[Amezarak]

The UK on a per capita GDP PPP basis is as poor, or poorer, than the poorest US state, Mississippi. [1] Immigration, trade policy, privatization, and financialization have cut the working class population off at the knees. It's an economically miserable country temporarily sustained only by the continued extraction of wealth in London, activity that continues only through inertia. This should be shocking given the starting point.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/britain-mi...

Even side from that, I think the view that a country's good is defined by GDP is entirely wrong.

Re: your migration comments, immigration is a matter of public policy. It is not possible unless the state encourages and allows it. It isn’t something that just happens because other people want to come.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> The UK on a per capita GDP PPP basis is as poor, or poorer, than the poorest US state, Mississippi.

Lets go through some basics, 40% of missippi's budget comes from federal money. California aint paying the tab of the UK, so yeah numbers look worse.

the UK budget for a person includes healthcare, and rent is cheaper (except london). On average UK residents have more disposable income and higher quality of life (longer life, fewer jail time, less child and mother deaths).

No one in the UK would trade their life for the same money, way more driving, worse food, no healthcare and a opioid epidemic all over the place.

> Immigration, trade policy, privatization, and financialization have cut the working class population off at the knees

the highest spending of the working class is housing which was cut by a conservative goverment to entrench purchasing power on the boomer generation. Cutting council house builds in the 70s was the biggest mistake in the recent history of the country

the idea of those kind of trade offs, similar to the US becoming a world currency is that the population would up skill. Replace mines with modern industries and services, which have higher quality of life and lower risk.

> It's an economically miserable country temporarily sustained only by the continued extraction of wealth in London, activity that continues only through inertia. This should be shocking given the starting point.

cool theory, but london is not continuing through inertia, it got ahead of wall street as a financial hub. We are literally the worlds largest financial centre. The fact that its not shared properly is an issue, but no country gets to be numebr 1 in such an incredibly competitive industry "through inertia"

> I think the view that a country's good is defined by GDP is entirely wrong.

why bring up missisippis then?

> immigration is a matter of public policy. It is not possible unless the state encourages and allows it. It isn’t something that just happens because other people want to come.

yeah an there is a need for immigrants. Between the lack of births, the lack of university spaces etc we need way more nurses than the UK can graduate per year for example. You also have the historical context of the UK being an empire and still having relationships with the countries it owned. There are plenty of people in Australia, Canda, Nigeria, India whose grandparents were born in UK, then moved to a different country and now their grandkids might wanna come back. Or grew up in an ex colony and think of the UK like many UK students think of europe, as somewhere to go an study or visit or dream of moving to some day.

You can make immigration harder or easier as public policy but it is also something that just happens. Outside of like north korea pretty much every country has people who come in and go out, for a myriad of reasons

[Amezarak]

> the UK budget for a person includes healthcare,

I don't think you understand how GDP PPP works, but you understand this makes the UK look even worse, right? At any rate the point is the fact this comparison can even be made is grim: the UK as a whole's best argument for "we're better off than Mississippi" is "well, we uh, have the NHS." Yeah, basically every country has universal health care - it's not impressive...especially when wages and benefits are so poor in the UK that you have to import people to man it rather than drawing in the people you already have. Even the average Mississippian probably gets equivalent care through the byzantine US "universal" system (a quick Google shows 25% of the population is on Medicaid plus another 15% on Medicare, many hospital systems are owned by the government, etc.)

> and rent is cheaper (except london).

The average rent excluding London is 1341 pounds[1], or about $1800. The average rent in Mississippi is $1150. [2]

> No one in the UK would trade their life for the same money, way more driving, worse food, no healthcare and a opioid epidemic all over the place.

The article I linked was from someone who emigrated from the UK to Mississippi. I've also never, ever heard anyone compare UK good favorably to US Southern food. Or any food, really.

Perhaps most importantly, the government of Mississippi and the police don’t have hatred and resentment for the lower classes. Lower class ethnic British people are clearly reviled by their government and the upper classes, regardless of what party is in charge. Even excluding the racial angle, you yourself mention that with how the police spoke of and treated the girls in those scandals.

> the highest spending of the working class is housing which was cut by a conservative goverment to entrench purchasing power on the boomer generation. Cutting council house builds in the 70s was the biggest mistake in the recent history of the country

I don't care whether the "conservatives" or the "liberals" or the "greens" or anyone else did it (do you think I like Thatcher?), the fact is the UK has been horrifically mismanaged and went from one of the wealthiest countries in the world to one for whom the average person is more badly off than the average person in most advanced countries.

> it got ahead of wall street as a financial hub.

Being a financial hub is not great for anyone except the 1%, but nevertheless NYC is a larger financial hub than London, despite, once again, the enormous advantage London should have had. [3]

However, I would agree: if the US doesn't do something soon, it will end up like the UK: the elite and the rich do great, while financialization, free trade, and migration destroy the middle and lower classes. That's what we're already seeing. If we don't wake up, the dystopia seen in the UK is our future.

> yeah an there is a need for immigrants.

Yes, capitalists love cheap labor. We always have labor "shortages" that magically can only be solved by dumping supply on the labor market. The birthrate argument is particularly silly, since immigration depresses native births. [4] It's also a worldwide problem except in some developing countries, so the "we have to be nice" argument is ultimately hollowing out the countries the migrants come from.

> but it is also something that just happens. Outside of like north korea pretty much every country has people who come in and go out, for a myriad of reasons

Migrants come because the can get money. They can get money because of government policies that specifically enable them to get jobs and benefits. In other words, they are incentivized to come and policies are developed to support and assist them. Without these carrots, migration plummets. UK political leadership made a deliberate choice to pump the UK full of migrants, one that would have been opposed by the population had it been a referendum. Indeed in the UK case, it's been particularly obvious that voting for politicians that claim to oppose migration just gets you even more immigration.

[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/average-asking-rent-outside-l... [2] https://www.redfin.com/state/Mississippi/rental-market [3] https://www.zyen.com/publications/public-reports/the-global-... [4] https://cis.org/Richwine/Impact-Immigration-US-Fertility