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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

Having lived in multiple western EU countries and in the US, and now living in the UK, I can say that it's not developing, it's regressing.

It is baffling how bad everything is, from public services (8 months of average waiting time in the NHS for something as benign as a lumbar puncture) to worker's rights (it's literally worse than the US). And now they of course committed economic suicide with the Brexit.

I simply do not understand how anyone can think that the UK is a first-world country if they have ever lived in a real one before.

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> worker's rights (it's literally worse than the US)

This seems very incorrect given that the UK has stricter laws around dismissal (the bar for losing your job is much higher), better minimum wage laws, more legally mandated holidays per year, paid time off for sickness, parental pay etc. - very basic things that the US doesn't have, at least not uniformly across states and industries.

FYI, In the UK you cannot go to an employment tribunal unless you worked at a company for 2 years (except if you are explicitly fired for racist or sexist reasons). So for the vast majority of workers, there is no actual difference between the UK and "at will" hire.

https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/what-to-do-if-youre-dismissed#:...

Under two years of employment, which is the majority nowadays, you can essentially be fired at will.

The rest is true, but a absolutely major one that is missing in the UK is unemployment benefits. If you lose your job you basically have no income at all.

Unemployment benefits exist through UC. Most people who are unemployed, in practice, also claim a number of other benefits that substantially boost your income i.e. housing benefit (so your rent is paid), ESA (another £100/week)...this has created another set of issues where lots of people have become economically inactive rather than "unemployed"...great statistically but not so great for people...but yes, the welfare state for adults who can work in the UK is unbelievably huge (£100bn/year, almost no age groups are net contributors into the tax system anymore...I believe 30-40 are the only net contributors...I don't think the level of government support for consumption has ever been so large in the UK, and few examples in other countries...possibly Nordics before their implosion in the early 90s).

All those benefits require you to have less than £6,000 saved to be eligible, essentially ensuring you are ruined before kicking in.

Not only that, they are not available to visa holders, contrarily to most first world countries.

Lastly, the amount is still laughable. In Luxembourg I would have had 80% of my salary for a year, without conditions. The UK is not a first world country at all.

No, they don't. And £6k is not ruined because everything else is being paid for you.

Because Luxembourg has a contribution-based welfare state. The money you are being paid is your own money that is being returned to you by the state when certain conditions are met (and yes, if you look at any contribution-based system, there is heavily conditionality, universal systems are the only ones without conditionality). The UK annual benefit bill just for people of working age is larger than Luxembourg's GDP.

The UK has a universal system that everyone can access regardless of circumstances. You just don't understand how it works at all (this is quite typical, Brits do not understand contribution-based systems either because they are used to a system where the state pays out massive amounts of cash to people in excess of the amount they paid in).

A very big chunk of that 100B benefits budget is the state pension.

The UK has only had a minimum wage act since 1998. So it might be better now, but taking a larger context window… not so much.

However, the social benefits around leave etc are definitely better but this is perhaps because of a more homogeneous culture than the US where some states like to work their fingers to the bone, and some states are more relaxed. The UK is definitely work hard, play hard and the only national variation seems to be the work getting done (blue vs white collar in US terms)

There are more to worker's rights than the minimum wage, and saying that "The UK has only had a minimum wage act since 1998." as if its evidence for poor worker's rights in 2023 (or at least worse than the the US's) doesn't really make sense, firstly because that was 25 years ago and plenty can change in that time, and secondly because we are comparing worker's rights in 2023, not 1998.

So you don’t think that having a shorter history of certain workers rights is also a proxy for current workers rights?

That you can just wave a magic legal wand and go from zero to workers paradise in 25, 50, 100 years?

To be honest I'm so baffled by the idea that the US has better worker's rights than the UK that I scarcely know where to begin.

For what it's worth, Sweden and Denmark do not have minimum wages even today. So no, it's not a hugely useful proxy, otherwise according to you the US may have better worker's rights than Denmark (trivially false).

The problem with the NHS is largely political. If you consider the structure of the NHS within civil/political society, it is clear why reform has been challenging.

The Tories are, for obvious reasons, totally unable to reform it. Labour are willing to do so but are inhibited by the fact that the vast majority of funding comes from unions who oppose any reform.

Worker's rights aren't "worse" than the US. It also depends what you mean, worker's rights in Denmark are "worse" than the US too...that isn't necessarily a bad thing if the system works. One of the biggest issues in the UK is that businesses are nervous about hiring people at all because firing people opens you up to virtually unlimited liability...I don't think this is a good thing, 20% of the UK's adult population are economically inactive.

>The problem with the NHS is largely political. If you consider the structure of the NHS within civil/political society, it is clear why reform has been challenging.

Private Eye on "24 Hours to Save the NHS" <https://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee/status/833654730849136641>

If you imagine all the healthcare workers in another country being unionized, it isn't a surprising outcome.

Both Blair and Cameron said that the BMA are, by far, the most powerful lobbying group in the UK (the savaging that Blair got from the BMA in 2000/01 when the spending increases were being planned caused him massive issues, and the resulting spending increases ended up creating quite a few problems because of this).

> I simply do not understand how anyone can think that the UK is a first-world country if they have ever lived in a real one before.

While I am fully on board with the sentiment that we are circling the drain, can you be more specific about where is actually better? I'm interested both from the perspective of potential emigration, but also trying to be rational rather than sensationalist - if I'm stuck here, I want a clearer picture of what "good" looks like.

My current sense is that a country like Switzerland is probably what most Brits would be happiest with (myself included), but that is not compatible with our national self-identity as a "major player" which is falling behind. Sometimes I think we'd be better off giving up the nukes and handing out UN security council seat to India, but that is not exactly an easy sell for a politician.

I lived in France, Luxembourg and the US, compared to the UK all feel like if you stepped 100 years in the future, especially Luxembourg.

I didn't experience much of the social services in the US so I won't expand on them, but in Luxembourg and France you get world class healthcare for free or very cheap (even for foreigners) in a timely manner, you get years of unemployment benefits, public transportation is better and cheaper (free in LU), transportation overall is better and cheaper (UK trains are notoriously horrible), etc.

So the obvious question is: what's the catch? France is the best comparison of those you mentioned - their GDP and budget deficit are similar to the UK, so where is the extra money coming from to fund this world class healthcare, generous unemployment, and higher class public transport?

Higher income tax

Can you elaborate more on how the UK's workers rights are "literally worse than the US"? I would say things like statutory sick pay, mandatory holiday allowance, protection from unfair dismissal and the right to uninterrupted breaks are all pretty progressive compared to the States.

There is no worker protection for the first 2 years of your employment with a company, so you're essentially an at will employee (worse actually, you have less rights and still need to give notice).

You also have only laughable unemployment benefits (£85 per week), that don't depend on your contributions.

Again, completely untrue. Automatic unfair dismissal does not have a minimum tenure to be applicable. Here [1] is a handy list of protections that do not require two years. You've also conveniently ignored all the other benefits in that list that are not available in the US.

You've already been corrected by someone else on the unemployment benefits so I'll not waste time repeating that.

The UK has a lot of problems, but downplaying workers rights in comparison to the states is a strange hill to die on.

1) https://www.tribunalclaim.com/unfair-dismissal/automatic-unf...

Workers rights is a mixed bag. If you are a contractor, somehow you seem to opt out - for everyone else you get a decent amount of holiday (people in the US seem to just get two weeks!?).

Most people in the UK who are 30 or over remember.

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