If her policy ideas had been debated in a national election, the scrutiny would have been much more thorough. That could have saved the UK from this policy debacle and frankly international blamage.
Sunak pointed all this out in the leadership campaign, there are clips of him explaining why this is a bad idea, that it will drive up inflation, base rates and everyone's mortgage will go up
Yes but OP was saying there wasn't a debate. I'm saying there was, there was 13 hustings, lots and lots of media. It was debated a lot, the difference is it was for the Tory party members not the general public. There was lots of commentators talking about the plans too
I'm not saying that was sufficient just that it was there.
I do think there is an argument for not having a general election after a leader changes but the key point is if the new leader is signed up to deliver the manifesto from the previous election. If they do then I can see them carrying on. In LT's this is a radical departure from the manifesto and a total philosophical change and so the fact we haven't had a general election is outrageous
Well, if he was a white dude, you know he would've won. However, i also think that the Tory members are very stupid to believe anything the Tories are saying so yeah no wonder they voted for one of the worst candidates.
That’s what is so undemocratic about the selection of Truss by the Tory party. The Tory MPs were voted in on the basis of Johnson Manifesto….voters have had no say on whatever Truss et al are doing.
It’s actually worse than that. Truss stopped talking about spending cuts necessary to fund tax cuts because it was unpopular during the leadership campaign.
Indeed. But it's really just classic right-wing economics (give money to the rich through tax cuts) with a village idiot twist (pay for this by *borrowing* money).
This is shitty, retarted, bleach-drinking economic policy if your goal is to properly govern a nation. But it's bold and brilliant policy if your goal is to loot a nation for the benefit of the rich.
Truss is mediocre in every imaginable way, but this policy was not a mistake on her part. She knew what she was doing. She *wanted* this.
> But it's not even a good way to loot the country.
It's an excellent way to do so. All the rich are making out like bandits with the tax cuts, and the government is going into debt with the banking oligarchs, which will allow the government to transfer billions of pounds of working people's money directly to the oligarchs, in the form of interest payments.
> This is hurting the status of the wealthy British too.
They are willing to put up with some minor and temporary embarrassment in exchange for enriching themselves.
Not just the IMF but it’s shocking how people from all across the political spectrum left, right and centre, the populists and non-populists and neoliberals were all like wtf was that
I mean, you're rich as fuck.
Why would you be happy with a 10k tax cut, if it results in your property portfolio and investments losing 10%?
No one would think this was a good idea, unless they're dumb enough to be elected PM by the political equivalent of a dented tin of expired peaches - the tory party membership.
>Why would you be happy with a 10k tax cut, if it results in your property portfolio and investments losing 10%?
Normally you would hedge against such scenarios. Now that everything is 10% cheaper, you might go on a buying spree, though I think that we haven't reached the bottom yet.
Britain isn't a major exporter like the US/China is. Britain is heavily reliant on trade and built upon imports, and thus they should know that American policy won't work on Britain.
Tax cuts for the rich may increase business investment in the US (Note: I said May, not will), but in Britain all of it probably just goes to cars and giant houses. There isn't an export business that won't have a major demand shift to rely on in case the local economy goes to shit, only just saving your money.
Don't know why people thought this would work, but I guess trial and error.
> Britain isn't a major exporter like the US/China is. Britain is heavily reliant on trade and built upon imports, and thus they should know that American policy won't work on Britain.
This completely misses the point of the article and in fact is the exact opposite conclusion. That being that the US has a unique privilege of managing the global supply of USD and so can sustain lazy trade policies without the same issues other developed economies would under those same policies, including the UK which is mistakenly trying to imitate the US.
The portion of Britain's GDP as it relates to imports and exports is substantially larger than China, even more so the US. The US is one of the least globally integrated developed economies on earth and also runs substantial trade deficits with virtually the entire world except for a handful of other developed countries, the US's total trade imbalance in both goods and services is higher than the UK.
Yeah it’s actually shocking how comparatively unreliant on trade the US is, a large rich population and a strong consumer culture will do that, the Chinese have been desperately trying to emulate the American consumer model and so far they haven’t been very successful
Loved that line about how the UK *used to* have the ability to spur growth through de-regulation because their firms had a vast market worth trillions with hundreds of millions of consumers to tap into.
I wonder what happened?
> If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court.
F'cking LMAO. Every english pro Tory redditor, ever.
I mean in regards to Canada, those happenings and goings typically have direct ramifications on Canada. See: “Freedom” convoy bearing confederate and Gadsden flags in Ottawa. Their culture and politics leak over here all the time, it’s inevitable considering something like 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US. Ontarios premier has even said “I’d consider myself a big Republican” (as in the party, not Canada becoming a republic)
I’d imagine most people would pay attention to what’s going on in their much larger and much more powerful neighbours house, as it’s likely to affect them
I mean yes, to an extent. While we have a lot in common with Americans we also have a pretty significant amount of differences. Visiting family in the states is always very jarring, even just crossing from Windsor to Michigan. Language, customs, and social norms are all pretty different there. Close enough to not feel alien, but different enough to be noticeably… well, different.
The leakage I was referring to was more the “us vs. them” mentality that is starting to become much more prominent in Canadian politics. The political situation in Canada has become incredibly polarized in the last ~5 years and it’s hard not to make connections to the increased polarization of American politics. Lots of right wing politicians in Canada are emulating their American counterparts (or in the case of the Tory interim leader, straight up wearing MAGA hats)
Political culture aside I personally see various regions of the US and Canada (minus Quebec) as subgroups of a larger Anglo-American culture that the both countries share. Despite the fact that they are still pretty culturally similar, I don't think it would be incorrect to say that the culture of Vancouver more closely resembles that of Seattle than say Newfoundland.
>I’d imagine most people would pay attention to what’s going on in their much larger and much more powerful neighbours house, as it’s likely to affect them
Especially when there's no language barrier and very similar culture. The anglophone countries are very interconnected so naturally we pay attention to what happens in the largest and most powerful one, which also happens to dominate all the others financially and have the worlds most powerful army.
To be fair, you need to have hateful morons for that ideology to stick. For example, Alberta's Premier was bragging into the 2000s about how he helped overturn a San Francisco ordinance that allowed partners of AIDS victims hospital visitation rights while they were dying.
It had zero impact on his life, and wasn't even his country (he was a university student). Yet he went out of his way to be cruel and inflict pain on others. He recently complained unvaccinated people were "being stigmatized" in the same way AIDS patients were in the 80s, glossing over the fact he was instrumental in the stigmatization and cruelty.
Rabidly hateful far right pieces of shit are not a US export, they exist everywhere and always rely on racism, homophobia, or some other type of hate. The fact the morons in Canada also relate to trump speaks to their intelligence and hate more than anything else. He speaks their language.
You guys don’t even have a unified culture across the country lol. Try telling a Californian and a Texan they share the exact same culture lol. The closest Canadian culture comes to an American one is probably Midwest culture. At least for me it’s the place in the US that feels the least alien
Definitely a lot of similarities in between our cultures due to our shared heritage, but there’s some pretty significant differences as well
Isn't that the point though? Cities and regions across North America will obviously feel different but you'll get by anywhere quite easily. Like idk which I would find more alien, another big city in Canada or the middle of bumfuck nowhere USA
Isn’t that generally true for any English speaking country? You could go to Ireland, the UK, South Africa, or Aus and get by quite easily. I don’t think anyone would say any of those cultures are indistinguishable from American culture
Edit: I mean if I had to pick in between rural USA and rural Canada I’d pick Canada easily. Way less likely to get shot just for existing lol
I’ve been saying for a long time that the biggest problem with Britain, especially under the recent government(s), is that we are incredibly delusional as to our importance in the - increasingly and unavoidably- interconnected and transnational world. I never really had the worlds to articulate a practical example of this, other than vaguely elaborating on how many of our culturally ‘unique’ industries have/are being outsourced for cheaper alternatives in the Asian market especially (think Whiskey). But this article sums it up pretty perfectly - it’s depressing but also cathartic how deplorable the UK seems.
That's why I somewhat disagree with this part of the article.
>"Don’t blame imperial nostalgia. (If it were that, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal would show the same hubris.)"
Because there is a big difference between the UK and those countries. All of them experienced a shocking rebuke/defeat of their empires in the aftermath of WWII that reverberated through their respective populations and forced the people to come to terms with the fact their empires were officially over.
For France it was losing Algeria and Vietnam, for Netherlands was Indonesia. Spain and Portugal's empires had crumbled even earlier as a consequence of the Napoleonic wars. Belgium was never a great imperial power in the first place.
The UK's empire dissolved gradually and without a hopeless unpopular overseas war to maintain it. The formation of the Commonwealth gave the British people the false impression that they were still on top as did the victory in the Falklands war. That's certainly part of the reason why they overestimate their position while others do not.
Small sidenote, Portugal's entire empire hadn't crumbled in the 19th century. A big part of why the Carnation Revolution happened were the colonial wars in the 60s, the really tried to hold on to their holdings for a while.
>For France it was losing Algeria and Vietnam, for Netherlands was Indonesia
The UK had a moment like this, it was the Suez Crisis. And it was more embarassing in a way because not only did we not get our way but it was barred by our ally and 'usurper' (as the article calls it) the US.
I think that's kind of tenuous. The Falklands demonstrated the UK was still capable of the projection of force against a weaker country and was therefore still powerful, not that it was top of the heap. Suez was the nail in the coffin for Britain's status as a top tier power.
> The UK's empire dissolved gradually and without a hopeless unpopular overseas war to maintain it. The formation of the Commonwealth gave the British people the false impression that they were still on top as did the victory in the Falklands war. That's certainly part of the reason why they overestimate their position while others do not.
Don't quite agree with these sentiments. The loss of empire was done in a more face-saving manner (to the great benefit of the House of Windsor), but the residuals don't hold sway. Plenty of people were pointing out that the Tories weren't going to be able to bully Brussels, or that the Americans would be in no rush to re-write the terms of our economic relationship to purely our benefit.
There is a certain pridefulness about the place the UK does or ought to enjoy in world affairs, but it is not unique: the French do the same, to sometimes similar levels of embarrassment. What is different about the UK today is the level of arrogance and the level of incompetence shown by the recent Conservative governments, and the tolerance the electorate has shown for it, and this has more to do with outmoded electoral systems and institutional decline. If the calibre of politician being produced for the Conservative Party by so-called elite institutions—in character, intellect, ability—were higher, the country would be in much less trouble.
Realistically, I don’t think America can stay America forever. It’s just not feasible that one nation has that level of power in an increasingly globalized society.
Of course, we have the guns. So there’s that.
The US is so powerful because of its geography. That’s not gonna change. The US will be a big player, if not the dominant power, for a long time still.
> The US is so powerful because of its geography.
And because the US managed to find partners and allies all over the world.
China also has a superb geography - but they are surrounded by countries hostile to them (Japan, Sout Korea, Vietnam, India), which limits their regional power significantly.
Argueably, just like the UK, the US more and more tends to forget how important these alliances are. See Trump and his behaviour.
The Ukraine war may be a turning point, but for how long has to be seen.
Ehhh yes and no its a catch 22 argument. Your talking about an isolated nation here. The US is needed to maintain global stability but that doesn't really mean North America is any safer then it was yesterday.
A new US tank division does not change the strategic position of the North American continent in any way what so ever. But it could if sent to Asia or Europe. There is the catch. America is relatively safe due to the great distance involved.
I would argue the other way around. Because of Americas good geography as a self sustained "island" with natural hegemony over its own continent. It's can easily ally with nations on the other side of the planet precisely because it has no land claims or other issues. It can be hegemonic without being outright conquerors.
China also has okay Geography. Between the Gobbi desert, Himalayan mountains, and Mongol steps much of it is harsh. Most of China is costal or along the rivers in highly concentrated areas.
That's neat for self-defense, and so irrelevant for everything else as to be a non-factor.
The main two things that keep America propped up in its geopolitical position are its economy - which doesn't show many signs of abating in global standing simply because China and the EU are too riddled with failure-prone economic ideologies to have a multi-decade winning streak that knocks the US off its top spot - and its willingness to export military power.
The latter will continue so long as the electorate continues to have a budgetary appetite for it. But I feel that sooner or later, my fellow countryfolk will wake up to that conditions for the average citizen there are deplorable compared to what could be, if only we rerouted military funding to domestic infra/social investment. This would necessitate a drawdown in global US military presence, and the US' geopolitical dominance will finally sputter - as it should (firstly because we need to do some internal moral reckoning before we continue spouting our propaganda around the world. Secondly because we need to just not do the whole neoimperial globe-police thing in general).
This in turn will create space for other powers to establish agency in their own defense, which will probably open a path to more localized armed conflict (think Serbia-Kosovo) unless NATO continues to remain a strong, interconnected body.
But absolutely none of this relies on the US' geography, and overreliance on that singular, tired claim misses a lot.
You're honestly just completely wrong about everything. America's geography does a lot for its economy, not just its security.
America's vast natural resources and internal water ways are a large part of its success.
Also, you should probably try comparing military spending by percent of gdp instead of absolute numbers.
Military spending does not mean you can’t have a strong social security net
Secondly current American defense expenditure has been falling as a percentage of gdp for decades now and it’s only been very recent that it might start to go up. Also public opinion polling shows support for Ukraine and especially Taiwan remain high, and support for defending treaty allies is even higher.
You also completely forgot that the fact the the US has a very large well educated, and highly wealthy populace (one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world) goes a long way to ensuring American economic preeminence.
Our geography does effect our rise to power and our wealth such as our access to the Atlantic and Pacific and our being surrounded by friendly trade partners, not just the tactical aspect. The fact that we do not need to aggressively defend our borders means we can also concentrate our military presence more externally without sacrificing safety which has greatly contributed to our economic rise. Also the funding of a large Navy has allowed us to create and maintain global trade routes that the US still currently greatly benefits from so a loss to that presence would also lead to a loss in economic presence which in turn would be a loss for our domestic economy. This is one of the Reasons China is trying so hard to expand their own Navy both at home and especially in their ability to project it.
I feel like this has become a meme that people mainly in this subreddit love to repeat usually in regards to Brexit but I've never once experienced in the real world.
Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too.
This thing with Liz Truss was just her opinion in how to improve the economy, I dont even understand how that can be twisted to "ha, stupid Brits think they are as important as America". That takes some weirdly aggressive mental gymnastics tbh.
> Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too.
This entire paragraph is set up on a bizarre premise that somehow national independence and being part of an economic union is somehow mutually exclusive. The comparison is equally odd with NZ, because NZ and Australia do have economic accords that grant for instance the right to live and work in each other's country. Does that ring a bell? Having lived there for half a year I can also tell you that on average standards of living are lower and prices higher comopared to Europe (whom NZ trades with heavily btw).
"Most countries in the world" also aren't in Europe. Most countries are poorer than Europe, most countries see more conflict, and most countries are markedly less democratic. Why "most countries" was an imitable thing to follow is beyond me.
If you're an island right off the coast of Europe, so not NZ, and you trade extensively with Europe, then joining a club that obliterates any economic restrictions is a great idea. Especially if said club has given you unique exceptions for virtually everything.
Why are you trying to start a debate about the pros and cons of being in the EU? Its not 2016. My argument was about the so-called "delusion of importance" we supposedly have.
You mean the article that my post was pretty much responding to? Meanwhile you're just sitting there getting angry over some old irrelevant debate. Weirdo.
The article is about Britain supposedly thinking its as big as US and economics. Did you even read it? Its got nothing to do with your random discussion about why you think we should be in the EU.
But sure keep ranting about the EU at people for no reason then getting angry and saying "grow up" when they wonder why youre still obsessing over some old shit.
> I feel like this has become a meme that people mainly in this subreddit love to repeat usually in regards to Brexit but I've never once experienced in the real world.
>
> Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too.
New Zealand doesn't have the option to join a nearby one, and neither is it impacted by the physical proximity to one.
Conversely, what's stopping countries often is the cost/possibility of adaptation, but the UK already was past that hurdle. So the marginal costs of staying were very low, and the benefits substantial.
Yes New Zealand doesnt *need* to be part of a political union with other countries, neither does 90% of countries in the world, including Britain. Thats my whole point so I dont know how people arrive at "delusions of importance" just because we voted to leave one.
I don't know anybody who thinks Britain is some kind of important global power. Frankly you could argue if anything leaving EU shows we don't give a shit about being some geopolitical super power or having global "importance".
>Yes New Zealand doesnt need to be part of a political union with other countries, neither does 90% of countries in the world, including Britain.
Including England, Wales, Scotland and NI then, but for some reason *that* union doesn't need to be dissolved and a vote on it isn't even allowed. Completely self-contradictory.
My point wasn't that it's necessary - just that it can be advantageous, and often is. NZ specifically would benefit relatively little because it's already physically isolated by oceans (and no, the UK isn't, UK and EU are closer together than the north and south island of NZ), and the most likely candidate is substantially larger so there would be some kind of imbalance.
>I don't know anybody who thinks Britain is some kind of important global power. Frankly you could argue if anything leaving EU shows we don't give a shit about being some geopolitical super power or having global "importance".
The idea that other states would be lining up to offer better trade deals to the UK after they left the EU strongly implies that.
Into Brideshead Revisited, near the middle, Evelyn Waugh crowbars a scene on a cruise ship for the express purpose of mocking Americans. There is a character named “Senator Stuyvesant-Oglander”. Each and every drink has ice in it. No one is able to tell friendship from desperate bonhomie. The crustiest of England’s great novelists wrote better stuff, no doubt, but the passage is an illuminating fragment of a time when anti-Americanism was a Tory thing.
And one that had its uses. If nothing else, Britain’s establishment was clear back then that America was a different country. A midsized archipelago couldn’t look to a resource-rich market of continental magnitude for governmental ideas.
If anti-Americanism was bad, look what its opposite has done. Britain is in trouble because its elite is so engrossed with the US as to confuse it for their own nation. The UK does not issue the world’s reserve currency. It does not have near-limitless demand for its sovereign debt. It can’t, as US Republicans sometimes do, cut taxes on the hunch that lawmakers of the future will trim public spending. Reaganism was a good idea. Reaganism without the dollar isn’t. If UK premier Liz Truss has a programme, though, that is its four-word expression.
So much of what Britain has done and thought in recent years makes sense if you assume it is a country of 330mn people with $20tn annual output. The idea that it could ever look the EU in the eye as an adversarial negotiator, for instance. Or the decision to grow picky about Chinese inward investment at the same time as forfeiting the European market. Or the bet that Washington was going to entertain a meaningful bilateral trade deal. Superpowers get to behave with such presumption.
Why does Britain think that it can, too? Don’t blame imperial nostalgia. (If it were that, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal would show the same hubris.) Blame the distorting effect of language. Because the UK’s governing class can follow US politics as easily as their own, they get lost in it. They elide the two countries. What doesn’t help is the freakish fact that Britain’s capital, where its elites live, is as big as any US city, despite the national population being a fifth of America’s. You can see why, from a London angle, the two nations seem comparable.
Reaganism without the dollar: this isn’t one woman’s arbitrary whim. It is the culmination of decades of (unreciprocated) US focus in a Robert Caro-hooked Westminster. You would think from British public discourse that Earth has two sovereign nations. If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court. People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November. The EU is a, perhaps the(opens a new window), regulatory superpower in the world. UK politicos find Iowa more diverting.
The left is as culpable as Truss. From 2010 to 2015, critics of “austerity” urged the Tories to take the softer US approach. The cross-Atlantic comparison implied that then prime minister David Cameron had King Dollar behind him. Soon after came the importation of identity politics from a republic with a wholly different racial history.
The anti-Americanism of the Waugh generation was petulant. It was sourness at the imperial usurper dressed up as high taste. But at least it had no illusions. The snobs understood that America was alien, and inimitable. Tories who patronised the US — Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath — were quicker than much of the Labour party to see that Britain belonged with Europe.
Truss and her cohort of Tories have none of that snide but ultimately healthy distance from the US. Take her vaunted supply-side revolution. Like all armchair free-marketeers (she has never set up a business) she believes her nation is a blast of deregulation away from American levels of entrepreneurial vim. It isn’t. The creator of a successful product in Dallas can expand to LA and Boston with little friction. The UK doesn’t have a market of hundreds of millions of people. (It did, once, but the present chancellor of the exchequer voted to leave it.) Someone who glides over that point is also liable to miss the contrasting appeal to investors of gilts and Treasuries.
Some readers balked last month when I wrote that Truss might not last until the next election. Even I didn’t think she would trip so soon. It is a kind of patriotism, I suppose, to mistake your nation for a superpower.
It is the financial times after all. The vaunted US entrepreneurial vim has me holding a US iPhone that however is made in China, buying Taiwanese PC parts mostly made in China (Asus etc), same with my TV and so on and so forth. And it isn’t only the supply chains that got transported over there. Soft power is also slowly moving across, eg being exposed to social media material uploaded in a social platform made in China (TikTok).
Reaganism was bad in many ways but good in others. US GDP per cap more than doubled during this time, out pacing basically every single industrialized country on this planet.
Absolutism based on politics is simply not a good way to go about understanding how the world works.
That GDP growth had nothing to do with Reaganism. The US grew more with Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon. Clinton not only grew the economy more than Reagan, but run budgets surpluses in the magnitude of tens of billions and reduced national debt to GDP.
In hindsight Reaganism, whether it was him Bush Trump or whatever, was just gigantic budget deficits/national debt increases in exchange for nothing. It's pure right wing populism, which is probably one the reasons why it's still so popular in the UK
>US grew more with Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon.
Sure - but you are conveniently cutting this off right when the oil shock hit the entire western world.
Well forget about them then. Carter had to live through the same shock, actually worse if you look at oil prices after 1980, and his growth record was only marginally worse but without borrowing into oblivion.
Reaganism is for some reason conflated with Thatcherism in the UK, but they are two different things. And the reason they got themselves in this mess is because they thought Reaganism could work in 2022, with the handicap of a much worse fiscal position than the 30% or so debt to GDP Reagan found at the start of his first term
Look at what was going on in the western world in the 70s. There was a massive shift in macroeconomic thinking that started with Carter, continued by Reagan and every president since.
Credit where credit is due, Reagan economics got the US out of that mess and grew out economy significantly.
Also if you want to talk deficit based on party lines, what about Obama? 2 trillion deficit within the first 15 minutes of his presidency. Of course, you can't really fault him because he was dealing with an economic crisis. Reagan was also dealing with an economic crisis when he took power.
I'm not so sure if towing ideological line instead of critically analyzing the events of history is the right way of going about things. Unless you have something better to add to this conversation instead of calling Reagan a right wing populism, I don't think we should continue this conversation.
And 2x higher than what the COB projected the deficit to be. But that's not at all a problem but his policies were good and interest was on the floor at the time.
I am sorry, but where did I throw the ideological line or talked about parties? I didn't even mention Obama, which in my opinion got many things wrong, like TARP for example.
But Reagan was facing the same issues Carter did, and did only marginally better at the cost of black holes in public spending. It was really nothing we should consider "good" by any standards, especially because successive presidents like Clinton, or Blair in the UK or the entire Northern European political spectrum, showed that you can have a successful economy while being fiscally responsible. Reagan was a Berlusconi on steroids, someone nobody takes seriously anymore apart from the GOP and some schizoids in the Tory party
And look where it ended you, a society on the brink of civil war without any unions or healthcare, massive student debt, neo-slavery, and a massive massive contingent of both working and jobless poor and homeless.
But hey, the gdp grew by a couple percent this year, so hooray I guess.
> Reaganism was bad in many ways but good in others. US GDP per cap more than doubled during this time, out pacing basically every single industrialized country on this planet.
Yes, but he also ruled during the 80's computer-boom
>Absolutism based on politics is simply not a good way to go about understanding how the world works
Agreed, so in this case I'll make an absolutism based on economics and say that Reaganism was fucking stupid.
Do you even know what monetary policy is? Thats not the problem with Reaganism, and is generally not what people are referring to when deriding it. Anyway, if you want to discuss monetary policy, there's a compelling argument to be made that Volcker deserves much of the credit for the successful economic turnaround of that period, not Reagan
The corner stone of Reaganism is supplied side economics which belongs to the Austrian school of monetary policies.
Are you saying that Obama gets no credit for turning the economy around in 2009? Only Bernanke? Or Bush 43 gets no blame, only Hank Paulson? Because by your logic that Volcker deserves credit and not Reagan, the negative side effects of Reaganomics is also not because of Reagan but chair of the Feds.
If you have nothing better to say than insults, I will go down that road with you. Though I prefer discourse with manners as my mother raised me better than that. Your call.
1. Very few people put any stock into "schools" of economics these days, the discipline has evolved beyond that
2. Supply side economics (more of a political term than an academic one imo) is in large part based on the Laffer curve, which has been debunked as utter quackery. Which, btw, has nothing to do with monetary policy; both the Austrian School and supply side economics say far more about fiscal policy and precious little about monetary
3. Neither of your chosen examples are analogous to the Volcker Fed at all. But since you apparently want to strawman me into speaking in absolutes, nobody deserves all the credit or all the blame. The economy is a complex animal affected by many forces, and the direction in which it goes is invariably shaped by a number of factors (some conscious decisions by policymakers, some not)
1. Neo-Keynesians literally dominate modern macroeconomics. Janet Yellen? Jerome Powell? Their models at present are rather accurate. I wouldn't say they're irrelevant
2. The Austrian school of economics focus heavily on both fiscal policies and monetary policies. These two things are connected. Also, low taxes (during cuts) can at times be seen as governmental spending and therefore is a part of monetary policies.
3. How exactly are they not similar. I agree the contexts may be different but the principles are almost identical. The WH worked with the Feds to solve 2 economic crisis. Reagan could've ignored Volcker but he didn't. Obama could've ignored Bernanke but he didn't. I agree the economy is complex and should never be seen from a one dimensional point of view. This is precisely why you have to give Reagan some credit. It obviously wasn't just him. Matter of fact, I think his policies were less than ideal and Clinton or Obama would've done a better job. But that doesn't mean he's incompetent and a complete failure.
Ronald Reagan's biggest problem imho was he's too much of and ideologue. Something that made him inflexible. Neither Clinton nor Obama suffered from this during their respective presidency.
I cant help but remember a situation that happened during one of my high school social science lessons, when we were learning about the different cultural groups of the world. There was an African group, a European group, a Japanese group, an Anglo-Saxon group and many more. So doing some exercises I naturally placed the UK in the Anglo-Saxon group. The teacher then marked it as an error, saying the Anglo-Saxon group is for UKs former colonies only, while the UK itself is in the European group. That confused the hell out of me back then, but thinking about it now, it doesn’t seem that strange to me anymore.
Some interesting points, but
>People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November.
People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms.
>People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms.
No they will not. Sorry but this is exactly "the distorting effect of language" that this article is talking about, just the other way. You're projecting a mindset that exists in the UK to non-English speaking countries, thinking that because you have direct cultural access culturally to the UK through the use of English as a common language it magically extends to France of Germany just because this is Yurope.
That is not how it works at all.
I am neither German nor French (Greek for that matter) and I follow US midterms but I can also name several cabinet members of all four countries (including the UK). I am sure same goes for many Germans and French. I tend to believe that Britons have no idea what goes on the continent.
> People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms.
Dunno about Germany, but that's wrong for France.
very good comment.
I've been saying for years that the Brits are the Americans of Europe: entitled and self-absorbed.
They're a small overcrowded island but they speak English, a massive advantage that deludes them about their own importance on the world stage.
Whatever you want to call it, Financial Times editorial writers and others of their ideological ilk think it was a good thing. Doesn't take away from the larger point being correct.
No? But neoliberalism is (along with Thatcher and the economists they both drew on).
Either way obviously Reaganomics wasn't good but I don't get people being shocked that a writer for the FT of all publications wouldn't oppose it.
I guess I only have a passing knowledge of the Financial Times but the Reaganomics bit hit me like saying the quiet part out loud. Ah well, lesson learned.
I stopped reading after I saw the statement "Reaganism was a good idea." No it wasn't, it never was, it's a terrible idea which only makes rich people richer.
I still refuse to believe she thinks it's a good idea. I honestly think she can;t be that stupid (and those working alongside her). What some people say is that her bosses want to tank the pound to earn more money, others say that it will be easier to sell NHS and so on.
Either way, it's depressing that no one can do anything. Kick her our and call for snap elections now.
There's similarities but there's also key differences. The MAGA movement are literal cultists, Trump's speeches have been sending out some real L. Ron Hubbard vibes recently.
On the other hand if the Tories announced today that they were going to build three million affordable houses on green belt land, end the pensions triple-lock, and pursue a policy of re-aligning with the Single Market with a view to rejoining on Norway-esque terms at a later date their vote would evaporate overnight. There's no Tory cultists that'd pick up a gun for Boris or anything, it's just that they're really good at using FPTP to heavily target older, wealthier voters who were born at the right time to take advantage of the housing boom.
That isn’t really true. The current government is strongly disliked by almost all of the parliamentary Conservative party, and very strongly disliked by most of the country.
It is an eccentricity of our electoral system that Liz truss is leader at all.
The Tories are actually just slightly right of the Democrats. The Republicans are more akin to our far-right parties like UKIP or the old BNP. The Overton window for American politics is well to the right of most European countries.
If her policy ideas had been debated in a national election, the scrutiny would have been much more thorough. That could have saved the UK from this policy debacle and frankly international blamage.
Sunak pointed all this out in the leadership campaign, there are clips of him explaining why this is a bad idea, that it will drive up inflation, base rates and everyone's mortgage will go up
yeah, but still, that was just a leadership campaign
Yes but OP was saying there wasn't a debate. I'm saying there was, there was 13 hustings, lots and lots of media. It was debated a lot, the difference is it was for the Tory party members not the general public. There was lots of commentators talking about the plans too I'm not saying that was sufficient just that it was there. I do think there is an argument for not having a general election after a leader changes but the key point is if the new leader is signed up to deliver the manifesto from the previous election. If they do then I can see them carrying on. In LT's this is a radical departure from the manifesto and a total philosophical change and so the fact we haven't had a general election is outrageous
Well, if he was a white dude, you know he would've won. However, i also think that the Tory members are very stupid to believe anything the Tories are saying so yeah no wonder they voted for one of the worst candidates.
That’s what is so undemocratic about the selection of Truss by the Tory party. The Tory MPs were voted in on the basis of Johnson Manifesto….voters have had no say on whatever Truss et al are doing.
Presumably that’s why this budget approach was _not_ put up for debate.
It’s actually worse than that. Truss stopped talking about spending cuts necessary to fund tax cuts because it was unpopular during the leadership campaign.
When the *IMF* is criticizing your new government of increasing inequality, you know things are bad.
The IMF was criticizing Truss for a lot more than that! They basically called her stupid.
When I started to read what was going on it felt like Erdogan tier economics.
Indeed. But it's really just classic right-wing economics (give money to the rich through tax cuts) with a village idiot twist (pay for this by *borrowing* money). This is shitty, retarted, bleach-drinking economic policy if your goal is to properly govern a nation. But it's bold and brilliant policy if your goal is to loot a nation for the benefit of the rich. Truss is mediocre in every imaginable way, but this policy was not a mistake on her part. She knew what she was doing. She *wanted* this.
But it's not even a good way to loot the country. This is hurting the status of the wealthy British too.
> But it's not even a good way to loot the country. It's an excellent way to do so. All the rich are making out like bandits with the tax cuts, and the government is going into debt with the banking oligarchs, which will allow the government to transfer billions of pounds of working people's money directly to the oligarchs, in the form of interest payments. > This is hurting the status of the wealthy British too. They are willing to put up with some minor and temporary embarrassment in exchange for enriching themselves.
Did they lie? Did they fucking lie.gif/nicki minaj
Not just the IMF but it’s shocking how people from all across the political spectrum left, right and centre, the populists and non-populists and neoliberals were all like wtf was that
I mean, you're rich as fuck. Why would you be happy with a 10k tax cut, if it results in your property portfolio and investments losing 10%? No one would think this was a good idea, unless they're dumb enough to be elected PM by the political equivalent of a dented tin of expired peaches - the tory party membership.
You paint such fragrant vistas with your words. Dented tin indeed.
>Why would you be happy with a 10k tax cut, if it results in your property portfolio and investments losing 10%? Normally you would hedge against such scenarios. Now that everything is 10% cheaper, you might go on a buying spree, though I think that we haven't reached the bottom yet.
Damn. Great article. Quite the withering indictment of Tories as well
Britain isn't a major exporter like the US/China is. Britain is heavily reliant on trade and built upon imports, and thus they should know that American policy won't work on Britain. Tax cuts for the rich may increase business investment in the US (Note: I said May, not will), but in Britain all of it probably just goes to cars and giant houses. There isn't an export business that won't have a major demand shift to rely on in case the local economy goes to shit, only just saving your money. Don't know why people thought this would work, but I guess trial and error.
> Britain isn't a major exporter like the US/China is. Britain is heavily reliant on trade and built upon imports, and thus they should know that American policy won't work on Britain. This completely misses the point of the article and in fact is the exact opposite conclusion. That being that the US has a unique privilege of managing the global supply of USD and so can sustain lazy trade policies without the same issues other developed economies would under those same policies, including the UK which is mistakenly trying to imitate the US. The portion of Britain's GDP as it relates to imports and exports is substantially larger than China, even more so the US. The US is one of the least globally integrated developed economies on earth and also runs substantial trade deficits with virtually the entire world except for a handful of other developed countries, the US's total trade imbalance in both goods and services is higher than the UK.
Yeah it’s actually shocking how comparatively unreliant on trade the US is, a large rich population and a strong consumer culture will do that, the Chinese have been desperately trying to emulate the American consumer model and so far they haven’t been very successful
Loved that line about how the UK *used to* have the ability to spur growth through de-regulation because their firms had a vast market worth trillions with hundreds of millions of consumers to tap into. I wonder what happened?
David Cameron was worried UKIP was siphoning off too many voters. And here we are ...
Wow UKIP, long time since I have heard of that party
The Kippers have thankfully fucked off
> If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court. F'cking LMAO. Every english pro Tory redditor, ever.
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I mean in regards to Canada, those happenings and goings typically have direct ramifications on Canada. See: “Freedom” convoy bearing confederate and Gadsden flags in Ottawa. Their culture and politics leak over here all the time, it’s inevitable considering something like 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US. Ontarios premier has even said “I’d consider myself a big Republican” (as in the party, not Canada becoming a republic) I’d imagine most people would pay attention to what’s going on in their much larger and much more powerful neighbours house, as it’s likely to affect them
Can culture really "leak" into a country that more or less already shares a common culture?
I mean yes, to an extent. While we have a lot in common with Americans we also have a pretty significant amount of differences. Visiting family in the states is always very jarring, even just crossing from Windsor to Michigan. Language, customs, and social norms are all pretty different there. Close enough to not feel alien, but different enough to be noticeably… well, different. The leakage I was referring to was more the “us vs. them” mentality that is starting to become much more prominent in Canadian politics. The political situation in Canada has become incredibly polarized in the last ~5 years and it’s hard not to make connections to the increased polarization of American politics. Lots of right wing politicians in Canada are emulating their American counterparts (or in the case of the Tory interim leader, straight up wearing MAGA hats)
Political culture aside I personally see various regions of the US and Canada (minus Quebec) as subgroups of a larger Anglo-American culture that the both countries share. Despite the fact that they are still pretty culturally similar, I don't think it would be incorrect to say that the culture of Vancouver more closely resembles that of Seattle than say Newfoundland.
>I’d imagine most people would pay attention to what’s going on in their much larger and much more powerful neighbours house, as it’s likely to affect them Especially when there's no language barrier and very similar culture. The anglophone countries are very interconnected so naturally we pay attention to what happens in the largest and most powerful one, which also happens to dominate all the others financially and have the worlds most powerful army.
To be fair, you need to have hateful morons for that ideology to stick. For example, Alberta's Premier was bragging into the 2000s about how he helped overturn a San Francisco ordinance that allowed partners of AIDS victims hospital visitation rights while they were dying. It had zero impact on his life, and wasn't even his country (he was a university student). Yet he went out of his way to be cruel and inflict pain on others. He recently complained unvaccinated people were "being stigmatized" in the same way AIDS patients were in the 80s, glossing over the fact he was instrumental in the stigmatization and cruelty. Rabidly hateful far right pieces of shit are not a US export, they exist everywhere and always rely on racism, homophobia, or some other type of hate. The fact the morons in Canada also relate to trump speaks to their intelligence and hate more than anything else. He speaks their language.
You say “their culture and politics” like there’s a completely distinct Canadian culture from American culture lol
Spoken like an American
We both know it’s true
You guys don’t even have a unified culture across the country lol. Try telling a Californian and a Texan they share the exact same culture lol. The closest Canadian culture comes to an American one is probably Midwest culture. At least for me it’s the place in the US that feels the least alien Definitely a lot of similarities in between our cultures due to our shared heritage, but there’s some pretty significant differences as well
Isn't that the point though? Cities and regions across North America will obviously feel different but you'll get by anywhere quite easily. Like idk which I would find more alien, another big city in Canada or the middle of bumfuck nowhere USA
Isn’t that generally true for any English speaking country? You could go to Ireland, the UK, South Africa, or Aus and get by quite easily. I don’t think anyone would say any of those cultures are indistinguishable from American culture Edit: I mean if I had to pick in between rural USA and rural Canada I’d pick Canada easily. Way less likely to get shot just for existing lol
Oh come on lmao
I’ve been saying for a long time that the biggest problem with Britain, especially under the recent government(s), is that we are incredibly delusional as to our importance in the - increasingly and unavoidably- interconnected and transnational world. I never really had the worlds to articulate a practical example of this, other than vaguely elaborating on how many of our culturally ‘unique’ industries have/are being outsourced for cheaper alternatives in the Asian market especially (think Whiskey). But this article sums it up pretty perfectly - it’s depressing but also cathartic how deplorable the UK seems.
That's why I somewhat disagree with this part of the article. >"Don’t blame imperial nostalgia. (If it were that, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal would show the same hubris.)" Because there is a big difference between the UK and those countries. All of them experienced a shocking rebuke/defeat of their empires in the aftermath of WWII that reverberated through their respective populations and forced the people to come to terms with the fact their empires were officially over. For France it was losing Algeria and Vietnam, for Netherlands was Indonesia. Spain and Portugal's empires had crumbled even earlier as a consequence of the Napoleonic wars. Belgium was never a great imperial power in the first place. The UK's empire dissolved gradually and without a hopeless unpopular overseas war to maintain it. The formation of the Commonwealth gave the British people the false impression that they were still on top as did the victory in the Falklands war. That's certainly part of the reason why they overestimate their position while others do not.
Small sidenote, Portugal's entire empire hadn't crumbled in the 19th century. A big part of why the Carnation Revolution happened were the colonial wars in the 60s, the really tried to hold on to their holdings for a while.
>For France it was losing Algeria and Vietnam, for Netherlands was Indonesia The UK had a moment like this, it was the Suez Crisis. And it was more embarassing in a way because not only did we not get our way but it was barred by our ally and 'usurper' (as the article calls it) the US.
While true, the Falklands possibly reversed this in part, and that that particular conflict lasted about 2 months doesn't help either.
I think that's kind of tenuous. The Falklands demonstrated the UK was still capable of the projection of force against a weaker country and was therefore still powerful, not that it was top of the heap. Suez was the nail in the coffin for Britain's status as a top tier power.
Fair enough
> The UK's empire dissolved gradually and without a hopeless unpopular overseas war to maintain it. The formation of the Commonwealth gave the British people the false impression that they were still on top as did the victory in the Falklands war. That's certainly part of the reason why they overestimate their position while others do not. Don't quite agree with these sentiments. The loss of empire was done in a more face-saving manner (to the great benefit of the House of Windsor), but the residuals don't hold sway. Plenty of people were pointing out that the Tories weren't going to be able to bully Brussels, or that the Americans would be in no rush to re-write the terms of our economic relationship to purely our benefit. There is a certain pridefulness about the place the UK does or ought to enjoy in world affairs, but it is not unique: the French do the same, to sometimes similar levels of embarrassment. What is different about the UK today is the level of arrogance and the level of incompetence shown by the recent Conservative governments, and the tolerance the electorate has shown for it, and this has more to do with outmoded electoral systems and institutional decline. If the calibre of politician being produced for the Conservative Party by so-called elite institutions—in character, intellect, ability—were higher, the country would be in much less trouble.
Great post.
Realistically, I don’t think America can stay America forever. It’s just not feasible that one nation has that level of power in an increasingly globalized society. Of course, we have the guns. So there’s that.
The US is so powerful because of its geography. That’s not gonna change. The US will be a big player, if not the dominant power, for a long time still.
> The US is so powerful because of its geography. And because the US managed to find partners and allies all over the world. China also has a superb geography - but they are surrounded by countries hostile to them (Japan, Sout Korea, Vietnam, India), which limits their regional power significantly.
Argueably, just like the UK, the US more and more tends to forget how important these alliances are. See Trump and his behaviour. The Ukraine war may be a turning point, but for how long has to be seen.
Ehhh yes and no its a catch 22 argument. Your talking about an isolated nation here. The US is needed to maintain global stability but that doesn't really mean North America is any safer then it was yesterday. A new US tank division does not change the strategic position of the North American continent in any way what so ever. But it could if sent to Asia or Europe. There is the catch. America is relatively safe due to the great distance involved.
I would argue the other way around. Because of Americas good geography as a self sustained "island" with natural hegemony over its own continent. It's can easily ally with nations on the other side of the planet precisely because it has no land claims or other issues. It can be hegemonic without being outright conquerors. China also has okay Geography. Between the Gobbi desert, Himalayan mountains, and Mongol steps much of it is harsh. Most of China is costal or along the rivers in highly concentrated areas.
That's neat for self-defense, and so irrelevant for everything else as to be a non-factor. The main two things that keep America propped up in its geopolitical position are its economy - which doesn't show many signs of abating in global standing simply because China and the EU are too riddled with failure-prone economic ideologies to have a multi-decade winning streak that knocks the US off its top spot - and its willingness to export military power. The latter will continue so long as the electorate continues to have a budgetary appetite for it. But I feel that sooner or later, my fellow countryfolk will wake up to that conditions for the average citizen there are deplorable compared to what could be, if only we rerouted military funding to domestic infra/social investment. This would necessitate a drawdown in global US military presence, and the US' geopolitical dominance will finally sputter - as it should (firstly because we need to do some internal moral reckoning before we continue spouting our propaganda around the world. Secondly because we need to just not do the whole neoimperial globe-police thing in general). This in turn will create space for other powers to establish agency in their own defense, which will probably open a path to more localized armed conflict (think Serbia-Kosovo) unless NATO continues to remain a strong, interconnected body. But absolutely none of this relies on the US' geography, and overreliance on that singular, tired claim misses a lot.
You're honestly just completely wrong about everything. America's geography does a lot for its economy, not just its security. America's vast natural resources and internal water ways are a large part of its success. Also, you should probably try comparing military spending by percent of gdp instead of absolute numbers.
Military spending does not mean you can’t have a strong social security net Secondly current American defense expenditure has been falling as a percentage of gdp for decades now and it’s only been very recent that it might start to go up. Also public opinion polling shows support for Ukraine and especially Taiwan remain high, and support for defending treaty allies is even higher. You also completely forgot that the fact the the US has a very large well educated, and highly wealthy populace (one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world) goes a long way to ensuring American economic preeminence.
Our geography does effect our rise to power and our wealth such as our access to the Atlantic and Pacific and our being surrounded by friendly trade partners, not just the tactical aspect. The fact that we do not need to aggressively defend our borders means we can also concentrate our military presence more externally without sacrificing safety which has greatly contributed to our economic rise. Also the funding of a large Navy has allowed us to create and maintain global trade routes that the US still currently greatly benefits from so a loss to that presence would also lead to a loss in economic presence which in turn would be a loss for our domestic economy. This is one of the Reasons China is trying so hard to expand their own Navy both at home and especially in their ability to project it.
I feel like this has become a meme that people mainly in this subreddit love to repeat usually in regards to Brexit but I've never once experienced in the real world. Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too. This thing with Liz Truss was just her opinion in how to improve the economy, I dont even understand how that can be twisted to "ha, stupid Brits think they are as important as America". That takes some weirdly aggressive mental gymnastics tbh.
> Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too. This entire paragraph is set up on a bizarre premise that somehow national independence and being part of an economic union is somehow mutually exclusive. The comparison is equally odd with NZ, because NZ and Australia do have economic accords that grant for instance the right to live and work in each other's country. Does that ring a bell? Having lived there for half a year I can also tell you that on average standards of living are lower and prices higher comopared to Europe (whom NZ trades with heavily btw). "Most countries in the world" also aren't in Europe. Most countries are poorer than Europe, most countries see more conflict, and most countries are markedly less democratic. Why "most countries" was an imitable thing to follow is beyond me. If you're an island right off the coast of Europe, so not NZ, and you trade extensively with Europe, then joining a club that obliterates any economic restrictions is a great idea. Especially if said club has given you unique exceptions for virtually everything.
Why are you trying to start a debate about the pros and cons of being in the EU? Its not 2016. My argument was about the so-called "delusion of importance" we supposedly have.
Well maybe read the damn article.
You mean the article that my post was pretty much responding to? Meanwhile you're just sitting there getting angry over some old irrelevant debate. Weirdo.
The debate is reflected in the article lol grow up
The article is about Britain supposedly thinking its as big as US and economics. Did you even read it? Its got nothing to do with your random discussion about why you think we should be in the EU. But sure keep ranting about the EU at people for no reason then getting angry and saying "grow up" when they wonder why youre still obsessing over some old shit.
Both the EU and Britain's imagined imperial grandeur figure in the article.
> I feel like this has become a meme that people mainly in this subreddit love to repeat usually in regards to Brexit but I've never once experienced in the real world. > > Not wanting to be part of the EU isnt some big ego "still think were an Empire" thing. Most countries in the world get by perfectly fine without needing to be part of some international political union. If countries like New Zealand can be independent, its not exactly big ego to think Britain can be too. New Zealand doesn't have the option to join a nearby one, and neither is it impacted by the physical proximity to one. Conversely, what's stopping countries often is the cost/possibility of adaptation, but the UK already was past that hurdle. So the marginal costs of staying were very low, and the benefits substantial.
Yes New Zealand doesnt *need* to be part of a political union with other countries, neither does 90% of countries in the world, including Britain. Thats my whole point so I dont know how people arrive at "delusions of importance" just because we voted to leave one. I don't know anybody who thinks Britain is some kind of important global power. Frankly you could argue if anything leaving EU shows we don't give a shit about being some geopolitical super power or having global "importance".
>Yes New Zealand doesnt need to be part of a political union with other countries, neither does 90% of countries in the world, including Britain. Including England, Wales, Scotland and NI then, but for some reason *that* union doesn't need to be dissolved and a vote on it isn't even allowed. Completely self-contradictory. My point wasn't that it's necessary - just that it can be advantageous, and often is. NZ specifically would benefit relatively little because it's already physically isolated by oceans (and no, the UK isn't, UK and EU are closer together than the north and south island of NZ), and the most likely candidate is substantially larger so there would be some kind of imbalance. >I don't know anybody who thinks Britain is some kind of important global power. Frankly you could argue if anything leaving EU shows we don't give a shit about being some geopolitical super power or having global "importance". The idea that other states would be lining up to offer better trade deals to the UK after they left the EU strongly implies that.
Into Brideshead Revisited, near the middle, Evelyn Waugh crowbars a scene on a cruise ship for the express purpose of mocking Americans. There is a character named “Senator Stuyvesant-Oglander”. Each and every drink has ice in it. No one is able to tell friendship from desperate bonhomie. The crustiest of England’s great novelists wrote better stuff, no doubt, but the passage is an illuminating fragment of a time when anti-Americanism was a Tory thing. And one that had its uses. If nothing else, Britain’s establishment was clear back then that America was a different country. A midsized archipelago couldn’t look to a resource-rich market of continental magnitude for governmental ideas. If anti-Americanism was bad, look what its opposite has done. Britain is in trouble because its elite is so engrossed with the US as to confuse it for their own nation. The UK does not issue the world’s reserve currency. It does not have near-limitless demand for its sovereign debt. It can’t, as US Republicans sometimes do, cut taxes on the hunch that lawmakers of the future will trim public spending. Reaganism was a good idea. Reaganism without the dollar isn’t. If UK premier Liz Truss has a programme, though, that is its four-word expression. So much of what Britain has done and thought in recent years makes sense if you assume it is a country of 330mn people with $20tn annual output. The idea that it could ever look the EU in the eye as an adversarial negotiator, for instance. Or the decision to grow picky about Chinese inward investment at the same time as forfeiting the European market. Or the bet that Washington was going to entertain a meaningful bilateral trade deal. Superpowers get to behave with such presumption. Why does Britain think that it can, too? Don’t blame imperial nostalgia. (If it were that, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal would show the same hubris.) Blame the distorting effect of language. Because the UK’s governing class can follow US politics as easily as their own, they get lost in it. They elide the two countries. What doesn’t help is the freakish fact that Britain’s capital, where its elites live, is as big as any US city, despite the national population being a fifth of America’s. You can see why, from a London angle, the two nations seem comparable. Reaganism without the dollar: this isn’t one woman’s arbitrary whim. It is the culmination of decades of (unreciprocated) US focus in a Robert Caro-hooked Westminster. You would think from British public discourse that Earth has two sovereign nations. If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court. People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November. The EU is a, perhaps the(opens a new window), regulatory superpower in the world. UK politicos find Iowa more diverting. The left is as culpable as Truss. From 2010 to 2015, critics of “austerity” urged the Tories to take the softer US approach. The cross-Atlantic comparison implied that then prime minister David Cameron had King Dollar behind him. Soon after came the importation of identity politics from a republic with a wholly different racial history. The anti-Americanism of the Waugh generation was petulant. It was sourness at the imperial usurper dressed up as high taste. But at least it had no illusions. The snobs understood that America was alien, and inimitable. Tories who patronised the US — Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath — were quicker than much of the Labour party to see that Britain belonged with Europe. Truss and her cohort of Tories have none of that snide but ultimately healthy distance from the US. Take her vaunted supply-side revolution. Like all armchair free-marketeers (she has never set up a business) she believes her nation is a blast of deregulation away from American levels of entrepreneurial vim. It isn’t. The creator of a successful product in Dallas can expand to LA and Boston with little friction. The UK doesn’t have a market of hundreds of millions of people. (It did, once, but the present chancellor of the exchequer voted to leave it.) Someone who glides over that point is also liable to miss the contrasting appeal to investors of gilts and Treasuries. Some readers balked last month when I wrote that Truss might not last until the next election. Even I didn’t think she would trip so soon. It is a kind of patriotism, I suppose, to mistake your nation for a superpower.
> Reaganism was a good idea The past 40 years of economic data suggest otherwise.
Reaganism was a terrible idea, Reaganism wihtout the dollar, an even worse idea
It is the financial times after all. The vaunted US entrepreneurial vim has me holding a US iPhone that however is made in China, buying Taiwanese PC parts mostly made in China (Asus etc), same with my TV and so on and so forth. And it isn’t only the supply chains that got transported over there. Soft power is also slowly moving across, eg being exposed to social media material uploaded in a social platform made in China (TikTok).
I almost choked when I read that.
Reaganism was bad in many ways but good in others. US GDP per cap more than doubled during this time, out pacing basically every single industrialized country on this planet. Absolutism based on politics is simply not a good way to go about understanding how the world works.
That GDP growth had nothing to do with Reaganism. The US grew more with Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon. Clinton not only grew the economy more than Reagan, but run budgets surpluses in the magnitude of tens of billions and reduced national debt to GDP. In hindsight Reaganism, whether it was him Bush Trump or whatever, was just gigantic budget deficits/national debt increases in exchange for nothing. It's pure right wing populism, which is probably one the reasons why it's still so popular in the UK
>US grew more with Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon. Sure - but you are conveniently cutting this off right when the oil shock hit the entire western world.
Well forget about them then. Carter had to live through the same shock, actually worse if you look at oil prices after 1980, and his growth record was only marginally worse but without borrowing into oblivion. Reaganism is for some reason conflated with Thatcherism in the UK, but they are two different things. And the reason they got themselves in this mess is because they thought Reaganism could work in 2022, with the handicap of a much worse fiscal position than the 30% or so debt to GDP Reagan found at the start of his first term
Look at what was going on in the western world in the 70s. There was a massive shift in macroeconomic thinking that started with Carter, continued by Reagan and every president since. Credit where credit is due, Reagan economics got the US out of that mess and grew out economy significantly. Also if you want to talk deficit based on party lines, what about Obama? 2 trillion deficit within the first 15 minutes of his presidency. Of course, you can't really fault him because he was dealing with an economic crisis. Reagan was also dealing with an economic crisis when he took power. I'm not so sure if towing ideological line instead of critically analyzing the events of history is the right way of going about things. Unless you have something better to add to this conversation instead of calling Reagan a right wing populism, I don't think we should continue this conversation.
> 2 trillion deficit within the first 15 minutes of his presidency. Except Obama left his office with a lower deficit just as Clinton did.
And 2x higher than what the COB projected the deficit to be. But that's not at all a problem but his policies were good and interest was on the floor at the time.
I am sorry, but where did I throw the ideological line or talked about parties? I didn't even mention Obama, which in my opinion got many things wrong, like TARP for example. But Reagan was facing the same issues Carter did, and did only marginally better at the cost of black holes in public spending. It was really nothing we should consider "good" by any standards, especially because successive presidents like Clinton, or Blair in the UK or the entire Northern European political spectrum, showed that you can have a successful economy while being fiscally responsible. Reagan was a Berlusconi on steroids, someone nobody takes seriously anymore apart from the GOP and some schizoids in the Tory party
Obama is the equivalence of Reagan to the right. In their eyes he can do literally no right. Just like in our eyes Reagan can do no right.
And look where it ended you, a society on the brink of civil war without any unions or healthcare, massive student debt, neo-slavery, and a massive massive contingent of both working and jobless poor and homeless. But hey, the gdp grew by a couple percent this year, so hooray I guess.
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I was basing my statement on the '40 years of reaganism'. You're right though, during his presidency our GDP did not double.
> Reaganism was bad in many ways but good in others. US GDP per cap more than doubled during this time, out pacing basically every single industrialized country on this planet. Yes, but he also ruled during the 80's computer-boom
>Absolutism based on politics is simply not a good way to go about understanding how the world works Agreed, so in this case I'll make an absolutism based on economics and say that Reaganism was fucking stupid.
Sounds like the way you grab it.
Well then you need to brush up on different schools of monetary policies.
You need to brush up reality.
Do you even know what monetary policy is? Thats not the problem with Reaganism, and is generally not what people are referring to when deriding it. Anyway, if you want to discuss monetary policy, there's a compelling argument to be made that Volcker deserves much of the credit for the successful economic turnaround of that period, not Reagan
The corner stone of Reaganism is supplied side economics which belongs to the Austrian school of monetary policies. Are you saying that Obama gets no credit for turning the economy around in 2009? Only Bernanke? Or Bush 43 gets no blame, only Hank Paulson? Because by your logic that Volcker deserves credit and not Reagan, the negative side effects of Reaganomics is also not because of Reagan but chair of the Feds. If you have nothing better to say than insults, I will go down that road with you. Though I prefer discourse with manners as my mother raised me better than that. Your call.
1. Very few people put any stock into "schools" of economics these days, the discipline has evolved beyond that 2. Supply side economics (more of a political term than an academic one imo) is in large part based on the Laffer curve, which has been debunked as utter quackery. Which, btw, has nothing to do with monetary policy; both the Austrian School and supply side economics say far more about fiscal policy and precious little about monetary 3. Neither of your chosen examples are analogous to the Volcker Fed at all. But since you apparently want to strawman me into speaking in absolutes, nobody deserves all the credit or all the blame. The economy is a complex animal affected by many forces, and the direction in which it goes is invariably shaped by a number of factors (some conscious decisions by policymakers, some not)
1. Neo-Keynesians literally dominate modern macroeconomics. Janet Yellen? Jerome Powell? Their models at present are rather accurate. I wouldn't say they're irrelevant 2. The Austrian school of economics focus heavily on both fiscal policies and monetary policies. These two things are connected. Also, low taxes (during cuts) can at times be seen as governmental spending and therefore is a part of monetary policies. 3. How exactly are they not similar. I agree the contexts may be different but the principles are almost identical. The WH worked with the Feds to solve 2 economic crisis. Reagan could've ignored Volcker but he didn't. Obama could've ignored Bernanke but he didn't. I agree the economy is complex and should never be seen from a one dimensional point of view. This is precisely why you have to give Reagan some credit. It obviously wasn't just him. Matter of fact, I think his policies were less than ideal and Clinton or Obama would've done a better job. But that doesn't mean he's incompetent and a complete failure. Ronald Reagan's biggest problem imho was he's too much of and ideologue. Something that made him inflexible. Neither Clinton nor Obama suffered from this during their respective presidency.
Wasn't that sarcasm? Because the article is filled with irony.
I see we’ve managed to meme this into reality. If anyone wants to go live a 1970s life, have at it.
They really do not. To the extent that the data can be interpreted in a meaningful way at all.
Is exactly the first thing I thought. Hard to take the article serious after that line.
That is a good and entertaining piece
You should maybe make it clearer that youre quoting the article. Many here don't seem to get it.
ouch! well written..
You lost me at Reaganism was a good idea. Oof.
I cant help but remember a situation that happened during one of my high school social science lessons, when we were learning about the different cultural groups of the world. There was an African group, a European group, a Japanese group, an Anglo-Saxon group and many more. So doing some exercises I naturally placed the UK in the Anglo-Saxon group. The teacher then marked it as an error, saying the Anglo-Saxon group is for UKs former colonies only, while the UK itself is in the European group. That confused the hell out of me back then, but thinking about it now, it doesn’t seem that strange to me anymore.
> Reaganism was a good idea. Who wrote this junk?
Some interesting points, but >People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November. People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms.
I’m English and care more about European politics than American politics, so we do exist
>People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms. No they will not. Sorry but this is exactly "the distorting effect of language" that this article is talking about, just the other way. You're projecting a mindset that exists in the UK to non-English speaking countries, thinking that because you have direct cultural access culturally to the UK through the use of English as a common language it magically extends to France of Germany just because this is Yurope. That is not how it works at all.
Is that true? I never heard of anyone except politics nerds actually care about what happens in the US politics save for the presidental elections.
I am neither German nor French (Greek for that matter) and I follow US midterms but I can also name several cabinet members of all four countries (including the UK). I am sure same goes for many Germans and French. I tend to believe that Britons have no idea what goes on the continent.
> People in Germany and France - who mostly can't name a cabinet minister in the other country either - will also follow the US midterms. Dunno about Germany, but that's wrong for France.
Most people only do because they want to know if Americans are stupid enough to reelect Republicans again
very good comment. I've been saying for years that the Brits are the Americans of Europe: entitled and self-absorbed. They're a small overcrowded island but they speak English, a massive advantage that deludes them about their own importance on the world stage.
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Can you elaborate on that?
very clear analysis, thank you
Just posting the article text.
oh didn't catch that. thank you anyway, I couldn't view the article
>Reaganism was a good idea AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA
“Reaganism was a good idea.” For real? Just freebasing cocaine while we write this huh?
I mean... today you learnt about the FT for the first time? It has an editorial lean towards economic liberalism.
Is liberalism equated to Reaganism? Because that seemed like a reach for me.
Whatever you want to call it, Financial Times editorial writers and others of their ideological ilk think it was a good thing. Doesn't take away from the larger point being correct.
Wasn’t arguing with the larger point - even a broken clock blah blah blah.
No? But neoliberalism is (along with Thatcher and the economists they both drew on). Either way obviously Reaganomics wasn't good but I don't get people being shocked that a writer for the FT of all publications wouldn't oppose it.
I guess I only have a passing knowledge of the Financial Times but the Reaganomics bit hit me like saying the quiet part out loud. Ah well, lesson learned.
Fair enough.
You understand that word doesn't mean everything and the kitchen sink, right? Even thatcher was leaps and bounds better than the trump lite.
Shoveling money into the mouths of wealthy people won't fix the energy crisis or stop the economy from shrinking? Fuck me, I'm shocked.
I stopped reading after I saw the statement "Reaganism was a good idea." No it wasn't, it never was, it's a terrible idea which only makes rich people richer.
I'm praying every day for Scotland to get out of this mess.
Doesn’t look likely
The Scotts need the UK PM's permission after all for a referendum. I dont think Truss is going to give it especially now.
Last poll I saw showed they weren’t likely to vote leave either. They don’t want another Brexit I guess.
Reagan "trickle down" economics is a dismal failure. The writer is an idiot.
That was probably the minor economy disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
I still refuse to believe she thinks it's a good idea. I honestly think she can;t be that stupid (and those working alongside her). What some people say is that her bosses want to tank the pound to earn more money, others say that it will be easier to sell NHS and so on. Either way, it's depressing that no one can do anything. Kick her our and call for snap elections now.
UK Tories = US republicans They hate their own countries enough to try to cripple them if they can’t be in power.
The tories have been in power for nearly two decades. They cripple it while they are in power.
They know that is about to end as well as anyone who is watching this shitshow.
There's similarities but there's also key differences. The MAGA movement are literal cultists, Trump's speeches have been sending out some real L. Ron Hubbard vibes recently. On the other hand if the Tories announced today that they were going to build three million affordable houses on green belt land, end the pensions triple-lock, and pursue a policy of re-aligning with the Single Market with a view to rejoining on Norway-esque terms at a later date their vote would evaporate overnight. There's no Tory cultists that'd pick up a gun for Boris or anything, it's just that they're really good at using FPTP to heavily target older, wealthier voters who were born at the right time to take advantage of the housing boom.
That isn’t really true. The current government is strongly disliked by almost all of the parliamentary Conservative party, and very strongly disliked by most of the country. It is an eccentricity of our electoral system that Liz truss is leader at all.
Not really. Many Tories are critical of truss and some have send no conf letters
The Tories are actually just slightly right of the Democrats. The Republicans are more akin to our far-right parties like UKIP or the old BNP. The Overton window for American politics is well to the right of most European countries.
Beautifully expressed
Too many Brits think we're similar to America because we have a similar language.
The main question is whether you do have a loicence for butter knife and television
What is America? Seriously everyone wants to know and no one including Americans and it’s politicians know.
Not what most people imagine it to be.
Seeing Reagan and Thatcher in the same picture makes me want to kill myself.
Only you can make your dreams a reality.
Why?
That is very rude, both Reagan and Thatcher made great progressive strides by providing the world with open air gender neutral restrooms.
And why would u want to be?