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Samidata quote of the day For almost a century, Governments have pissed away countlesss billions in the North. It didn’t work. No amount of cycle lanes and art galleries and award-winning ‘garden’ bridges will do it. The North needs Hong-Kong style shock-treatment tax cuts.
– Martin Durkin
It’s a tweet, so that’s all there is.
Similar sentiments have been expressed by Dominic Frisby, as reported towards the end of this earlier posting here. (LATER: Also, I now see, Johnathan Pearce says very similar things in the previous posting to this one. Well, if it’s worth saying, it’s worth repeating.)
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I tend to think that cutting regulations should precede cutting taxes+spending, for the simple reason that cutting regulations, if done carefully, can get the economy going without anybody getting hurt.
Once the economy gets going, you can cut spending, and the people who lose their jobs as a consequence can easily find another job. (Also as a consequence of looser labor regulations.)
Once you have cut spending, you can safely cut taxes.
Of course, you can take the Laffer view that cutting taxes pays for itself; but that’s a gamble.
Were I less freedom-and-rule-of-law loving I’d point out aviationally defenestrated collectivists can make helicopter fuel pay for itself…….
Better I think just to make it easier to make money from providing goods and services to each other, Free Enterprise being much kinder than murder.
Also watching the epic shit flinging tantrum from said collectivists that is in part attributable to the strong Trump economy, I could live with something similar.
Yup, bring on the Special Economic Zones. But don’t impose them, invite people to vote for them. Democratic accountability is absolutely crucial if you want buy-in. . .
…because tax cuts only pay for themselves when the tax rates are already past the maximising point (usually WAYYYY past!), hence lower rates = more overall income.
You’d think with all the smart people in government (*baddoom-tish*) they’d have figured that out by now…
There is a stretch of road in Hull that I encounter if I cycle to work. It could best be described as the remains of a road. I don’t think that much money has been pissed into that.
The edges and borders of these zones might be problematic, I believe some US States reduce sales taxes in exposed border counties to avoid too much destruction when high taxes abut low or zero taxes.
From a woefully uninformed and far-removed observer:
History repeats. Conservatives repeat.
Seems as if the good guys achieved a large majority bloc on the strength of Brexit, and anti-Corbyn.
Anti-Corbyn is a done deal, but Brexit gained nothing from the election itself. That election only provided the possibility for Brexit to move forward, through future actions taken by this new large bloc.
So, as conservatives are wont to do, before this bloc has a chance to work its will on Brexit – strengthening it, cementing it – they’re going to break up into many smaller struggles over other issues that, important or not, weren’t deemed critical enough to throw the elections.
Election or not, Brexit hasn’t happened yet. Why not hold these fights until the day after Brexit? Why antagonize those folk who held their noses and voted Tory simply for Brexit?
John Galt, taxation isn’t about raising money. In a fiat money state, which is everybody now, governments can raise all the money they need without taxes at all. Taxation is mostly about social control with some virtue signaling thrown in for good measure. High taxes on the upper brackets show that our society is committed to egalitarianism. That the rich will simply shift income into capital gains or overseas is largely irrelevant.
@Stonyground
There is a stretch of road in Hull that I encounter if I cycle to work. It could best be described as the remains of a road. I don’t think that much money has been pissed into that.
Oh my, what a cock-eyed optimist you are Stony. Is it your view that the government can’t spend lots and lots of money and still get a really crap outcome…. I beg to differ with you….
A number of years ago my company (which made identification systems) went to do a bid on a job for the State of Illinois. I worked with the committee and I personally wrote the RFP for the state. Yes… I, the vendor, wrote the RFP on which bids were to be done because the guy in charge was not sure what to ask for. (Or, perhaps it is better to say “I had significant input to the RFP”.) Did I tilt the RFP to perfectly match the features of the product that my company sold? My attorney has advised me to take the fifth on that question.
Nonetheless, although our bid, which, obviously, perfectly matched the RFP, was the lowest bid, and although we had a proven track record of success, and although our company was domiciled in Illinois, the state still awarded it to Deloitte and Touche. Their bid was three times higher than ours. I believe the eventual bill to the state was about twice that, and took three times as long to deliver as they promised. Their final system did not work, and it was all written off and the system junked.
Is anyone surprised at any of the above?
Just to add to the story…. when I initially went down to Springfield to have the discussion about what they were looking for I was with our head of sales (I was the CTO). This project was about a million dollars roughly. So there were two of us from my company, and, if I remember rightly, there were thirty five people from the state in that meeting. Only two or three people from the state said a single word.
Is anyone surprised by that?
Remember, Mr. Orr, it’s not waste if your friends get the money…
Fraser Orr, count your blessings.
Fifteen years ago, we did over two million dollars worth of work for State of Illinois and City of Chicago. We succeeded in what we were hired to do.
We had some sharp lawyers on our crew. Some were well-versed in collections law.
And we were never able to actually force our clients into paying us the money they owed us.
We got acknowledgments of the debt, and admissions that we were owed, and promises to pay, and apologies for not paying, and revised payment schedules, but we never got the money. Once a state pleads poverty, your recourse is . . . limited.
D&T has friends in high places, so they probably got paid. But you might not have.
I agree with Snorri that there desperately needs to be deregulation – leaving the European Union would make that legally possible, IF we really leave the European Union and IF the government has the will for what Winston Churchill called the “bonfire of controls”, one of the central principles of his election victory of 1951 -it should be remembered that in 1951 the United Kingdom was the most Collectivist country in Western Europe, the Atlee government had done terrible harm – essentially throwing away the vital years just after World War II when new manufacturing and trading networks were being created.
However, government spending and taxes must also be cut – and NOW. Cutting taxes on their own is no good (unless the tax cut is also an automatic government spending cut – as getting rid of the BBC “License Fee” would be), because government spending financed by borrowing does just as much harm in the long run (a short term “boom” financed by borrowing, just leads to a long term BUST, which is a warning to the United States).
What are the chances that the government will cut government spending and regulations? Sadly the chances are not good.
There may be some tax cuts – but if the government spending just carries on, financed by borrowing, little long term good will be achieved.
The North of England boomed when it had resources in close proximity to each other that were important at the time — especially coal. Before the industrial revolution the North of England was pretty much only fishing villages and the odd cathedral town.
The only way to revive the north is to allow people to use the resources they have, not try to somehow make the area artificially more attractive. Good luck with that, because what does the North have that can’t be got cheaper elsewhere? You can import higher quality coal much cheaper, even if you allow coal fired energy again.
Tax cuts that work only in one area are iniquitous. Why should people in Kent not get the same tax rate that people in Newcastle get?
It’s sad, but trying to “save” areas is hopeless. They need to have something worth saving.
I am not sure that anything can re-industrialise the North. It might be better bet to consider everywhere in England and Wales to be a London suburb.
For yesteryear’s coal, read cheap energy today. Build some nuclear power plants to provide that cheap energy and watch prosperity return.
The North has, amongst other things, attractive scenery and a much lower cost of living than the South East. The is the square root of bugger all reason why a lot of stuff that happens dahn Sarf couldn’t be done more cheaply oop North save, perhaps, infrastructure and agglomeration effects. But the latter becomes less important as doing stuff digitally becomes more widespread.
Further to my last, what are the resources that make London a more attractive prospect than Hamburg for a bank? Time zone; language; the Common Law of England and Wales and a reasonable confidence that said Law will persist; e proximity of all the other financial institutions, facilitating ease of meeting. Ask Dave that last exist in Newcastle or Bradford, and that last is becoming less important when everyone carried technology allowing face to face conversations with anyone in the world in their pocket. This leaves perceived quality of life as a recruitment and retention tool. There is a slight climatic advantage in the South east, but more a perception that London is where it’s at. I can’t help feeling if I were a bank I might prefer to employ someone who realises they’re salary will go a hell of a lot further outside the metrop, that they are unlikely to be consuming the marginal cultural advantages every day and would be easily able to afford to travel the of time they want to see a West End show, but can watch Netflix quite happily wherever they are.
Patrick Crozier, you almost make me despair. You think the North is without enterprise, effort, intelligence, skills, ambition? I don’t know what to decry most bitterly: the ignorance or arrogance of your post. Try to remember that the North is where the world discovered the industrial revolution, in all its filth and fury. Do you honestly think this energy has just disappeared?
I’m sorry if this seems a rude reply, but dismissive attitudes like yours have probably done as much damage to the North as anything else. I regret it.
What’s badly needed is for the rest of the collectivists to be defenestrated from that Overton Window thingy. In a better world, the views of International Socialists would receive the same polite attention and presumption of good faith as is currently granted to the views of National Socialists.
Ha! What on earth was I thinking. That there would be money left over after all the non jobs have been allocated?
Regarding London. Are there also horrendous long and expensive commutes to consider? My commute takes 30 minutes one way in the car. On a good day I’ve cycled it in under 40 minutes.
“Patrick Crozier, you almost make me despair. You think the North is without enterprise, effort, intelligence, skills, ambition? I don’t know what to decry most bitterly: the ignorance or arrogance of your post. Try to remember that the North is where the world discovered the industrial revolution, in all its filth and fury. Do you honestly think this energy has just disappeared?”
But you see, this is the core question. If the rest of the UK has all that, why aren’t they as rich/productive as London? What’s blocking them? Why would companies rather pay hugely inflated prices for rent and living expenses packed together in London than move to Liverpool or Newcastle? What’s different?
Nullius, I think it’s important that you answer your own question. Think, hard.
“Nullius, I think it’s important that you answer your own question. Think, hard.”
Well, according to one analysis I’ve seen, it’s mainly due to their openness to immigration. 😉
@Michael Taylor
Nullius, I think it’s important that you answer your own question. Think, hard.
FWIW, I think this is an awesome rhetorical trick, I’ll have to remember it.
If NIV can’t come up with an answer he is apparently not smart. But if he does then he is not smart for asking the question. And at no stage does Michael have to actually answer the question. So heads NIV loses, tails Michael wins.
A delightfully brilliant, Machiavellian rhetorical ploy. You should take up politics.
“Nullius, I think it’s important that you answer your own question. Think, hard.”
I share what I take to be Fraser Orr’s contempt for this kind of vapid one-upmanship, which only works if you’ve never had it done to you before. MT knows the answer, or thinks he does. Well, let’s hear that answer.
Fraser, Brian,
Thanks, but I suspect what Michael was getting at was that the ‘obvious’ answer to my question, the explanation for London getting all the business, was exactly what he’d just been talking about – the common contempt and snobbery of Londoners for Northerners. I think he was trying to suggest that he’d already answered my question in the very comment I was commenting on – somewhat snarkily I’ll grant you, but understandable in the circumstances. 🙂
I don’t think the answer works (and therefore wrongly assumed it wasn’t being seriously proposed), for the same reason I asked the question in the first place. Sucessful entrepreneurs don’t rely on the approval and acceptance of others for their success. They didn’t back in the Industrial Revolution, and when it comes to making money, businesses are remarkably undiscriminating now. If we’ll eagerly trade with sweat shops in China and India, I don’t think we’re going to get all snobby about the Northerners if they can do the job. In fact, quite a lot of the people I know working in London moved there from the north – it’s not due to any shortcomings of the people!
I assumed it would be obvious that there must be more to it than that, and was trying to start a serious conversation about what else it might be, because I don’t think it’s at all obvious what the problem actually is. Part of it may be to do with what Patrick Crozier was alluding to – that skills in heavy industry (mining, steel working, ship building, etc.) don’t translate well to the modern tech services industry. They’re not stupid, or unskilled, but they’re the *wrong* skills now, and they’ve never moved on. We’re never going to go back to old-style industrialisation. So how do we re-skill all those workers now that their old skills are redundant? Or is that even the problem?
I don’t know what the answer is. That report I linked to lists a couple dozen factors they think are involved, but I suspected their conclusion that openness to immigration was the key driver was a bit of a dig at Brexit, and don’t take that too seriously. (More precisely, they say that finding people with the right skills was the driver for most companies, that the UK is relatively poor at upskilling locals, but they were able to recruit the best from all over the world. It’s a lot like the way English football teams are among the best in the world, because most of the players are foreign.) However, I really don’t see why that applies to London and not the rest of the country, so I don’t think it’s the explanation. Nevertheless, the other factors they mention may be food for thought.
Boris is arguing for “infrastructure and education and technology”. He wants to invest in developing and upskilling the rest of the country. It’s arguably a much better use for government money than welfare, but I’m sceptical that it’s the real problem, or industry would have already invested. But it may not be the only thing he’s planning, and this isn’t my area of expertise.
Nullius:
Thanks for the reply – from our previous exchanges, I think you gave me the credit that I wasn’t primarily trying to be snarky.
So where do I start with the answer? I think it is very complex, but incorporates a couple of things:
First, we should recognize that London doesn’t really ‘fit’ with the rest of the country. By that I mean something quite specific: that when it comes to distributions of population, and of income, Britain isn’t a ‘coherent sample’. Even more specifically, Britain is one of the very rare (and I mean very very rare) examples, in which its urban distributions don’t conform to a Zipf distribution. London is simply too bit and too rich to be considered merely as the capital of the UK. Rather, it makes sense primarily as the capital of Europe (which is perhaps why it is Remain central).
No understanding of Britain’s predicament will be sensible until it grapples with this statistical truth. (PS. the only other country where Zipf breaks down is, or rather was, China – where Beijing and Shanghai used to be far smaller than they ‘should have been’).
Why? Because it explains why ‘national’ policies developed in London continually fail. And will continue to fail. Perhaps the Treasury should be moved to Leeds, DTI to Newcastle, Home Office to Liverpool and Transport to Crewe? Less snarkily, it explains why ‘national’ policies such as minimum wages, or even planning and employment laws, practically entrench and extend regional inequalities. Regardless of intention, the flaw is to believe that we are One Nation: we aren’t.
The second strand to this is linked, but difficult to explain. The buttress against the post-national magnetic power of London is, how can I put it? effective local communities. By which I mean the ability not merely to earn a living in your city/town, but to organize your long-term projects of self within that community. Pride in your town is also, to some extent, your town’s pride in you. Many people, including me, will tell you that the local government re-organizations of the early 1970s did tremendous harm to local ‘society’ in this sense. I think that social vandalism meant that when economic hardship arrived, these towns were uniquely badly placed to react properly. We are still living with that social collapse. Thanks, Ted Heath.
The third strand follows from that: if these towns are to regain their natural vigour and health, then restoring that civic spirit is essential. I’d suggest that a programme of special economic zones/free ports could be remarkably successful, provided – and this is important – that there is democratic buy-in involved. Because the rebuilding of these economies goes hand in hand with their rebuilding themselves as societies. And that means democracy.
Well, that’s my ‘social democratic’ point of view. I look forward to responses.
PS. I hope this also explains why I reacted so sharply to Patrick Crozier’s comment. He may think he’s being clever, but actually, attitudes like his not only unconsciously identify the problem but perpetuate and extend it. Comments and attitudes like his do real damage.
Michael Taylor, it is also worth noting, as I tried to do in my own post-election posting, that the Midlands/North aren’t quite the grimy, desperate places of London-based media imaginations. I am afraid that our culture encourages this: Coronation Street, “gritty” northern dramas made by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh and all that sort of stuff. The reality is a bit different, far more varied, with plenty of prosperity coming up. Heck, even Liverpool is much, much nicer these days and a great place to visit. Manchester and Leeds have a lot of wealthy people, not all connected with football either. I am from the flat plains of East Anglia, and apart from Cambridge, which is already known for its IT sector, you have prosperous bits in Suffolk, Norfolk and Northern bits of Essex, etc, etc. Ask yourself why lots of wealth managers and Swiss private banks (yes, the Swiss!) have opened regional offices in these places if they are supposed to be something out of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel.
Johnathan Pearce: I agree. Still, when you’re up against the combined cultural might of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Patrick Crozier, its a problem. . . 😉
Two problems which haven’t been covered are that the best Universities and airports are clustered near London.
Larger international companies won’t place an office where international travel is difficult.
And one of the problems which we haven’t covered is that the many talented northerners have been forced to move to London, making problems in the north worse.
“Thanks for the reply – from our previous exchanges, I think you gave me the credit that I wasn’t primarily trying to be snarky.”
No problem. I wasn’t offended – I have a very thick skin for internet debate! And I had assumed it was just a misunderstanding.
“Why? Because it explains why ‘national’ policies developed in London continually fail.”
Interesting perspective! In the same sort of way that a centralised command economy doesn’t have the information to optimise the myriad transactions, so a centralised command government can’t optimise the regulatory environment. I’ll have to think about that one.
“The third strand follows from that: if these towns are to regain their natural vigour and health, then restoring that civic spirit is essential. I’d suggest that a programme of special economic zones/free ports could be remarkably successful, provided – and this is important – that there is democratic buy-in involved.”
That sounds hopeful. Local autonomy, control over your own fate, …
“PS. I hope this also explains why I reacted so sharply to Patrick Crozier’s comment.”
I suspect it was a misunderstanding. I read Patrick’s comment as only talking about ‘Industrial Revolution’ style heavy manufacturing industry. The coal mining, steel works, ship building sort of ‘industry’. That’s not coming back. And I don’t think that’s at all controversial, surprising, or evidence of arrogant contempt for the capabilities of northerners. But you understandably didn’t interpret ‘industry’ to mean only ‘heavy manual-labour big-lumps-of-metal industry’.
Although there is one aspect of that that I think may be worth talking about some more. I’ve seen some documentaries about the impact of closing the mines, in which it was observed that some of those sacked miners never worked again, the mining communities they lived in never recovered. Their complaint seemed to be that their skills were all in mining, and they were incapable of learning new ones, not even to the extent of the average 17 year old kid getting a starter job. And it’s very tempting to criticise their attitude, as being too tangled up in pride and resentment over Maggie to move on.
However, others have told me that it’s not quite like that. When those coal miners grew up, the non-academic boys all expected to go into the local industry – mining, steel working, train engineering, whatever. And their education was abbreviated accordingly. They were taught, and learnt, what they needed to know to do that job, and all the other manual jobs that needed more strength and stamina and dexterity than brains. Other classes they skipped or paid no attention to or didn’t understand (and often took pride in not understanding – the number of people I’ve met who boast about how they didn’t understand maths…). There is always a spread of natural ability, and there are always people in the bottom tail of that spread, and those people need jobs. In the modern world, those jobs are simply no longer there.
And this is why we have millions struggling in minimum wage jobs – prices driven down by far more people willing to work than jobs of that sort that need doing – and a critical shortage of skills at the top end.
It’s not that the North doesn’t produce clever people. It’s that those people all move south to find work, while their fellows on minimum wages can’t afford to.
All the above is speculative, hypothetical, and a gross over-simplification; and of course the problem of the lower tail applies universally, to north and south alike. But there is a possibility that it isn’t about different economic policies in north and south, it’s really about the gap between the lower and upper tail, and it just happens to have become correlated with north and south because of the way people have moved around to find work.
And so the problem is really to do with education and training. How do we take minimum-wage blue-collar manual labour, and turn them into educated white-collar workers? It’s well-known that there are techniques for learning, memory, and maths that can be taught. We still rely on individual people stood up at a whiteboard, teaching face-to-face, when we could easily video the best lecturers and teachers and distribute those nationally. There are some fairly crude efforts to get computers to teach, but surely there’s more here that could be done? Teaching methods are still largely in the Victorian era, driven in part by the teaching unions’ need to preserve jobs. Automate it. Create a market for educational software. And what else? Education is also about culture and upbringing, work ethic, people’s attitude to cleverness (like maths), (justified) self-confidence, and so on. What cultural changes are needed? And how do we bring them about?
I offer it only as a thought for discussion. I’m not saying that’s the problem, or that this is the answer.
Nullius,
Thanks for the thoughtful response – much of which I agree with. There certainly is a strata, found particularly in mining country, where now elderly miners have wasted their lives nursing the grudge. There is also plenty of evidence that in the past some strands of the ‘working class’ would dumb themselves down from puberty, when they discovered intelligence was not universally lauded. (Ted Hughes started out as a teacher – his letters contain his distress at witnessing this phenomenon kicking in with the children he was teaching). And, absolutely of course, the leeching away of talent is at the core of the problem.
All of which is why I think any likely ‘recovery’ strategy must include an absolutely overt ‘buy-in’ from the local community. Along the lines of ‘Do you sincerely want to get rich?’ I think by making it absolutely overt – that this is absolutely your chance to break the chain, but it’s you that’ll have to do it, and you that will enjoy the fruits of success – you do stand a chance of preserving existing social institutions and growing new and helpful ones alongside.
The default here is libertarianism, but I’ve come to the conclusion that social democracy is needed. But that’s not, repeat not, a kind of watered down socialism, nor is it any kind of liberalism. Rather, it recognizes that social institutions provide the framework within which the market does its magic, therefore they should be fostered where possible. And that democracy is a basic human dignity, without which the social institutions can go whistle.
This may well provoke disagreement in some quarters, but rather than spend money on stimulating the Midlands/North, why not remove all subsidies on living in London (social housing, for example), so that the costs of doing business there have to rise in order to fill all positions? In other words, put a real market price on the cost of doing business in London, and see how many firms choose lower-cost environments elsewhere.
There may well be other, collateral benefits of such a policy (indeed, in an ideal world there would be no social housing, although immigration would have to be maintained at no more than replacement level so as not to limit supply), and of course it would have to be accompanied by a suitable “right to buy” scheme for existing tenants.
Move all of your governmental bodies and agencies and departments and employees out of London and into the North.
They might not be able to mine coal anymore, but they can easily learn to shuffle papers and send out notices and schedule hearings and study trade and opine on everyone else’s business.
KrakowJosh:
Amen to that.
(Added in proof: lower taxes for the North are not unfair, IFF it can be shown that the South gets more than its fair share of spending per capita.)
Close, but you’re starting at the bottom rather than the top. Remove government subsidies for creating business in London, first.
Only then do we remove things like social housing, elsewise we’re punishing the poor.
Remember – topdown, not bottom up 😉
Perhaps I should clarify my remarks. All I am saying is that perhaps geography is against the North. For whatever reason, it will never be as prosperous as the South. As such, maybe rather than trying to push ecomomic water up hill, it would be better to accept that the South is where prosperity lies and act accordingly: relax planning restrictions in the South to allow people to move there from the North and build infrastructure to match.
@Neonsnake 8:49 pm
Are there government subsidies for creating businesses in London? If so, they should indeed go first.
But removing social housing in London isn’t punishing the poor, it’s taking away a system that allows a few lucky poor people to live in areas that everyone else has to pay a great deal for – that’s less like punishment and more like removing an unfair advantage that only a limited number of people can exploit (and while so doing, reducing the availability and inflating the price of housing that others have to pay market rates for).
Patrick,
I must confess that I’d not heard of the ‘cardinal inevitability theory’ of economic prosperity. Still, if true, it would certainly make economics a lot simpler.
It would be interesting to compare this phenomenon with the black ghetto community in USA, where from the 60s for decades (and still now for all I know), blacks who “played whitey’s game” by studying in school were in some danger, such that school prize givings had to be discrete, even secretive, evening events just for the prize winners.
The North is never going to be identical to the South, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be successful.
This is interesting on the subject: https://unherd.com/2019/11/lets-turn-off-the-northern-powerhouse/
Patrick – you can guess what I am about to say, but I am going to say it anyway (because other people may not know).
The prosperity of London is based on a vast Credit Bubble – there are some factories there, but not really a large scale industrial base. It is a essentially a vast bubble city – and the idea of even more people moving there will just make the suffering worse when it does come.
The United States faces similar problems – such cities as New York make no sense, no sane person would produce good there (the taxes, regulations and other costs are just too high), yet millions of people live in these places and they have vast mountains of DEBT.
In a way the problems of many American cities are worse – they have bigger debts and wildly higher taxes than other places in the same country. A person in, say, South Dakota really does have less government (less statism) than a person in New York State or California. Unless they live on an “island of socialism” such as the Pine Ridge Reservation. Someone from Chicago (which will go bankrupt – in fact if not in name) can hit the road – they really can go to places that are less statist.
The United States still has space – it is not as densely populated as Britain, especially South East England, is.
When the international Credit Bubble economy finally goes (and, I admit, I am utterly astonished at how long it has lasted) the suffering in Britain may actually be worse than the suffering in the United States.
I do not see how Britain will even feed itself. Traditionally it sold manufactured goods to pay for food imports – but now we pay with “financial industry” IOUs.
New (biotech) technology may (or may not) mean that food is created in factories (not farms) – but a country will still have to be financially sensible place to have such factories.
As for financial services – these would play a vital role in a sane economy. But in a sane economy they, financial services, would be about REAL SAVINGS – the actual sacrifice of consumption (not Credit Bubble ism).
Johnathan, December 18, 2019 at 10:55 am:
“…[T]he Midlands/North aren’t quite the grimy, desperate places of London-based media imaginations.”
Nor is the American South*, nor most of the rest of Flyover Country, save such rotting cities and Detroit and others — brought on by monumental governmental mismanagement at all levels from local to Federal.
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* I believe it was authoress Jean Kerr (who wrote Please Don’t Eat the Daisies) who somewhere mentioned somebody who wrote in the style of “And then the house gave another lurch as termites finished the east wing,” referring of course to the stories built around the depressingly muddled, incestuous lives of Southerners.
I love this line, as a wonderful sendup of certain writers’ penchant for such plots. 😆 E.g. Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner.
@bobby b
Move all of your governmental bodies and agencies and departments and employees out of London and into the North.
FWIW, this is actually the plot of a Yes Prime Minister episode. (Those of you who know me will understand that I have a disturbing obsession with that show, since it is the fount of all wisdom on matters of government.)
Jim Hacker, the Prime Minister, plans to move all of Britain’s defence establishments “oop north”. The civil service objects, primarily because they and their wives’ wouldn’t accept the idea of being “hundreds of miles from Harrods, Wimbledon, the Army and Navy club — civilization itself….”
If you have half an hour, it is pretty darned funny.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kgy89
Fraser, it is hilarious.
And I love the scene in “Party Games” where Duncan warns Hacker that he has a long memory and then threatens him by saying that he expects Jim to support him for P.M., “unless you fancy Northern Ireland for yourself.”