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A copy of this commentary in PDF format is available
here...
A copy of a graphical presentation of the context and fact in PDF format is
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A copy of the associated notes and observations in PDF format is
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A copy of a graphical presentation of a longer terms trend in PDF format is
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UK Economy
A commentary on the current (2017/2019) media and campaigning discussion
As the UK and the world’s population, life expectancy and wealth
have increased over the last 200 years or so, and quite dramatically
over the last few decades throughout the world, so the recent clamour
by some campaigning and political causes has grown ever more shrill.
Whilst
most of the campaigning to continuously improve people’s lives
throughout the world was and is justified, sadly, in common with the
current instant judgement “sound bite” approach to
discussion of important matters, many campaigns now “make a
drama out of a crisis” and they clearly put their
moral judgement, ladled with liberal doses of self-righteous
indignation, ahead of balanced facts and consequent reasonable
action.
One
such is the burgeoning naïve politicking regarding the UK
economy and government policy in the 21st century.
Without
any doubt, and by any measure, despite the 2008 international
economic crisis, we in the UK are better off than any previous
generation in history.
Before
our age, the majority of people lived brief and hard lives in
poverty, with life expectancy of only 30 to 40 years for most of the
UK’s and previously, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland’s
history.
There
was, is and never will be a bucolic age or place as imagined by
today’s dreamers. We have seen many attempts to impose
self-appointed and self-righteously held images of the “bucolic
idyll” throughout the UK’s and world history. The
result is always dire for the majority of people!!!!
Thanks
to slack and lazy government thinking and behaviour, again “boom”
turned to inevitable “bust” in 2008, after a sustained
period of unrealistic and greedy speculation, allied to underlying
unrealistic expectations of a wealthier populace. In the UK many
joined the clamour to be a “millionaire by this time next
year”!
Inevitably
due to the desperate need to “reign in” government
spending, and consequent plunging current account deficit, plus
prevent further rise in the soaring national debt, the newly elected
coalition of 2010 were duty bound to introduce many measures of
painful austerity.
It
remains an unavoidable reality that ultimately… "Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result misery."
Sadly, it is also inevitably true,
that despite the earlier introduction of the minimum wage (1998), the
substantially increased lower tax thresholds (2010), and consequent
improvements for the lowest paid wage earners, the least well off
tend to disproportionately suffer from economic difficulties and
austerity measures in real terms.
It
is also true that all people tend to be naturally “relativistic”
in their perception of their world. Thus tend to forget that despite
some increase in economic challenges compared to a decade earlier
(often many), they generally remain significantly better off than
their parents at the same age and dramatically better off then their
grand parents or any previous generation.
In
addition, despite the tremendous gains in health and wealth
throughout the world, the vast majority of people in the UK are
amongst the richest people in the world.
When
looking at the history of the UK economy for the last 120 years and
looking back beyond at the reality of grinding, absolute poverty from
before the Second World War and even more before the First World War,
it is important to see our lives in the context of that “foreign
country” and also the many, many “foreign
countries” and their peoples now.
It
is also true that every government, more and more since the Second
World War is rapidly “damned if they do, and damned if they
don’t” in roughly equal measure.
As
our freedom to express ourselves has grown, and in the 21st
century ballooned, thanks to the near ubiquitous use of the
facilities of the Internet, so the tendency to ill considered,
ignorant snap judgements and knee jerk reactions has overwhelmed the
world of thoughtful, consideration and fact based analysis; the
latter is now showing every sign of being forced to take the Socratic
path…when it’s ideas are not already being burned on
pyres of mass hysteria.
In
contrast to all such campaigns conceived on the zealous moral high
ground, the prosaic actual facts, be they economic, financial,
mathematical, chemical or physical, by all measures, show that we are
healthier, wealthier and long lived than ever in human
history.
No matter the naysayers and
hand-ringers clamour that the sky is falling, that we are all dying
(even prematurely), we still remain healthier, wealthier and
long lived than we poor everyday folk have EVER been in the whole of
human history.
And yet the wealthier and healthier
we have become the more miserable, niggardly, gloomy and doom laden
many have become; it seems not also wiser!
Perhaps those same doom merchants
would do as well to live the lives of the majority of the world’s
population, or the lives of their parents or grand parents, to put
modern life in the UK for most in real perspective.
This
is no call for complacency or rampant, unbridled economic
free-for-all. There remain many, many issues to tackle, including
slack, lazy government and rich individual and corporate greed, plus
every day ignorance and complacency.
Rather
it is a call for reason, balance and fact based argument,
before dubious hysterical, zealous and knee jerk judgement.
And
above all a call for firm, continuing governmental support for the
REAL sustained improvements that have been wrought, so far, in
people’s lives in the last 100 years.
Rather
than the modern penchant to ban or subsidise everything in a panicked
sop to a minority of vitriolic dreamers, government, entirely paid
for by the taxpayer (“there is no such thing as public money
– there is only taxpayers’ money”), should
honestly and forthrightly live up to the broad social contract; to
keep the nation safe, prevent excess of greed and set and impose
the legal limits to balance economy and environment for everyone’s
benefit, but with a light touch.
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