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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion, mostly formed from personal experience in the UK the biggest issue is the extreme cultural and political centralization around South-East England. The gulf between London and the rest of the country, particularly the North of England is immense. There is incredible potential wasted in large parts of the UK.

The tone of the article itself reflects that culture, one particular government or set of policies cannot be responsible for malaise that is so generalized. I think the UK needs much more devolution of power, autonomy and less financial and political dependence between its regions.

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I think you are on to something. The USA has a cultural capital in LA/Hollywood, a financial capital in NYC, a political capital in Washington D.C., and technology capitals in the Bay Area and Seattle.

The UK has all of those too, but they are all located in one city instead of spread out across the country.

There's also an academic capital, New England (Boston), with Harvard, MIT, Yale, Brown, and two dozen top liberal arts colleges.

Boston (Cambridge) is also the global top biotech and life sciences center.

Just to clarify, Yale and Brown aren't in Boston and 4/8 Ivies aren't in New England. And Ivies aren't even all the top schools.

Top schools really are spread out quite well in the US compared to some countries. Which agrees with the general point that the US isn't super centralized.

Why did you put Brown with Harvard and MIT? Alumnus? Yale isn’t in the same state as MIT and Harvard.

The Ivy's are all in the north east, which I think is your point, but not in Boston nor NewEngland.

And on top of that, even the secondary industry hubs in the US (eg tech in NY or biotech in the Bay) are massive and productive enough to dwarf European industry "capitals".

The geographic diversification of the US really is an enormous asset for the economy.

US and China both have very well off coasts where a large part of the economy’s value add happens in large cities. I don’t think that is lost in the hinterlands in either places. Ever heard of the “coastal elites”?

> There is incredible potential wasted in large parts of the UK.

Except that those parts are the ones who benefited most from being in the EU and are also the parts that overwhelmingly voted for Brexit.

All corners of the media fed them decades of lies about how it was the EU that was holding them back, and not the british ruling class.

How are they benefitting from cheap labor and goods coming over from Eastern Europe? That sounds like something London benefits from.

IIRC, the poorer parts of the UK are where the car factories are, and they used to export a lot — might still do, but the investment in that sector is down due to Brexit, and that's because the cheap imports included parts for manufacturing cars.

As for labor, again IIRC, the (fruit?) farms are labor intensive and locals aren't interested, at least not at the wages that the farms can afford given what they get paid by the supermarkets, who can't meaningfully pay more without raising prices, which they can't do without hurting more people: even before I left, I was seeing "donate food to the food bank" baskets at the doors to supermarkets in well-off areas like Cambridge.

Because cheap labour from the EU, an area of the world generally richer than the UK minus London, was mostly a marginal phenomenon that didn’t have an impact on the lives of the British workers. EU citizens earn more than the locals and are generally younger and better educated, so they finance public services without actually using them as much as the locals.

The entire UK depends on fiscal transfers from London, which is the only part of the country that is fully developed. So what benefits London, benefits the job center material complaining about foreigners in the barbaricum (which is the UK minus London).

> So what benefits London, benefits the job center material complaining about foreigners in the barbaricum (which is the UK minus London)

Gee, I wonder why those folks don’t believe Londoners who say they have their best interests at heart.

Because the flow of fiscal transfers never stopped. Turn London in an independent state that keeps all its tax income and see how long it takes to Brexit England to realise where the benefits have been coming from.

Or the hinterland could pull a Hunger Games: https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Capitol. God knows London of all places would have it coming.

At which point everything collapses--not just London. And what does the rest of the British isles have that the EU or US can't get elsewhere, better? And you would be relying on "modern norms" to protect you against someone invading the isles, exterminating everybody and taking over.

This is something people don't seem to get--anarchy sounds nice to lots of people. However, everything doesn't just keep going--everything suddenly stops.

Maybe what emerges on the other side on anarchy is better for "the people" (history suggests that the probabilities are against it), but there's a lot of bloodshed and starvation in the meantime.

You may get your pound of flesh but will you be alive to appreciate that fact?

Which is, in some sense, what happened with Brexit. And the result is that the average Briton is poorer than 6 years ago, while London is kind of holding, but for how long we don’t know.

It's a bizarre situation, they'd actually probably be better off voting to leave the UK and rejoining the EU.

The problem isn’t power centred on London it’s political power centred on the Home Counties. So we end up with far-right financialsm dressed up as economic policy.

You’re restating the case for “leveling up”.

IMO, the only thing wrong with "leveling up" is that the government itself, and not just the rest of us, is putting the policy in air-quotes.

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