What’s changed is that no one cares about the public sphere anymore. You wouldn’t believe the contrast between Britain’s crumbling high streets and the lavish interiors of some of these homes. I’ve seen marble floors, $10K TVs, $100K kitchens, $150K bathrooms. Home offices decked out with $50K worth of gear. Wine cellars, indoor spas, private gyms—you name it.

Even on the commercial side, it’s wild. It’s not uncommon to walk into a privately-owned or government-owned building and be greeted by a $5 million art piece in the lobby. Then you start looking around and adding up the costs—“they probably spent $10K just on that fancy trim around the doorframe.” Or you notice a particularly heavy door, Google it, and realize it costs $15K per door. Then you start counting the doors—there are thousands. The rabbit hole goes deep, and the amount of wealth becomes staggering. It’s just hidden in plain sight.

But all of this wealth is cloistered. No one’s investing in the public-facing world. There’s a broad cultural resignation—from the elites to the average person: “Why bother fixing the outside world? Just survive the workday and retreat into your private kingdom.” The mindset has shifted toward building personal fortresses rather than shared prosperity.

So yes, Britain feels poor—but it’s not because the money is gone. It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.

You can find far, far more luxurious hotels in South Africa or the Philippines than in Switzerland or England.

Some days I think the difference between 1st world and 3rd world is not so much wealth, but the division of wealth.

For example, Grab/Uber rickshaw/tuk-tuk drivers in India may technically earn over $10 a day, but many of them remain homeless because the price of food and rent has risen, and they often support a lot of their family members who have no jobs.

They often sleep on their rickshaws and work more than 20 hours a day, seven days a week, relying on excessive amounts of caffeine and other substances to keep going.

Many of them sleep on their motorcycles or near them on the sidewalk.

I was once debating between granite countertops that ranged from 5k to 10k—like it was a make-or-break decision for my budget—only to walk into a home where the owners start rambling on about how much of a pain it was to get custom wood countertops imported from Brazil, sourcing the same industrial kitchen range that michelin star cook cooks use, industrial fridge/freezer setups, marble floor tiling, and every single top-of-the-line thing in a kitchen you can possibly think of.

Considering I spent 25k on a modest kitchen with brand new top of the line Samsung appliances in a fairly large house in a "high-income" area, I’d say these folks are spending 4-5 times what I did. And honestly, my guess might be an underestimate. The elites and upper-middle class have DEEP pockets.

Obviously there is more hands-on involved the cheaper you want to go.

Also "full" is probably doing a lot of lifting here. He likely didn't do plumbing for the kitchen from scratch nor electrical.

If you just need to replace cabinets + appliances, there's no reason why you can't get any kitchen done under 30k.

When you have a customer base with 1000x average income, you will rapidly find there's a 1000x priced option... even if it's only 2% better than something priced 10x average (or often, simply labelled differently).

"Upper middle class" in the UK comprises the top 5% or so of the population. They tend to be senior professionals or business owners, are likely to be privately educated, will probably speak with a "received pronunciation" (rather than regional) accent, and have significant asset wealth.

"Upper class" is reserved for landed gentry, nobility, etc. They're people who can live off long-standing inherited wealth and don't need jobs or even education (though many still do have them, of course).

I’m no economist, but after working closely with many UK clients, I’ve noticed something: the upper-middle class here may not be flush with current cash flow, but they're sitting on a ridiculous amount of generational wealth that's been safely accumulated over the last 200 years within tight-knit family networks. In my view, the elites have both robust current cash flow and deep generational wealth, while the upper-middle class primarily relies on that generational cushion. They might not be buying Bugattis like the elites, but they're still living extremely luxurious, lavish lifestyles. Anyone without that kind of inherited wealth—unless you hit it big with a million-dollar tech idea—is stuck in the rat race, whether you're working at Starbucks or engineering at a tech firm.

The US seems a bit different. Here, there’s more opportunity to generate enough cash flow within one generation to set up the next with “generational” wealth. In the UK, it takes longer—about 3–4 generations—to build that legacy. But once a family in the UK secures this wealth, it tends to provide a relatively stable, luxurious life for the next 2–3 generations. In the US, while you might build wealth in just one generation, it can just as quickly vanish—sometimes within a single generation or even half one—due to medical debt, mismanagement, or economic swings. It takes a structured effort, clear strategy, and a strong individual family culture to preserve wealth in the US. If it’s not properly secured, that wealth ends up transferring to someone else who is setting up their own cycle of generational prosperity.

I also think the UK’s cultural and systemic setup makes it much harder for wealth to move from family networks at the top down to the working class. Over the past 10 years, globally, more wealth has shifted from the working class to the upper-middle and elite tiers. In the UK, that wealth is now entrenched at the top for the next four generations—even if the flow stops today, it’s going to stay that way for another 50 years or so. In the US, although wealth has also moved upward, there’s a genuine chance for it to “expire” at the top within 5-10 years and start cycling back down to the working class. I think this is the major difference in US economics as opposed to much of the world.

That said, who really knows what will happen given today’s global political climate? Everything’s kind of up in the air right now, and we'll have to see how it all settles over the next few years.

"Consider that about ten percent of Americans will spend at least a year in the top one percent and more than half of all Americans will spent a year in the top ten percent[1]. This is visibly not the same for the more static –but nominally more equal –Europe. For instance, only ten percent of the wealthiest five hundred American people or dynasties were so thirty years ago; more than sixty percent of those on the French list were heirs and a third of the richest Europeans were the richest centuries ago. In Florence, it was just revealed that things are really even worse: the same handful of families have kept the wealth for five centuries."

And there is more quoted here: https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...

Full disclosure, I travel all over Europe for work and in the last 3 years, 1 of them was in the UK. The divide between the rich and poor is incredible.

Further, the only place I’ve seen so many young homeless men on the streets is in the UK. Not seen it anywhere else.

Go back to my childhood (Australia) and a playground was a very basic slide, possibly weathered and with minimal regard for safety and no landscaping beside mown lawns. A public plaza would've been pretty austere. Now, either have quite premium fit-outs - high end playgrounds, thoughtful and professional landscaping, etc. The budgets would be huge. And there are still very premium fit-outs in many houses.

That happened in the 80s. This is not a new sensation in England, just a worsening one.

I see there could be like 3 options: 1) hide wealth / do not spend this money; 2) distribute to economy / i.e. pay a tradesman to curve the frame; 3) donate money to a fund or throw from a balcony to the crowd.

It doesn't seem that 1 cold be helpful to anyone. We see 2 in those examples, but it seem you imply that it's not the best way. So we have the only the 3rd option left, with donations. Is that what is considered as the best option? Is it sustainable in a long term?

> So yes, Britain feels poor—but it’s not because the money is gone. It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.

This is not necessarily related. People don't care because the fabric of society is eroded and the essence of what makes a country and a culture is diluted to a point that it is almost non-existant. Those factors are correlated but not causally determined.

Whole quote here: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689

She doesn't just mention real people, she also says "and families" in the same breath, which is the part I always found most strange of the whole argument. So "society" doesn't exist but "families" do? Why stop there, specifically? Aren't families just "individual men an women" as well?

Thatcher was making this argument because in the 1980s the [British] left was still very Marxist, so they tended to demand extremely expensive things and when challenged as to who will do/pay for that they'd answer with society. It was a form of rhetorical evasion because what they actually meant was "someone else but not me". Thatcher was railing against that tactic by pointing out that there isn't some specific entity with a big wad of cash you can go to called Society and ask them to do something. Society is your neighbours, your friends, your coworkers, your family, it's you and everyone around you. So if you say society should pay, what you actually mean is the people around you should pay but not yourself, without being willing to say so clearly.

Arguably the post-Marx neo-left actually did listen to her and stopped talking like that. You didn't hear people like Tony Blair claim that "society" would pay for their latest ideas. But the old left were never willing to give up the stupid linguistic game playing and reacted by fully stripping her words of context, to try and make it sound like she rejected the idea of bonds between people. Which is not only not what she said, but the conservatism she stood for was all about the primacy of friends/family/workplace/church/social clubs etc, vs the alternative Tony Benn style worldview in which the primary organizing unit of people was either the state or the unions.

That's... incomplete.

Society is the obligations and responsibilities collectively imposed on these people.

It's indicative that part of Thatcher's intent was to remove the obligation of people to each other.

More profitable when choosing to help others is instead at one's discretion...

"It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation [...]"

She certainly puts the framing as individualistic, but I think she very much understood the obligations are a necessary part of the system.

The latter has never worked at scale to remind the wealthy that they need to look after the societies which allowed them to create that wealth.

This is the core behind so much popular rhetoric about taxation (the 99%, wealth taxes, supporting individuals ripping off businesses). The selfish motivation where you accuse the people you want to tax of being selfish.

The second part is cutting down the successful - a very popular game down under. Although we do laud our sportspeople.

> in large part because they’re mandated to write blank cheques for social care with no support or strategy from central government. Individual cases in Central Bedfordshire are now costing up to £750,000 per year, a quarter of the entire libraries and leisure budget and an amount that is rising rapidly with no apparent ceiling. As I wrote previously, “In a single year, residential care costs for children have increased by £2,000 per child… per week,” taking the average cost for a single case from ~£200,000 to ~£300,000 per child per year, again with little explanation as to where the money is going or how this is even possible.

> Similarly, “school transport costs have increased by over 100% - from £9m to £20m - in just 4 years” - that’s driven by an unexplained rise in the number of SEND pupils eligible for support and it amounts to roughly the same as - deep breath - the transport, roads, parking, libraries, leisure, housing benefit, public protection and safety budgets combined. Central Bedfordshire Council is not an outlier here - collectively, council overspends on SEND services are set to hit £2bn in the next year, risking further bankruptcies. Again this is not about pitting children against libraries, but asking if we seriously believe we’re addressing either of these things well?

Local councils have to pay the very large bills for social care and supporting SEND children but have basically little control over how it's spent or levers to help control the bills.

Fixing this so councils can once again spend relative minor amounts of money improving the public realm could go a long way to improving day to day experience. Definitely some other large structural problems (see the huge costs of HS2) but it would provide a noticeable improvement in people's lives and potentially isn't too hard for a government willing to make some bold changes around taxation, local government funding and providing proper national strategy and funding on social care.

Of course the actual place continues to exist so the local authority will continue to exist in another form, this time with fewer major capital assets and they're paying rents to the people who now own them instead.

As pointed out in the article you could see this happen when something entirely out of the authorities control (e.g. spending on SEND children due to the massive increase in eligible children in Central Bedfordshire's case) causes it too.

Which may be perceived as a actual goal of this mandate if you have enough of tinfoil in your hat.

It's the standard neoliberal playbook - defund and cripple public services, complain they're not working, then insist the only solution is for-profit privatisation because it's "more efficient".

The result is that all utilities and much of the infrastructure are being run down for profit, and have to be regularly bailed out by central government at vast expense.

Which is fine, because this creates a transfer of wealth from tax payers to the already wealthy.

The aristocracy literally cannot imagine a country which isn't run for their personal benefit. And the consequence is that many of the areas in the UK are now poorer than anywhere in Europe, or even the US deep south.

By all of those measures, the poorest states in the Deep South rank higher than many European countries.

So saying "poorer than anywhere Europe, or even the US Deep South", implies that you think the Deep South is poorer than anywhere in Europe. This is an absurd statement because the poorest places in Europe are much poorer than the poorest places in the US.

If you take the poorest zip code in the United States and look at the median income, 1st quartile income, (or even percent of people under the global poverty line adjusted for PPP), it's not even close to last place among European countries.

People have a very skewed view of the Deep South. Because parts of it are poorer than average for the rest of the country doesn't mean it's objectively poor when compared to the rest of the world.

HDI and Inequality adjusted HDI are not an objective measurement?

I can’t find IHDI by state, but given that the US only drops a few spots between HDI and IHDI, Mississippi isn’t likely to be anywhere near the bottom.

All southern states except Mississippi rank in the top 50% of European counties by HDI btw.

My point stands.

> My point stands.

Funny stuff.

It’s a skewed European attitude to look down on the southern US as the poorest place they can think of outside of Africa or Asia. When in fact the vast majority of the South is better off than economically than 90% of European countries.

I once talked to someone traveling to Atlanta ask “do you get CNN down there?” CNN is based in Atlanta.

and child is being looked after by barely qualified minimum wage worker (often actually paid below minimum wage if you add unpaid overtime and foreign workers not knowing the laws), meanwhile owners of care services live opulent lifestyles in places like Dubai. UK services market is not free, which is part of the problem.

SEND = "Special educational needs and disabilities"

I can't help feeling like this is a vicious cycle - the lack of community facilities is causing greater isolation, causing a rise in health needs and so on.

All this is a direct result of bad, ideological law making combined with a biased judiciary that interprets it in bad, ideological ways. Unfortunately it's the ideology Labour is in thrall too and they're in power for several years at minimum and maybe much longer if the right stays split, so the state of Britain's infrastructure will continue to sharply decline.

Where can I read about this?

https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_d7ff3a8f-9cf7-4ff3-837a-0bbb...

Although Grok thinks the problem lies in "deep rooted inequalities", whereas I'd say it's pretty normal for jobs like bin men to be paid more than cleaners. It's one of the most dangerous jobs you can do, due to the frequency with which they get hit by cars.

The summary did not support your claim court cases and equity laws said any gender pay gap was the result of discrimination. It said the plaintiffs argued successfully they were paid less for work of equal value. It was not clear cleaning and refuse collection were determined equal value. The summary mentioned also contract clauses.

It sounds like the real issue is you disagree with the value of work calculated for some jobs.

paywall bypass: https://archive.is/MLC49

It only mentions councils in passing and doesn't cover them going bankrupt over it, but it covers the issue at hand, which affects the private sector as well.

This is also a cultural issue. In large cities, people often don't feel as being part of the community and they don't take pride in their surroundings. They put rubbish everywhere, vandalise. There is little done to change that. They see neighbour has nice flowers in the garden? Instead of admiring, they will cut them off.

I don't think this aligns with the lived-experience of most Britons. The big cities are mostly litter-free areas, and people can have well tended gardens go unmolested by neighbours.

Vandalism is a difficult one. But it's likely because the people doing it don't have anything better to do, no hobbies, jobs, families, responsibilities, etc. And also, broken window syndrome.

But then you look at e.g. east or southeast asia and they have things like neat closed off bus stops with heating and you're like, "Why can't we have nice things?". We're stuck with glass booths with a beam for leaning against at best. Glass so that people in there are visible and don't use it as a public toilet, uncomfortable seating so people don't use it as a hang-out or sleeping spot. But the design adapts to a problem, one which the government has little interest in fixing - or which would infringe on people's rights.

We also have free bulky waste collection, so again, we actually already have that. You just have to arrange for it. You are very poorly informed.

There are also free council run recycling centres (previously known as tips), where you can take stuff yourself. Some have a charge for hardcore, that's about it. Businesses cannot use them though and must pay for waste disposal themselves.

Fly tipping is fairly rare in the UK, I saw an armchair fly tipped on a train journey yesterday and it was notable because you rarely see that sort of thing.

There are areas with fly tipping problems, but usually because those people are lazy, not because of cost. And the council will clear it up (at least eventually depending on the area).

We are having a problem with councils struggling to perform their usual role at the moment. Running out of money. Potholes are a hot topic.

This is actually because our councils are mandated to provide care for old people, and the cost has sky rocketed in the last 2 decades, while they've been capped on how much they can raise their tax. So now almost 90% of my council tax gets spent on old person care instead of what most people might think it was for, bins, schools, parks, etc..

[1] It's not worth going into different taxes here, think of it as a state tax instead of a federal tax. In fact the UK government have a large degree of control in that they force the councils to spend most of it on mandated services and can dictate how much the councils are allowed to raise it by

This just isn't true. The council takes taxes at pain of going to jail to eventually pay for this service. Saying "make it free and the behaviour will change" is just nonsense. Things can't all be free. People need to make an effort to keep their neighbourhoods nice.

If they don't feel that a neighbourhood is "theirs" - that's more likely to be a problem.

This is because America's alleged welfare queens are undocumented, whereas Britain's are there legally and the government actually has very good data on which groups are a net boon and which are a net draw on the economy.

I'm not a Brit and I could care less at the end of the day, but it does seem kind of bonkers to me to be importing people while your own country suffers.

Local authorities are forced to sell off assets and fire direct employees, then get charged a fortune to provide basic services and child and adult social care.

And for contracts and outsourcing, the ownership of the contract itself is the thing that gives value, not providing the actual service. Creating a whole set of perverse incentives.

A council should look at a pot hole in a road as a massive opportunity. Here is a chance to provide good quality work for local people and local resources, but the opposite happens.

We have a whole layer of service retailers e.g. for electricity and gas and communications, who are not more than a spreadsheet speculating on long term prices, a call centre and a web site. Their entire business model being based on a) not messing up the spreadsheet calculation b) enough people being lazy and not renewing or switching their contract every year.

Our financial services industry has massive positive PR, seen as a net good for the country. When in reality it is focused not on basic things like providing banking and direct insurance, but in attracting our best and brightest individuals from around the country and instead of having them put their talents to something productive. Instead reward them for creating and maintaining complex systems to move wealth around, asset strip regions, hide it from tax and create a layer of gambling and financial products on top of these systems.

I could go on.

Reprivatize shit and put it in the hands of someone competent. Also, increase wages so that government agencies don't depend so much on expensive consultants / contractors.

Competition works best for commodities. How is your electricity bill looking? And electricity is a fabulously strong example of a commodity. Have you noticed petrol prices are not that competitive even though petrol is a commodity?

3/4 of my leccy bill is a distribution cost: I think it is a fixed cost that any electricity supplier I choose oncharges. I can choose different suppliers that will make a small difference to the other variable kWh by time charges but it's not real competition. I could buy solar and batteries - but the initial investment and payback period is so long that it would cost me far more than the distribution cost I currently pay.

I think the average english person fundamentally lacks the mindset for capitalism to work, there is little trust in an individual, and too great a desire to have daddy government come make it safe. It's the unquestioning faith in top down measures that has lead to the current system, and pulling things back to public ownership won't fix that.

Even if you don't agree with him (and I know many don't for various reasons..) You have to admit that he does bring a new perspective to the table and (as a layman economist) it just makes logical sense.

Regardless, the main stream economists have not been able to either predict the economy or improve it (for the general majority of people) and it seems that every western economy is following the same trajectory where

  - governments are broke and pulling back on their services to the public (health care, education etc.)
  - working class is broke, living pay check to paycheck barely scraping by
  - middle class is shrinking and financing their lives with ever increasing amounts of debt (mortgages)

I feel more optimistic that the energy issue will be solved with a shift to nuclear and renewables.

Housing just seems so hard to fix as so many people have a vested interest in not fixing it.

but "tax on savers ie the rich"

rich normally are rich enough to protect their savings from inflation. e.g. by putting it in an effective monopoly - land or housing (housing is a monopoly if you also are rich enough to have some influence on what / where houses are built / not built)

People with money pretty readily deploy that money into investments that beat inflation.

----

> Housing and energy could both be dirt cheap and the money would still go to rich people.

----

So the working class is being forced to give the wealthy all of their money. On prices set by the wealthy and coupled with policies encouraged by the wealth. And if the wealthy just stopped being so greedy and took a small hit, everything would be fine. And the wealthy aren't the problem?

The deadlock today comes from people needing to sell for much since they are bound up by massive loans, but that could have been avoided.

They tried that before and got The Aberfan disaster, Newgate Prison, and child labor.

"Trust me baby, I've changed!"

Stock market/trading is a kind of zero sum game. For him to gain, someone else has to lose.

However, real economy is not a zero sum game and I dont think he understands that. AFAIK never was an entrepreneur, or created a business.

He advocates for a wealth tax, ie a tax on unrealised gains.

For realised gains, we already do wealth tax and thats called capital gains tax.

In other words while the real economy might be growing as a "non-zero sum game" the growth of the elite and the rich far exceeds that and outpaces it. Net effect is that their wealth is wealth away from everyone else.

Is it? Nothing in the FT articles indicates that, and they clearly state that 2 years prior a trader got a $100 million personal bonus (so on profits much higher than that). There can be good and bad years, but I seriously doubt $35 million would be the best worldwide, and all of his colleagues who agreed to speak seem to agree with that.

He possibly had the highest p&l on his desk ($35mil) in 2011 - was not top in 2011 in the bank, and certainly not in the world. $35mil - rookie numbers in this game, and in a seat at Citibank, middling at best.

I listened to him being asked a question on UK / US trade and his answer was very generic - something something Amazon.

To be a forex trader, you would live and breathe detail on stuff like this. To be in the top 1% of forex traders you would be far beyond that.

yes he isn't in that position now, but I expected some novel insight that you could only get from a specialist, not something that anyone could come up with.

This isn't the only example.

I don't disagree with most of what he is saying, and I'm very happy for him that he has managed to break through in a small way to get his message out.

but still something iffy.

Crashcourse economics likely provides much more value to anyone really looking to learn.

The "I.T. Revolution" was supposed to bring a vast payoff from improved productivity. Did the benefits of society-wide process improvement get snarfed up by... vastly more inequality ?

Sadly the author I think is getting distracted by specific issues. Focusing on school or social costs. Or specific large project over runs.

While I do not agree with him on many things, I think Dominic Cummings's treatment of the subject digs deeper: https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/q-and-a

You need to read through a ton, but it paints a picture of a government chasing newspaper headlines. And an overall ineffective method of running a country from the top down.

How could it be that an act of parliament is being held up by local councils? Parliament's orders used to be the law of the land. Now it is but one of many.

Often treatments of British decline read as if the authors wished Britain had been fire bombed to smithereens, and benefited from the Marshel Plan. Yet this undersells the British people. They know how to build new houses. They know how to build trains. Yet Britain as a whole is still searching for that win-win. The path to fixing problems without compromises.

Meanwhile Britain's managerial and governing class is so incompetent, it is hard to imagine replacements who would perform worse.

The lasting effect of Truss was to make the national debt problem much worse by pushing up interest rates.

Google suggests that line would be about 127 miles long, or about 200 kilometers. That’s one different consent form for every 25 meters of track. Mind boggling.

> That’s one different consent form for every 25 meters of track. Mind boggling.

I can easily imagine Sir Humphrey lecturing Bernard on why 8276 is not enough consents and why they need more of them.

Our country inherited/modeled our civil services and bureaucracy based on the British system. We know the effort it takes to get things done.

It is a reasonable response to high-crime areas, and it is unusual for the wealthiest parts of a city to be high-crime areas. But an area being less affluent doesn't make an area high-crime.

If you look at the other comments you can see people are actually keying off how much of a sense of community and civic pride there is in an area, as well as commercial activity. Which is going to probably distinguish between upper and lower class - even that isn't certain - but that isn't actually relevant to the topic because there is always going to be an upper and lower class. It isn't going to get a great read on how affluent they are at any given moment.

> There's a reason your original post is a very light shade of gray.

In an academic sense, yes. But no-one knows what it is - some people might be in your shoes where they read "affluent", misinterpreted it and had a fear response. Or they might have other opinions as some of the other comments lay out. Or there could have been other reasons.

One of the philosophical underpinnings of HN is that downvotes don't contain a lot of information and are a poor tool for promoting discussion - it is a wonderfully mature approach to moderation.

You'll notice my response to the thread going long was more arguments. It keeps the discussion more respectful when people only push on when they have arguments to make. Not the only option, but insinuation specifically is a weak long term strategy. As are insults, for that matter.

How well upkept are the buildings? Are they clean and well maintained or are they dingy and broken with overgrowth? Are there a lot of open shops around? Do people seem to be buying things? What kind of clothes are the people wearing? Does it seem like many people are homeless? How is the state of the transit (both public and private?) Do people feel the need to have bars on their windows and security stationed around to prevent theft, or do storefronts feel safe enough to even have merchandise sitting out? Are people eating in restaurants? Are those expensive or cheap restaurants? Do people seem to be comfortable spending a night out on the town, going to bars and shows or are the streets empty because people can't afford outside entertainment?

You can find relative class status of an area by the number of beggars, I grant you that. But you aren't going to get a bead on the actual affluence of the high-class people. Are they thousandairs or billionairs? All we really know is they aren't beggars.

Probably seeing a lot of new/upper segment cars and well maintained houses.

Gary's angle is mostly based on wealth being a zero sum game. I think new wealth does get created but I agree that the vast majority of wealth is existing assets and their growth probably dwarfs any net new wealth creation.

Some links:

Gary's Economics on Youtube - whether or not you agree, he articulates his economic view: https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics

This podcast where Gary debates with Daniel Priestly who has opposing views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yohVh4qcas

The effective pay of a person making £80k per year in London isn't really all that different from a minimum wage worker in social housing. Especially when things like child benefit, student loans, and potential council tax reductions are involved.

I think it's better to be at the top of the working class than the bottom of the middle class.

£80k a year works out at £4,166.14 per month (assuming plan 2 student loan and 0 pension contributions).

Full time minimum wage works out at £25,397.00 per year or £1,819.48 per month (assuming no student loan or pension contributions).

That works out as a difference of £2,346.66 per month. It's plausible the cost difference between social housing and private rent for a 3 bed in Westminster could make up that difference alone.

Westminister social housing is obviously a favourable case, but we also have to consider benefits:

In the scenario of 2 kids on that min wage salary it seems like you'd get £34.15 per month in universal credit.

Whilst small on its own, the universal credit status unlocks many other benefits and perks. Potential discounts of up to 100% of council tax could be possible depending on local authority (avg council tax in London is £157.75 per month). The NHS low income scheme can be accessed: getting free prescriptions and support with health travel. Another big thing would be getting access to social tariffs on energies and utilities. Together these could add up to hundreds of pounds per month.

The min wage worker would also child benefit at £187.17 monthly.

Firstly, if you earned £80k and needed a 3-bed flat, you would categorically not try to live in Westminster. The rent alone would come out well over £3k per month [0]. It's one of the most expensive places to rent in the country. Looking at the disposable income from £80k for a 3-bed flat is highly selective.

Secondly, money isn't the only factor when it comes to social housing. Consider that social housing is notoriously ill-maintained and has characteristics in line with the poorest 40% households [1]. And if you do live somewhere unsatisfactory, the waiting time for a 3-bed is around 3 years for non-high-priority applicants [2].

[0] https://committees.westminster.gov.uk/documents/s9851/Afford...

[1] https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-06/Housing-quali..., p12

[2] https://www.ukpropertymarketnews.co.uk/how-long-does-it-take...

It's crystal clear we can build new houses and new businesses, so suggesting 'wealth' is a zero sum game is ideological folly.

As to his thesis, here's the demolition of mathematics within it: https://birchlermuesli.substack.com/p/copy-garys-badeconomic...

In your example of building more, in order to a new building get erected someone owns the land, someone owns the materials, someone owns all the assets and the capital required to build. The people who invest to this will of course want to turn a profit on it.

In England, only the King owns the land, and Parliament can deploy any resources in the UK it wishes by simple Act of Parliament.

The only other thing there is is human labour, and that can similarly be deployed if we choose to.

As we discover every time we go to war.

So no there is no cabal of hoarders preventing anything, and no shortage of stuff or money. All that is preventing regeneration is the political will to do so.

In reality Gary is a member of the Outer Party, and he wants to take money off the Inner Party and give it to his mates so they can all play at looking after the Proles while value signalling to one another.

Can you point me to other theories which articulate the cause of my observations?

So we've gone from "everyone will have flying cars" to "the rest of you will eat bugs." Castles and jets for the few; austerity for the rest of us. Which certainly isn't new, but it's not what was promised, or what seemed possible within living memory.

Perhaps the bigger issue is old wealth destruction. We live in a world of effectively infinite low cost electronics, clothes and food, but the things which used to be abundant are now actually quite scarce.

Housing is most obvious example here - but the costs of driving (excluding vehicle purchase), childcare, wedding, and energy are now radically higher than ever before. In these areas it feels like we've gone backwards in productivity.

Wealth is created by taking less valuable inputs and producing something new of greater value. For the HN crowd, that might mean using a little energy and a cheap computer to produce software that provides something even more value than the sum of its parts. Clearly you can create wealth out of "thin air".

Perhaps you mean in the net? Where new wealth is created, equal old wealth must be destroyed? But wherein that aforementioned software was additional value destroyed in order for the net wealth to remain the same?

> It only looks that way because of devaluing currency and population growth.

Not really. While we often measure wealth in currency, which is subject to fluctuations over time, wealth is not the measurement itself. In the same vein, the physical distance you currently know as a kilometre will still be the same distance even if we redefine the kilometre.

Britain is a retirement home with a handful of warships attached.

That's the median voter.

Or at least the picture of the median voter all the parties are chasing. Which is very bad news for the working population, because policy gets heavily influenced by clueless retirees.

Similar argument to the article, but in much more depth.

In a nutshell, the UK has made it legally difficult to construct new housing and many forms of infrastructure- electricity plants, roads/tunnels, railway, hospitals, etc.

As a result, these things take up a larger fraction of ordinary people's budget and also limit mobility and hence productivity, resulting in poverty or effective poverty even for someone with an income that would make them globally rich.

Partly this is because of the myopic policies of the coalition and then conservative governments, which didn't invest in growth and what seems like a blindingly obvious consequence of this is that there was then no growth.

> Britain’s houses are cramped, ancient and in the wrong places

Ain't that the truth. And actually you're better off getting the ancient ones because they're less cramped.

I think I agree quite a lot with this article, as someone now watching from overseas - something needs to be done as the state just seems to soak up ever more money for ever less benefit to the average person. Things are getting worse and more expensive over there. Time to change tack and at least have them get better if it's going to cost more!

This is true of Europe in general vs the US because economic growth in Europe has been low compared to the US since at least the financial crisis. At the time GDP of the Eurozone was comparable to the US' now the US is almost twice as big. As a consequence every European country ranks low compared to US states on GDP per capita:

"Italy is just ahead of Mississippi, the poorest of the 50 states, while France is between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively 48th and 49th. Germany doesn't save face: It lies between Oklahoma and Maine (38th and 39th)." (2023) [1]

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/09/04/the-gdp...

No, You're just comparing change in the EUR/USD exchange rate here. In 2007, the euro was at a high point of 1.48, and in 2024 it's at a low of 1.02. Inflation has not been higher in Europe than in the USA over that period.

If we look at GDP at purchasing power parity from 2007 to 2023 we have this:

- European Union: 31,162 → 61,217, +96% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)

- USA: 48,050 → 82,769, +72% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)

Which shows a slight catching-up by the European Union over the period.

"Between 2010 and 2023, the cumulative growth rate of GDP reached 34% in the United States, compared with just 21% in the European Union and 18% in the eurozone. This measure of GDP in volume does not depend on changes in exchange rates." [2]

[1] https://www.futuribles.com/en/sur-le-decrochage-economique-e... [2] https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/economy/ec...

Yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee

2. I'm glad that people in the UK have access to healthcare. I'd be very happy if that went to the US. That doesn't change the raw GDP figures though.

I agree it may change the experience they have of being poor if you aren't also deprived of medical care. But here's another thing - people in the UK are less satisfied than ever with the NHS as well - it appears to be floundering.

(In answer to the below "people have always been less satisfied with the NHS" - perhaps so, but this time it's serious, they haven't been this less satisfied before - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/02/patient-sati... )

That's assuming they're relevant, and spoiler, they aren't for the topic at hand.

How is any individual's life better because they work at a café selling $20 coffee vs £5 coffee? Because if you measure GDP, person one is drastically more productive, but in reality, it doesn't matter, really. If both are earning minimum wage, the person in the UK with the cheaper coffee has higher income (outside of a few US states). But what is their quality of life? That's highly dependent on where they live, what are their housing costs (which are quite high in the UK in most desirable locations), etc. In any case, GDP doesn't evaluate that, and it's probably the main thing people care about and what they mean by "poor".

I agree, GDP is an incomplete measure, but it does provide a comparison point.

Environmental impact assessments, engineer stamps, etc, etc, for minor projects that wind up prescribing some petty stormwater solution which adds up to more cost than if the Taj Mahal of stormwater solutions had just been fired from the hip in the general direction of the problem. Graft reducing procurement processes that have grown over time to cost more to run on an annualized basis than the graft they were intended to prevent.

At least if we took best guesses when implementing solutions to ancillary problems and awarded contracts based on favor trading at least we'd have the solutions and the stuff to show for it even if the solutions and stuff aren't perfect.

    * Naval and trade dominance (a legacy of Venetian methods, transferred through the Netherlands).
    * Financial systems (London as the hub of insurance, lending, and later offshore banking).
    * Intelligence networks and manipulation (from the East India Company to MI6).
    * Colonial exploitation (enclosures, the Opium Wars, the Bengal famine of 1943, suppression of the Sepoy Rebellion, the exploitation of Ireland, etc.).

    * Enclosures (16th–18th centuries) – Peasants driven off the land for landlord profits.
    * The Irish Famine (1845–1849) – Grain was exported to England while millions starved.
    * "Divide and rule" policies – From India to Northern Ireland, preventing unity among the oppressed.
    * Austerity – Post-2008 budget cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/20/britai...

"For those born in the 1940s and 1950s, incomes would typically double from their late 20s to their early 50s. However, those born in the 1960s only saw income grow by around 50% over that period, whilst those born more recently look set to see weaker growth still as they age."

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/income-and-wealth-inequality-exp...

  - UK poverty has been falling continually for decades
  - UK real disposable household income (median) after housing costs is higher than ever

(the latest report came out a few days ago and actually the latest year is a slight worsening of household income, but not far off the high from 2022)

The numbers do paint a picture of a fairly anemic 5-10% increase between 02/03 and 23/24 in 'inflation-adjusted' median household income.

However, I note that that the data is 'equivalised' which to me somewhat muddies the waters; the numbers are inherently tied into the population's demographics, and I'm not confident that I understand what effect things like demographic shifts (which are obviously ongoing) would have on these numbers.

It’s still a travesty that the UK has not gotten much richer in the last 20 years than it has, but the constant refrain of “living standards are collapsing” and “no one can afford a house” just doesn’t match the data IMO.

I think it muddies the waters because it's possible that the numbers are higher because people are choosing to have fewer children (which may be driven by affordability), or more people are living in HMOs. It makes it much harder to argue about cause and effect. Are these equivalised incomes rising because people are having fewer children, because there are more people living in HMOs - or are more people doing these things because of a crisis of affordability?

> but the constant refrain of “living standards are collapsing” and “no one can afford a house” just doesn’t match the data IMO.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

The price of housing in England has doubled relative to the median income since 2000.

House price ratio has doubled since 2000 but over the last twenty years in the UK it’s flat. The doomsaying is not justified.

Now come on, data is data, if you want your arguments to live on the cite-able data, then you must accept that your arguments can also die on the cite-able data.

Take a look at a longer term view of the data and tell me you wouldn't be angry: https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-...

And remember that this says nothing about the quality of housing, or its suitability for the needs of the household.

The housing crisis is not primarily one of homelessness (although many are forced to live in poor quality temporary accommodation waiting decades on lists for affordable housing), but of people living in the wrong accommodation for their needs; some of them forced to live in dangerous accommodation but unable to move, a greater number forced to rent, some people being forced to live with their parents; these are the things that happen when affordability decreases.

Do me a favour and do some real research on the topic before you dismiss other people's problems as nonsense. I think you owe them that.

Nobody believes that about the bat tunnel. HS2 designed the most expensive thing they could think of because that maximises the profit. They say Natural England approved it but why wouldn't they? In a non-government project the contractors would negotiate with Natural England to agree on the cheapest thing that complied with the law. HS2 presented the most expensive thing and said can we do this? And they got the answer they wanted.

The longer it takes the more the companies involved in making it receive, because the government will cover the bill.

Everybody is lazy, nothing works, and nobody is going to do anything about it because doing something would require fighting an army of bureaucrats. And, dear reader, who would blame you for not doing that?

I had British Telecom around to fix a wiring issue. The rental agency said they'd be coming by on Thursday or Friday and I should pick. Simultaneously, I get a text from BT that they'll be by on Wednesday. The gent shows up Tuesday. I ALSO get a call on Friday (while I'm at work): "Mate, I'm about 15 minutes away from your house...".

Everything is like this. Everything.

data for 2024

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/7EF2/production...

I made my peace with not earning London salaries but being able to comfortably live in a nice area and pay off my mortgage early a long time ago.

My parents weren't of the University generation, so I'm ~better off than they were at the same point in our lives. On the other hand, we're worse off than my in-laws would have been at the same time, because of housing. But housing is a fixable problem. The government just needs to legislate to allow the building of more of it. Even in London, the real answer, whether politicians want to say it or not, is the densification of suburbs - allow redevelopment of suburban areas into higher density developments, and prices will come down.

Same with public sector - we had an ecosystem of small businesses delivering services and that was destroyed. Any public sector body buying these services got fined and "nudged" to buy from more expensive big corporations.

So you get no productivity, brain drain and big corporations taking massive profits overseas, where small business would spent the money locally stimulating the economy.

It's a slow car crash, nobody is paying attention to.

I agree the implementation of IR35 is an absolute, grade-A clusterfuck, and leaves workers having to do things like buy IR35 insurance, and make in/out determinations themselves, only for HMRC to come up with new ways to try and classify them as 'managed service companies', or a myriad other ways to undermine the entire sector, such that financial ruin can be dangled over people's heads like the sword of damocles...

But working class? Pull the other one!

In reality, IR35 has had a broad and damaging impact on a much wider group of skilled workers - IT contractors, engineers, healthcare professionals, tradespeople - many of whom built small, legitimate limited companies as a way to work flexibly, compete fairly, and build some financial security. It was one of the few viable paths to independence left, and IR35 has made it effectively unworkable for many.

Large corporations didn't like losing contracts and talent to smaller, more agile competitors. IR35 conveniently removed that competition by making small operators too much of a compliance risk to hire. Meanwhile, public sector bodies were discouraged—sometimes even penalised—for engaging small suppliers, further consolidating the power of the big consultancies.

The media focus on celebrity cases wasn't accidental. HMRC gained free publicity and public support by targeting high-profile individuals - knowing it would reinforce the idea that IR35 was closing tax loopholes rather than quietly dismantling a thriving small business ecosystem. The result is a workforce with less autonomy, less incentive to go above and beyond, and fewer opportunities to build something for themselves.

This isn't just about tax - it's about economic structure, incentives, and who gets to participate in the rewards of their own labour. And when those opportunities disappear, so does productivity, innovation, and local economic resilience.

You're not disagreeing with me, other than that I don't consider those "working class" occupations. In general in the UK those are quite often middle to upper middle class.

> tradespeople

Still do run small limited companies AFAICT. Certainly the ones I used to interact with. Mostly because they have multiple clients and are a lot harder to point at and say "that's not a real business!"

IT has been one of the only modern trades where working-class people could genuinely break through - without inherited privilege, connections, or expensive qualifications. All it took was a computer, determination, and skill. For decades, it offered an alternative route to upward mobility that wasn't gatekept by traditional class boundaries.

To say those people aren't "working class" anymore simply because they found success in a high-paid field is to misunderstand how class mobility works - and to dismiss the significance of what's been lost. IR35 didn't just hit a few middle-class professionals - it cut off a rare path to independence that was uniquely accessible to people from working-class backgrounds.

That's what makes it so damaging. It's not just about tax or regulation - it's about who's allowed to build something for themselves, and who gets pushed back into being a compliant employee for a large organisation.

> Still do run small limited companies AFAICT

You're absolutely right—tradespeople doing B2C work are largely unaffected, because IR35 targets B2B relationships, especially when the client is a medium or large company. But that actually reinforces the concern: it's access to the broader market - especially corporate and public sector clients - that’s been cut off.

For working-class professionals who moved into areas like IT, healthcare, or consulting, IR35 has closed the door to operating as a small business in those spaces. They can still work - but now only as employees or through intermediaries, with fewer rights and no control. They’re denied the same freedom tradespeople still have in B2C, despite offering equally legitimate, client-driven services.

So yes, plumbers and electricians can run limited companies - but if someone from a similar background wanted to build a small IT consultancy or contract directly with the NHS, that’s now a legal minefield. The playing field isn’t level - it’s skewed in favour of large firms, and that restriction disproportionately hurts those without generational wealth or corporate safety nets.

It’s clear we’re talking past each other. I disagree that IR35 has had a specific effect on social mobility, but am happy to leave the conversation here!

If someone is a professional, they are engaged in a middle class job on a middle class income. Unless you consider “working class” to be something that is indelibly stamped on someone’s soul at birth…

Being a professional or in management is pretty much the definition of middle class - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_K...

This is what I mean by talking past each other - I don’t think we’re working from the same dictionary.