[Esras]

Positives upfront:

I appreciate that the article is trying to describe a complex topic, and many of the issues described are shared by us here in the US. It does cite different statistics of other nations as comparisons, and calls out that access to jobs, ease of movement, and housing are all things that help make countries wealthy.

Now for the downsides.

I feel like this article maintains a tone throughout that I might describe as "dismissive nationalism." The comparison against France is preceded by a paragraph that, due to the framing, is presented as ludicrous, proceeds to describe all of the things France does better, and then somehow still makes the claim that Britain has "many advantages." Perhaps that's intended in a vacuum, but with how hard it's pushing for private investment (to the extent that it touts all that earlier infrastructure in Britain as "built by a total of 1,116 private companies" and that it describes the State's role as functionally just exercising eminent domain), it's hard to overlook.

And while the underlying paper is discussing foundational, long-term effects, that there isn't a single mention of Brexit in the article feels stark in contrast to the conclusory statement by the paper's authors of "it is vital that Britain should once more have the strength and self-belief of 1939 with which to play its part in the leadership of the free world."

---

I'm not an expert in economics (as my critique above might have clued you in), but I do think it's important to be careful in which experts you choose to listen to. I also don't know the biases that this particular publication or the underlying paper subscribe to.

I may try read the Foundations paper (https://ukfoundations.co/ - it's not that long), but if this article is summarizing well and is all, then it feels "too shallow." What's the underlying mechanism that got them to that state? If the proposed solution is "allowing more private investment," then what about all of the social shifts that happened in the meantime? NIMBYism is brought up as "logical" given the incentives at one point, but I'd argue it's fundamentally a social issue, related to a perceived quality of life and a lack of perception of a larger group as being part of "your community."

I digress.

Thanks for sharing the link, and I hope others with more of an economic / politics background might have more fruitful critique.

[janice1999]

> I may try read the Foundations paper (https://ukfoundations.co/ - it's not that long)

> What's the underlying mechanism that got them to that state?

It's the people behind the ukfoundations.co site who got Britain to its current state. The site is literally the work of Adam Smith Institute members whose Thatcherite neoliberal policies have dominated the UK since the 70s.

[mike_hearn]

Brexit isn't mentioned because it's not relevant - the perception that it was important economically is a hangover from the times when the establishment was telling everyone it would be. In fact there was no economic impact. Britain continued in about the same place it was before rankings-wise, there was no Brexit recession and even trade with the EU continued on its prior trend line! An outcome so embarrassing to the Remainer classes that they just ignore the real outcomes and talk as if the economist's models were accurate.

> What's the underlying mechanism that got them to that state?

The Foundations essay discusses that. It's a combination of a big overhang of very socialist regulation from the 1940s, especially related to construction, combined with the lack of a big enough libertarian faction in the right wing party that would fix it. America has a strong Republican movement that pushes for pro-capitalist, pro-freedom outcomes (or did pre Trump), and inter-state competition makes it easier to compare outcomes. The UK had such a government for a while in the 1980s but British society didn't produce enough Thatchers to keep it up and the reforms were never completed. Blair accepted the 80s changes were necessary but didn't continue, and after Blair stepped down Labour shifted to the left (reverting to its historical mean). Cameron took advantage by steering the Conservative Party towards being continuity New Labour i.e. a center left party. They found that maintaining and doubling down on super strict building regs satisfied both the left wing greens and the right wing pensioners/house flippers, making it into a winning electoral strategy. They didn't have enough people making the long term arguments about the economic damage of that strategy, and indeed the Conservatives set things up to suppress their own right wing in the belief that this would yield bigger victories. Everything continued to drift ever more listlessly to the left until their activists, funders and ultimately voters basically gave up on them. Labour won more or less by default (not because they became more popular) and is now acting much like they did in the 1970s, so it looks like history travels in a loop and things will get worse for Britain before they get better, unfortunately.

> NIMBYism is brought up as "logical" given the incentives at one point, but I'd argue it's fundamentally a social issue

It's mostly not a social issue but financial. The USA has unusually sophisticated investing culture, it's common for people to understand and engage in stock trading there. In the UK it's normal for people's only investment to be their houses, and the social expectation that house prices always rise is abnormally strong. Therefore, anything that could lower house prices became political death -> NIMBYism.

[Esras]

For anyone else coming along reading this thread, in searching for Brexit's impact, I see mention that while a sharp recession and many of the doom-and-gloom style predictions didn't happen, it _absolutely_ has had a negative impact on the economy, and that it's expected that the effects are long-term and will continue.

I do think it's potentially fair to say that some of those effects aren't relevant for this particular article or discussion, due to the recency. The movement around it didn't arise out of nothing, after all.

[mike_hearn]

Can you show me the data showing negative effects post-implementation?

The expectation of long term effects comes, as far as I know, only from the same people who were wrong last time and are trying to save face by making new predictions with effectively unfalsifiable timelines.

[nojvek]

I’m glad you acknowledged pre-Trump.

Republican Party definitely ain’t pro-freedom or pro-life.

[mike_hearn]

I realize it may not seem that way, but even under Trump the Republicans are still quite a bit stronger on the pro-business pro-liberty agenda than political parties in other countries. Also Trump only really matters at the federal level, whereas a lot of the decisions that matter for this UK vs USA discussion take place at the local level. It's more about the councillors and governors than the President or the Prime Minister. That's where permitting decisions are taking place for instance.