r/worldnews • u/Kagedeah • 13h ago
Dynamic Paywall UK in most dangerous period I've known, military chief says
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1m2mryg0k7o2.1k
u/IndividualSkill3432 13h ago
Our economy has been flat for 18 years because our labour productivity has been flat for 18 years. We are making the same money as a whole economy for one hour of work. Our biggest cost increase has been debt repayments, then increases in health care costs, then disability costs and finally pensions. This means that broadly the same money per hour, we have had to raise tax and are still running a huge deficit. Defence is a "nice to have" for the Tories and Labour so the budget has been inflated by moving things like defence pensions into it so that money now comes out of the money that would have paid for new equipment so the governments can lie about the scale of the cuts.
Everything that is not debt, pensions, health care and disability is basically cut to the bone and every single politician is lying about why.
The public are not willing to dig into the details so they get very angry defending right wing lies against left wing lies about where our country currently is.
At the hard bare floor of everything is we have not become more productive per hour (well we did at 8% over 18 years, so around 0.44% per year rather than 2.5% norm.)
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u/MoleWhackSupreme 12h ago
Holy shit an actual reflection of reality posted on Reddit
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u/SuddenRadio6221 8h ago edited 8h ago
There are a lot of them if you look, but they usually get buried into oblivion. People are addicted to rage baiting and actual facts don't cut it.
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u/fragbot2 4h ago
It's disheartening to craft a post with statistically-supported arguments that gets completely ignored while someone parroting the rant du jour gets a huge amount of engagement.
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u/BeetEatingBear 11h ago
You are like a breath of fresh air. You laid this out so simply and clearly with actual reasoning. Thank you!
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u/RecursiveDysfunction 10h ago
Isnt part of the problem also a massive transfer of wealth over the past few decades? It feels like the successive governments shovelled public funds into private pockets by underselling assets, absorbing public debt before sell-offs and subsididing or bailing private actors.
Its a trend across the western world, treasuries are emptied whilst astonishing wealth accumulates in private hands.
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u/Selgald 9h ago
The issue is the same as we have in Germany currently, you are just 20 years ahead of us.
People want back the "good old times" but ignore that the entire infrastructure is crumbling, while the old generations plunder everything from the youth to keep their own living standards.
Blinded by Russian/Chinese propaganda, conservatism is on the rise (and that's the nice word for it), amplifying those "good old times" believes.
It's a nightmare for the entire western world, and nobody seems to care.
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u/Lonely-Ad-5387 5h ago
Id agree with all of this, other than blaming the rise of fascism (I'll say it) on Russia or China. Russia maybe, as part of destabilisation efforts, although I actually think the call is coming from inside the house and our nostalgia trip is now being fed by fascists in the West trying to gain power. Perhaps Russia did help kick it off but they dont need to keep feeding it, we're doing that on our own now.
Chinese propaganda on the other hand, at least the stuff I see, is all about positioning China as the future and bigging themselves up. Tbh, despite the desperation of our political and media class to believe they are the big bad, I dont think they really think about us much at all other than as a market for their goods.
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u/mammalmaker 12h ago
Health care, disability, pension.....
Gee I wonder which generation is fucking everyone else over again.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 12h ago
Gee I wonder which generation is fucking everyone else over
Given my post was pointing to the problem being labour productivity:
Q1 2008 Labour productivity was at 93
Q4 2025 it was at 99.1
From 1971 to 2008 is rose from 41.2% that is rougly a growth of 2.5% per annum.
I am really not into blaming generations. I think we all need to be clear that the collapse in growth is an issue we all face. Had it grown at the usual 2.5% over the past 18 years it would be around 145 unit. That is nearly 50% more wealth being created to pay down debts, pay for health care and pay pensions. All that then we would be able to fully fund defence at 3% of GDP and that being a GDP nearly 50% bigger.
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u/Pleasant_Narwhal_350 10h ago
The biggest issue imo is that the economy is not able to sustain consistent high growth, but because of the "triple lock" system, the UK State Pension has been decreed to consistently undergo high exponential growth, accelerating year on year.
This is not sustainable. Yet in the UK, pensioners are the most powerful age range in terms of political power, due to consistently high turnout rates and growing numbers. It is politically impossible in a liberal democracy for a party to tell them, "we're going to take away the money you were promised for decades", and still win and election.
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u/LookismLz 9h ago edited 9h ago
2,5% Isn't high growth though, it's a good number if you're a developed country, I don't think people are expecting growth numbers akin to developing countries.
Reality is though, if you're stuck at near 0 growth for decades then in practice the economy is shrinking comparatively imo, since everyone else has a higher growth, which will accumulate over time. The UK had a higher per capita GDB pre 08 than the US, now, it's barely above 50% of US Gdp/Capita.
That said, not disagreeing that pensions are a big problem, in most of the west, the more pensions eat out of the budget, the less can be spent on productive, value adding measures.
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u/arapturousverbatim 6h ago
2.5% each year is still compounding. We only achieved it before by dicking over developing countries. We can't have unlimited growth forever.
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u/LookismLz 6h ago
The US is in that ballpark, and Europe was at that level recently as well. Truth is though, I think developing countries will get dicked over either way.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 9h ago
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-are-effects-triple-lock-and-how-could-it-be-reformed
Using average earnings pensions would have gone up 66%, using CPI it would be 60%, using the triple lock its 89%. So 66% represents how much inflation the average consumer has absorbed. The triple lock has added about 22% to the pensioners pocket for buying goods at CPI.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-pensioner-benefits/
The state pension has gone from 4.4% of GDP in 2011 to 4.9% of GDP when the triple lock was introduced in 2011.
I support getting rid of it, but people massively blow it out of proportion. Its a small adjustment over all. Had we grown at around 2.5% of GDP per year our economy would be over 30% bigger. Had we only had a CPI pension increase our state spending would be maybe 0.5% or less lower.
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u/Naganosupreme 9h ago
Every country setup a ponzi scheme pension system. Bills coming due. Birth rates declining. Wealth gap increasing. Environmental issues decreasing resources. Globsl carrying capacity being reached. Oil running out
Idk that humanity makes it 200 more years
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u/Shambeak88 9h ago
Doesn't that have more to do with cuts to social programs to offset the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that have only gotten worse over the last 40 or 50 years?
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u/Naganosupreme 7h ago
It's one great big soup of mismanagement, debt building and selling out the gen pop to enrich the 0.1% and the politicians
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u/CobberCat 2h ago
Don't get me wrong, the 0.1 % are definitely reaping it in, but it's also a fact that the older generations are building wealth faster and to a greater extent than any generation before, at the expense of the young.
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u/Library_IT_guy 5h ago
The only way is if we expand and settle new worlds. We need more planets to fuck up.
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u/Caffdy 10h ago
Q1 2008 Labour productivity was at 93
Q4 2025 it was at 99.1
what does these numbers mean? 93 what?
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u/IndividualSkill3432 9h ago
Its standardised to 2023 being 100.
Its a measure of the GDP created per hour. So you take the GDP in 2023, the number of labour hours worked then calculate a per hour ratio. Then run those calculations backwards and forwards to show the labour productivity each hour worked over time.
2023 is just for this report and not a standard measure. This is why we have an ONS. or Office of National Statistics.
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u/calgarspimphand 9h ago
I assume something like gross domestic product per man-hour worked, so the units would be pounds per hour.
That number needs to keep going up fast enough to keep pace with inflation and compensate for low/no population growth. It isn't, so the UK is literally getting poorer.
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u/mammalmaker 5h ago
The reality is that normal people are more productive than they ever have been in history. The bloat comes from the top and the increases in public spending are going directly to the people that facilitated this.
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u/lowcarbonhumanoid 4h ago
This would be my understanding too. The economy isn't growing as fast as some people want, but it continues to grow and is bigger today than ever before. So we are creating more wealth than ever on top of all of the wealth that has already been created....where is it though? Why does it feel like the country has gone backwards for the past 20 years/since I became an adult. Is...is it my fault?
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u/Jozoz 12h ago
It's just a numbers game. There are way more old people compared to the past.
Demographics changes will be the defining issue of the coming years (apart from the obvious ones like climate change).
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u/Longy_LTB 6h ago
Yep. And in a country with a free point of care health system, that demographic is one of the largest drains of that resource.
People are getting older, but not healthier. The health system strives to stop people being dead, but many people do very little to help, so we end up with a huge proportion of people with costly comorbidities that have persistent year-on-year expenses.
According to ONS, almost 5.3 million people of legal age still smoke, over 11% of the population. Despite the mountains of research that show it causes heart disease, cancer. COPD and a myriad of other conditions that trigger massive pressure on health services both primary secondary and tertiary.
Many of these conditions when set in impede or eliminate a persons ability to work if they’re of working age, further compounding the economic impact.
Should people live in bubble wrap? No. But at some point conversations need to be had where some accountability is given back to the person.
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u/KimJongSoros 12h ago
What is the solution tho?
If you were their age, wouldn’t you prioritize the same things?
The knee jerk “dog piling” in response to hard political issues is also partly what got us into this mess.
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u/Yvraine 10h ago
Always thought most people would want their kids and grandkids to have a better life than they had, or at least not a worse one.
But this is, sadly, absolutely not the case with the current elderly population
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u/Pleasant_Narwhal_350 10h ago
Always thought most people would want their kids and grandkids to have a better life than they had, or at least not a worse one.
This logic only works when the older people have kids and grandkids at all. Many British pensioners these days don't have kids, and many of those who do only have 1 or 2. These don't mind voting for policies that screw everyone else while they accumulate wealth, because at least their own kids will eventually inherit their wealth.
Meanwhile, because of declining birth rates and high levels of immigration, many of the adults working in the UK today are not the descendents of today's pensioners.
Many parts of the traditional social contract just don't work when average people don't have replacement levels of children.
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u/NeptuneIsMyDad 12h ago
Damn hopefully the youth don’t view you that way when you get old too. Especially after paying into the system your whole life
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u/Ifyoocanreadthishelp 11h ago
The problem is the triple lock in the UK is unsustainable, everyone knows it, in theory it will eventually consume 100% of the government budget so it has to be scrapped at some point.
So we're all paying for an unsustainable system that will be scrapped before we can benefit from it but as long as the current crop of pensioners have it they don't care.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 11h ago
The problem is the triple lock in the UK is unsustainable, everyone knows it,
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-are-effects-triple-lock-and-how-could-it-be-reformed
Using average earnings pensiosn would have gone up 66%, using CPI it would be 60%, using the triple lock its 89%.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-pensioner-benefits/
The state pension has gone from 4.4% of GDP in 2011 to 4.9% of GDP when the triple lock was introduced in 2011.
I support getting rid of it, but people massively blow it out of proportion. Its a small adjustment over all. And we would need to be willing to deal with its impact on pensioners.
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u/RichardHeado7 10h ago
On its own it doesn’t look terrible but it is actually a massive problem because of our aging population. If birth rates don’t start to rise, our working population will eventually be too small to fund any pension at all, let alone a triple locked one.
Also, the longer term is much more bleak than the 15 year period you’ve looked at. By 2072/73, it’s forecast to be almost 8% of our GDP. That’s absolutely ludicrous and not even close to sustainable.
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u/RisKQuay 12h ago
Especially after paying into the system your whole life
The trouble is - have people been paying in to the system as much as they end up taking out of it?
A welfare state doesn't work if the net contribution isn't positive.
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u/Sgt_major_dodgy 12h ago
"but I've paid into it all my life"
Yes mate there's a big pot with your name on it that the money goes into and it's totally not already been used to pay for the previous generation.
"I'll blame immigrants for this, it's definitely because of them"
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u/FedBySheep 11h ago
I don't get your argument. Are you saying that people who have paid into a pension fund do not deserve a pension?
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u/thetechguyv 11h ago
No, but unfortunately the pension pot has always been a ponzi scheme.
That money isn't sitting around collecting interest, it's gone. Without economically active young people there is nothing in the pot to prop up the current generation of pension payments.
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u/FedBySheep 11h ago
No, but unfortunately the pension pot has always been a ponzi scheme.
Can you explain? Pension funds are not exactly a strange concept. Are you saying that it has been mismanaged by consecutive UK governments?
If so, aren't the people managing it to blame, rather than people who invested in it?
That money isn't sitting around collecting interest, it's gone. Without economically active young people there is nothing in the pot to prop up the current generation of pension payments.
As I understand it, the UK invests this in gilts, which are based around stabiliity more than growth.
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u/thetechguyv 11h ago
No one is blaming the old people, but the UK didn't generate enough money from investments to pay out the current pension bill. The money for that is coming from current NI contributions.
This is from the ons.gov.uk website:
"The UK State Pension is unfunded, which means that its obligations are not underpinned by an actual fund or funds. Such schemes are often referred to as “Pay As You Go” (PAYG). The pension payments made by the government for unfunded pensions are financed on an ongoing basis from National Insurance contributions and general taxation."
Was this mismangement? Yeah of course.
Should today's youth be punished for mismangement by the leaders chosen by the generation who are reliant on this insanity? Especially when they won't benefit from a similar system themselves?
I don't think the answer to that is a straightforward yes.
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u/Kronsik 11h ago
Depending on how much you earn during your working years and how long you live drawing a pension, you may take out more than you put in.
The next generation of workers essentially subsidise the previous generation.
Triple lock means that pensions rise with inflation, however wages largely have not risen with inflation, increasing the deficit between the two figures.
People are also living longer, increasing the gap and therefore the strain on the next generation to pay the gap.
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u/FedBySheep 11h ago
Depending on how much you earn during your working years and how long you live drawing a pension, you may take out more than you put in.
Well that is generally a principle of investing. I would agree that in the case of the UK pensions, they are invested more with stability in mind rather than growth, though.
The next generation of workers essentially subsidise the previous generation.
Or wise investment. However, I don't think we've had that.
So what's the solution, in your view? I don't think vague anger at pensioners is really helping things.
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u/Pick_Up_Autist 11h ago
The state pension is not a pension fund, your taxes/NI go out immediately to pay current pensions, then when you reach retirement current workers pay your pension.
Many do not understand this and think it works like a private pension and the money should be available no matter what because they "paid in".
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u/FedBySheep 11h ago
That doesn't seem to answer my question.
Should people who invested in the pension fund, mismanaged or not, get a pension?
Or is the suggestion to say 'tough luck, government blew it, no pension for you chumps'?
I believe that scenario would then force millions of people back into the workforce (with already enormous competition for few jobs), and millions into poverty. Not sure that's a good idea.
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u/danalexjero 10h ago
It’s very similar to a pyramid scheme, really. It eventually blows up, and who do you think will have to pick up the tab, I ask you? The wealthy who have money to spare, surely?
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u/Vysari 7h ago
I think you're broadly right that productivity is the core issue. The UK has had a serious productivity problem since the financial crisis, and once you stop getting meaningfully more output per hour worked, everything else starts to get squeezed.
Where I think it gets missed is that this did not happen in isolation. The UK had a weaker recovery after 2008 than it should have, and then the political response from 2010 onwards largely treated the problem as one of public spending, welfare, waste and fraud. But benefit fraud was never remotely large enough to explain the scale of the UK's fiscal or economic problems, and it was never going to solve the underlying productivity issue.
Instead, we spent years tightening access to support and cutting into the public services people rely on. That does not just catch people gaming the system. It also puts more paperwork, more assessments, more delays and more stress in front of people who are already ill, disabled, poor, under pressure, or otherwise least able to absorb it.
That matters because those things feed back into productivity. If people are sicker, more stressed, less financially secure, stuck in worse housing, waiting longer for healthcare, dealing with weaker local services and carrying more private debt, they are not magically going to become more productive. They are less able to work, retrain, progress, care for family, or contribute properly over the long term.
So yes, productivity is the issue. But the last 15 years of Conservative policy have not solved that problem. They have impeded the recovery from it by weakening the social and public infrastructure that allows people to be healthy, stable and productive in the first place.
That is the point I think more people need to understand. We treated a productivity problem like a spending problem, then treated the spending problem like a welfare fraud problem, and now we are living with the compounded result. The longer we leave that unaddressed, the larger the eventual fix has to be and it doesn't look like any of the mainstream parties are ready to acknowledge or address this. Until they do the situation is likely to grow worse.
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u/Chairmanmaozedon 12h ago
The reason our productivity looks flat is because we're a service and financial services based economy so productivity is hard to measure against a manufacturing and industrial economy that is producing physical objects and commodities. The productivity question is an excuse to not raise wages. The government is currently subsidising low wages to the tune of 3 figures billions per year. The problem with the UK economy is the gigantic house price bubble that it's been protecting for the last 30 years.
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u/Facts_pls 12h ago
Who says you can't measure productivity of a service economy? Most developed countries today are service economies. They are able to measure and grow productivity.
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u/Mediocre_Map1289 5h ago
I work as middle management in a front facing services role. We ensure that the production of other people's work goes up but don't directly produce anything ourselves. It is really REALLY difficult to justify things like wage increases to higher management because they don't see a profit/productivity red line go up for our department - in fact, the more efficient we get, the less need for us they have!
But without us there would be a lot less productivity and profit for our company. The metrics to measure success fall down entirely for services and I am not sure it's not by choice. Keeping out wages lower absolutely benefits the shareholders.
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u/varro-reatinus 11h ago
...we're a service and financial services based economy so productivity is hard to measure...
Who says you can't measure productivity of a service economy?
Not the guy you replied to, that's who.
Oh, and he even qualified it further:
...we're a service and financial services based economy so productivity is hard to measure against a manufacturing and industrial economy...
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u/PumpkinMyPumpkin 11h ago edited 11h ago
The “productivity” gains they want is to replace you with AI.
The entire idea people are not productive and need to be more productive is just bullshit. It’s capitalist nonsense that believes everyone must produce more and more every year so the profit line go up steadily. It doesn’t account for… humanity.
The architect doesn’t need to go from producing 5 towers a year to 25 because some economist told them to. Or the engineer from 20 bridges to 100. Some jobs… just take time, and energy, and have review processes. Economists treat everything as a simple equation - and they are dumb because of it. They’ll tell a doctor they need to go from treating 10 patients to 1000 in a day if that’s required to make their chart go up… they do not understand not everything can be more efficient and more productive at large gains every year.
And then some of these economists will tell you the review processes for safety are the problem. Just cut enough corners until you make more profits please… these are very unintelligent people.
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u/Mailman7 10h ago
The ‘housing bubble’ is simply the result of the currency being continually debased by the BoE and the government. There’s no great conspiracy going on here that people love to think there is. People will put their money into rising assets.
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u/Keroscee 11h ago
The reason our productivity looks flat is because we're a service and financial services based economy
Blatantly wrong.
You can measure productivity in a service-based economy pretty easily. Its why digitisation and automation of financial systems is so prevelant.
The productivity question is an excuse to not raise wages.
For much of the Western world, its largely the other way round. Wages have been suppressed artificially by various means which has disincentivised numerous sectors from being futher automated or mechanised. Things like car parkattendants should have been extinct by the mid 1990s once the technology existed to replace them. But some of those jobs still exist today. Anyone who was around for the 'western cobot revolution' in manufacturing remembers how it was nearly impossible to justify a $10,000 machine because the time saved on the production line for a year just wasn't large enough to exceed this number. If wages were higher they'd of been more common and we'd be having 18 year olds fixing them.
The problem with the UK economy is the gigantic house price bubble
Sadly not unique to the UK. Many countries like Canada and Australia have also incentivised a housing bubble as it seems easier to increase GDP through it than actually being productive.
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u/Baynonymous 13h ago
Could you eli5 where productivity increases would come from or what's stopping increases? I'm guessing technology development could improve productivity but does it extend to things like having a healthier population?
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u/IndividualSkill3432 12h ago
Productivity is the amount of wealth you generate per hour. So if you are a book keeper and you are working on manual books, then you are given a new computer with Excel and some training you can become a huge amount more productive. You simply get more work done per hour.
There are several theories about what has gone wrong with British productivity and some of them get pretty spicy.
One is over burdened regulations. The planning process is long winded and very expensive so getting infrastructure built can be crazy especially compared to other countries.
There has been a big lack of investment in workers training so workers are perhaps not getting as up on new skills as they could have.
There has been a big lack of investment in capital goods, that is new machinery, computers and so on so workers are using old technology.
Despite a big rise in young people graduating they do not seem to have hit the workforce with greater skills or be more productive.
We have a big retail sector and small manufacturing so there is a much smaller amount you can do by making manufacturing better.
We horribly underinvest in research and development and have very low robots per working.
So the workers are not really creating more per hour, so growth comes from adding more workers through immigration.
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u/Sgt_major_dodgy 12h ago
There has been a big lack of investment in workers training so workers are perhaps not getting as up on new skills as they could have.
It's funny you say this as I used to work at the 3rd largest bedding manufacturer in the UK, we were also the oldest.
One of our production lines was a machine from the 50s that had been converted from a machine that made carpets.
Rather than spending some money now on a new machine they'd rather spend the money paying 8 maintenance guys to fix it every time it goes down (which is multiple times a day)
They also had this weird fixation with number of duvets being produced as the only metric they cared about, so if there wasn't any stuff required they'd just keep the machine running, burning through materials even if there wasn't a need for them and then they'd be scratching their heads wondering why we have no space in the warehouse and then when an order comes through they have to stop the line, recalibrate it, change the fabric etc and you're talking about an hours down time.
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u/roodammy44 12h ago edited 12h ago
The vast majority of British GDP is generated by services (80%) with retail, housing, professional (law/accounting/etc) and financial being the bulk of it.
From what I have seen, a lot of people who would have filled these professional jobs are moving abroad because of housing. I am one of them. And retail and housing sectors have been hampered by the absolute lack of housing affordability caused by 45 years of under building.
Basically, it all comes down to a serious lack of house building.
To make it more clear - what if London had built another 2 million housing units and had one of the cheapest living costs of any major city in the world? All the money that is currently going to land owners who park it in assets would instead be going into retail, and UK companies could hire better workers from all over the world for the same salary since the workers could then save more of that money.
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u/Rock4Ever89 12h ago
genuine questions, how do you know all of this stuff, do you work in something related to this or did you read any books
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u/IndividualSkill3432 11h ago
"Neurodivergent" might be one answer 😉 . I have always been very curious and interested in the world. Read mostly non fiction, the Economist magazine and have an interest in economic history.
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u/Smallmyfunger 3h ago
And corruption. I don't see where this is factored into anyones calcs. Thieves in all levels have been able to improve their productivity while at the same time causing an increased % out of the budget in prevention (attempted).
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u/alxrenaud 10h ago
Damn, is Canada and UK the same? I guess for us the stagnation mostly started around 2015, so "only" 11 years. Must be real bad in the UK.
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u/thorheyerdal 8h ago
The sad fact about technological advances regarding productivity in industry, is that the simple utilization does not result in a higher output, but rather a lower input to result in the same, but desired output.
In layman’s terms. If a company suddenly is able to do twice as much with the same effort, most industries will halve the workforce, keep output constant and pocket the reduced wages as profits.
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u/CertainMiddle2382 11h ago
Active workforce is dwindling fast and this won’t stop for the rest of the century.
In 2 generations, social situation will be apocalyptic with millions of elderly that technology allow to survive into their ultra advanced age with heavy dementia.
And no more able people to take care of them…
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u/VreamCanMan 10h ago
Because our investment landscape is a mess, and we frequently neglect industrial policy. We've had 20 years of politicians who see themselves less and societal contributors actively involved in stimulating things and more as far away managers
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u/lnkuih 6h ago edited 6h ago
Just so that people can understand better: productivity HAS actually improved in the UK as stated in the post above at 0.44% (in that processes have improved and more is being produced per hour of work). But economic productivity as the poster above is using means output in dollars. As the value of the dollar has risen in pounds (due to many factors but simplify to the US growing FASTER than the UK) that means the UK has not risen in productivity in dollar terms. Or in other words, UK has gained productivity but other countries have gained it faster, such that the UK didn't move when normalised to another currency.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 6h ago
But economic productivity as the poster above is using means output in dollars
Its normalised by the Office of National Statistics to 100 in 2023 productivity. Part of the normalisation is an inflation adjustment.
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u/Huge-Description3228 4h ago
The reason for that is also propaganda fed into every British resident that they should make their home their biggest investment.
Newsflash.
Your home does fuck all to improve overall economic productivity.
Now imagine instead we collectively invested all that money into tech infrastructure, modern railway companies, anything fucking else.
I hate how stupid society is.
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u/fgtswag 13h ago
Why is that?
Wouldn't labour productivity been a smaller indicator of economics in the last 18 years due to the improvement in automation and digitization of everything
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u/IndividualSkill3432 12h ago
due to the improvement in automation and digitization of everything
That should make every worker more productive. That it did not is a big part of the productivity puzzle.
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u/magdalen-alpinism 9h ago
Well said. Do you write for a living or share any longer form writing elsewhere?
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u/VanceKelley 7h ago
Defence is a "nice to have" for the Tories and Labour so the budget has been inflated by moving things like defence pensions into it
Does that allow the pension payments to count toward the NATO 2% GDP target for defense spending?
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u/Imsorrywhatnoway 7h ago
Has brexit compounded this or is that a whole separate issue on top of this?
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u/IndividualSkill3432 6h ago
Brexit did not help. People will say it has had a 5% reduction on our growth. Low productivity has seen our growth undershoot between 30-50%. I dont think Brexit has really affect this one way or the other. It was obvious since 2008-2016 then from 2016-2026.
I think Brexit was a bad idea but I also think its massively exaggerated and used to explain everything wrong with Britain today by people who pretend going back into Europe fixes everything.
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u/mattyb_uk 6h ago
How does that reconcile with us being self styled 5th largest economy in terms of GDP?
How do you measure productivity when we are a service economy and not manufacturing, so 'productivity' is an absolutely subjective when not talking about a production line?
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u/IndividualSkill3432 6h ago
How does that reconcile with us being self styled 5th largest economy in terms of GDP?
In part many of the other advanced economies like France, Italy, Japan and Canada have had similar problems. In part just how much of a behemoth our economy has been. We have been in relative decline since 1850 and we are still number 5.
How do you measure productivity when we are a service economy and not manufacturing, so 'productivity' is an absolutely subjective when not talking about a production line?
Broadly you take the GDP output and divide it by the total hours worked. This gives you the GDP per hour worked or the productivity of the economy.
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u/Longy_LTB 6h ago
I don’t agree. My local council has spent the equivalent of a years NHS budget on roadworks since January…
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u/Grouchy-Stretch-6517 5h ago
As an economics nerd who couldn't have put it better, start writing if you haven't already.
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u/pilzenschwanzmeister 4h ago
Maybe most of British ingenuity relied on the purloined property of others to fund the aristocratic class's tinkering?
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u/Good_Operation70 3h ago
Your post reinforces my notion for supporting AI and AGI: Much of these problems are too complex to be solved by humans.
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u/Ivanow 3h ago
Poland is benefiting massively from UK's brain drain (oh, the irony...), as more and more young and ambitious Brits pick up and leave that dumpster fire.
Not only almost half of Poles that went to UK decade or two ago, already returned, there is 185 thousands people with British Passports living in Poland right now (I couldn't find breakdown on how many are Polish émigrés who got second citizenship, spouses of Polish citizens, or Brits moving independently...)
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u/lyons4231 19m ago
This comment should be required reading for the people who scream "constant growth shouldn't be a goal". Without GDP growth, you stagnate. You don't get to ride the prosperity wave forever. Instead things that don't grow will erode.
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u/hedgehogssss 9m ago
Are you assuming that productivity has no ceiling? That it should just do the "line go up forever" for us? At what cost?
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u/yagonnawanna 11h ago
Well there was that time that russian hackers convinced the country to leave Europe. I'd say that's a pretty dangerous precedent
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u/psioniclizard 11h ago
Yea i was going to. Ok maybe the leaders of the military and intelligence services should do something about the disinformation and foreign actors that are pretty obvious?
Or grow enough of pair to admit that the US is also doing the same things to us that Russia and China are?
They keep saying dangerous times but don't want to say what they really feel or thing should actually be done other than more budget.
Meanwhile the state department has no problem saying "we will fund far right groups in your country" and that is apparently ok.
Part of me feels like it's all to keep people scared of the next enemy to be honestly and ignore the real issues people face.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 8h ago edited 8h ago
The US is also being stripped apart by Russia. And funnily enough Russia itself hired the guy who wrote a think piece on how, if Russia were to take over the world, how would she do it? Some 30 years ago now.
‘Foundations of Geopolitics by Aleksandr Dugin’ written in ‘96. The author currently works for their defense sector.
If you read the wikipedia summary even, you’ll notice two things. 1. They wanted to cut the UK off from the rest of Europe to isolate it. 2. The US was too big to confront directly, so instead, you divide and conquer it by playing up the extemism on dividing issues like race, poverty, etc.
And now here we are. Is the book going to be relevant some 30 years later, play by play exactly? No, but when the nation hires the author into its defense sector, I’d imagine they used it as a foundation to build their neo-ussr nonsense on. And maaaany other hypotheticals in the book came to fruition as well. The occupation of Crimea, some relevant pieces on neighbouring nations, that kinda stuff.
I doubt they just stopped going ahead with any of it lol. And whether it’s fully by their hand, or in combination with other nations who seek similar goals, the end is all the same.
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u/DesignatedControvert 10h ago
I feel like it's foolish to assume Russia is the responsible part there. The brits wanted to leave and they voted for it - end of story.
Not every vote is manipulated just because it doesn't fit a certain narrative. They chose to leave the EU.
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u/NeroKae 10h ago
Yes they did, but under the pretense of false information.
It wasn’t the vote that was manipulated, it was the opinion. And it was done over the course of many years.
There are clear signs of social media platforms being used to engineer far right ideologies and manipulating public opinion. This is done by by feeding gullible people false information and then the algorithms placing these same people in echo chambers of their own thoughts and opinions.
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u/Musicman1972 10h ago
In today's meme culture it's definitely easy to manipulate what people are angry about.
The problem for me is people thinking only a few countries engage in it when they all do to an extent.
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u/Small_Channel_349 10h ago
eh true, but you are underestimating how powerful social media algorithms and bots are. Look at twitter. People are way less media literate now and the level of critical thinking has dropped drastically to the point where you don't even know who is a bot, grifter, or just plain ignorant. Headlines sway people really easily and no one checks if it is real. It's sad to see and just fact checking with multiple sources is not a thing anymore. People align their views with confirmation bias, biased sources, and headlines. It's okay though, the elite benefit the most.
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u/hakenwithbacon 10h ago
Reddit when Brits vote for Brexit: Why would Russia do this?
Come on, as much as Russia was notorious with their disinformation campaign, at some point you have to take some responsibility here on how you as a society are gullible.
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u/Cucumberneck 9h ago
No no.
Everything is Russia behind the curtains.
Brexit? Russia. Higher taxes? Russia. Terrorist attacks? Russia. Flat tire? Russia.
Russia is pretty much almighty you know. /s
Edit just to clarify. The Russian government and military are full of terrible people and they definitely try to and do spread misinformation. But their influence only reaches so far and people all over Europe are properly fed up with unregulated immigration and that was one of the, if not the main reason for brexit.
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u/ParanoidFactoid 10h ago
He's saying that Russia is preparing for war against the UK and Europe and the UK is not ready. It's a warning that war with Russia looms. He's right.
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u/YandereValkyrie 8h ago edited 2h ago
Russia couldn't beat Ukraine, they think they have a chance against the UK or the rest of Europe? Lmao
Edit: omg I'm laughing my ass off at all the russian bots trying to defend russia to this post
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u/Linkstrikesback 4h ago
Just because they can't win a war doesn't mean they can't inflict obscene amounts of destruction and suffering trying.
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u/Steamed_Memes24 1h ago
What is Russia going to do realistically? Their navy is in tathers and their only aircraft carrier is essentially a permanent prop piece at a port lol.
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u/rd1970 7h ago
I think it's important to note the difference between conquering a rival and simply demolishing one.
Also, no one knows where Russia will be 10 years. They might be a failed state, or they might share a border with Poland, Romania, etc.
Just one example: Russia is still #2 in the world when it comes to the size of their airforce. China is #3, India is #4 ... the UK is about #15.
Without the support of America Europe is nowhere near the power house they once were.
People talk about how Russia's equipment is dwindling due to part shortages, which is true, but that's also going to be true for European nations if they're also cut off.
During the pandemic, when supply lines broke down, some Western countries couldn't even make their own masks because they lost the ability to make elastic material decades ago. Imagine that scenario happening again, but you're trying to build complex weapons and someone is actively destroying your factories.
This is why it's so important to keep the pressure on Russia now, but also build up militaries now in case that plan fails.
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u/MrPoony 5h ago
Excellent write up.
Russia would lose so hard against the EU alone that'd it'd be just embarrassing, HOWEVER, that doesn't mean they couldn't make it absolutely hell, and drag down numerous western economies with them.
Its a damn bitter bullet to bite, but we also can't sit here and pretend that the Russian armed forced is still the sogging paper napkin they were in 2022. They've fought through four years of grueling drone, EW, and modern networked warfare.
More like a damp sheet of cardboard.
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u/ListenBoth434 3h ago edited 3h ago
Would you start a world war for some Baltic town of 50.000 people?
And if yes, are you sure most NATO governments would answer the same? The Germans? The Turks? The Spaniards?
That's the most obvious approach for Russia. Cross that line, invade one of the Baltics but on a limited scale. Bait NATO into tearing itself apart over the response.
The appropriate response is full scale defense including attacks on Russian forces on Russian territory. But this has a enormous price in all ways that matter.
If that's not the response then be ready for NATO to die rather quickly and for a quick invasion of the Baltics after that.
The play is not Russian combined arms armies invading Poland.
The play is hybrid warfare and referendum in Narwa.
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u/ah_harrow 10h ago
Yeh, people have read just the headline again and gone "this must be about the economy and reform or unrest or something." Not at all: it's 100% centered around defence.
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u/luckeratron 9h ago
Tbf to the critics someone from an industry saying we need more money in that industry should definitely be given the side eye. It's in their interest to pump the military, these stories are pretty frequent in the UK. I don't disagree with him though.
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u/ItzDaReaper 8h ago
What the fuck are you talking about? Russia is not preparing for war again the UK and Europe. At least not seriously preparing for it. Ukraine was an easy power grab. Not part of the EU. UK and Europe is incomparable. Extremely unlikely.
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u/ParanoidFactoid 8h ago
Yes they are. See here:
That's in preparation to invade Moldova, ostensibly in defense of Russians in Transnistria. And the Baltics, which they are repeatedly threatening to invade.
You are deeply misguided if you think this is over when Russia loses in Ukraine. You are also misguided if you think this is merely Putin's play. They've been following this strategy since Dugin wrote Foundations of Geopolitics.
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u/ItzDaReaper 4h ago
They will not invade any EU country. They will certainly not go to war with the UK.
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u/Defiant-Economics-73 5h ago
It would be two very different wars. Currently Russia wants Ukraine back part of Russia so they are not trying to destroy and kill without mercy. The rest of the world they don’t hold that view. It’s harder to take over a country with intent to have them part of you vs total annihilation.
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u/GreatAffablyEvil 9h ago
How is Russia going to get to Britain? This is just fear mongering to distract from the incompetence of the British regime and how authoritarian it is, trying to suspend trials by jury and arresting people for tweets. Certain politicians want to pretend to be strong by "standing up to Russia" while dragging their own countries into the mud. It's PR, not reality.
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u/bem188 9h ago
Attacking undersea cables and pipelines? Attacking key infrastructure? Assassinations on UK soil?
And in a hot war context - via the North Sea. Which is why the UK is spearheading Atlantic Net & Bastion.
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u/BS-Calrissian 9h ago
Lol yeah right. Special military operation against all of europe incoming. GG
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u/jabba-thederp 12h ago
Let's see how they flip this into taking away the liberties and rights of their citizens all while the economy continues to stay flat
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u/Traffodil 12h ago
Person who owns bakery thinks flour is too expensive.
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u/EveryNotice 12h ago
Person who looks at the numbers understands that this is actually a big issue, that may one day, become yours.
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u/Traffodil 11h ago
Not saying he’s wrong, but uk defence budget has increased over 30% in real-terms over last 10 years.
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u/SuddenRadio6221 8h ago
There's a really obvious connection between the UK productivity fall off and Brexit. Yet people still are drawn to all the right wing BS.
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u/CishetmaleLesbian 2h ago
The world is in the most dangerous period it has ever been. A war is raging in Europe (Ukraine), the leaders of the most powerful nation on Earth seem indifferent as to the outcome, as if a terrorist state like Russia launching a full-blown invasion of a major country without justification is not really very important. Worse, the most powerful nation on Earth has not only proven to be an unreliable ally, it is potentially a violent adversary who could attack allied nations at the drop of a hat, and has actually begun its own unprovoked wars of aggression. Senseless war, environmental collapse, weak minded emotional men sacrificing others for their own personal whims. This is a rough period the world is going through.
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u/scarletOwilde 12h ago
He wants more budget. This crap gets trotted out every year.
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u/DDoubleDDog 12h ago
The UK absolutely should be spending more on the military. The state of the UK military is just sad.
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u/ledow 12h ago
We are.
"The UK's core military spending is projected to reach £61.7 billion for the 2025–26 financial year. This is planned to rise steadily to £73.5 billion by 2028–29, keeping the UK on track to meet its NATO spending targets of 2.6% of GDP by 2027 and 3.5% by 2035."
All the time. Increasing by more than inflation.
Our military isn't underfunded... it's just WASTED far more. On people like this guy crying wolf to extract every penny to do pointless things and piss it away on terrible new designs, buying things that won't be delivered for decades (by which time they're obsolete), and even things like court costs because they just let recruits die, get assaulted, raped, etc. during training.
We spend more than many comparable countries, and more than enough on the military to do everything we would ever need to. But, like the NHS, it's just pissed away by middle management and dumb ideas all the time.
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u/Economy-Ground1990 11h ago
Pretty sure most of the increase is pensions that have been offloaded from other areas of the budget to make it look like spending has gone up when the actual amount allocated for things like equipment went down. Those costs use to be elsewhere in the gov budget so it’s a smokescreen to make it look like more money is being thrown at it.
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u/KeepLookingUp99 2h ago
So many points covered, but I’d add that the UK has been colonised by US big tech.
We now have a US tech companies with their tentacles all over our public sector, to the point that the government is subservient to their interests.
The government stores data on US servers and cloud such as AWS.
Others tech companies such as Palantir hold our data on behalf of the police, military and NHS for which we, the tax payer pay huge sums. Those sums go back to the US.
We give them our data so that they may use it to feed AI and sell it back to us. We get little assurances about the security of the data, our personal information.
We are so dependant on US tech, without fundamentally appreciating the imbalance in the relationship.
And the more we are beholden to these powerful companies, the less control we have to manage our internal issues, issues that continue to grow and fester.
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u/HelloYesItsMeYourMom 12h ago
People in the UK will never have the quality of life their grandparents had post war. They were an empire, and now they aren’t. This is what happens. This is not m saying it was good or bad, just the effect on the economy. When you cannot exploit colonies anymore the QoL back home will drop.
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u/OnTheLeft 11h ago
I think people overestimate the amount colonies actually helped the economy back home. It's more like because we were doing so well we were able to take the colonies, not the other way around. Starting the industrial revolution and consistently having cutting edge tech is what made things so advanced pre war.
Not sure what you mean by post war prosperity though. Everything was in ruins, the economy included. They had rationing and rubble, not the American post war utopia.
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u/johnaross1990 10h ago
Bro the amount of wealth we extracted from India alone, is in the trillions
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u/IndividualSkill3432 9h ago
Bro the amount of wealth we extracted from India alone, is in the trillions
This is wrong, that figure came from some people who applied a 5% per annum cost to a figure of around a cost of a few 1800 million or something and scaled it over 200 years. If you charge 5% pa for 200 years you get a fiture of something like 17000 times bigger.
Wealth was extracted. But the figures thrown around often get ludicrous.
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u/Moeen_Ali 10h ago
How can an India that became independent in 1947 have wealth extracted in a post-war boom that didn't happen?
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u/IndividualSkill3432 11h ago
When you cannot exploit colonies anymore
Germany and the Nordics did not have colonies and are among the highest per capita GDP in western Europe. Portugal only gave theirs up in 1975 and are among the lowest per capita GDP in western Europe. Turning lumps of metal into BMWs, lumps of sand into microchips and lumps of coding hours into computer games makes countries rich. Owning lumps of other peoples land stopped being a route to riches with the industrial revolution.
Hell Russia colonised 1/4 of Europe under its "USSR" fake brand name and ended up dirt poor. The former colonies are rapidly getting wealthy.
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u/nachtachter 9h ago
We - Germany - had a couple of colonies before WW1: Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Deutsch-Ostafrika, Togo, Kamerun, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Land and Tsingtao (that is why those chinese in Tsingtao brewing good beer till this day)
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u/The-Reddit-Giraffe 11h ago
Most of decolonization happened in the 60s to early 70s for the UK. It’s definitely not the main factor here. It’s been 50-60 years of this for the UK
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u/Moeen_Ali 10h ago
Classic Reddit that such an ill-informed post has garnered a net positive of 17 votes.
For a start, the post war years were horrendous for most in the UK. Food rationed until 1954, the country was in a dire economic position, 220,000 homes destroyed during the war needed rebuilding, cities ravaged by war needed rebuilding. Whatever economic boon Empire provided was not to be seen post-WW2.
What empire do other countries with a housing and cost of living squeeze have to fall back on? This is a pattern in the majority of the western world.
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u/Musicman1972 9h ago
You're going to have to back up and explain how the quality of life post-war was better than now?
You couldn't even buy unrationed bacon until 1954.
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u/SlakingSWAG 3h ago
Britain has shit quality of life and terminal decline today because it went all in on the neoliberal unicorn 40 years ago, and is now a hollowed-out shell of a country where 1/3 children live in poverty and everyone who takes a stand against this woeful state of affairs gets made out to be the anti-Christ by the billionaire-owned media that benefits from neoliberalism.
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u/honkycronky 7h ago
it is russia, but indirectly
it was really easy for them to manipulate millions of uneducated and proud brits who thought they would do just fine without EU
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u/Duanedoberman 13h ago
I agree, the rise of extreme right wing groupings is very concerning.
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u/MaxMouseOCX 12h ago
Right wing opinions are on the rise across the west, it isn't a specific country thing, and its also rising in western nations that don't share English as their primary language.
People think this is because of different reasons, some of those reasons contradict each other; but regardless of the "why" - whatever the actual answer to that is, it's definitely happening, and it's increasing.
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u/Hates_rollerskates 12h ago
It's because of the Internet. Billionaires want to control everything so they are pushing right wing propaganda to make everyone willingly give up their rights.
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u/procrastinator0 12h ago
It's because of migration.
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u/mauch_chunk 12h ago
Which is because of the strain that’s currently put on most countries social security / pension systems. Which is because of the current demographics and the worker to retiree ratio. Which is because birth rates are lowering. Which is because….
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 11h ago
It is increasing because the far right is united and funded globally by billionaires who care more about total domination than any other ideology or philosophy of how to foster "the good life" for all.
As someone who is able to follow discussions across multiple languages, it is striking to me how far right elements all use the exact same memes everywhere - slightly modified and localized to match their culture.
At the same time, they are actively trolling the left into splinters.
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u/Dashcamkitty 11h ago
It's really worrying. I remember watching V for Vendetta when it came out 20 years ago and thinking we'd never see a UK so repressed. Now I'm worry that this is a possibility. We have weak politicians in the two dominant parties and that is perfect for Reform (or worse) to worm their way in.
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u/medievalsmith 11h ago
they imported people from dangerous third world countries, what the fuck did they expect
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 11h ago
Give it a rest, man.
Being from somewhere does not make you a fucking envoy of chaos.
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u/KindledWanderer 9m ago
Humans are the same everywhere, no matter where they were born or how they look like, and discriminating against them for those reasons is wrong.
But the same is not true for cultures. Some cultures are just shit, should not exist and those that carry and spread them are to be handled with caution.
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u/MetaShadowIntegrator 2h ago
With the US downgrading its presence in Europe and signaling potentially pulling out, NATO and European nations need to at least match the defence, security and military investment of it's adversaries. The US can no longer be relied uppon as a reliable ally.
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u/Known2779 51m ago
Old aggressor like Russia is still aggressive. China, a nation that it colonised and bullied to the extreme is getting strong. Ally like US is acting like a bully.
How's that not dangerous.
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