[omegaham]

Head out to some of the Rust Belt states - New York. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. You'll find towns that are just that - empty and gutted. There are cities that lost more than 80% of their manufacturing jobs in less than 10 years.

It was just the way of the future - the Southeast had lower labor costs, lower cost of land, and advantageous shipping arrangements. The cities just couldn't keep up, and they fell by the wayside.

And yes, it's pretty crappy to go to these cities and tell the people who are struggling there that their businesses deserved to go bankrupt or leave, but there's no other way to do it. The alternative is to subsidize them, and that ends up discouraging progress and also creating a culture of dependence on the government. After all, why invent new stuff if the government will increase the subsidy to keep up with your new manufacturing process?

Letting the free market purge badly competing industry is good for the country and also good for everyone in the long term.

[lostlogin]

I wouldn't call what Thatcher brought in 'free market' per se, although I dont think this is what you are saying. Many of the formerly nationalised companies that are now supposedly private depend heavily on state subsidies. Her implementation of change swapped one inefficiency for another while setting vast swaths of the country at loggerheads. Other countries have managed to implement painful change without the friction experienced in the UK. It's a sad period of history.