Funny thing is that often too low housing tax is one reason for high costs, the next thing is government money printing and banks lending up to the roof in housing. So it is in the short term very unpopular to do something about it. But in the long run it is the best investment a nation can do. Only a few nations in Europe have had a strict policy on this. And together with complete stupid policy on energy, Europe therefor is doomed.
In a nutshell our government is incompetent, they wear a tie and suit, have a cv from Eaton and Oxford, and speak with vigour and passion about their party and what they can do… But they’re still completely incompetent. The fact that we have allowed the same 2 parties to rule for a century (different names) is in my opinion the root cause of this lack of talent.
The truth is British people have got complacent and naive. They love the Eatonites, go watch every podcast interview of Kwarteng or Blair and see how much they lap up the smooth talk. It's all romance and sweet talk and the British love it!
@@trickydicky90 The first pass the post system is what’s stopping people like the OP with new ideas from doing anything. It has entrenched our de-facto two-party system and said two-party system encourages status quo politics. Anyone still voting Tory or Labour is now a part of the problem, and these people are reluctant to change their vote for many reasons but one of them is the FPTP system where a vote for the loser is a wasted vote. So, you have a system which encourages voting for one of the main 2, and so the main 2 will never implement the reform that’s needed for recovery.
It's not incompetence. Its done deliberately. They are simoly stealing money from the masses and pocketing it for themselves. Its easier to make money being middlemen than to produce anything yourselves.
The UK is a carehome, the UK goverment is a carehome operator, local councils are the carehome staff. Turning the UK into a carehome is bankrupting the UK.
If you're not educating and training people to be productive, then make housing so expensive to boost GDP on paper but that everyone spends more than half of their salaries on rent, then no wonder the country is turning into a carehome. I left the UK in 2020 back to my country, each passing year the UK makes me happy i made that decision
Actually the average age in the Uk at 40 is younger than most other European countries and we spend a lot less on care and pensions for the elderly than most of them too. The problems are many but too many old people is much less of an issue here than elsewhere.
People in the UK aren't having kids because it takes so long to get a home, and when they do it's so very expensive. These problems are created by government with them inventing new rules all the time, mass low skill migration etc.
@@afgor1088 In the 1970's 1980's the housing supply was good. But 1990's onwards demand has totally outstripped supply. The housing price signals should prompt a market response.
@@Music5362 objectively untrue. you've replaced fact with theory and ideology that you never bother to check. the data is available at the ONS, correct yourself.
@@afgor1088 in 2023 net migration was 685,000, new dwellings in that same year was about 230, 000, and this year net migration is about 900, 000 with similar house building.
As always, simply an expertly put together video on a specific topic. Not only do you manage to make it understandable to those who may not have studied economics and other similar subjects, but you also manage to give it enough depth that those who have studied the subject can get something concrete out of it. Brilliant channel. Keep up the fantastic content!
In my experience of working with various parts of the UK Government both central and local, there is little incentive for spending to be efficient. In many cases only a serious mistake will lose in a senior manager being sacked so there is an big barrier to change. You also mention pensions but fail to distinguish between the state pension and public sector pensions which are related to final salary schemes. Pensioners have paid taxes for their working lives which can be up to 50 years with the promise of a state pension which isn’t generous by International standards. It isn’t their fault that successive governments since the introduction of the state pension in the late 1940’s have funded this from spending rather than investing the National Insurance payments into a fund. I think that the bloated Public Sector needs to be cut substantially and money spent more wisely before creating an age divide where people blame each other for poor government decisions.
To say that the quality of UK public services has dropped in the last couple of years is an understatement. Crappy doctor appointment waiting times, overpriced non-punctual public transport, tripled supermarket food prices, commercialized education, useless consumer rights organizations and charities with lofty business goals.
Be lucky to get a phone appointment then they tell you to send picture in for them to examine but the pictures cannot be over 8mp and they can’t see it , absolute shambles
@@charlesbruggmann7909 When they're making record-breaking profits year on year, since Covid, and their workers can hardly afford their own rents and ordinary lives, then yes, it becomes a problem.
You spend less at the supermarket as a percentage of your wages than at most points in history. The thing that is increasing more than anything is the cost of the UK Government, it's a parasite we can no longer afford to feed.
Yup, in those regards a relatively high tax on housing and property is recommendable. It puts a lit on prices for the benefit of the rest of the economy. In general housing should rise in line with productivity increase
I was working on Wall Street in NYC in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the talk of the town was the EU and the UK. Everyone wanted a slice of the EU and the road to that slice went right through England. American companies and companies globally started repositioning themselves, using the UK as a diving platform from which to enter the EU. Entire departments packed up and move to the UK, people were given the option to move with it or get left behind. I remember when our datacenter migrated to the UK, a big fancy building in Canary Wharf. Then came Brexit and exit stage left.
@@VincentRE79we were controlling Brussels just as much as they were controlling us. We had veto powers, nothing happened without us approving it. Now the Tories have lost their scapegoat and they didn't even attempt to achieve anything in all the years succeeding the referendum.
@@VincentRE79 That your country was not being controlled by Brussels. That was a bag a lies by Brexiters. The UK has voted ‘No’ to laws passed at EU on 56 occasions, abstained 70 times, and voted ‘Yes’ 2,466 times. The UK was on the “winning side” 95% of the time, abstained 3% of the time, and were on the losing side only 2%. You call that control?
No one can afford anything, and we keep letting more people in that can't afford anything and so were all fighting for scraps that are not worth fighting over, on top of that no one wants to work just to survive. I believe the saying is "work to live not live to work", so where do we go from here.
The last generation borrowed to keep their taxes low and now it's the workers of today who are paying for their retirement. The interest on the debt alone is more than our entire defense budget. I wouldn't mind paying more tax if I though it was an investment in the future but it would be spent maintaining the triple lock for the same generation that squandered the North Sea oil profits and voted to borrow. All while the retirement prospects for today's workers look to be non existent.
That same generation then desperately try to point the finger at immigration and refugees, as well as the younger generation, rather than accept responsibility
I am danish, and if the standard of the danish health system is that it is run by “ A state of art IT system” then I feel really sorry for the citizens in UK. We Danes have had endless problems with the IT system, and we are currently building several so-called super hospitals, and that process has been met with an endless amount of scandals and problems. Sometimes people here in Denmark say: If you want to find out how well functioning everything here is after all, just try to go abroad for a while ! Maybe that statement is true ….?
Your last statement is true. The amount of negligence and sloppy administration in various European nations is hard to believe. So in those terms you can say the danish IT systems are magnificent. But still lacks a lot to wish for. But the UK’s problem is to some extend also insane migration which means it is tough even getting a doctors appointment within months. Denmark you get in within the week regardless how small your problem is.
@@jakeforrest I think that a large part of the UKs problems with getting doctors appointments are 14 years of being run into the ground by the Tories. I am sure immigration has played a role but it’s not the key one.
I would very much agree! Also environment (not necessarily "environmental"), which some include in lifestyle. Eg high population density, minuscule flats and houses (some of the smallest in Europe), in-building like extensions, granny conservatories, etc. The general lack of basements for storage, and garages/drives for parking. All of this increases human stress. Be it direct, like having to listen to neighbours loud noises, or the stress of finding a parking space. Or indirect, just the psychological feeling of being crowded.
Get council houses built and many of our problems will be solved. Reduce housing costs and more people will be able to afford private pensions and private healthcare.
@ It can only be called ‘investment’ if profitable. So rents will have to be high enough to cover the cost of the land, construction, finance and maintenance. Probably not what most hope for.
Not that simple. In Sweden, bigger cities (with a lack of housing) are paying people on benefits to move to smaller cities (with a surplus of housing) - and there they will drain those small cities on money. So now the small cities (often run by socialists) have started to buy apartment blocks and tear them down. Building more social housing will only work as a pull factor.
Excellent video indeed my good man. Just goes to show that the smaller our governments and the less power and tax we give to our politicians, they better our lives will be.
Not necessarily, though? Denmark pay high tax and has a large government and runs its public services well, as stated in this video. The UK just doesn’t really bring in enough to ensure it can begin to fix any of its issues. Small government comes with its own set of issues, though it can help make processes more efficient and cheaper to run, it also leaves us with less security about those decisions and provides us with more need to trust those in power to do the right thing
@@jenko6196 and there is your problem - you need to trust those in power to do the right thing - what happens when day in and day out they don't do the right thing??
@@JoBo301 it’s yet to be tested with labour. They are more similar ideologically to the tories than their supporters would like to admit, but they are an entirely different group of people. Let’s see if we can trust them long term before we make any sweeping conclusions about them
The UK is an ageing society. You cannot look at how things were run in the past to find ideal solutions. New ones need to be found. You cannot have a massive amount of retirees vs the past but expect services to remain where they were. However I do agree that government overreach is a problem. But is any government in the UK running on reducing government involvement in your lives?
Pensioners can't expect to retire and live a comfy life on the taxes of the young. Carehomes are so expensive and pensioners need to pay more in their houses, giving up their pensions to pay for it and everyone needs to be told that living to 90 is a real posibility and it's extremely expensive!
This is only half true. Yes, there are fewer working age people, but we are also far more productive per capita than we used to be. If certain things like care homes were nationalised it would be cheaper over all because of the economy of scale.
The biggest problem with our government is to tax more, and to continue taxing us more, it has to waste more aswell! There is no obligation for other tax payers to pay for people incompetence! It has no obligation to fund other peoples lifestyle!
There is no such thing as people's incompetence. Our power structures are all trees. Only 10% succeeds, the rest are losers. It is not the people, it is the system. Those at the top will always say, you are not at the top because you are incompetent, the truth is there is no room for great majority of people there. As you reach 40s or 50s you are no longer able to compete against most younger people, unless you are in power structure already. The only thing that counts is how deep up the ass of those who have power you have gone to get what you want. Most of your incompetent ones, just do not do that, because not many humans enjoy flowing through shit half of their life.
You will be glad of state support if you lose your job, get sick, have children, grow old. You will also discover it’s virtually impossible to live on welfare
We are spending over £8b on "irregular" migrants every year. That is not the cause of our problems, but it is a pretty significant representation of why we are where we are. Lawyers and politicians are getting rich, everyone else is getting rinsed.
This is utter nonsense Migrants have always been a net financial benefit because they pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits Check for yourself
I have a theory on immigration. It was a hot topic of the Brexit argument, yet we saw the highest immigration figures ever in the period POST Brexit, when it should've decreased, per the wishes of so many pro Brexit voters. The theory is that at a high level our govts understand that we need care based labour for our aging population, which is typically a low paying industry. Our domestic population is largely unwilling to enter that area due to poor working conditions and low pay, so the borders are effectively but somewhat subtly opened to allow a care workforce to enter and manage our aging population. One that is willing to work for lower wages due to coming from areas of lower opportunities. It's anecdotal, but in my area, we've seen a huge increase in foreign nations working in elderly care based roles. But this isn't publicised, because immigration is such a hot topic.
@@iian050 Just a reminder Sajid Javid (and Rishi?) supported Brexit specifically because the EU was unfair to ‘people like them’. Then, given the structural labour shortages in Britain, the plan was always to import workers from the ‘Commonwealth’ - in practice, India and Nigeria of course.
@@iian050 its not just elderly care. its the low wage service sector, healthcare, prisons, so many other industries and institutions where british wages have fallen behind what british people want to work for (this has been an intentional wage suppression for the sake of increased asset values). someone has to fill the gap. left or right, governments are going to not reduce immigration because if they do, our social order will collapse as all these important low pay jobs do not get done. i get that people on the right are scared of people who dont look or sound like them, but sometimes you have to overcome your fears for the better of you, your family and your country.
Only senior officers are ruled by politicians. And do you think anyone would ever stand for office if they were personally liable - which is why private companies have limited liability?
How big would the bar on that graph be of subsidies offered by the UK government? Just went and looked it up. If you divide subsidies by the sum of Health and State Pension spending, you get approx. 73%, (I’ve rounded the decimals). So, if you combine the “burden” of providing us healthcare and pensions, every pound of the subsequent pot will be matched by 73p “paid” in subsidies. I know it’s not spending per se, but it is money the government has to find. If I wanted a 73% reduction in my income tax bill, the government would say they couldn’t afford it. The argument is, the money stimulates the economy. What would it do if it were in peoples’ pockets?
The UK’s tax authority has not fined a single “enabler” of offshore tax evasion or non-compliance in five years despite landmark powers introduced in 2017, new figures reveal. HMRC has been under pressure to estimate the size of the tax gap after figures disclosed to the independent thinktank Tax Policy Associates by HMRC in September 2021 revealed that UK taxpayers held nearly £570bn in tax havens. HMRC estimates that it collects 95% of all the tax owed in the UK, but the remaining 5% accounted for about £36bn in lost revenue in 2021-22.
@@davidclark1545 The Paradise Papers (November 2017) contained 13.4 million leaked files that were investigated by 95 media establishments worldwide, and found to contain the details of a large number of individuals and offshore companies who were illegally utilising tax havens to avoid personal and corporation tax. Using a tax haven for monetary gain and neglecting to declare income to HMRC, gives the holder a financial advantage over those who are paying tax correctly, and inhibits economic cooperation and development. Those currently taking advantage of the system in this way are liable to be investigated by HMRC and may be found guilty of non-compliance, resulting in a hefty penalty. So it can be legal if declared, not if not declared and immoral is another question.
The use of tax havens means less tax revenue for the government, leading to an increase in taxes on goods and services, which ultimately hurts the poorest. On top of this, it facilitates money laundering, corruption, and hinders financial regulators to identify risks in capital markets. Using tax havens will only comply with HMRC tax regulations if declared to HMRC.
I live very near Portsmouth and I’m 23 and housing prices are getting beyond insane - a very small bungalow just sold near me for over 500k… the best way I can describe it is, nobody new can buy houses, just people that own them shuffle around. The going rate for a studio flat is £1100 rent… are you having a laugh? Most of us can barely afford to exist. I’ve grown up around here and it’s sad that I can’t afford to live in the area I was raised in.
Great informative video. These problems need solutions for our grandchildren not to have to face huge government and private debt. I work with care homes and the costs are unnecessarily large. One solution is to bring these costs down. It can be done.
UK.... I don't know, probably most people here from UK, but that B.S. going on all around the world..... And almost anyone disregard country can tell the same especially recently...
All laws should have a 10 year sunset provision. Keeps the buggers busy and removes deadwood. Also all departments should face job decimation every 10 years.
Cut 2/3 of all government jobs (excluding front line docs and nursers), double all the salaries, make them have private pension schemes and cut the bottom 1/4 of performers every year . That would be a good start
Government is a monopoly that has no real competition, and so suffers from all the consequent problems one would expect. Inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, impossible-to-fire workers, lack of accountability to customers, etc - all while charging monopoly prices to taxpayers.
@@jontalbot1 In theory elections are supposed to make government "competitive" and therefore more responsive to customers/citizens needs. In practice the only competition is for the political leadership positions while the civil service itself remains an effective monopoly. One of the difficulties is that civil servants can also vote. So they'll never vote for a politician who promises to slash the civil service or expose them to real market competition. The best example of this is teachers unions in the USA that fight tooth and nail against school voucher systems or charter schools. Also keep in mind that in most developed countries the government is the single biggest employer, so civil servants are the single biggest group of workers. In a close election the support of the civil service can make the difference between winning or losing for a political candidate. Both the civil service unions and the politicians are very aware of this so civil servants get the kid glove treatment.
State pensions are always the culprit in the UK. According to an OECD analysis published in 2019, the UK has an overall net replacement rate of 28.4% from mandatory pensions for an average earner (well below the OECD average of 58.6% and the EU average of 63.5%). When voluntary provision (mainly workplace pensions) is included as well, the UK’s net replacement rate rises to 61.0%, while the OECD and EU averages rise to 65.4% and 67.0% respectively. But voluntary pensions in the UK are always fully funded as they come from the private sector. In other countries the much big pensions are funded largely from current taxation. The UK in terms of much of pensions are fully funded from the private sector.
government helps landlords get their rent on time. Social housing has been in decline for decades, so councils can't get the rents. Restore mass social housing or face downwards spiral. Private rented sector should be a tiny minority and taxed very heavily, but we have the opposite.
@@swojnowski453 I agree, but they won't do it because all the parties subscribe to the same economical fallacy - I said on another video on another channel, all they will do is change the 10 to a 12 and the 45 to a 46; government are lazy and incapable of doing what we regard as work, they tinker and that's all they will do until eventually the system collapses and someone does some actual work.
@@sirsurnamethefirstofhisnam7986 Get a Ryanair flight, if anyone else wants you that is- and stop running the country down. Plenty of people seem to want to live here so it can’t be that bad
The problem isnt that once benefits are there people dont want to lose them . Its that once benifits are a thing the system normally adapts in other negative ways . Build a town with lots of council houses and watch the businesses not give their workers pay rises till you can no longer afford rent
When you have over 1 million immigrants a year you will not be able to build enough houses or keep up with the demands on public services, it isn't really hard to figure that out.
Ironically, it's the countries with high levels of - both legal and illegal - immigration that have been achieving growth. In that respect, our membership of the EU was a great boon and we have been hit severely by its loss.
@@chrisbirmingham5132 the logic of that correlation is inverted. Economies that are doing well attract immigrants disproportionately. The UK attracts immigration well beyond its means because English is the most universally spoken language and in the case of criminal and low skilled immigrants, they know we are profligate with benefits and incompetent at policing our borders.
@@christinemurray1444 What does it even mean to speak of "immigration well beyond its means"? And "we" can hardly be said to be profligate with benefits. Are you living in the real world or watching GB News?
@@chrisbirmingham5132so by your argument we need even more immigration? And why then, after a 10 million increase in the Uk population in the last 20 years, are we still seeing minuscule growth?
Let's not forget the legendary wastage of money in the public sector. Its fine saying the govt spends x or y on healthcare, police or whatever, but how much of that goes up in smoke through bureaucracy and non-jobs?
It is this kind of unfocused, generic comment that could have been written at any time since 1950 that is part of the problem. As you say it is a legend, even though there is truth in it the function is to invoke dissatisfaction. Most of the serious economic and organisational analysis gets ignored.
@ you can woffle and bluster all you like, it does not make it untrue and it still sucks up money that could be spent on healthcare, roads etc etc. My comment is not part if the problem, the subject of my comment is. It’s not rocket science.
@@hughjohns9110 you're suggesting one is morally worse. public services and private services should both be ran competently as they both impact the public, whether paid for with public or private funds. failure to properly manage staffing costs (including your execs) to a degree that it threatens the continuation of he business is incompetence and potentially corrupt - just as is doing the same in the public sector.
These are very insightful videos about the UK economy and fascinating to see. Thank you for your contribution. It’s tough to be asked to keep paying higher taxes with no real context as to why they never result in meaningful improvements. Countries like Japan and Switzerland seem to get the best bang for their buck. I wonder what we can do to improve. Somehow I think culture and work ethic play a big part in these differences, and I think changing that is really very challenging.
HOTEL UK: There are more Cooks in the Kitchen and more Waiters in the Diner than there is Guests. The Management has taken over most Floors, and the Cusstomers can't get a seat to eat because all the chairs are filled with fat-ass Bureaucrats... but there are Bugs to eat in the Dumpsters out back - and if you're lucky - some might be chocolate-coated. Hurry up before those Dumpsters are emptied and converted into temp-housing, though! ;)
0:35 - '(...)EVEN Lolipop Ladies (...)' - to me this sentence is a cultural shock. We have such a job in Poland too and yes - it's not the most paid job, but people have much respect to such a people. The way the three words from quote were pronounced kind of reminds me the very reminders of imperialism - the attitude to slaves. Seeing empty libraries (and how nobody reads books anymore) I don't feel surprised to have libraries budget cut. The existence of Lolipop Lady job to me is evidence of somebody's failure (to put proper traffic light in place). Still however these are people securing somebodys children with their own body - I feel more respect should be given than in the 0:35 sentence.
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Partly right. My sister lives in Waterlooville and it is under Winchester. I thought Winchester was a unitary authority, but it is part of Hampshire Council
Taxes are getting higher because those who should be paying.more refuse to do so, therefore the burden gets bigger for those that have less capacity to pay.
"Very expensive to provide temporary accommodation" for homeless...yet every month the government invite and allow an Albert Hall full of illegal migrants to cross the channel ! This is madness.
If your council is forced to fund people’s private rent to private landlords, while their council housing stock can be sold off. It is understandable how that can balloon a budget then additionally all councils in the U.K. WITHOUT EXCEPTION have an aging population so care budgets are bound to increase
Instead of the large versus small state debate, we need to focus on investment to make the state more efficient - private organisations that don't invest and only retrench fail so why do we treat the public sector like this? An example is how poor, means tested social care provided by a postcode lottery patchwork of local authorities results in longer more expensive stays in hospital. The first wave of network connected Information Technology in the late 90s and into the first decade of the 21st century created huge economic growth everywhere and we need to leverage the next wave of tech to do the same to tackle productivity. The NHS is way behind with IT and diagnostics and at the end of the day this is what needs to be funded but they can't do it like the Blair government (big top down IT programmes). Also, the tendency in the UK is to consider cost over quality of life - probably a cultural overhang of the class structure - I don't find this as much in Europe and Australia.
Child benefit cap only negatively affected those that put themselves in that position... It isn't taxpayers priority to house and feed others children.
The state used to own stuff so earned money through services and exports. Privatisation and deindustrialisation in pursuit of green targets means the states only income is now taxes, which have to rise to compensate.
Thanks for that really good analysis. It sounds like the difference between the approaches is difference between paying the absolute minimum necessary and getting something that just about gets the job done but feels grotty and paying more to get something that does the job well and feels a lot nicer. I'd be interested in knowing why the USA seems to have escaped the decline in economic growth that seems to affected the UK and Europe and if there is anything the UK and Europe can learn from this.
I'm not convinced that the USA has escaped, its just a bit behind us. There have been lots of recent videos on YT about US job layoffs. recruitment freezes and so on. There was one today about MacDonald's there running out of money because customers can't afford to eat out so often. Other indicators are the declining futures price of petrol, and industrial metals like copper. With the Chinese economy on the slide as well, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with some sort of global recession which will make the UK situation even harder to deal with. We are all doomed.
It's because they, surprisingly, still believe in government investment at least a bit. Look at the CHIPS act. As far as I know there's no equivalent to that in the UK. We categorically refuse to invest in our own industries. All we do is tinker with things to try to encourage private investment, which doesn't work when business confidence is so low. And it's low because the government refuses to invest first. Contrary to market orthodoxy, government investment can and does crowd IN private sector investment, especially after a down turn like we had in 2008. But instead of investing they chose to cut based on a single, and now debunked, research paper. It's honestly embarrassing. Imagine basing an entire economic strategy on a single researcher.
Someone said: "The UK is an ageing society.", but what the reason? As in many other countries.... High cost of housing, low pay, high taxes, so young families don't want kids while not feel stablity. And that cause less young and more old people. *In the loop.*
This is the problem with UK politics. We need parties to either set out the case for Denmark model or set out the case for a US model and then deliver. It seems the UK is not capable of doing anything these days and that has resulted in stagnation
Lol. Models are maps, not the territory. Don't confuse the two. We are neither the US nor Denmark. And thinking we can borrow models devised for other economies has brought us to the situation we are now in. Neoliberalism was devised in America, but it hasn't even worked there. And unfortunately for us, we dived into copying the Americans and ended up with a busted flush. All we got was a huge transfer of wealth to the already asset-wealthy, and a crumbling system brought down by savage underinvestment in education and industry and underfunding of public services. British workers work the longest hours in Europe, but are paid the least to the extent that Polish and Slovenian workers will earn more than the workers of the sixth richest economy in the world, leading to increasing income and wealth inequality. They say one's problems come from one's priorities, and if one doesn't like cleaning up the mess caused by one's problems, then one needs to take a hard look at the priorities that put them there. We've made rich people richer at our own expense. That is not just folly on the part of our short-termist politicians. We've played our part in electing them. So we too are responsible for losing our own way. It is our priorities that are skewed away from reality. Until we look at the truth of who we are without rosy glasses and unicorns, and commit to making the changes needed, we're not going anywhere, because we have to change before it will. We need to stop looking for easy answers to tough problems and commit to change. Because being Denmark is not a quick fix. It is literally changing not just our minds but the way we do things. And not just moaning at governments, scapegoating, and blaming. None of which achieves anything. But getting more involved in how our country is run. Our errors are rooted in how we see the world and ourselves in it. That distorts our relationship to reality. Nice things cost time, effort, and money to produce. Denmark didn't get nice things by thinking their national economy is run like a household. And even though they encourage people to grow wealth, they are not shy in taxing it to pay for the things that make it possible to have nice things. We don't subsidise wealth creation to make a few people rich and nothing else. We do it to ensure that everyone's boat can float to the extent that everyone is able to contribute to making wealth for the country as a whole. We have spectacularly failed for nearly half a century to do what we did after World War Two, when we were 100% worse off than we are now. Why? We followed the American overoptimistic model, and it's hurt us badly. We are now reaping the rewards of that folly. We can do better, but we are too complacent and are deceiving ourselves. We have found out that we need to change. We sat by as whole communities fell to the neoliberal attrition. And then no one can understand why they can't build themselves up, as the whole weight of the Big Con is standing on them.
Gary of GarysEconomics put it nicely when he said we have a Uniparty system. The problem is both political options are to a greater or lesser extent brought and when the public were given the chance to start to break this up (the A.V. referendum) they voted to keep the current, corrupt and broken system. And without even the will for structural reform we are well and truly fu...
@@loc4725 I am danish, and we have a system with several political parties . When you voted no to rethink your political system, I felt very sorry for you.. I agree completely with what you have written about the UK system. The danish system with several political parties may not be perfect, but at least the winner doesn’t take it all, and to achieve something you have to work it out with other political parties , which creates a lot of dynamics.
@@CuriousCrow-mp4cxare you really sure we are living in a neocon system? We have the highest tax burden since post war years, with regulation and government intrusion which would amaze any previous era, as well as expectations of what government can deliver never seen before. Sounds like you may have fallen for the map, and are not seeing the landscape
@CuriousCrow-mp4cx "hasn't even worked there". A bunch of nonsense. It's worked well for America. The US economy is still the envy of the world and Europe is going the way of the Dodo. What brilliant innovations amd companies does Europe have to drive it through the 21st century? NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. Europe is just a bloated bureaucracy to redistribute wealth accumulated in the last century. At one point the wealth will run out without good growth.
Many of the older people who had benefitted from the post war consensus are telling the young today to just work harder when the young justifiably says that things in real terms are so much more expensive now. Then they wonder why, should the young actually beat all the odds against them, and actually makes it to the point that they're finally ready to settle down and have kids, they may well have become too old to do so themselves by then, which'll make the demographic crisis even worse.
I second this claim. As a migrant who worked as a teacher in my home country, it took me 11 months to get my QTS here with DfE, which people say it's the fastest. My application was just sitting in the queue gathering dust for 10 months as I received email asking for supplementary documents and further verification in month 10. Beforehand, it took a week to respond to my enquiry with no specific details or progress at all. Honestly, in my home country, emails are mostly answered within 24 hours, both in private and public sectors. Other examples include Land Registry (3 months in my home country vs 1-2 years), passport (2 weeks in my home country vs 3 months here), fixing poleholes (almost never had one vs forever to fix here)... the list goes on and on The bureaucracy of the UK government makes things really inefficient. In the end, the citizens and our economy suffer.
It’s the result of chronic staff shortages. If you read most of the comments here people are convinced the public sector is over staffed. The reality is just the opposite
The market is failing. Corporations are running things but they aren’t equipped to dealing with a load of issues that don’t make them money. The government will have to come back after decades of being absent .
Surely it's normal for the richest council areas also to have the most debt, since they have a higher capacity to borrow. The problem is that you need to increase your population and output in order to continue to service that debt sustainably. If you have a load of debt *and* expenditure rising faster than revenue, *then* you have a problem. Places like Hampshire, as you describe, need to grow their working-age population.
You can't beat something that that grows exponentially with something that grows linearly longer term. Debt longer term is something that will break any neck. Once you in it, you are on your way to collapse. Debt cancellation is the only way out then. Increasing number of people will not help. What needs doing is directing rents to council's hands rather than to private ones. If not done, collapse will follow ...
Stop hiring those incompetent and unqualified managers and CEOs and ministers who think sitting on government jobs is a safe haven and doesn’t need performance or any pressure, and still rake in hundred of thousand annual in compensation package. Start there and the productivities will increase. Everyone should be performance based and out the door is couldn’t keep up.
The the trendlines on the charts misleading ? Economic conditions changed dramatically as a result of the credit crunch in 2007-2009. There appears to be one trend rate up to this and, unsurprisingly, a differing rate after.
Went into pensions and welfare benefits due to an ageing population. It's just simple maths. The more old people you have that survive into their post-70s, you need more money for State Pensions and more money for healthcare.
It isn't going to be easy but I am a science person so I would put the priority on new technology which can increase producitivy and replace human workers. New medical breakthroughs can help us work for longer. Just increasing the retirement age by one year leads to a marked reduction in pension payments. the other issue os that means tested state pensions are almost inevitable with middle class people being forced to abandon part or all of their state pension. I would cut the state pension by ten percent for every addition house a Man owns with the result that a man who owned ten houses would get no state pension but if he were to sell them then he'd get some more. Id offer to abolish the standard rate of income tax for a man who continues to work over the age of 65 if he agrees to not claim the state pension for that year,
Because it's not really relevant. The underlying cause is low fertility rates and ageing populations which is happening regardless of whether you are in the EU or not. We are living off a welfare state that is effectively a glorified Ponzi scheme that is unsustainable in the long-term.
In the US health outcomes follow the money, where the bulk of money is spent.you have great outcomes, and where you have very low spending you get people dying earlier. This the demographic that scews the life expectancy down.
People have to stop comparing what we could do now to post ww2 recovery. Post ww2 there were 450,000 dead British people who most of whom would have had a house or land, that was either handed down or handed over to the state massively reducing pressure to build new homes so rebuilding and repair could easily take precedent. UK post ww2 recovery was half fueled by American money, debt relief and globalisation, post ww2 recovery was a big boost for almost all countries involved.
The problems all come down to aging demographics. It’s takes 20 years to grow yourself so that’s not a viable strategy. This will be the problem that drives the UK into fascism and starts to address the problem of “too many old people”
The problem is not drop in fertility. There is no drop in fertility, the drop is in birth rates. This drop is caused by working class not being able to afford to have children. The root cause is Government missmannagement. They keep increasing tax to "find money for their essential services", but non of that money actually benefits the country. All the money goes to other countries, people who have no legal right to even be in the country, and into encouraging people to live on the dole.
The biggest cause of this spending problem is people who have never worked or paid in both homegrown & illegal! Govs borrowing massive amounts to pay for said eaters!
This is a lie. Most spending is on pensions & the NHS. about 10% goes on working age benefits, with most of that going on child credit and people in work.
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Your comments section is full of insane right wing economic bullshit, do you know? its quite embarrassing
When people need to pay 50% of their salary as rent, no economic growth can be expected. So many cases in the world.
So debt rises further, providing grist for the mill for the bankers who thrive in a debt-sodden environment.
High interest rates + inflation means no money left after paying the bills.🤬
Funny thing is that often too low housing tax is one reason for high costs, the next thing is government money printing and banks lending up to the roof in housing.
So it is in the short term very unpopular to do something about it.
But in the long run it is the best investment a nation can do.
Only a few nations in Europe have had a strict policy on this. And together with complete stupid policy on energy, Europe therefor is doomed.
The greatest problem to growth is the 72% reduction that comes from made up statistics
50% as rent and 42% as tax. Tax freedom day comes on 10th June.
The point is to make everyone poorer except for the wealthiest and most insulated. The devastation has been decades in the making.
Decades? You do know when Wealth of Nations was written
Nothing to do with wealth of nations. This jas happened over the last 30 years....starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall @kevoreilly6557
Love how you never mention the elephant in the room. Genius.
In a nutshell our government is incompetent, they wear a tie and suit, have a cv from Eaton and Oxford, and speak with vigour and passion about their party and what they can do…
But they’re still completely incompetent.
The fact that we have allowed the same 2 parties to rule for a century (different names) is in my opinion the root cause of this lack of talent.
The truth is British people have got complacent and naive. They love the Eatonites, go watch every podcast interview of Kwarteng or Blair and see how much they lap up the smooth talk. It's all romance and sweet talk and the British love it!
What's stopping you having a crack? You seem to know everything. It's a democracy. Give it a go and then report back.
Well you know the solution: put yourself forward so you can solve all our problems
@@trickydicky90 The first pass the post system is what’s stopping people like the OP with new ideas from doing anything. It has entrenched our de-facto two-party system and said two-party system encourages status quo politics. Anyone still voting Tory or Labour is now a part of the problem, and these people are reluctant to change their vote for many reasons but one of them is the FPTP system where a vote for the loser is a wasted vote. So, you have a system which encourages voting for one of the main 2, and so the main 2 will never implement the reform that’s needed for recovery.
It's not incompetence. Its done deliberately. They are simoly stealing money from the masses and pocketing it for themselves. Its easier to make money being middlemen than to produce anything yourselves.
The UK is a carehome, the UK goverment is a carehome operator, local councils are the carehome staff.
Turning the UK into a carehome is bankrupting the UK.
If you're not educating and training people to be productive, then make housing so expensive to boost GDP on paper but that everyone spends more than half of their salaries on rent, then no wonder the country is turning into a carehome.
I left the UK in 2020 back to my country, each passing year the UK makes me happy i made that decision
The Tories broke Britain with their stupid Brexit
@@blimbag No, the trend has been clear for ages; this was going to happen, Brexit or not.
its a gulag
Actually the average age in the Uk at 40 is younger than most other European countries and we spend a lot less on care and pensions for the elderly than most of them too. The problems are many but too many old people is much less of an issue here than elsewhere.
People in the UK aren't having kids because it takes so long to get a home, and when they do it's so very expensive.
These problems are created by government with them inventing new rules all the time, mass low skill migration etc.
Housing supply per person has increased almost every year since the 70s.
The evidence disagrees with your political narrative.
@@afgor1088 In the 1970's 1980's the housing supply was good. But 1990's onwards demand has totally outstripped supply. The housing price signals should prompt a market response.
@@Music5362 objectively untrue. you've replaced fact with theory and ideology that you never bother to check.
the data is available at the ONS, correct yourself.
@@afgor1088 in 2023 net migration was 685,000, new dwellings in that same year was about 230, 000, and this year net migration is about 900, 000 with similar house building.
Exactly. No-one wants to start a family in a one bedroom apartment, but that's all they can afford so they don't bother.
As always, simply an expertly put together video on a specific topic. Not only do you manage to make it understandable to those who may not have studied economics and other similar subjects, but you also manage to give it enough depth that those who have studied the subject can get something concrete out of it. Brilliant channel. Keep up the fantastic content!
In my experience of working with various parts of the UK Government both central and local, there is little incentive for spending to be efficient. In many cases only a serious mistake will lose in a senior manager being sacked so there is an big barrier to change. You also mention pensions but fail to distinguish between the state pension and public sector pensions which are related to final salary schemes. Pensioners have paid taxes for their working lives which can be up to 50 years with the promise of a state pension which isn’t generous by International standards. It isn’t their fault that successive governments since the introduction of the state pension in the late 1940’s have funded this from spending rather than investing the National Insurance payments into a fund. I think that the bloated Public Sector needs to be cut substantially and money spent more wisely before creating an age divide where people blame each other for poor government decisions.
To say that the quality of UK public services has dropped in the last couple of years is an understatement. Crappy doctor appointment waiting times, overpriced non-punctual public transport, tripled supermarket food prices, commercialized education, useless consumer rights organizations and charities with lofty business goals.
Be lucky to get a phone appointment then they tell you to send picture in for them to examine but the pictures cannot be over 8mp and they can’t see it , absolute shambles
What do supermarket prices have to do with public services?
@@charlesbruggmann7909 When they're making record-breaking profits year on year, since Covid, and their workers can hardly afford their own rents and ordinary lives, then yes, it becomes a problem.
@@charlesbruggmann7909Wakey, wakey!!!!!
You spend less at the supermarket as a percentage of your wages than at most points in history. The thing that is increasing more than anything is the cost of the UK Government, it's a parasite we can no longer afford to feed.
High property prices do not equal affluence, it just drains the other parts of the economy.
too late now.
yes we make very bad use of our private investments housing is an example of this.
When banks started creating new digital money to loan for mortgages instead of lending savings prices were bound to increase.
@@peterwait641 they bloated like a corpse.
Yup, in those regards a relatively high tax on housing and property is recommendable.
It puts a lit on prices for the benefit of the rest of the economy. In general housing should rise in line with productivity increase
As you say. Govt getting bigger but we get less. That's the problem and solution. Cost of oversized govt is too big. Solution smaller govt
I was working on Wall Street in NYC in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the talk of the town was the EU and the UK. Everyone wanted a slice of the EU and the road to that slice went right through England. American companies and companies globally started repositioning themselves, using the UK as a diving platform from which to enter the EU. Entire departments packed up and move to the UK, people were given the option to move with it or get left behind. I remember when our datacenter migrated to the UK, a big fancy building in Canary Wharf. Then came Brexit and exit stage left.
Yes and the EU has been in a mess since Brexit, one day the UK will get better the EU is finished
Yes but we had to get out of the EU, how would you feel if your country was being controlled by Brussels.
@@VincentRE79we were controlling Brussels just as much as they were controlling us. We had veto powers, nothing happened without us approving it. Now the Tories have lost their scapegoat and they didn't even attempt to achieve anything in all the years succeeding the referendum.
@@Phucket24 Delusional
@@VincentRE79 That your country was not being controlled by Brussels. That was a bag a lies by Brexiters. The UK has voted ‘No’ to laws passed at EU on 56 occasions, abstained 70 times, and voted ‘Yes’ 2,466 times. The UK was on the “winning side” 95% of the time, abstained 3% of the time, and were on the losing side only 2%. You call that control?
No one can afford anything, and we keep letting more people in that can't afford anything and so were all fighting for scraps that are not worth fighting over, on top of that no one wants to work just to survive. I believe the saying is "work to live not live to work", so where do we go from here.
The last generation borrowed to keep their taxes low and now it's the workers of today who are paying for their retirement. The interest on the debt alone is more than our entire defense budget. I wouldn't mind paying more tax if I though it was an investment in the future but it would be spent maintaining the triple lock for the same generation that squandered the North Sea oil profits and voted to borrow. All while the retirement prospects for today's workers look to be non existent.
That same generation then desperately try to point the finger at immigration and refugees, as well as the younger generation, rather than accept responsibility
we are screwed. Get out of major towns and grow some of your own food if you can.
Agree to all that
There should be no tax why would you wanna pay more? 😂
@@euphoricbliss6699 to pay for adult social care and NHS treatment for all these oldies
I am danish, and if the standard of the danish health system is that it is run by “ A state of art IT system” then I feel really sorry for the citizens in UK.
We Danes have had endless problems with the IT system, and we are currently building several so-called super hospitals, and that process has been met with an endless amount of scandals and problems.
Sometimes people here in Denmark say: If you want to find out how well functioning everything here is after all, just try to go abroad for a while !
Maybe that statement is true ….?
That’s a great saying😂
Your last statement is true. The amount of negligence and sloppy administration in various European nations is hard to believe.
So in those terms you can say the danish IT systems are magnificent. But still lacks a lot to wish for.
But the UK’s problem is to some extend also insane migration which means it is tough even getting a doctors appointment within months.
Denmark you get in within the week regardless how small your problem is.
@@jakeforrest I think that a large part of the UKs problems with getting doctors appointments are 14 years of being run into the ground by the Tories. I am sure immigration has played a role but it’s not the key one.
i had a doctors appointment a few years ago, and the doctor was still using Windows Vista.... That is the state of play in the UK.
Isn’t life expectancy mainly affected by lifestyle and diet, not the bandaid we put on the problem afterwards?
We follow a very American model, and get very American results
I would very much agree!
Also environment (not necessarily "environmental"), which some include in lifestyle.
Eg high population density, minuscule flats and houses (some of the smallest in Europe), in-building like extensions, granny conservatories, etc. The general lack of basements for storage, and garages/drives for parking.
All of this increases human stress. Be it direct, like having to listen to neighbours loud noises, or the stress of finding a parking space. Or indirect, just the psychological feeling of being crowded.
Yes. And here lies another problem with the UK. We are terrible at preventative care AND terrible and treating the resulting illness.
Get council houses built and many of our problems will be solved. Reduce housing costs and more people will be able to afford private pensions and private healthcare.
The problem being the next Con government will sell them off, creating a new generation of Con voters but cycling the problem back to the beginning.
You will, of course, be happy to pay extra tax to finance this?
@ Building council houses will be an excellent investment for country, and therefore can be funded through borrowing.
@
It can only be called ‘investment’ if profitable. So rents will have to be high enough to cover the cost of the land, construction, finance and maintenance.
Probably not what most hope for.
Not that simple. In Sweden, bigger cities (with a lack of housing) are paying people on benefits to move to smaller cities (with a surplus of housing) - and there they will drain those small cities on money. So now the small cities (often run by socialists) have started to buy apartment blocks and tear them down. Building more social housing will only work as a pull factor.
Excellent video indeed my good man. Just goes to show that the smaller our governments and the less power and tax we give to our politicians, they better our lives will be.
Not necessarily, though? Denmark pay high tax and has a large government and runs its public services well, as stated in this video. The UK just doesn’t really bring in enough to ensure it can begin to fix any of its issues. Small government comes with its own set of issues, though it can help make processes more efficient and cheaper to run, it also leaves us with less security about those decisions and provides us with more need to trust those in power to do the right thing
@@jenko6196 and there is your problem - you need to trust those in power to do the right thing - what happens when day in and day out they don't do the right thing??
@@JoBo301 it’s yet to be tested with labour. They are more similar ideologically to the tories than their supporters would like to admit, but they are an entirely different group of people. Let’s see if we can trust them long term before we make any sweeping conclusions about them
The UK is an ageing society. You cannot look at how things were run in the past to find ideal solutions. New ones need to be found.
You cannot have a massive amount of retirees vs the past but expect services to remain where they were.
However I do agree that government overreach is a problem. But is any government in the UK running on reducing government involvement in your lives?
Pensioners can't expect to retire and live a comfy life on the taxes of the young.
Carehomes are so expensive and pensioners need to pay more in their houses, giving up their pensions to pay for it and everyone needs to be told that living to 90 is a real posibility and it's extremely expensive!
This is only half true. Yes, there are fewer working age people, but we are also far more productive per capita than we used to be. If certain things like care homes were nationalised it would be cheaper over all because of the economy of scale.
im not old though.
@IshtarNike so your solution to government overreach is more government overreach...
@@hobbabobba7912I don't think you understand what government overreach actually is.
The biggest problem with our government is to tax more, and to continue taxing us more, it has to waste more aswell! There is no obligation for other tax payers to pay for people incompetence! It has no obligation to fund other peoples lifestyle!
There is no such thing as people's incompetence. Our power structures are all trees. Only 10% succeeds, the rest are losers. It is not the people, it is the system. Those at the top will always say, you are not at the top because you are incompetent, the truth is there is no room for great majority of people there. As you reach 40s or 50s you are no longer able to compete against most younger people, unless you are in power structure already. The only thing that counts is how deep up the ass of those who have power you have gone to get what you want. Most of your incompetent ones, just do not do that, because not many humans enjoy flowing through shit half of their life.
You will be glad of state support if you lose your job, get sick, have children, grow old. You will also discover it’s virtually impossible to live on welfare
We are spending over £8b on "irregular" migrants every year.
That is not the cause of our problems, but it is a pretty significant representation of why we are where we are.
Lawyers and politicians are getting rich, everyone else is getting rinsed.
This is utter nonsense
Migrants have always been a net financial benefit because they pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits
Check for yourself
do you have the tax figures for those migrants? estimates across their life will do..
I have a theory on immigration.
It was a hot topic of the Brexit argument, yet we saw the highest immigration figures ever in the period POST Brexit, when it should've decreased, per the wishes of so many pro Brexit voters. The theory is that at a high level our govts understand that we need care based labour for our aging population, which is typically a low paying industry.
Our domestic population is largely unwilling to enter that area due to poor working conditions and low pay, so the borders are effectively but somewhat subtly opened to allow a care workforce to enter and manage our aging population. One that is willing to work for lower wages due to coming from areas of lower opportunities.
It's anecdotal, but in my area, we've seen a huge increase in foreign nations working in elderly care based roles.
But this isn't publicised, because immigration is such a hot topic.
@@iian050
Just a reminder Sajid Javid (and Rishi?) supported Brexit specifically because the EU was unfair to ‘people like them’. Then, given the structural labour shortages in Britain, the plan was always to import workers from the ‘Commonwealth’ - in practice, India and Nigeria of course.
@@iian050 its not just elderly care. its the low wage service sector, healthcare, prisons, so many other industries and institutions where british wages have fallen behind what british people want to work for (this has been an intentional wage suppression for the sake of increased asset values). someone has to fill the gap. left or right, governments are going to not reduce immigration because if they do, our social order will collapse as all these important low pay jobs do not get done. i get that people on the right are scared of people who dont look or sound like them, but sometimes you have to overcome your fears for the better of you, your family and your country.
No council should be legally able to get into debt. It should be illegal, with the senior officers having personal criminal liability.
Only senior officers are ruled by politicians. And do you think anyone would ever stand for office if they were personally liable - which is why private companies have limited liability?
How big would the bar on that graph be of subsidies offered by the UK government? Just went and looked it up. If you divide subsidies by the sum of Health and State Pension spending, you get approx. 73%, (I’ve rounded the decimals). So, if you combine the “burden” of providing us healthcare and pensions, every pound of the subsequent pot will be matched by 73p “paid” in subsidies. I know it’s not spending per se, but it is money the government has to find. If I wanted a 73% reduction in my income tax bill, the government would say they couldn’t afford it. The argument is, the money stimulates the economy. What would it do if it were in peoples’ pockets?
Let’s be honest, paying people for existing. That’s how social democracy has been running and now they can’t stop but they must.
they have bred a whole generation of dependents. lol.
For some odd reason I always thought Hampshire was an inland county, never realised Portsmouth was there. You learn something new everyday!
i always thought sussex was in scotland.
The UK’s tax authority has not fined a single “enabler” of offshore tax evasion or non-compliance in five years despite landmark powers introduced in 2017, new figures reveal. HMRC has been under pressure to estimate the size of the tax gap after figures disclosed to the independent thinktank Tax Policy Associates by HMRC in September 2021 revealed that UK taxpayers held nearly £570bn in tax havens. HMRC estimates that it collects 95% of all the tax owed in the UK, but the remaining 5% accounted for about £36bn in lost revenue in 2021-22.
Mind Your own business.
@@CreepyTrendManlost your marbles?
Moving money is not tax evasion, it is tax avoidance and is legal.
@@davidclark1545 The Paradise Papers (November 2017) contained 13.4 million leaked files that were investigated by 95 media establishments worldwide, and found to contain the details of a large number of individuals and offshore companies who were illegally utilising tax havens to avoid personal and corporation tax. Using a tax haven for monetary gain and neglecting to declare income to HMRC, gives the holder a financial advantage over those who are paying tax correctly, and inhibits economic cooperation and development. Those currently taking advantage of the system in this way are liable to be investigated by HMRC and may be found guilty of non-compliance, resulting in a hefty penalty.
So it can be legal if declared, not if not declared and immoral is another question.
The use of tax havens means less tax revenue for the government, leading to an increase in taxes on goods and services, which ultimately hurts the poorest. On top of this, it facilitates money laundering, corruption, and hinders financial regulators to identify risks in capital markets. Using tax havens will only comply with HMRC tax regulations if declared to HMRC.
I live very near Portsmouth and I’m 23 and housing prices are getting beyond insane - a very small bungalow just sold near me for over 500k… the best way I can describe it is, nobody new can buy houses, just people that own them shuffle around. The going rate for a studio flat is £1100 rent… are you having a laugh? Most of us can barely afford to exist. I’ve grown up around here and it’s sad that I can’t afford to live in the area I was raised in.
Great informative video. These problems need solutions for our grandchildren not to have to face huge government and private debt. I work with care homes and the costs are unnecessarily large. One solution is to bring these costs down. It can be done.
Making a commodity available at below market levels is a recipe for queues, shortages, and black markets.
UK.... I don't know, probably most people here from UK, but that B.S. going on all around the world..... And almost anyone disregard country can tell the same especially recently...
Another point is rentierism; Brett Christophers has written a couple of great books on this.
All laws should have a 10 year sunset provision.
Keeps the buggers busy and removes deadwood.
Also all departments should face job decimation every 10 years.
Cut 2/3 of all government jobs (excluding front line docs and nursers), double all the salaries, make them have private pension schemes and cut the bottom 1/4 of performers every year . That would be a good start
Love your videos, super intelligent and straight to the point
Government is a monopoly that has no real competition, and so suffers from all the consequent problems one would expect. Inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, impossible-to-fire workers, lack of accountability to customers, etc - all while charging monopoly prices to taxpayers.
Weird that. I thought we had elections. Perhaps things would be better if we privatized services like water…hang on a minute
@@jontalbot1 In theory elections are supposed to make government "competitive" and therefore more responsive to customers/citizens needs.
In practice the only competition is for the political leadership positions while the civil service itself remains an effective monopoly.
One of the difficulties is that civil servants can also vote. So they'll never vote for a politician who promises to slash the civil service or expose them to real market competition. The best example of this is teachers unions in the USA that fight tooth and nail against school voucher systems or charter schools. Also keep in mind that in most developed countries the government is the single biggest employer, so civil servants are the single biggest group of workers.
In a close election the support of the civil service can make the difference between winning or losing for a political candidate. Both the civil service unions and the politicians are very aware of this so civil servants get the kid glove treatment.
@@marcusmoonstein242 Quite right. They are the enemy within
The problem with comparing the UK to Scandinavia is that Scandinavian governments don't actually hate their citizens.
Brilliant analysis again
State pensions are always the culprit in the UK. According to an OECD analysis published in 2019, the UK has an overall net replacement rate of 28.4% from mandatory pensions for an average earner (well below the OECD average of 58.6% and the EU average of 63.5%). When voluntary provision (mainly workplace pensions) is included as well, the UK’s net replacement rate rises to 61.0%, while the OECD and EU averages rise to 65.4% and 67.0% respectively. But voluntary pensions in the UK are always fully funded as they come from the private sector. In other countries the much big pensions are funded largely from current taxation. The UK in terms of much of pensions are fully funded from the private sector.
Its not called Benefits Britain for no reason
government helps landlords get their rent on time. Social housing has been in decline for decades, so councils can't get the rents. Restore mass social housing or face downwards spiral. Private rented sector should be a tiny minority and taxed very heavily, but we have the opposite.
@@swojnowski453 I agree, but they won't do it because all the parties subscribe to the same economical fallacy - I said on another video on another channel, all they will do is change the 10 to a 12 and the 45 to a 46; government are lazy and incapable of doing what we regard as work, they tinker and that's all they will do until eventually the system collapses and someone does some actual work.
You're a smart guy, enjoyed watching your videos. Keep them coming!
People of UK do your duty: Have lots of kids you can't afford so that the government can keep it's welfare gravy train running!
You will be grateful for the welfare gravy train if you get sick, lose your job, have children, get old
Too many people in UK..end of!
@@GeorgeHargrave-w4n Agreed. Eff off out of it to get the ball rolling
@@jontalbot1most of us are too poor to leave that’s how dire the situation in this country is.
@@sirsurnamethefirstofhisnam7986 Get a Ryanair flight, if anyone else wants you that is- and stop running the country down. Plenty of people seem to want to live here so it can’t be that bad
The problem isnt that once benefits are there people dont want to lose them . Its that once benifits are a thing the system normally adapts in other negative ways .
Build a town with lots of council houses and watch the businesses not give their workers pay rises till you can no longer afford rent
Outstanding insights , thank you . BradTen 🏴
When you have over 1 million immigrants a year you will not be able to build enough houses or keep up with the demands on public services, it isn't really hard to figure that out.
Ironically, it's the countries with high levels of - both legal and illegal - immigration that have been achieving growth. In that respect, our membership of the EU was a great boon and we have been hit severely by its loss.
@@chrisbirmingham5132 the logic of that correlation is inverted. Economies that are doing well attract immigrants disproportionately. The UK attracts immigration well beyond its means because English is the most universally spoken language and in the case of criminal and low skilled immigrants, they know we are profligate with benefits and incompetent at policing our borders.
@@christinemurray1444 What does it even mean to speak of "immigration well beyond its means"? And "we" can hardly be said to be profligate with benefits. Are you living in the real world or watching GB News?
@chrisbirmingham5132 i paid 6 digits in taxes last year and I live in a third world country regarding services. I live in the real world.
@@chrisbirmingham5132so by your argument we need even more immigration? And why then, after a 10 million increase in the Uk population in the last 20 years, are we still seeing minuscule growth?
Health care is full of people who don’t do the health care just 50%of the workforce are doctors and nurses
9:47 - can you give a source for the trump vs harris national debt increase predictions?
In the chart at 8:54 ff - I don't see defence. What is that annually?
Thank you for this illuminating summary
Let's not forget the legendary wastage of money in the public sector. Its fine saying the govt spends x or y on healthcare, police or whatever, but how much of that goes up in smoke through bureaucracy and non-jobs?
in the private sector, the waste is in the boardroom
It is this kind of unfocused, generic comment that could have been written at any time since 1950 that is part of the problem. As you say it is a legend, even though there is truth in it the function is to invoke dissatisfaction. Most of the serious economic and organisational analysis gets ignored.
@ even if that were true, they are not wasting public money.
@ you can woffle and bluster all you like, it does not make it untrue and it still sucks up money that could be spent on healthcare, roads etc etc.
My comment is not part if the problem, the subject of my comment is. It’s not rocket science.
@@hughjohns9110 you're suggesting one is morally worse. public services and private services should both be ran competently as they both impact the public, whether paid for with public or private funds. failure to properly manage staffing costs (including your execs) to a degree that it threatens the continuation of he business is incompetence and potentially corrupt - just as is doing the same in the public sector.
How can we get better talents to run the government?
Excellent video. Thank you
Because its easier to raise taxes than investigate where current taxes are being wasted.
These are very insightful videos about the UK economy and fascinating to see. Thank you for your contribution.
It’s tough to be asked to keep paying higher taxes with no real context as to why they never result in meaningful improvements. Countries like Japan and Switzerland seem to get the best bang for their buck. I wonder what we can do to improve. Somehow I think culture and work ethic play a big part in these differences, and I think changing that is really very challenging.
HOTEL UK: There are more Cooks in the Kitchen and more Waiters in the Diner than there is Guests. The Management has taken over most Floors, and the Cusstomers can't get a seat to eat because all the chairs are filled with fat-ass Bureaucrats... but there are Bugs to eat in the Dumpsters out back - and if you're lucky - some might be chocolate-coated. Hurry up before those Dumpsters are emptied and converted into temp-housing, though! ;)
0:35 - '(...)EVEN Lolipop Ladies (...)' - to me this sentence is a cultural shock. We have such a job in Poland too and yes - it's not the most paid job, but people have much respect to such a people. The way the three words from quote were pronounced kind of reminds me the very reminders of imperialism - the attitude to slaves. Seeing empty libraries (and how nobody reads books anymore) I don't feel surprised to have libraries budget cut. The existence of Lolipop Lady job to me is evidence of somebody's failure (to put proper traffic light in place). Still however these are people securing somebodys children with their own body - I feel more respect should be given than in the 0:35 sentence.
Cut the I&D funding.
Cut the Carbon Zero funding.
Lower regulations.
Bring back industry.
The aim of the state is to either work for the state, or live off it.
Either way you are dependant on the state which is exactly what they want.
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Portsmouth isn’t under Hampshire Council. PCC is separate and the northern areas like Waterlooville are Winchester Council
Waterlooville is within the "Havant Borough" local authority (not the Winchester local authority) and is also under Hampshire County Council.
Partly right. My sister lives in Waterlooville and it is under Winchester. I thought Winchester was a unitary authority, but it is part of Hampshire Council
Taxes are getting higher because those who should be paying.more refuse to do so, therefore the burden gets bigger for those that have less capacity to pay.
"Very expensive to provide temporary accommodation" for homeless...yet every month the government invite and allow an Albert Hall full of illegal migrants to cross the channel !
This is madness.
“Politics: “Poli” a Latin word meaning “many”; and “tics” meaning “bloodsucking creatures”.” - Robin Williams
If your council is forced to fund people’s private rent to private landlords, while their council housing stock can be sold off. It is understandable how that can balloon a budget then additionally all councils in the U.K. WITHOUT EXCEPTION have an aging population so care budgets are bound to increase
The slide around American national debt rising based on candidate policy seems to be discredited by the graph shown in the previous slide.
Excellent analysis
Thank you Sir
Interesting... very interesting
Wonderful discussion
Instead of the large versus small state debate, we need to focus on investment to make the state more efficient - private organisations that don't invest and only retrench fail so why do we treat the public sector like this? An example is how poor, means tested social care provided by a postcode lottery patchwork of local authorities results in longer more expensive stays in hospital. The first wave of network connected Information Technology in the late 90s and into the first decade of the 21st century created huge economic growth everywhere and we need to leverage the next wave of tech to do the same to tackle productivity. The NHS is way behind with IT and diagnostics and at the end of the day this is what needs to be funded but they can't do it like the Blair government (big top down IT programmes). Also, the tendency in the UK is to consider cost over quality of life - probably a cultural overhang of the class structure - I don't find this as much in Europe and Australia.
A smaller state is necessarily more efficient than a larger one
Child benefit cap only negatively affected those that put themselves in that position... It isn't taxpayers priority to house and feed others children.
Those children will pay your pension. Myopic.
The state used to own stuff so earned money through services and exports. Privatisation and deindustrialisation in pursuit of green targets means the states only income is now taxes, which have to rise to compensate.
Deindustrialisation was not the result of "green targets"... You've fallen for a very obvious lie.
Thanks for that really good analysis. It sounds like the difference between the approaches is difference between paying the absolute minimum necessary and getting something that just about gets the job done but feels grotty and paying more to get something that does the job well and feels a lot nicer.
I'd be interested in knowing why the USA seems to have escaped the decline in economic growth that seems to affected the UK and Europe and if there is anything the UK and Europe can learn from this.
on the basis it is the world's reserve currency, so it can easily throw money about.
I'm not convinced that the USA has escaped, its just a bit behind us. There have been lots of recent videos on YT about US job layoffs. recruitment freezes and so on. There was one today about MacDonald's there running out of money because customers can't afford to eat out so often. Other indicators are the declining futures price of petrol, and industrial metals like copper.
With the Chinese economy on the slide as well, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with some sort of global recession which will make the UK situation even harder to deal with. We are all doomed.
It's because they, surprisingly, still believe in government investment at least a bit. Look at the CHIPS act. As far as I know there's no equivalent to that in the UK. We categorically refuse to invest in our own industries. All we do is tinker with things to try to encourage private investment, which doesn't work when business confidence is so low. And it's low because the government refuses to invest first. Contrary to market orthodoxy, government investment can and does crowd IN private sector investment, especially after a down turn like we had in 2008. But instead of investing they chose to cut based on a single, and now debunked, research paper. It's honestly embarrassing. Imagine basing an entire economic strategy on a single researcher.
@@IshtarNike
Milton Freedman economics
Take a look at US national debt vs everywhere else in the world... It's astronomical
Someone said: "The UK is an ageing society.", but what the reason? As in many other countries....
High cost of housing, low pay, high taxes, so young families don't want kids while not feel stablity.
And that cause less young and more old people. *In the loop.*
That and government backed feminism
Its out of control! High earner (because I f@cking graft) & I cant get a bin for my street or an NHS appointment.
Reminds me of south Amercian governments. Good example is Argentina however Argentina has finally started to sort this out.
This is the problem with UK politics. We need parties to either set out the case for Denmark model or set out the case for a US model and then deliver. It seems the UK is not capable of doing anything these days and that has resulted in stagnation
Lol. Models are maps, not the territory. Don't confuse the two. We are neither the US nor Denmark. And thinking we can borrow models devised for other economies has brought us to the situation we are now in.
Neoliberalism was devised in America, but it hasn't even worked there. And unfortunately for us, we dived into copying the Americans and ended up with a busted flush. All we got was a huge transfer of wealth to the already asset-wealthy, and a crumbling system brought down by savage underinvestment in education and industry and underfunding of public services. British workers work the longest hours in Europe, but are paid the least to the extent that Polish and Slovenian workers will earn more than the workers of the sixth richest economy in the world, leading to increasing income and wealth inequality. They say one's problems come from one's priorities, and if one doesn't like cleaning up the mess caused by one's problems, then one needs to take a hard look at the priorities that put them there. We've made rich people richer at our own expense. That is not just folly on the part of our short-termist politicians. We've played our part in electing them. So we too are responsible for losing our own way. It is our priorities that are skewed away from reality. Until we look at the truth of who we are without rosy glasses and unicorns, and commit to making the changes needed, we're not going anywhere, because we have to change before it will. We need to stop looking for easy answers to tough problems and commit to change. Because being Denmark is not a quick fix. It is literally changing not just our minds but the way we do things. And not just moaning at governments, scapegoating, and blaming. None of which achieves anything. But getting more involved in how our country is run. Our errors are rooted in how we see the world and ourselves in it. That distorts our relationship to reality. Nice things cost time, effort, and money to produce. Denmark didn't get nice things by thinking their national economy is run like a household. And even though they encourage people to grow wealth, they are not shy in taxing it to pay for the things that make it possible to have nice things. We don't subsidise wealth creation to make a few people rich and nothing else. We do it to ensure that everyone's boat can float to the extent that everyone is able to contribute to making wealth for the country as a whole. We have spectacularly failed for nearly half a century to do what we did after World War Two, when we were 100% worse off than we are now. Why? We followed the American overoptimistic model, and it's hurt us badly. We are now reaping the rewards of that folly. We can do better, but we are too complacent and are deceiving ourselves. We have found out that we need to change. We sat by as whole communities fell to the neoliberal attrition. And then no one can understand why they can't build themselves up, as the whole weight of the Big Con is standing on them.
Gary of GarysEconomics put it nicely when he said we have a Uniparty system.
The problem is both political options are to a greater or lesser extent brought and when the public were given the chance to start to break this up (the A.V. referendum) they voted to keep the current, corrupt and broken system.
And without even the will for structural reform we are well and truly fu...
@@loc4725 I am danish, and we have a system with several political parties . When you voted no to rethink your political system, I felt very sorry for you.. I agree completely with what you have written about the UK system. The danish system with several political parties may not be perfect, but at least the winner doesn’t take it all, and to achieve something you have to work it out with other political parties , which creates a lot of dynamics.
@@CuriousCrow-mp4cxare you really sure we are living in a neocon system? We have the highest tax burden since post war years, with regulation and government intrusion which would amaze any previous era, as well as expectations of what government can deliver never seen before. Sounds like you may have fallen for the map, and are not seeing the landscape
@CuriousCrow-mp4cx "hasn't even worked there". A bunch of nonsense. It's worked well for America. The US economy is still the envy of the world and Europe is going the way of the Dodo. What brilliant innovations amd companies does Europe have to drive it through the 21st century? NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. Europe is just a bloated bureaucracy to redistribute wealth accumulated in the last century. At one point the wealth will run out without good growth.
Many of the older people who had benefitted from the post war consensus are telling the young today to just work harder when the young justifiably says that things in real terms are so much more expensive now.
Then they wonder why, should the young actually beat all the odds against them, and actually makes it to the point that they're finally ready to settle down and have kids, they may well have become too old to do so themselves by then, which'll make the demographic crisis even worse.
I second this claim.
As a migrant who worked as a teacher in my home country, it took me 11 months to get my QTS here with DfE, which people say it's the fastest. My application was just sitting in the queue gathering dust for 10 months as I received email asking for supplementary documents and further verification in month 10. Beforehand, it took a week to respond to my enquiry with no specific details or progress at all.
Honestly, in my home country, emails are mostly answered within 24 hours, both in private and public sectors.
Other examples include Land Registry (3 months in my home country vs 1-2 years), passport (2 weeks in my home country vs 3 months here), fixing poleholes (almost never had one vs forever to fix here)... the list goes on and on
The bureaucracy of the UK government makes things really inefficient. In the end, the citizens and our economy suffer.
It’s the result of chronic staff shortages. If you read most of the comments here people are convinced the public sector is over staffed. The reality is just the opposite
The market is failing. Corporations are running things but they aren’t equipped to dealing with a load of issues that don’t make them money. The government will have to come back after decades of being absent .
IMO good analysis but could do with more suggestions for a fix
Surely it's normal for the richest council areas also to have the most debt, since they have a higher capacity to borrow. The problem is that you need to increase your population and output in order to continue to service that debt sustainably. If you have a load of debt *and* expenditure rising faster than revenue, *then* you have a problem. Places like Hampshire, as you describe, need to grow their working-age population.
You can't beat something that that grows exponentially with something that grows linearly longer term. Debt longer term is something that will break any neck. Once you in it, you are on your way to collapse. Debt cancellation is the only way out then. Increasing number of people will not help. What needs doing is directing rents to council's hands rather than to private ones. If not done, collapse will follow ...
Stop hiring those incompetent and unqualified managers and CEOs and ministers who think sitting on government jobs is a safe haven and doesn’t need performance or any pressure, and still rake in hundred of thousand annual in compensation package. Start there and the productivities will increase. Everyone should be performance based and out the door is couldn’t keep up.
Another excellent video, you are doing great work helping people understand the real problems the UK faces.
At 9m10 - your graph of government spending ;
Why did you leave out defence/arms spending ?
Bit odd, it's £52bn for that year.
The reason why taxis keep rising because of poor government over the last 20 years
Efficiency on spending. Simple as that. The gigantic disaster of HS2 explains itself.
Too many old people consuming too many of the available tax and healthcare resources. Have no doubt the current economic model will collapse.
God, what’s changed in those years. I can’t work it out!! 🤔
The the trendlines on the charts misleading ?
Economic conditions changed dramatically as a result of the credit crunch in 2007-2009. There appears to be one trend rate up to this and, unsurprisingly, a differing rate after.
Very interesting segment nonetheless
I wonder where all that money went from the deeply discounted sale of council houses? It certainly wasn't back in to replacement properties.
the sale of council houses was a public finance disater we have spent far more on housing benefit since.
Went into pensions and welfare benefits due to an ageing population. It's just simple maths. The more old people you have that survive into their post-70s, you need more money for State Pensions and more money for healthcare.
@@inbb510 it went into the hands of private landlords via housing benefit.
They sold 2 million can u believe 🤦♂️
It isn't going to be easy but I am a science person so I would put the priority on new technology which can increase producitivy and replace human workers. New medical breakthroughs can help us work for longer. Just increasing the retirement age by one year leads to a marked reduction in pension payments. the other issue os that means tested state pensions are almost inevitable with middle class people being forced to abandon part or all of their state pension. I would cut the state pension by ten percent for every addition house a Man owns with the result that a man who owned ten houses would get no state pension but if he were to sell them then he'd get some more. Id offer to abolish the standard rate of income tax for a man who continues to work over the age of 65 if he agrees to not claim the state pension for that year,
Very interesting -
wonder why you left out Brexit as a cause of reduced growth ?
Because it's not really relevant. The underlying cause is low fertility rates and ageing populations which is happening regardless of whether you are in the EU or not.
We are living off a welfare state that is effectively a glorified Ponzi scheme that is unsustainable in the long-term.
In the US health outcomes follow the money, where the bulk of money is spent.you have great outcomes, and where you have very low spending you get people dying earlier. This the demographic that scews the life expectancy down.
People have to stop comparing what we could do now to post ww2 recovery. Post ww2 there were 450,000 dead British people who most of whom would have had a house or land, that was either handed down or handed over to the state massively reducing pressure to build new homes so rebuilding and repair could easily take precedent. UK post ww2 recovery was half fueled by American money, debt relief and globalisation, post ww2 recovery was a big boost for almost all countries involved.
The problems all come down to aging demographics. It’s takes 20 years to grow yourself so that’s not a viable strategy.
This will be the problem that drives the UK into fascism and starts to address the problem of “too many old people”
Given the disgusting politics of most old people I hope so.
That net debt interest seems too much for a budget, in my opinion. I am sure it makes the lenders happy.
The problem is not drop in fertility. There is no drop in fertility, the drop is in birth rates. This drop is caused by working class not being able to afford to have children. The root cause is Government missmannagement. They keep increasing tax to "find money for their essential services", but non of that money actually benefits the country. All the money goes to other countries, people who have no legal right to even be in the country, and into encouraging people to live on the dole.
And incompetent !!
Supply and demand should be the mechanism for building
The biggest cause of this spending problem is people who have never worked or paid in both homegrown & illegal! Govs borrowing massive amounts to pay for said eaters!
In fairness, most jobs are now worthless service sectors jobs
This is a lie.
Most spending is on pensions & the NHS.
about 10% goes on working age benefits, with most of that going on child credit and people in work.
They always tackle the symptom, never the source. Idiotic governments each time.