This is what happens when you have a country trying to become more American over time. We want European public services with American tax rates. What we’ve ended up with is American public services, and American tax rates, but with none of the political or economic power of America. The economy is hampered by the privatisation of necessities.
However, I also think comparing with America is disingenuous. I’d much rather live in a country where my government is semi-competent, versus one where it is totally incompetent. You couldn’t pay me to live in America.
The way I see it, living here in the US, is that since the 1970s corporate America has been in the business of extracting wealth from the great middle class that came out of WW2 spending, and US hegemony over the world:
Cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cutting social spending in order to commercialize and tax social infrastructure that used to be free such as childcare, healthcare, elderly care, education and so forth. De-industrializing sending blue collar jobs overseas so that corps can extract even more wealth faster.
In many poorer areas, this vein of wealth has been tapped out and local communities are desolate, misery-drug addicted holes.
Britain did not have that same post-war middle class boom to the same degree, and taking on the same wealth extractive policies will result in little to no gain, IMO because there’s little wealth to extract.
The above is purely my own uneducated uninformed drivel.
This is exactly it. The American economy is riding on a semi-permanent high of being the dominant economic power of the entire world, especially since the USSR fell. They maintain this with a combination of military power and economic power, projected globally.
Copying that simply will never garner the same results
I think one can further break down “economic power” between industrial strength, control of the largest financial (stock, bond, futures) markets, and control over the de facto global currency.
This is what happens when you have a country trying to become more American over time. We want European public services with American tax rates. What we’ve ended up with is American public services, and American tax rates, but with none of the political or economic power of America. The economy is hampered by the privatisation of necessities.
However, I also think comparing with America is disingenuous. I’d much rather live in a country where my government is semi-competent, versus one where it is totally incompetent. You couldn’t pay me to live in America.
The way I see it, living here in the US, is that since the 1970s corporate America has been in the business of extracting wealth from the great middle class that came out of WW2 spending, and US hegemony over the world:
Cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cutting social spending in order to commercialize and tax social infrastructure that used to be free such as childcare, healthcare, elderly care, education and so forth. De-industrializing sending blue collar jobs overseas so that corps can extract even more wealth faster.
In many poorer areas, this vein of wealth has been tapped out and local communities are desolate, misery-drug addicted holes.
Britain did not have that same post-war middle class boom to the same degree, and taking on the same wealth extractive policies will result in little to no gain, IMO because there’s little wealth to extract.
The above is purely my own uneducated uninformed drivel.
This is exactly it. The American economy is riding on a semi-permanent high of being the dominant economic power of the entire world, especially since the USSR fell. They maintain this with a combination of military power and economic power, projected globally.
Copying that simply will never garner the same results
I think one can further break down “economic power” between industrial strength, control of the largest financial (stock, bond, futures) markets, and control over the de facto global currency.