our current maternal work ethic.

(my bold)

Brilliant. So where are you going to get all the care workers, nurses, teachers etc??? These areas (and others) are already suffering from chronic staff shortages and are very difficult to automate in any meaningful way. Your proposal would reduce the quality of healthcare even further and reduce the quality of life for the old.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

Of course, the fact remains that we are the least automated of all the developed nations by a mile.

Think of the potential!. All we need is a government not stuffed with crinkly old self preserving rich people.

Hi Ted,

Hope you're well and have to fit 25hrs in to today

Can I interrogate you please, noting I won't employ the electric chair just yet . Too costly

1. Are you suggesting proportional representation? (Hint - answer is yes )
2. Are you suggesting that some don't respect the needs and wishes of young people, whom I hasten to add are going to inherit what we leave behind? (Hint - answer is yes )

Joking aside and stepping away from my two questions above, which were very much tongue in cheek I'd like to hear your opinion please. Not because I am going to take a view different to yours and argue until the sun implodes and not because it will be of comfort to me if your opinion agrees with mine, but because there may be elements of your opinion that I haven't thought of yet, which, I’d like to think may just enrich me.

I’ve said this before and like a stuck record I’d like to say it again. I have no allegiance to any political party. As we approach the next election I will read their manifesto’s and vote for the party who’s [manifesto] looks to share as many of my values as possible. Others will approach the subject in a different way and that’s the great part of the society we live in. Freedom of choice.

I am looking at how the parties will

1. Run the economy
2. Look after the environment
3. Budget for education, policing, defence, the NHS, care in the community & mental health resources
4. Achieve net zero and how they will measure what net zero means
5. Work towards energy independence
6. Reward work
7. Level up including specific targeting of socio-economic deprivation

I’d like to think they include my needs to have a decent pension for when I retire, but if I have to work for a little longer instead then I’m going to have to suck that up.

Can I add a personal note please. Many of you are aware that I have had serious and progressively declining mental health issues since I was 13-14 years old. The NHS have never managed to get on top of the root cause and consequently I’ve lead a life of inconsistent income and have until very recently had some significant symptoms associated with my condition. I’ve been off work for about 2 years now. I have not drawn a penny from the state. I have also paid for private medical support and managed to achieve a diagnosis and medication which both appear to be taking me in the right direction. At last. In lost net income and spending from our “rainy day savings”, including paying for private medical care, I am out of pocket about £200K. At the same time there has also been a loss to HMRC’s income from me not earning. I’ve managed to convince myself of the positive aspects and have started to think about my future income.

Long story, shortened. Having spoken with my daughters school I’m aware that approximately 10% of all the students in their two sixth form years are waiting for assessments for ADHD. The waiting list is a minimum of six months for referral. I’d guess, in reality, it’s probably a lot longer. Once the process of assessing ADHD has started it can be another 6-8 months before the process is complete and a diagnosed patient is on the correct dose of medication. There are also difficulties with availability of some ADHD medications.

I started sixth form studies forty-five years ago. That’s just a little short of half a century.

Of course I’ve thought about the costs I’ve mentioned above, and I know that delays my previously planned retirement date by at least 2 years. S.hit happens. However, when I heard about the students who are waiting to be assessed for ADHD I shed a tear. It’s just not right. It’s not good enough and we should and can do better. I am preparing some information for the school and am hoping to support them to find a solution to this immediate problem.

I’d like to see if any of the leading two parties make mention to dealing with mental health issues which, speaking from personal experience, need attention.

But enough about me. I’d like to hear you’re opinion, not on your political affinity, but how you think we can start thinking like an emerging market. As an eternal optimist I think there’s plenty of hope. As you’ve mentioned we have a government of self-serving silver haired folks whom, for the most, are detached from the economic restraints many of the electorate, they are paid to serve, have to live with.

AiY(D)

[rhys]

I’d like to hear you’re opinion, not on your political affinity, but how you think we can start thinking like an emerging market.

I worked in Beirut for three years during the 90s. Lebanon is a small country, created out of a greater Syria at the end of WW1 by a Christian majority amongst Moslems and Druze. Beirut became a financial hub during the 50s, gaining the moniker "Switzerland of the Middle East".

Demographic changes led to the Moslem population outbreeding the Christians, and this was augmented by a Palestinian refugee influx. Homogeneity of religion has decreased, and in the Middle East, secularity does not exist. YOu are what your father was. An increasingly disgruntled section of the population that had not prospered from trade and finance, as well as a disenfranchised Palestinian element, led to a civil war in 1976, that was eventually settled by Saudi influence in 1990. The result has been catastrophic for the economy. During the 70s, 1LBP purchased 1GBP. Today 1GBP purchases approximately LBP120000. That financial hub moved to Dubai.

A Lebanon without any mineral resources to exploit now struggles to feed a much larger population. Its run by an oligarchy, there's an evident super rich class, cash stashed abroad and an underclass that struggles to survive. The middle class has been eviscerated. It emigrated or withered.

I'm finally coming to the point. This was a leading country that has fallen back to EM status. But it survives because its people have never had a state safety net to provide for them. Kids value education. Young graduates continue to study in their spare time for second and third degrees. Street crime hardly exists since its shameful (although Syrian refugees have led to an increase), and in anycase, the youths are at home doing as much homework as they can find. There's a highly developed sense of self preservation and everyone's a grafter or a trader. Not to do so would mean being left behind. I don't see that the indigenous British population has the initiative to survive in an environment where life is tough, since we've had it easy. The immigrants, by comparison, know how to get on. The entitled days of Empire are long gone, it's perhaps time to compete on an equal footing with the world's footloose.

[Wuffle]

Does it actually matter whether the state is the safety net or grotesquely wealthy grandparents gifting their own kids a privileged life? It's the same thing.

The kids I work with on minimum wage are decent mostly but don't make the news unless the really entrepreneurial one's end up on Crimewatch. Then there are the clueless, middle class kids who turn up to Glastonbury years before they will ever go to work. The good people are evenly spread, the opportunities aren't.

The UK accumulated wealth (which is considerable) is a fact and somebody is going to be spoilt and privileged (and apparently borderline useless), the politics dictates who.

W.

[Lootman]

Does it actually matter whether the state is the safety net or grotesquely wealthy grandparents gifting their own kids a privileged life? It's the same thing.

I did not realise that anyone on this site would ever describe wealth as being " grotesque". I thought this was a site for people who thought that wealth is good and desirable?

[SalvorHardin]

I did not realise that anyone on this site would ever describe wealth as being " grotesque". I thought this was a site for people who thought that wealth is good and desirable?

I'm not surprised. It's increasingly par for the course to find anti-wealth posts on TLF. The more TLF turns into a politics and current affairs website (with a sideline in investment and personal finance), the more likely we're going to get the sorts of post which you'd expect to see as comments to an article in The Guardian slagging off "the rich".

This isn't new. Back in the heydays of TMF, particularly in 2007, there was a lot of animosity directed against those of us who had made "loadsamoney" in small oil explorers, notably Soco International (shares peaked around £24, lots of us got in at well below £1 and there was a lot of buying around 250p after a big discovery in offshore Vietnam).

Several key posters were driven off TMF by jealous types gaming the system by persistently reporting their posts and whining to the moderators after deliberately antagonising them.

I remember the furore caused when some of us in response started saying how much we had made on Soco to wind up the envious saddos. In some cases enough to buy a house, with no need for a mortgage, and have enough left over to retire earlier than typical early retirement age. Envy central or what!