Canada has a similar problem. For some reason, Alabama became code for poor and backwards. I asked a friend of mine why Canadians were obsessed with denigrating a state most of them had never been to. She said that she did not believe it was true. Over the next couple of weeks I brought to her attention at least five times that Alabama was in the press with statements such as “even in Alabama.”
I thought about this recently when the Globe and Mail ran an article titled “How Canada became poorer than Alabama.”
After all the statistics (I’m a former economist) the best summary is Keynes’ “animal spirits.” For better, and sometimes for worse, and depending what animal we may be thinking of, these days America has more animal spirits.
I admire the chutzpah of this piece. The statistics are striking, and the nod to smugness doesn't simply retread NoahPinion's post from a few months back. As a Brit who spent three months in New York this year, I'll grant the London-NYC comparison. Where we part ways is on the solution.
Deregulation caused many of our problems; more of it will not help. Housing — the policy area I know best — is a case in point. Deregulation would not have helped with the cladding scandal, nor with the chronic underinvestment that produced Awaab's Law. On utilities, read Dieter Helm's report on the water industry: deregulation and privatisation caused a near-moratorium on investment, systematic dividend extraction, and mounting debt.
What Britain needs is more care, stricter enforcement of the regulations we already have, and serious investment in the fundamentals — not deregulation and financialisation. And we need an honest conversation with the electorate about what prosperity might actually entail.
Canada has a similar problem. For some reason, Alabama became code for poor and backwards. I asked a friend of mine why Canadians were obsessed with denigrating a state most of them had never been to. She said that she did not believe it was true. Over the next couple of weeks I brought to her attention at least five times that Alabama was in the press with statements such as “even in Alabama.”
I thought about this recently when the Globe and Mail ran an article titled “How Canada became poorer than Alabama.”
After all the statistics (I’m a former economist) the best summary is Keynes’ “animal spirits.” For better, and sometimes for worse, and depending what animal we may be thinking of, these days America has more animal spirits.
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I admire the chutzpah of this piece. The statistics are striking, and the nod to smugness doesn't simply retread NoahPinion's post from a few months back. As a Brit who spent three months in New York this year, I'll grant the London-NYC comparison. Where we part ways is on the solution.
Deregulation caused many of our problems; more of it will not help. Housing — the policy area I know best — is a case in point. Deregulation would not have helped with the cladding scandal, nor with the chronic underinvestment that produced Awaab's Law. On utilities, read Dieter Helm's report on the water industry: deregulation and privatisation caused a near-moratorium on investment, systematic dividend extraction, and mounting debt.
What Britain needs is more care, stricter enforcement of the regulations we already have, and serious investment in the fundamentals — not deregulation and financialisation. And we need an honest conversation with the electorate about what prosperity might actually entail.
What’s stopping British politics and people from following this advice?