Poverty in Britain – Why are millions of Brits so broke? – DW Documentary [video]

Just below the title (on YT page) it says "...more". Click / tap on that to expand into a summary.

Imho: out-of-control capitalism, and the resulting wealth inequality with all its negative effects.

Ok, the world obviously isn't (yet) ready for a Star Trek style utopia where money isn't important & people work 'for the common good of humanity'.

And yes, globalized capatalism has served humanity well to make efficient use of resources, innovate, and drive down the cost of mass produced items to near-zero.

But conditions have changed. GDP is a poor yardstick for measuring a population's overall well-being. Nor need I explain how greedy corporations & their advertising has enshitified the web. Or how much human talent is wasted when poor people can't afford a proper education, their lives wasted in sweatshops making cheap T-shirts.

Going forward, we need something better as a base for our economies. 'Capitalism 2.0'? A good pinch of socialism? Universal basic income? Bhutan style GNH?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness

I don't have the answers. But 1 thing is for sure: free-wheeling capitalism in the form of multinational corporations creating 'shareholder value', is NOT it.

Also in the UK, using FF on MacOS via BT FTTP. I got the same. I had to turn on my VPN to Germany to access the video.

Brexit is only the last few years, whereas this has been an ongoing situation for decades. Brexit probably hasn't helped but didn't cause it either.

I can't view the video, but honestly I think characterising millions of Brits as "broke" is probably misleading. I grew up (and still know many people) in this part of our society.

Broke in the UK doesn't mean the same thing as broke in the USA or most of the world. Broke here typically means: although you may not work or have any money left at the end of the week, you still have food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, kids, a bank account, a car, etc. You can exist in this twilight state for your whole life, having never had a job from leaving school all through to retirement. If you do have a job, it's probably informal or low skill work, possibly under the table. It's not an enjoyable life, but it's comfortable enough that, for many people I know, they don't have any real motivation to change it. Certainly not enough motivation to get an education, move to a city and get a 9-5 or start a business.

Some demographics of the UK native population have worse life outcomes than first and second generation migrants from poor countries. As someone who has managed to break out of that demographic, there's a real crabs in a bucket mentality. I was discouraged from following the path of education and a white collar career, because, as poor working class folk, our mortal enemy was The Manager. Now that I have joined the ranks of The Managers, I am now the enemy.

You don't need to manufacture anything if other countries can swap their manufactured goods with importer's sovereign currency and if importer's country can dole out money to everyone to cover healthcare, housing, and food. Of course, the second order effects such as housing inflation, healthcare inflation, etc, across that country.

We (the UK) manufacture less and less, but most sources would still put us around 7th, 8th, or 9th largest manufacturer in the world (eg random results [1] and [2]). Wikipedia has the UK as the 5th largest exporter here [3].

I don't accept the accuracy of these sites (on such a scale the numbers probably aren't exactly right) but it should be in the ballpark.

In brief, we do manufacture a lot of things (though often despite and not because of government policies).

[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-countries-with-the-hi... [2] https://themanufacturer-cdn-1.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom

You are what you eat.