I thought this article on life in the U.S. in an era of GDP growth below 2% was interesting and perhaps relevant to the failing country theme.
Yes, we have political problems that may be rooted in less or no growth. But, they are much older than he thinks.
His metric seems to be total, nominal GDP.
Established businesses that are trying to show nominal growth care about that because they figure they can get a share of a growing pie.
Itâs not a very good metric to me. Mine is âmedian real wageâ. Thatâs what matters to voters.
Businesses like growing populations â more customers and more workers. Individuals donât care about aggregate numbers.
Businesses like more income inequality, after all, business leaders are the personal beneficiaries. Or, they are at least agnostic, they can simply target the top 10%. Median wage workers donât like wage inequality.
The big change in wage growth started nearly 50 years ago. The people on the bleeding edge of that change were the unionized factory workers. They thought neither party cared about them and were open to Trumpâs message in 2016. People who grew up on my block have been living this for a long time. And, they are likely to support things that this author sees as problems.
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Ferrari reducing UK sales to protect resale values.
Water bills up 50% and sewage in rivers and beaches up even more.
Broken Britain strikes again. People are even angrier now because water bills have been front-loaded over the last year.
Iron Crosses probably fetch a lot of money these days..
Which side did they fight on?
I assumed German because of the Iron Cross
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Should read more carefully
The Farage support would make you think he was British butâŠ..
As predicted. And Labour has accelerated the trend by further repressing the young in favour of the old and the benefits class.
Sounds a lot like New Zealand. I wonder where everyone is going to end up?
Didnât most of New Zealand end up in Australia. Something, something, both countries smarter.
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I recently discovered Zoe.Bread on Instagram (Instagram)
(and TikTok). Iâve been fascinated by her wars with Manchester and Liverpool councils over parking tickets and shady practices. It seems to be a skmall sign of some of the difficulties and problems councils in the UK have.
ETA: weirdness around SIP car parks in ManchesterâŠ
Not surprised at any of that tbh.
The UK pummels people with fines and uses them to fund local revenues.
So when Councils are broke (due to adult social care and SEND spending) they widen the net to catch more people with these fines. It has turned into a huge racket and it really pisses people off given the cost of living crisis.
Its also a sign of a failing local government (in the wider context of a country that is failing).
I assume its very easy for someone from NZ to work in Australia? IIRC they have no need for work visas or similar (not 100% sure if they have something like the EU has or UK-Ireland with Common Travel area).
UK folks have it a bit worse given that they lost EU access, so they have to emigrate the hard way (and given language limitations its usually to an English speaking country - which means Ireland, Canada, US, Australia, NZ, Singapore etc).
That only works if itâs only the dumb ones leaving New Zealand. Unfortunately this time I think a lot of the smart ones are leaving too.
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This is what happens when you make entry level employment much more expensive without sorting out investment (to increase productivity). Labour really are failing the young.
This is the governmentâs job?
TIL.