you're busy. things to watch. bridges to guard.
yes indeed
yup. for all the talk they never actually take the time to break that down for the "great british public" and explain what they have to do to fix it.
the USA has better produtivity growth and it has a service economy.
factors including capital investement, adoption of technology, skills and training, management, working culture, utilisation of human capital, resources, trade, inward investment.
the USA has a similar low skills section of society but the US is light years ahead of the UK when it comes to utilisation of technology and management science to make full use of that portion of society.
I was still chewing on productivity but I couldn't finish my thought lol
I think this is all true, and again, investment (or the lack of it!) is huge. I wondered if the US having a larger manufacturing base and internal market would encourage investment in such things, leading to better productivity but this line of thought was a little woolly. On a cursory search I found this (also surprised manufacturing is still so much of the UK's GDP tbh):
UK vs. U.S. Manufacturing: How Can the UK Close the Productivity Gap?
The U.S. companies that invested more heavily in digital – specifically data access capabilities – gained a clear competitive advantage. The largest performance gaps between the UK and U.S. were seen in the Productivity and Efficiency, Product Quality, and Agility and Resilience categories, with the UK significantly behind in all three of these critical areas.
As the IDC data shows, the answer lies in harnessing the power of digital. Many UK companies still rely on manual, paper-based,
or Excel spreadsheets to view and manage manufacturing operations performance, making it impossible to keep up in today’s fast-paced, complex world where decisions need to be made in a more connected and immediate way.
Though perhaps the US isn't the place to be looking to for a model working culture
(I suppose it depends on the industry)
in the UK we are skeptical and untrusting of formal qualifications and management science. reverse snobbery from the masses.
european footballers routinely study before or while playing football.
meanwhile in the uk:
"Le Saux took an Environmental Studies degree at
Kingston University before dropping out to concentrate on his football career. His interest in learning never left him, however, and as a player he was often derided for reading
The Guardian and visiting museums in his spare time.
[19]"
I was going to say - but so many people have qualifications now! But even then, there
is scepticism. It's difficult to discuss without generalising because I can definitely envision reverse snobbery, but then on the other hand it seems like everyone these days is getting MBAs lol.
This reminded me of Kompany, who I think got an MBA while he was in the UK (is he still here? idk)?
---
Now, one thing that keeps coming to mind is the
astounding amount of legislative effort this strain of government puts into inflating the price of housing (a fundamentally unproductive asset class)...
Some recent examples:
- 50 year mortgages - wtf? When they were first posted here I thought it was just one of Boris' brainfarts, but
they're actually happening?
- Extending the right to buy, another bad idea that really doesn't benefit many people and would in all likelihood make things worse:
How does right to buy work and why is Boris Johnson planning to extend it?
- Cutting stamp duty: I will concede that it is kind of punitive at higher values (I've heard), but to cut it with no increase in supply of houses will just increase prices as we saw between lockdowns
None of this will do anything to soften the sclerotic housing market (love that phrase ngl
) And I genuinely don't see how the situation can be improved while
a whole quarter of Conservative (and yes, 18 Labour) MPs are directly profiting from the current state of affairs.
I came across this comment that I thought was really good: (and btw Ruby Lott-Lavigna has some nice articles on housing on Vice
)
The mentality of a good slice of the people in this country is off. Ask someone what they are saving up for - it's not to launch a business, develop an invention, invest in education or R & D or do something creative. 9 times out of 10, property is their chief aspiration, with the economy now primarily built on selling off our nation's assets, land and housing to investors at home and oversees at inflated prices. Property and national assets are our country's last big "export" and forms the basis of the government's debt based asset bubble economy. So long as the bubble is inflating, consumer spending continues.
Since Thatcher, getting easy, lazy, feckless, flabby money by taking and owning and renting rather than creating, making and doing and inventing is deeply ingrained in the national psyche - company law means our companies have to be run for the benefit of rentier shareholders and profits drained into their pockets instead of into R & D, and much of Britain is still very feudal and a good portion of the land and rent wealth is still in the hands of people who's predecessors did a bit of Saxon slashing 1000 years ago.
We are waiting for a government who will support the productivity economy over the rentier and the property economy. There are far too many lazy BTL barons these days who think fitting the odd carpet or fixing the boiler on their inherited house they're renting out is a real effort and service that entitles them to drain away 60% of someone's productive earnings. There are too many extractive business owners and shareholders and there are far too many undeserving rich NIMBYs who've made get-something-for-nothing fortunes on house price appreciation by doing nothing more than sitting in their own home in London.
The idea of collecting and hoarding money to buy a house or to buy some other tat vs spreading it like mulch to invest in people and places and communities to make things flourish is part of the problem of the Tory pearl-clutchy economy and a warped mindset that prioritises property and owning over creativity, sharing, generosity and human dignity.
(I suppose it's one way to make the UK an attractive place to invest in, once again at the expense of virtually everyone actually living here...)
fortune.com
apple.news
www.theguardian.com
www.hrreview.co.uk
Stephen Moore and his crappy Libertarian policies
