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Comment by mmarq | Hacker News Reader

The UK has entered the institutional reform phase. Like Italy in the early 90s, it has become convinced that the country does not work because some random institutions need changing. In Italy it was `equal bicameralism`, the organisation of administrative divisions (regions and provinces), and other stuff not worth discussing here. In the UK, the institutional reform phase consists of Brexit, Scottish independence and, more recently, 'charter cities' and the abolition of the House of Lords. All this while taxes on productive activities (let it be labour or corporation tax) are increased, public investments are cut and the quality of public services is declining on a daily basis. The country is wondering why the NHS can't hire personnel, while a junior doctor in the UK has less purchasing power than a German janitor and nurses resort to food banks.

The fact that since 2010 this country has been ruled by people whose main qualification is being children or husbands of rich people, doesn't help. From this cold island, Ursula von der Leyen, a failed German politician, looks like a monumental stateswoman.

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> the institutional reform phase consists of Brexit, Scottish independence and, more recently, 'charter cities' and the abolition of the House of Lords

It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. And Brexit was popular precisely because it located the failed institutions outside the country where they could be a convenient scapegoat, without having to look at the big failing institution: the media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people.

Institutional failure reached the point of allowing Liz Truss to be PM, the UK's shortest PM term at 45 days. The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s.

(Where's the air disaster type writeup of "how did the Truss failure occur?" in the media? You won't see that because it implicates too many people. Yet it was the organisational equivalent of handing control to an untrained junior who immediately flew the plane into the ground.)

You don’t necessarily have to do anything, you just need to keep your mind busy to avoid introspection. Do you think Italy has abolished ‘equal bicameralism’?

Liz Truss can barely speak in her native language and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been allowed to become a member of Parliament, let alone a senior minister or the Prime Minister.

>It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried.

A lot of people said that about Brexit, before it happened. Scottish independence is a real possibility (although I think it is an equally bad idea).

Why would Scottish independence be a bad idea?

The big opportunity for them would be that they could join the EU. That seems like a massive win. The have lots of potential to generate energy.

Pre-Brexit I would have agreed with you, but clearly being ruled from London isn’t helping anyone but London.

The Northern levelling up is also looking like a joke at this point. Perhaps Manchester, Newcastle and York need to start thinking of independence!

I would say because:

* If Scotland joins the EU then there must be customs checkpoints between England and Scotland. In the era of the modern nation state there has been no such formal border between the two countries. One can only imagine the number of business that rely on completely frictionless transfer of good across the border. At least in the case of Northern Ireland there is a recent historical precedent for border checkpoints (albeit one that's tied to painful memories). And yet look at how that's going.

* Scotland would be poorer. I can very much sympathize with Scots who don't like being ruled by English Tories (I'm English and I don't like it either!), but a lot more money flows from London to Scotland than in the other direction.

* The UK's nuclear deterrent would very likely be compromised. Some might say 'good riddance', but current world events are pretty nicely illustrating the strategic value of nuclear weapons. Scotland's GDP is about 6% of the UK's. It can't afford to fund its own defense. The SNP's plan for defense is either to pretend that it's not required, or just to assume that the remainder of the UK will continue to pay for it. On top of that, the armed forces employ a significant number of Scottish people (both directly and indirectly).

* The UK is already becoming a second-tier actor on the world stage. Split it up into smaller countries and the international influence of each will dwindle further.

Scottish independence is a stupid idea because it makes no sense and it is, from inception, a fantasy issue to attract the monomaniacal voter. Scotland, like the entirety of the UK, lives on fiscal transfers from London. Once you cut that lifeline, Scotland, and similarly any other region of the UK, will decompose in a matter of weeks.

The notion that the EU is just waiting for the next English speaking country to join and/or leave every other year is the root of Brexit ideology (as in a set of quasi-coherent beliefs that constitute a world view). It is based on a weird sense of superiority that is not justified in anything that happens in the material world.

I think Scottish independence is a good, if expensive, idea, but fundamentally the UK government can just veto it. See the recent section 35 nonsense. The Scottish parliament has no real leverage and no sovereignty of its own. It could be abolished tomorrow by ordinary legislation.

Whereas the UK government was perfectly capable of carrying out Brexit, it just had totally incoherent ideas of what it wanted and what other parties would agree to.

Cameron could also have vetoed Brexit, but didn't. Remember that the government of the day opposed Brexit but still honored the referendum result. There's similarly no reason to think that the UK government would have vetoed Scottish independence if the previous referendum had gone the other way [1][2]. There's a distinct possibility of a future referendum having a different result.

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/242/pdfs/uksi_20130...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Agreement_(2012)

> The Scottish parliament has ... no sovereignty of its own

I vaguely remember they said something like this about the 13 colonies. I wonder what happened to them?

> media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people

Acting like the “media,” the “intelligentsia,” and the “Tories” are in any way aligned is some serious cope.

They can be aligned in maintaining a mutually beneficial standoff.

Fervent us-or-them competition helps frame anybody else out of the contest.

A more accurate statement would be that the media, intelligentsia, and New Labour are aligned in a way that benefits historically Tory business interests.

> The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s.

Government turnover in Italy has always been a nightmare since 1945. The difference between the First Republic and the Second Republic is the former basically had the same ruling party and the same electoral law, the latter has had coalitions with very different parties and a different electoral law in almost all the elections.

> the media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people.

Was Labour any better at the time?

Corbyn could have campaigned as the "we'll reverse the Brexit decision" and IMHO could have had a decent chance of winning/ forming the government.

> Corbyn could have .... and IMHO could have had a decent chance of winning/ forming the government.

No.

I think its well accepted by most people with sensible minds that the reason Johnson got it was because of Corbyn.

Corbyn was basically a bit nuts, he effectively wanted to return the UK to the 1970s.

Corbyn was attractive to the young and politically naïve via his "Momentum" programme, but as we saw with the Red Wall votes, those who were around in the 70s didn't want a return to that, even if it meant lending their vote to the party of Thatcher.

The Blue Wall will highly likely prove to be a one-off, they held their nose and ticked the box because Johnson was the lesser of two evils.

I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates. The evidence shows they are not very good, perhaps even worse than the Russell Group average. We need to find better indicators of ability; this cannot go on.

Some anecdotal evidence ahead.

I've been interviewing graduates in the UK for many years now from a very broad range of universities, all focused on CS or stem degrees.

In my experience, I've yet to interview an oxbridge graduate who wasn't at least great academically, and this is speaking as someone who went to a lesser university. Clearly whatever standards they have for teaching and entry selection criteria really work.

That said, graduates from other universities are easily on par with oxbridge, just that there were some total morons amongst their peers as well.

In my opinion, the problem is not that the UK fetishes oxbridge candidates, the problem is politics is dominated by arts and ppe graduates which does not offer the problem solving skills stem degrees do. I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.

> I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.

The other half of the problem is that the archaic UK parliament needs to change, its not fit for the 21st century.

For example ...

MP's perks and expenses - why do MPs get HEAVILY subsidised food and drink ? why do they get such generous expenses ? why do they get Friday's off ? why do they get so many recess holidays ? why does the whole place shut down for party conference silly season ?

Prime Minister's Questions - Its a disgrace. The clue is in the word "Questions". Instead it's a farcical theatrical display where someone asks a question and then the Prime Minister doesn't answer it and/or the Prime Minister's backbenches ensure the answer gets drowned out in noise.

Planted Questons - All the planted questions from the Prime Minister's back benches. What's all that about ? Do they really think people are that stupid ?

Too many "gentleman's agreements" - For example, what's with the whole "you can 'unknowingly' lie, but you can't accuse others of lying" thing ?

Lack of independent scrutiny - Enquiries and investigations are all based on the "gentleman's agreement" that the Prime Minister can be trusted to be a "good man" and will therefore, of course, launch any necessary investigations into alleged acts of wrong doing. However as we saw with Johnson, well ....

Ministerial Code - The ultimate joke. A code with no teeth. Again, Johnson demonstrated how circles could be run round it.

Archaic "parliamentary protocol" - So many examples here, perhaps one of the most infamous is Christopher Chope MP shouting "object" and blocking progress of the Up-skirting bill. The perogueing of parliament by the Johnson government in relation to Brexit is another.

> why do they get so many recess holidays ?

Because the bulk of the work of an MP is in being at home spending time talking to the bosses (i.e. the constituents) to ensure that the correct message is brought back to the central meeting place (i.e. parliament). After all, you, the constituent, are hiring the representative to carry your message to the central meeting place so you don't have to make the trip yourself. But you still have to make your message known. MPs are most definitely not mind readers who can simply be elected and then never spoken to again. It is a time consuming process to sit down with each and every constituent to hear their voice.

And, well, I guess if an MP really is a mind reader and doing such a great job that his bosses don't feel the need to talk during these recess periods, why not allow a nice vacation? An MP figuring out how to be more efficient than other MPs shouldn't be penalized. The recess will still be necessary for the poorly performing MPs to go home and get tuned in by their bosses.

> MP is in being at home spending time talking to the bosses (i.e. the constituents)

Its awfully cute when people think that's an acceptable answer, it goes awfully well with that other well known phrase "write to your MP about it".

I know sufficient people across the length and breadth of the UK to know that the reality is that MPs (perhaps especially those who fly the Conservative flag) will do their utmost to avoid and fob off their constituents.

If I had a penny for every person who told me they wrote to their MP and either received no reply or received two-pages of pre-prepared boilerplate that didn't answer the question ... I'd be rich.

As for MPs who have extraordinarily well-paid "advisor" jobs on the side, what's your reasoning for that ?

I interned briefly for an MP when I was a student. She got Sunday morning off, and spent the rest of the week in Parliament, in committee, in meetings, on the train (reading papers), in the constituency office, or attending political events. She worked extraordinary hours, which isn't unusual.

If you want to ignore your constituents and not bother (and are in a safe seat) you might do less than half of that. But MPs, as a group, are very hard working. I also think that the way we select MPs, incentivise them, and manage them is awful and that's one of the many reasons why the institution of parliament is fairly crap. Unjustified cynicism about individuals is unlikely to fix that.

I do apologise for the form letters, though. That's almost always staff work, with the MP signing the result after a brief skim. We got a lot of mail and much of it was repetitive or crankish so the replies weren't always artisanal...

Like with any organization, it is not unusual to hire bad employees. Of course, when you do hire a bad employee you don’t write them a friendly letter and call it a day. You hunt them down and talk to them face to face. Maybe you’ll even have to yell and scream until they cry to get your point across. Hopefully you will choose better next time.

It’s never fun being the boss, but given that you’ve accepted the role you can be a good boss and stand up to your workers, even as much as they try hard to avoid you, or accept your failings and let your organization fall apart. Your choice.

> Hopefully you will choose better next time.

Aah yes, another favourite old-chestnut, the old "well, you can vote differently next time".

Trouble is that one falls apart when you are reminded that the UK has FPTP (First Past The Post) and not PR (Proportion Representation).

As a result, most people's votes don't really count for much, and you end up with safe seats and all sorts of other problems.

But it favours the big-two parties and hence, like many other problems with UK politics and parliament, it will (likely) never change.

FPTP is perfectly fine for electing a representative. I might even argue that it is best electoral system for selecting a representative. It is how most organizations choose between a set of employees and it works well enough.

FPTP absolutely fails hard when parties get thrown into the mix. But that is when you should stop to ask yourself why are you hiring party members in the first place? You want to hire someone who is there to represent you, not some other allegiance. The Westminster system really isn't well suited to having parties in the first place, even if it has grown to accept them.

A computer scientist would see all that as technical debt that needs to be resolved to streamline due process. PPE graduates see it as a grandiose theatre which adds gravitas to the process.

I think my point still stands, the whole system could be transformed if some real problem solvers involved. Alas, I don't see it happening any time soon.

Oxford and Cambridge are undeniably very good universities, I think "fetish" for their grads is going too far. I think it's that there is an expectation in some sectors that an Oxbridge grad is capable of working in wider areas than they are necessarily qualified. To much weight is place on the oxbridge "brand".

The unfortunate thing is that we have been governed by a party which takes that unhealthy attitude towards senior party members, they have always been more about who you know than what you know. You don't see the same proportion of Oxbridge grads in the current opposition.

Slightly anecdotal, my first job after graduating (from former polytechnic Loughborough) was in Cambridge for a company formed by a couple of Cambridge grads. There was a higher proportion of non Oxbridge grads at the company, I think we tended to have more practical experience.

The British political system isn't hiring Scientists, Engineers or MBA graduates out of Cambridge. It's also about Eton. Look at the last 3 that won elections:

David Cameron - Eton, Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, went straight into politics.

Theresa May studied Geography at Oxford, worked at Bank of England and a few other institutions for a while.

Boris Johnson - Eton, study of the Classics, ancient literature and classical philosophy. Worked as a journalist, was fired for lying, then became a politician.

Eton is more important. Children go to Eton. They dont chose to go. Their wealthy parents send them. Eton is where elite families form the bonds that are the backbone of the UK elite. Oxbridge is just the finishing school.

How many politicians are hired or promoted by prime ministers not because of quality or background but social debts between families? Nobody really tracks those relationships.

No, it isn't. People outside the UK have this fascination with Eton. And don't seem to realise that there are hundreds of other independent schools, grammar schools (which are often as good or better than many independent schools), and (if we are talking about history) grant-maintained schools.

Eton isn't regarded as a particularly good school. It is relatively expensive, and preferred by people outside the UK. Their academic results aren't that strong.

And social connections are an aspect of almost every political party. Blair hired almost everyone in Derry Irvine's chambers. Most of the SNP are not only friends, they are actually related to each other. The Tories are possibly the least incestuous because Cameron made a concerted effort to widen the reach of the party in the mid-2000s (this is why the current Cabinet is so diverse).

The reason why there is a concentration of Oxbridge is because, when most of these people went to uni, they were far and away the best. In Scotland, you see the exact same thing with Edinburgh (and strangely, no-one talks about the fact that almost of Sturgeon's clique went to Glasgow...which is, generally, an inferior university). And what you are actually seeing now is that more and more politicians are going to other universities reflecting the fact that non-Oxbridge unis caught up in the 90/00s (and recently, they have dropped off far more...Imperial is ahead in sciences, Oxford PPE is still very good though).

"Eton" stands for that class of schools, just as "oxbridge" really covers a cluster of elite institutions.

The person isn't referring to the Eton group. You know this.

Nonsense. Which?

> Oxford and Cambridge are undeniably very good universities

Looking at Instagram there are undeniably many physically fit Americans. In reality their physical fitness is notable because it is relatively rare.

Elite universities are sustainable in an industrial society where scarcity of resources means there are only so many high positions.

In a post-industrial society knowledge is the resource. Elite universities then instead mean you have a lack of resources.

> In a post-industrial society knowledge is the resource.

Err, no.

Don't get me wrong, the Oxbridge system accepts, fosters and matriculates some very bright, very smart people.

But that is not at all what the core of the "Elite University" system is about, it's about connections and maintaining a single degree of freedom between the families that collectively hold > 90% of the wealth, resources, and influence within UK society.

I think we are mostly on the same page. Elite universities are fine in an industrial society because you are more limited by physical resources. South Korea does relatively well being run by relatively few rich families. Because it only takes so many executive, managers or engineers to run factories refining natural resource. An elite university can produce the people necessary to fill those slots.

In a post-industrial society, or beyond that, you aren't tied to physical resource in the same way. Instead you are limited by the amount of people with relevant knowledge. The existence of elite universities in such a society is really more saying that you can't produce enough people and opportunities.

Arriving at a village finding there is only one person with a car you don't say "wow, this guy is successful" you say "ouch, this is a poor village" even if that is the most successful person in the village. Because these days we expect cars and if everyone had cars he wouldn't stand out as successful.

NB, in current UK English "matriculation" describes the process whereby the student is formally enrolled by the university. It is a formality and happens after they arrive at the university but before they are taught anything. A matriculation photo is taken by the college at the beginning of the first term. That is all there is to it.

It makes more sense to call it the Eton system. Oxbridge is accessible for many smart young people, but in itself that does not invite you to the political elite. It's Eton and a couple of other schools.

Pretty much any male politician whose official actions could be described as inhuman or sociopathic has been through boarding school trauma.

As long as there are people much smarter than other people, there will be universities much more prestigious than other universities.

Universities aren't just places of learning, but designed to select leaders through the state.

How does it select leaders? By finding the most talented, or by finding those who are controllable?

Seems like the institutions are dual use.

Oxbridge selects for upper / upper-middle class polish and above average - but probably not exceptional and definitely not neurodivergent - intelligence.

Having been to both institutions, I can assure you that the comp sci and STEM programmes are dominated by neurodivergent types. Those aren't the people going into politics though.

The hiring is not being driven by ability, it's being driven by connections. Oxford PPE graduates are being hired .. by other Oxford PPE graduates. And then promoted in the newspapers by the same.

> I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates.

Yup. As the old joke goes ...

How do you know someone went to Oxford ? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

> We need to find ...

Who is "We" here?

I think it would be reasonable to claim the two main parties come from very similar backgrounds. Both seem to be happy continuing with maintaining their status quo.

Without their consent, is it likely or possible to see a third option rise?

It's remarkable how the SNP have taken over and dominated Scottish politics by having exactly one radical policy and otherwise being a sort of Merkelist centre-right government. But that's undoubtedly linked to the use of AMS at the Scottish Parliament.

Merkel presided over economic growth. The Torry government saw the UK economy barely move.

I blame the recruiters.

I don't know how true that bit is about the German janitor, junior doctors earn around 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle. I assume most janitors in Germany would be earning minimum wage (around 15k GBP, converted).

Is that junior doctor fully credentialed, or wrapping up specialization?

In the US, a resident will earn somewhere in the $50k-$80k range, depending on specialty.

Once out of residency, the average junior salary jumps up to somewhere north of $150k. Although by that point, the doctor is likely almost 30 and possibly carrying $100k+ in student loans. They’re well paid, no question, but makes for non-optimal (for society) choices - harder than it should be for them to enter poor areas or lower salary specialties.

A junior doctor makes as low as 25-28K, that is not enough to rent a room in London, and tend to have massive a student debt

> 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle.

sigh what multiple of salary mortgage are you going to get on that? And what are average house prices?

Depends, that's across the UK, but housing prices differ greatly. I've seen new built houses for 170k around Newcastle. Most of the "north" is affordable, even towns near Manchester etc. It's nowhere nearly as bad as Ireland, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.

When you think about taxation, in principle if the taxation strategy were perfectly optimal then the government would never have a spiraling debt problem.

The explanation is quite simple. If you subscribe to MMT, the government issues legal tender currency and creates it and today that happens via debt. This means debt just represents untaxed money in the private sector. In other words, the government didn't bother to collect all the money that is in the private sector.

When you understand this, then having a single tax like income tax be the primary source of tax revenue is a bad thing. Let's assume that we have an economy where all income exists in the form of wages and therefore is taxed at the income tax rate of 50% (I can't do this math on the phone, sorry). This means the half the income is taxed once every year. This money has a half life of exactly one year if the government were to use all of it to pay off debt. This means that in this example the government can never really go bankrupt as long as it doesn't do some inherently backwards things that break the economy in the long run.

But what if there are two types of incomes that are taxed at different rates and at different frequency?

What if you have wages and offshore companies where income tax can be delayed indefinitely until you bring the money back home where it is taxed at the usual income tax rate? Then suddenly it is possible for money to be stuck abroad and never taxed for long periods of time. As we know, this is money the government simply didn't bother to collect. It actively lets people keep the money abroad untaxed, so it shouldn't be surprising that the problem cannot be solved by hiking income taxes. The debt has to be extended not because the government is living beyond its means but because it is simply not collecting the money necessary to pay off its debts.

This is supposed to be an illustration, not a perfect description of the real world. I didn't talk about low capital gains taxes. Which also means money could be stuck domestically inside the financial systems.

The lower the tax rate and the lower the frequency of the taxable event, the more time money gets to spend away from the government and the longer the government will spend its time being in debt and I am still assuming that debts are eventually paid off. In principle there is no rule that money can't be stuck in a non productive sector indefinitely which then means the government must constantly intervene by spraying money at the productive sectors so they don't dry out like plants in a desert.

Taxation and spending is a means to an end. The end is reallocating the productive resources of the state to political rather than "free" market ends. Money locked up offshore is not relevant to this, only money being spent in the country on labour and resources.

Money locked up offshore doesn't sit there doing nothing. It has a complex relationship with the labour, resources and political system of the nation that currency comes from.

One of those relationships is the corruption feedback loop it creates, with offshore money buying political power which is used to aquire more offshore money.

Alternatively you stop talking about 'debt' because there is no such things.

What there is is people with financial savings, and a balancing item in the national accounts because of that. That balancing item occurs naturally, costlessly and without concern as a consequence of the way double entry bookkeeping works.

Money is never stuck because it isn't a thing. It's really just an accounting record.

If you have £50 in your wallet or purse you are 'causing' the balancing item to come about because you have spent it yet.

Tax isn't there to raise money. Tax is there to stop the private sector hiring everybody - so there is somebody left for the public sector to hire to do the jobs the government needs doing to fulfil its democratic mandate.

i don't think this argument actually makes sense. The rate at which money arrives in people's pockets via income such as wages and becomes available for them to spend - what you call the half life of money - is effectively what people think of as money. What money means to most people is the amount available for them to buy stuff with, and while the money may recirculate when they buy something for personal consumption the actual goods and services do not. This means that money recirculating back around faster through wages has the same effect on inflation as just printing and handing out more money: both result in more money chasing the same limited supply of goods and services. When looking at the economy as a whole, it's the rate of flow that matters.

This is especially true if you follow MMT. Remember, the whole underlying premise of MMT is that the government's ability to pay for goods and services is not in any way limited by a need to collect money first, that they cannot ever be forced to default on debt denominated in their own currency, that the only actual limiting factor is the actual real resources like labour, raw materials, and so on, and that the purpose of taxation is to keep inflation under control by reducing private demand for those things. From that point of view, money sittting in offshore accounts is a red herring because it doesn't represent consumption of real resources, and wages and money being brought into the country to buy things with are exactly what does need to be taxed because they do represent actual demand which will cause consumption of those resources.

> When you think about taxation

When you think about taxation, look at the UK's tax code. Arguably one of the longest and most complex in the world.

Walk into a firm of UK accountants and ask to be shown their copy of Tolly's Tax Handbook....

You'll be led to a room with a bookshelf full of books with Orange and Yellow spines.

The "handbook" is 23,000 pages long.

Tax Avoidance is an artform in the UK.

Tax Evasion is illegal, of course, but avoidance tends to be sufficient for the majority - sufficient legal loopholes and grey-areas are provided in the tax code !

I agree here: taxes (on the rich) are replaced by debt

But you do not have to subscribe to MMT.

(I see MMT as wishful thinking by social democrats who have already given up their fight)

The central idea that the government knows what sectors are productive and not productive is laughable.

Some sectors aren't "productive" on their own but still necessary. Railways basically never pay for themselves by fares paid by (mostly) workers out of post-tax income, but the value they bring to the economy by enabling economic activity is worth it.

Roads, education, healthcare, much of these things would either be unprofitable or unaffordable if they have to be self-funding. But they bring social value even if they don't make their own shareholders rich.

The commenter I was replying to was not talking about social programs. He was talking about a command economy.

I’ve never understood why this argument wasn’t the first thing economists bring out as a counterpoint to MMT. The entire thing hinges on a central planner knowing where to spend money. Gee… we’ve seen that work out so well in the past.

I can’t nor I want to deploy any grand theory, such as MMT. But if the triple lock were applied to nurses and doctors’ pay, instead of pensions, we would have one less problem. Or if instead of increasing NI to pay for social care (??), they had increased income tax, the burden would have been shared more evenly and wouldn’t be only on workers. Maybe introducing a property tax would have been even better, given that a pensioner owning his home outright is significantly richer than a young professional paying half his salary in rent. Then we have cuts in in-work benefits, such as child benefits.

Since 2010, the UK has declared war on work and now everybody is wondering where productivity is. In the meanwhile everybody is busy talking about grand reforms, such as Scottish secession and leaving the EU.

> given that a pensioner owning his home outright is significantly richer than a young professional paying half his salary in rent.

The young professional can upskill, or work harder, to cover increased income taxes. The pensioner is often unable to work; they're less likely to be fit, and their alertness may be fading.

I'm 66, out of employment for 5 years, and I can't imagine enduring a 9-5 shift. I don't always sleep well, I often need a siesta, and I'm certain I'm much less sharp since I quit employment. My work-rate has fallen a lot.

I don't have a pension as such; I live on the rent on my property. I worked for the money to buy that property; it's not inherited wealth that fell into my lap. My finances are planned around the rental income. If you start taxing my property, how am I supposed to pay? My only choice is to sell the property, reducing my rental income to zero, and rendering me a burden on the taxpayer.

Fact is poverty among the elderly is at the lowest since records began. If somebody is left behind, we can think of ad-hoc measures. It is insane to increase pensions by 11% and offer a 4% pay rise to nurses.

The young professional worked hard to acquire his human capital, that is taxed way more than rental income. Also, salaries in the UK have increased much less than rents.

Besides, properties are taxed everywhere in the world, especially if they are rented out, bar the UK.

I pay tax on my rental income. I don't have a problem with my income being taxed. But if you try to tax my property, you take away my ability to generate income. I can't compensate by working harder, because I'm not fit to work 9-5.

BTW: the term "human capital" is usually a euphemism for staff, isn't it? I'm not sure what it is that you think is taxed way more than rental income; my rental income is taxed as income, just as if it was salary from employment. So what is this heavily-taxed "human capital"?

> I pay tax on my rental income. I don't have a problem with my income being taxed. But if you try to tax my property, you take away my ability to generate income. I can't compensate by working harder, because I'm not fit to work 9-5.

Can you get a reverse mortgage to sell back some of your equity to pay your taxes? Maybe this isn't a think in the UK but it very well could be. I mean if I held market equities and no cash and owed taxes, I don't think I'd get much sympathy not selling some to pay the taxes I owe. I'm not sure why real estate should be treated differently.

Yes, that's an equity-release mortgage.

It's not a "reverse" mortgage; it's just a mortgage that the lender doesn't expect you to pay off (so when you die, they get a stake in the your estate).

I've thought a good bit about equity-release; I might be forced into it, if my health holds out longer than I've planned for. But I was taught never to use capital for current expenditure. I try to stick to that.

Thing is, it seems wrong to tax the property of someone whose only income is rental from that same property. The only way they can pay the tax is to reduce their stake in the property, and so their ability to pay tax. It's a spiral that ends in disappropriation, and dependence on the state.

> It's not a "reverse" mortgage; it's just a mortgage that the lender doesn't expect you to pay off (so when you die, they get a stake in the your estate).

In the US it's commonly called a reverse mortgage.

> I've thought a good bit about equity-release; I might be forced into it, if my health holds out longer than I've planned for. But I was taught never to use capital for current expenditure. I try to stick to that.

> Thing is, it seems wrong to tax the property of someone whose only income is rental from that same property. The only way they can pay the tax is to reduce their stake in the property, and so their ability to pay tax. It's a spiral that ends in disappropriation, and dependence on the state.

Sure I agree that you ideally don't want to draw down on your capital, but ideally you'd have the cash to pay the taxes. Going back to the case of equities, if your only income was in the form of dividends and you didn't have enough to pay taxes you owe, you'd need to sell stocks which would decrease future cash flow from dividends.

I don't really see this as fundamentally different than other cases where you don't have enough income to grow your wealth after costs. E.g. when you go in to retirement. I mean it's nice if you have enough capital that you can fully live of off cash you derive from it (rentals, dividends, pensions, etc.), but if you can't then you gotta dip into your capital.

von der Leyen was a housewife. Sunak was a partner at one of the most successful hedge funds of all-time (in his late 20s), and founded his own multi-billion hedge fund. His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics. Leader of the Opposition was a barrister in one of the top chambers, head of CPS. Shadow Chancellor worked at the BoE. Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians, and a strong political system.

There is no comparison possible with German politics. German politicians wouldn't be councillors in the UK, and their system is totally cooked (Russia appears to have purchased almost all of the SPD, the media is non-existent, the farce around the Merkel transition was incredible).

Junior doctors do not have less purchasing power than a German janitor. One of the main issues with the NHS is doctors going part-time because the pay is so high. The BMA have actually mooted the idea of tax cuts for doctors only between the band of £100-125k in order to get more of them into work (and btw, part of the issue with pay is regional inequality, doctors in London can work two days a week and earn £300k/year...London is distinct). One of the negative aspects of the UK political system is that the BMA has massive political/media/PR influence so people will say things like doctors are underpaid, without connecting to this any other information that they have.

Nurses are generally overpaid too. One of the problems in the NHS has been low productivity, and part of that has been significant growth in nurse numbers. But there is a hard cap on their productivity (and a result pay). Starting pay is £27k/year...for reference, this is as much as engineering grads make (generally speaking, almost all grads are underpaid in the UK apart from those going into tech/finance/medicine...relatively low-skill work is almost always overpaid).

I actually agree with your point in part, a lot of it is naval-gazing but there is a need for more local powers (if you look at what is happening around Manchester, it is clear that this can work). Thankfully, leading politicians of both parties today are largely past it.

Also, public investment isn't being cut whilst taxes are rising...taxes are significantly below the level required to fund public investment. One of the main political issues is that voters don't understand this.

I have no sympathy for Ursula von der Leyen, I would not have referred to her as a failed politician otherwise. But she does indeed look like a monumental stateswoman compared to Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Sunak, Gove, Farage, May, Corbyn, Truss, Sunak, etc…

Germany works much better than the UK. Just look at salary growth or at the number of strikes that the past 12 years of idiocy unleashed on the UK.

Sunak as a chancellor is responsible for idiocies like Eat Out to Help Out, the stamp duty holiday and losing billions of pound of taxpayers’ money to fraudsters during the pandemic. As a prime minister he can’t manage the strikes and half his cabinet is under investigation (by HMRC or for violations of the ministerial code or bullying). He’s clearly not fit for the role and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And at this point I’m not even expecting a strategic vision, I’d just like somebody that doesn’t increase my tax bill by 10 % every year and loses half of the money like a toddler sent to buy milk and bread.

An NHS consultant makes 70K, that in London is not enough to send a child to nursery and pay the rent (that is: they are poor). A junior doctor makes a fraction of that. For those unaware, depending on the specialty, a junior doctor may be even 35-40 year old. A private doctor may make a lot of money, but I wrote specifically that the NHS can’t hire, not that I can’t find a doctor in Harley Street.

Finally, taxes have gone up (I would have payed £800 less a month in 2009). Sunak alone increased my tax bill by £2-300 a month, while inflation reduced my real income by more than 10%. I don’t have time to find the data, but last time I checked public capital investment as a share of GDP was lower than in 2007.

"Looks like" is very much the right way of describing it - it's largely a matter of appearances. Especially since Brexit, a lot of the British media pushes only the downsides of any option the government chooses and only the upsides of the alternatives, whilst at the same time spinning everything other countries do as a success. For example, Germany's rail infrastructure has been having real problems actually running trains as a result of massive underinvestment (about a third of what the UK spends if I remember ightly) but our media makes it sounds like they're the ones with a better rail system due to actually investing.

Or take Covid - our press pushed this tale about South Korea having such effective contact tracing they could lift restrictions and reopen society, whereas our incompetent government failed to do so, but in reality they were actually less successful at doing so and even had their own equivalent of Eat Out to Help Out planned that they completely failed to launch in 2020 because they couldn't keep restrictions lifted for long enough. It's just that the British press only reported on them attempting to lift restrictions as proof they succeeded and ignored the part where it kept on failingg and they were almost immediately reimposed, whilst their UK coverage only focused on failures and not on the country being largely out of lockdown for most of summer 2020.

Also, the only zero-fraud option for something like furlough or business support is to deny everyone - every real-world set of anti-fraud checks inevitably blocks some genuine people and permits some fraudsters, I'm sure HN must be familiar with this concept by now, and of course the media attacked the government as incompetent for both. (For example, complaining that businesses couldn't just add people to payroll and immediately claim furlough for them - which would enable massive, trivial fraud - and also that they had no way of detecting if employers were making people come into work whilst claming they were furloughed.) Most of the publications pushing that story even spin normal benefit fraud as something that's not a big deal and right-wing Tory attempts to crack down on it as damaging and counterproductive using essentially this argument. On the other hand, Germany's financial regulator actually opened a criminal investigation into the journalists who investigated the Wirecard fraud, and Germany's own press and politicians failed so hard at investigating that it fell to journalists from outside the country working for the Financial Times to finally prove it. Those are, qualititively, very different kinds of fraud problems and not in a way that makes Germany look good.

Are you really trying to convince me that 10 years of wage growth in Germany are bad and 10 years of stagnation in the UK are good by listing random factoids on German trains (that work way better than the British) and mentioning the Wirecard fraud?

Should we start with the Libor fixing scandal and continue all the way through to the recent PPE scandal? Is this how it works?

PPE scandal was covered by the Auditor General. Libor fixing has, subsequently, been discovered not to be a crime (to the great embarrassment of the SFO who seem to have botched everything recently).

The significance of Wirecard may be the fact that one of the biggest German frauds of all time was uncovered by a British newspaper. And after it was discovered, top politicians continued to lobby aggressively for the country for over a year.

The level of corruption is unimaginable to Brits (imagine if Cameron was working directly for Putin...that is what Schroder is doing, indeed most of the SPD male parliamentarians have, one hears, been compromised in Moscow) precisely because of our open institutions. These do not exist in Germany (as has been widely acknowledged even within Germany after Wirecard).

The reason cases do not play out the same way here is because of the Auditor General, because of the FT...this kind of scrutiny is unimaginable to most countries in the EU (why would voters even have such a puerile interest in their representatives? They vote, we lead).

> His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics

Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit?

> Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians

We have a massive shortage of competent politicians at delivering benefits to the country. They're only competent at delivering benefits to themselves. If there wasn't a shortage, Truss would never have been put in charge.

Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period. Not just herself - a hapless, content-free cipher, now discarded - but everyone who voted for her should be regarded as grossly incompetent. As should people who published positive press about her. Just as SBF got so many glowing reviews before stealing/losing several billions of dollars of customer money.

> Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit?

No.

> Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period.

And anyone criticizing the system has to explain how someone incompetent was removed so quickly. In any other country, she would have been in power for years.

And the shortage theory would only follow logically if the Tories had then elected someone who was at least as bad...which didn't happen. Truss was bad, but that is all you can really say.

> And anyone criticizing the system has to explain how someone incompetent was removed so quickly. In any other country, she would have been in power for years.

She was polling so badly it was seen as the equivalent of her party coming fourth, behind not only Labour, but also the SNP and the LibDems:

"""That could see the Tories win just 22 seats, behind the SNP on 42, the Lib Dems on 47 and Labour on 515.""" - https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/18/liz-truss-silent-as-poll-poin...

> And the shortage theory would only follow logically if the Tories had then elected someone who was at least as bad...which didn't happen.

Not so; while competence and popularity aren't the same things, none of the candidates for leadership of the Tory party have been of a high standard at least since Cameron left.

And? She was removed. In most other political systems, it is not possible to remove someone in her position because we have a parliamentary, not presidential, system. Some countries, like Italy, do not even have an elected President.

Cameron said Sunak was going to lead the party. He is leagues above Cameron (who, for a British politician, was quite average). If you look in the Cabinet, you see the same thing. It is more obvious once you compare the Tories to Labour, the gulf is huge (Labour really only has Reeves and Starmer, and the latter is, seemingly by his own admission, not strong opposition...btw, I am a Labour supporter, the reason I know this is because I know people in the party, it is embarrassing and all stemmed from the problems with Brown).

Truss was one of the weakest members of the Cabinet (alongside her stooges). But Johnson, for all his faults, was the right man at the right time, and left when he was supposed to. Again, another one of the strengths of our system. And we didn't get a Brown situation (you may have forgotten that Brown also polled under the Lib Dems in the run-up to 2010, Corbyn was leader for how long...and he actually polled under the Lib Dems too in 2019).

> And? She was removed. In most other political systems, it is not possible to remove someone in her position because we have a parliamentary, not presidential, system.

Still allowed to criticise the system for allowing her to gain power. No brownie points for the fact that her party recognised she was such a disaster they would cease to be a meaningful political force at the next election, and therefore made it clear that she should resign. This can easily be replicated in other systems. They don't need to have an official way to force leaders out: she, officially, resigned.

> But Johnson, for all his faults, was the right man at the right time, and left when he was supposed to.

Oh god no, he was a walking disaster area well before he became the uncontested replacement for May. He was fundamentally unfit for office and shouldn't have even been allowed to stand as a Tory candidate MP given his pathological incomprehension of the concept of truth as something deeper than an ad hominem attack. Allowing him to be PM has almost certainly undermined UK national security given his complete lack of restraint or self control in either lust or money.

Only reason he won the election is because Corbyn was so unappealing that even the parliamentary Labour party overwhelming rejected him (what was it, all MPs not in the shadow cabinet?), which is exactly him sticking around for years in the way that you're saying doesn't happen in the UK.

But why did he stick around when the Tory MPs could kick out their leaders? Because Labour's leadership contest allowed candidates rejected by the party to be on the ballot, while the Tories (do they still change their method with each leader or was that just the Blair years?) don't.

> And we didn't get a Brown situation (you may have forgotten that Brown also polled under the Lib Dems in the run-up to 2010, Corbyn was leader for how long...and he actually polled under the Lib Dems too in 2019).

That was unusually high LibDem support of 29% instead of the usual 10-15%, not a spectacular catastrophic nose-dive by Brown.

Corbyn should've gone after the first election or the leadership contest. That he didn't proves the UK being parliamentary didn't help.

There's no allegations the Chancellor used his position to interfere with any investigation into him. There's no point making stuff up.

>Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit?

No, actually

Von der Leyen was a medical doctor. She was only a few years in the 90s a housewife when she and her husband (who have seven children) moved to the US. But 1998 she taught again at university before she moved into politics.

Maybe not as impressive as billionaires, but still impressive. And certainly as a family more valuable than hedge funds.

The hedge fund that Sunak worked for runs one of the largest charities in the world (25th largest, 2nd or largest in the UK). They have also created tens of billions for pension funds.

Whether this is the case or not, Von der Leyen is a visibly average politician. Juncker-tier. You actually wonder if there was some kind of competition to elect the biggest idiot.

And that’s my point, she had to be removed from the ministry of defence because of her incompetence. Still she didn’t even get close to the damage caused by the Eat Out to Help Out thing.

> von der Leyen was a housewife

This is a very misleading statement. Here’s a Wikipedia summary of her career, which you could easily have checked:

> In 1980, she switched to studying medicine and enrolled at the Hannover Medical School, where she graduated in 1987 and acquired her medical license.[33] From 1988 to 1992, she worked as an assistant physician at the Women's Clinic of the Hannover Medical School. Upon completing her doctoral studies, she graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1991. Following the birth of twins, she was a housewife in Stanford, California, from 1992 to 1996, while her husband was a faculty member of Stanford University.[34]

> From 1998 to 2002, she taught at the Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health System Research at the Hannover Medical School.[citation needed] In 2001 she earned a Master of Public Health degree at the institution.[35][36][37]

> von der Leyen was a housewife. Sunak was a partner at one of the most successful hedge funds of all-time (in his late 20s), and founded his own multi-billion hedge fund.

A bit partial I think, for those interested, maybe a more complete profile from BBC (2021): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vp0r

How much do you think junior doctors are paid?

Bizarre. A long reply chain has disappeared from under my comment.

It mostly consisted of me pointing out the salary bands for Junior doctors and the person I was replying too angrily denying reality and substituting in their own.

Why are taxes going up but public investment is going down? Where is the money going?

An aging population means you need more money to provide the same level of pensions, healthcare, etc. And you have less working people to tax income from.

The problem is mostly the welfare state. But the Leftists and their media cronies will never admit it, of course.

They drive the narrative. This continued decay is on them. They like to pretend the Truss debacle was something entirely of her own making which they merely observed and reported, but it was an engineered political takedown. The Tories of course are pathetic and spineless so they put up little resistance.

I’m fine with German taxation and the German welfare state, I’m also fine with a minimal state where I have to pay for healthcare.

What I don’t like is the current situation in the UK, where I pay more income tax than I would pay in Germany and I also have to pay for healthcare and childcare and education.

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