That effectively makes the country poorer.
And with an aging population, less working people equals serious economic problems when you have a mass of retired folks whose pensions are paid via the taxpayer (who is shrinking and working less)
Like I said in my original posts, I don’t see a way out unless you conduct some serious tax reforms (probably more likely that you will be struck by lightning as there are too many embedded interests imvolved).
Holy cow. This is when I tell my spouse to pull out a pencil and peice of paper so they can write down their top 10 reasons why we can’t do something.
You’re well fed. You earn a good income. Of you got something in the way of socialized medicine. Your kids can live a reasonable life, with some opportunity to better themselves. It’s not nearly as horrible as you’re making out. And if you trade something out of your top 10 list for another country, you’re just gonna have another, different top 10 list of complaints.
Eventually you make drastic cuts to benefits and ask the Germans to bail you out, although I don’t know that they’ll be in a strong position to…
When it comes right down to it, I don’t see the UK as a country where you can raise kids well anymore.
This was not the case 20 years ago.
And this worries me a lot, because from an actuarial standpoint, I know the UK is going to get even poorer.
So sure, I can sit back in my own little enclave of the UK and ignore the rest of the country, but smaller children don’t operate in this way.
They see and absorb things as they are.
I grew up in developed countries as a small child for a reason (stability and quality of life), and I just don’t see the UK now as such a country.
It is veering towards instability and poverty. And this is accelerating.
It all comes back to the tragedy of Brexit, imo. Because post-empire UK’s niche was being the global financial capital, and then they decentralized it between mainland Europe, NYC, etc.
What will likely eventually happen is taxes will go way up and spending will be cut. But that means 10 years of managed decline as too many things need fixing.
There is no real point in staying for those 10 years if you have other options. You can always return if things do improve.
Thats my thinking on the matter.
Yes. It really is a tragedy.
US money went via UK to EU. Now thats shrunk significantly as US money goes directly to EU.
I’m just happy I have my employer-based healthcare in the US, and some legal bureaucratic nonsense fills up my $4,000 max out-of-pocket for essentially no cost to me. It’s a stupid system but it works out nicely in my specific case.
My Canadian relatives complain, like one had to wait 6 months for a removal of a non-cancerous but worrisome mole. But they’ve never mentioned waiting an excessive period for an important procedure.
Ignoring COVID where everybody everywhere waited, but as anti-vax anti-masker MAGA Qnadians, that was all intentional by the government of course.
As for the UK, I’m curious where it would be today without Brexit. Seems it would clearly be better.
6 months would actually be fast in the UK for such a procedure.
I remember a long time ago on the old AO erosewater saying you could not have quality care and universal access (single-payer model) at the same time. It just wouldn’t work unless you seriously rationed care.
I have to admit, he was right on that one. UK is a perfect example of this issue.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7281/
Maybe? That’s a very lafferesque sentiment, which could be true, though also wants for quantification.
Feiw, you guys do appear to have some very screwy tax rules.
Yikes.
Sadly, 4 hours is a not-uncommon waiting time in the Emergency Room waiting rooms I’m familiar with. If you have trauma, or are showing signs of cardiac distress or stroke, they’ll find a spot for you (even if it’s on a gurney in a hallway), but otherwise…
I most recently went to the ER with full-blown auditory and visual hallucinations. Thought I was going to die, I was taken there in a police vehicle.
6 hours later, the sun was up and I decided it was time to leave. Still hadn’t been seen except a urine sample to see if I was on drugs. (I was not.)
The main problem with the waiting lists is that working-age people who are waiting for treatment in order to get better and then re-start work keep getting blocked by older folks (retired mostly).
So what ends up happening is that those working age people get sicker as they wait.
Some of them die, and others develop health issues, so the end result is labour productivity goes down and you have more people that require social benefits.
This a huge problem in the UK right now.
You guys want to see the scale of the problems in the UK?
The largest local authority (LA) in the UK has now declared itself effectively bankrupt.
Birmingham.
And that is only the first domino. More LAs will be joining that list over the next 12 months as inflation, rates, cost of living, and demographics start to bite.
Looks like the equal pay claim is a contributing factor in Birmingham’s demise. Does London have a similar large claim facing it? Of course, London has more wealth than Birmingham.
Not that I know of (London). Have not heard of that.
Funding for LAs was simply cut too much and many of them were left financially fragile.
Now they are between a rock and a hard place as they cannot increase council taxes significantly due to the cost of living crisis. Instead, they keep cutting services to the bone (and even that is not enough).
There seems to be a curse with places named Birmingham. Jefferson County, Alabama (county seat: Birmingham) had a huge bankruptcy several years ago.
Detroit was a bigger bankruptcy. The territory of Puerto Rico would have filed for bankruptcy a few years ago, except it couldn’t get federal permission to seek such protection…
…and that doesn’t include local government or taxing districts that were de facto bankrupt but didn’t/couldn’t file Chapter 9.
To pile on to the NHS, if you want to get gender affirming care through the NHS there are currently only 7 sites in all of England where you can do so. One of the largest ones claims to have a backlog of 5 years (62 months to be precise), calculated by the fact that patients referred in 2018 are now getting their initial appointments. FOI requests suggest that the backlog is growing, rather than shrinking. Trans people allegedly waiting up to 35 years for NHS appointment
My understanding is that the situation in Scotland is significantly better, but still slow enough that lots of people are turning to private care instead.
I think the idea is choose two of quality, cost and speed where the UK tended to have quality and cost and the US has speed and quality, although all very subjective.
