So Amazon as a whole is just a logistics company then? OK!
This map shows average income adjusted for local purchasing power
A better example. But still does not quite reflect the pressure people face. Someone in sub-Saharan Africa might happy if they have clean water and sanitation. But we take those things for granted and can have a poor quality of life even with them. We can still feel isolated, alone and helpless whilst feeling pressurised into a well paid job we hate, that takes us away from our family and we can't find a way out of.
It's easy to say 'oh these are first world problems' and they are, but we shoudn't trivialise them. We may have more discretionary purchasing power than most places but that does not make us happy. It's easy to say 'live the simple life' but not necessarily easy to do, since 'the simple life' needs things we might not be able to get like family and community support, or close friends etc.
However I fully agree that the UK is nowhere near a third world country for that and many other reasons. But it is still shitty.
All Bezos does is transport goods from a warehouse to an address within easy driving distance after processing an electronic payment.
As military people like to say, "Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics." Reliably delivering massive quantities of stuff around the globe is a hugely impressive undertaking. If it was easy, everyone would have done it.
He does it by paying people crap money to work long shifts in rubbish conditions, and then paying as little tax as possible on the huge profits.
Successful companies have always paid the lowest wages they can get away with. Same with paying tax, nobody pays more tax than they are required to. I've never worked for Amazon, but looking at images of their warehouses, the conditions look much less crap than factories I worked at when I was young. Amazon is profitable now, I believe, but for a long time they were basically operating as a non-profit delivering cheap goods to consumers, funded by their investors. Bezos didn't become wealthy from Amazon profits, he became wealthy from investors believing that Amazon would eventually become a profitable market leader and pushing the stock price far higher than the historical profits justified.
Basically, Bezos isn't a nice guy, but neither are most successful business people. Rather than worrying about that, it's better to set reasonable minimum wage levels and workplace health and safety standards and then just let people get on with things.
Bezos didn’t become wealthy from Amazon profits, he became wealthy from investors believing that Amazon would eventually become a profitable market leader and pushing the stock price far higher than the historical profits justified.
He speaks the truth - as they haven't made much profit they haven't paid much tax - the serious tax avoiders are the likes of Apple and the Pharma companies, Amazon are in a lower league.
I'm not holding Bezos up as a shining example of humanity - but I've never felt that MPs who rely on public approval for their jobs should solely be in charge of big infrastructure projects.
It leads to decisions based on popularity, personal gain and short-term'ism (ie kicking that maintenance budget into someone elses budget spend). There's got to be a better way of dealing with these things.
but pre-WWII we were already dependent on importing food
During WWII we managed to bring something approaching 90-95% of available farming land back into production from a pre war level of 35-40%. We also managed to decay the soil to such an extent they probably took decades off it's productive life and are still dealing with the consequences of that decision today*
* I'm not saying that decision was wrong, I'm just saying that it had unintended and unforeseen consequences.
there was no violence.
Jo Cox was murdered.
Having worked in a few other countries, the biggest difference in places that are known for competence in engineering is that people **** listen to engineers.
Where are these utopias?
Asking for an engineering type friend who is genuinely fed up with copping the blame for shit going wrong after putting forward the opinion that stuff done right takes X amount of time and not one eighth of that time.
They’re actually getting worse (MrsIHN is an actuary, this is an actual thing that they’re having to cater for now when pricing premiums etc)
The ONS figures show that life expectancy increased continually to 2020 all the figures from then on are somewhat meaningless. Covid, CoL, Ukraine all help to skew the numbers.
Have you been in a cave?
Inflation due to the energy crisis and the following inflationary increases and then interest rates to curb inflation are all rises due to known causes, some of which will again decrease over time - energy, food, fuel, etc. It's hardly 3rd worth stuff where exchange rates can change by 50% in a day or inflation can hit 300% in a week, is it?
Jo Cox was murdered.
That's true. I don't think it's as simple as saying she was assassinated because of Brexit. But in any case, I'm not saying there has never been political violence in the UK - that is totally untrue. But it's just not the case that violence is routinely used against politicians and activists or that perpetrators are not punished. Compare that to the rowdy democracies of Nigeria or India or Brazil, let alone the authoritarian states of Russian or Gabon or Myanmar.
I’ve never felt that MPs who rely on public approval for their jobs should solely be in charge of big infrastructure projects.
They're not.
But it’s just not the case that violence is routinely used against politicians and activists or that perpetrators are not punished.
Yes, I agree with your broader point, but I think it does us no harm to remember that we're not immune from political violence.
A better example. But still does not quite reflect the pressure people face. Someone in sub-Saharan Africa might happy if they have clean water and sanitation. But we take those things for granted and can have a poor quality of life even with them. We can still feel isolated, alone and helpless whilst feeling pressurised into a well paid job we hate, that takes us away from our family and we can’t find a way out of.
that may be so, but the measure of "first world" vs "third world" is not one of happiness. Its generally (these days) taken as a rough index of development, life length, quality of life, and so on, and as such the UK is miles away from something you'd categorise as "third world" in every measurable index. So the answer is still a resounding "no".
I remember being shocked by the level of inequality in Morocco in the 70s. Income inequality in Britain now outstrips Morocco.
The ONS figures show that life expectancy increased continually to 2020 all the figures from then on are somewhat meaningless. Covid, CoL, Ukraine all help to skew the numbers.
The thing is, the job of actuaries like MrsIHN is to remove the effects of exceptional factors like those things. And when they do that, the mortality figures are getting worse.
And CoL 'skews' the numbers? If that's true, are you saying that we don't need to worry that people are dying because they can't afford to live? That's an interesting perspective
Inflation due to the energy crisis and the following inflationary increases and then interest rates to curb inflation are all rises due to known causes, some of which will again decrease over time – energy, food, fuel, etc. It’s hardly 3rd worth stuff where exchange rates can change by 50% in a day or inflation can hit 300% in a week, is it?
No, of course it's not. I'm not saying that we are comparable to 3rd world stuff, but it's pretty crap for a 1st world one.
" A third world country " possibly too strong a phrase, but you would have to be quite the optimist not to see the pretty poor state we are now in. Unfortunately for Labour, this can't be sorted in one term, and will probably let " that lot" back in, and so the decline will continue.
Not third world no, but if you look at GDP subdivided by region then large lumps of the UK are on a par with Romania and other parts of central europe, and that starts to matter
BillMC
Full Member
I remember being shocked by the level of inequality in Morocco in the 70s. Income inequality in Britain now outstrips Morocco.
I do think inequality in the UK is a problem, but that's not factually true. The UK has a Gini Coefficient of 36.6, Morocco is 39.5. Lower is more equal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
Gini coefficients - Morocco measured in 2013, UK in 2019 so both are likely to have changed in intervening periods.
My guess, FWIW, is the gap will have closed - Morocco falling & UK rising.
the UK is miles away from something you’d categorise as “third world” in every measurable index. So the answer is still a resounding “no”.
Oh no, I absolutely agree. I'm just pointing out perils of statistics.
Irrespective of all the damage the Tories have done (some of it deliberate, of course) this country will never move forward until we stop constantly looking back. The Monarchy, the Aristocracy, the Honours system etc etc just keep perpetuating the past. The ownership of the land and the vast majority of the wealth by a few people is nothing short of obscene. They are also the ones mainly responsible for us constantly harking back to our 'Glorious past'. We must be fairly unique in the developed world in this respect, shirley?
Are we a 21st century European emulation of 20th century Argentina perhaps? We have apparently declining productivity, increasing indebtedness and more pervasive everyday corruption like the driving test touting thing that’s been hitting the news.
It strikes me that it’s going to be hard to clean things up when it so often appears there’s a broad acceptance in society of the entitlement of a kleptocratic privately educated “elite”.
This is a shadow of the country I moved to 20 years ago, and it’s increasingly striking how run down it is here when I return from visiting our neighbouring countries.
Agree with this:
We can still feel isolated, alone and helpless whilst feeling pressurised into a well paid job we hate, that takes us away from our family and we can’t find a way out of.
I think a lot of the problems in the UK are difficult to capture with statistics or graphs - so are largely ignored. They're wishy-washy "Guardian" things that are mostly imperceptible. It's class, culture and community. It's security and stability. It's perceptions and opinions.
The biggest council in the country has just declared itself bankrupt. 20 more are said to be on the brink of doing the same
I’d say that’s the very definition of a failed state
A failed state wouldn't allow women to make a £760m unequal pay claim, let them win it, actually pay it, or let it bring down a local authority serving a million people.
i.e. we have rights, functioning legal system to some degree, mostly stick to the law and principles even when it's inconvenient etc.
They are also the ones mainly responsible for us constantly harking back to our ‘Glorious past’. We must be fairly unique in the developed world in this respect, shirley?
Beyond the Mail-Telegraph-Rees-Mogg Axis, I don't think there is a lot of harking back to past (glorious or otherwise) in everyday life in the UK, actually. It's a small and dying class of poppy-botherers now. France, Austria, Greece, Russia, China all place a greater emphasis on the past imvho.
...there are certainly places more attractive.
Always have been. The big thing the UK has had during my lifetime is tolerance. That has been cynically eroded quite deliberately by those in power.
Where are these utopias?
Asking for an engineering type friend who is genuinely fed up with copping the blame for shit going wrong after putting forward the opinion that stuff done right takes X amount of time and not one eighth of that time.
I don't know if Germany is quite the place it was when I was younger, but when I graduated in civil engineering the German side of the family addressed me as Herr Ingeneur. There was a running gag that in Germany if you announced you were an engineer you would be invited in to meet the daughter, in the UK you would be invited in to fix the washing machine.
Jo Cox was murdered.
And wasn't the only MP murdered. Or constantly being abused and threatened.
It does feel like the country is a shambles at every level
https://twitter.com/NotThatBigIan/status/1699441269150224610?t=_flJz1od1MUaS-7yBY6aCg&s=19
gues which chancellor oversaw big cuts to prisons in 21/22 budget ?
Where are these utopias?
Asking for an engineering type friend who is genuinely fed up with copping the blame for shit going wrong after putting forward the opinion that stuff done right takes X amount of time and not one eighth of that time.
Best example I have is Germany, as above. I worked for several weeks on a bid to migrate a shedload of code to a new platform for a big bank in the UK. We also had a German guy with us who'd done it before for a German insurance company. I came up with estimates based on an actual methodology rather than finger-in-air which is usual, and they started haggling with us and forced us to reduce the time because the customer wanted a fixed price contract. There's always huge uncertainty in this sort of thing - after all, none of it was our code and most of it was written by people who weren't there any more. So by forcing us to reduce estimates they were almost guaranteeing failure or at least overrun, or forcing us to skimp on other areas.
The German guy who'd done the same thing in Germany had been employed on a time and materials basis. They'd asked him to come in, worth with a few of their guys and stay until it was done properly. They trusted the engineers to do it right and gave them the time they needed.
Germany's not utopia - they do other things wrong in general, but they do listen to engineers.
germans? berlin international airport not being a shining example at 9 years late.
from wiki:
The airport was originally planned to open in October 2011, five years after starting construction in 2006. The project encountered a series of successive delays due to poor construction planning, execution, management, and corruption. Berlin Brandenburg Airport finally received its operational license in May 2020,[2] and opened for commercial traffic on 31 October 2020, 14 years after construction started and 29 years after official planning was begun
anyhow there was a very hollow LOL at the poster who suggested a labour government would be a disaster for us after the 13 years of tory mismanagement we've endured. what do you reckon, give them another 10 years to put it all right? f right off mate.
full disclosure i really like germany and, by and large, the german people.
Is the UK becoming a third-world country?
No, but others are catching up but financially they still behind even in the developing countries.
However, one day in the distance future things will be different where the migration etc will be heading East instead due to greener grass (financial prosperity etc) This is not a bad thing because for once the west can rest and chill. No more influence and no more headache.
The UK government spends money, and did do during austerity.
But it doesn't spend it on the right things - you know for the many not the few.
Not Third World - just an economic model that is taking its last gasp before it really destroys itself, and us .
It's terrifying that neither party has the brains to pull the correct strings on spending for all the stuff that is broke.
The only restriction is political will not money. The money bit is simple but we still need to target the most desperate broken things with government spending - tax things that are too luxury for their own good, look at what resources we need and to what end.
It's mostly going to be about green infrastructure/energy, fixing the NHS and forcing the private element back into public use.
Fiscal policy should work far better than it does and monetary policy is inherently stupid when it causes so much grief for the larger end of society but gives basic income to those with wealth.
During WWII we managed to bring something approaching 90-95% of available farming land back into production from a pre war level of 35-40%. We also managed to decay the soil to such an extent they probably took decades off it’s productive life and are still dealing with the consequences of that decision today
You need a link for that, nickc or it's false.
There are 18 million hectares of agricultural land in the UK and only 2 million additional hectares were ploughed up. Lots of allotments (1.5 million) and gardens were also used but in terms of area that's small.
Whilst cereal and potato production increased (though not in the proportions your numbers suggest - about half that given the increase in self-sufficiency stated in Wiki an elsewhere) food imports remained high -particularly meat (about half), diary products and fruit. The impact on soil quality you greatly exagerate, most of the damage came post war with more intensive fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide use to increase yield - that has continued to this day.
Thank you for inspiring an interesting browse which has supported the view that it's Britain's high meat and dairy diet that is the biggest factor in being unable to feed itself.
But it’s just not the case that violence is routinely used against politicians and activists or that perpetrators are not punished.
You say that like it’s a good thing. How shall we end the current situation of concentration of land and other resources in the hands of a few, if not by violence ?
How shall we end the current situation of concentration of land and other resources in the hands of a few, if not by violence ?
Is that what you are proposing? Seriously?
Is that what you are proposing? Seriously?
No, but I’m not holding up our supine acceptance of injustice as a source of pride.
You are putting words into DrJ's mouth rather than answering his question.
My reply is "vote" and use your vote to further your own interests which will mean not voting Tory. (Edit: Mefty excepted, I can't think of anyone else on here who could benefit from Tory policy) 😉
It does feel like the country is a shambles at every level
This is it for me. I said a similar thing as the OP to my wife the other day. I didn;t really mean the UK is actually a 3rd world country now, as I'm sure the OP didn;t really mean that. But it has gone very down hill. It used otbe that you'd go abroad and come back here thinking our infrastructure was great and we were generally in a good place in the world.
Now they just laugh at us, the country is crumbling beneath us while the rich reap the benefits. The UK is truely a shit hole nowadays.
You need a link for that, nickc or it’s false.
No, he needs a link or it's unconfirmed you confrontational sod!
You confrontational sod
😯 cough....splutter....
My reply is “vote” and use your vote to further your own interests which will mean not voting Tory
i admire your optimism, but we’ve been voting for a good while now and it doesn’t seem to have helped, and it’s likely to get worse as the information needed to make a voting decision is increasingly controlled by bad actors (and I’m not talking about Ronald Reagan 🙂
Now they just laugh at us
I don't think anyone overseas particularly gives a shit about the UK. Apart from the Irish, they're always banging on about the Brits, not realising that average UK person thinks about Ireland once a decade. But to be fair there may be a historical context for that.
No, he needs a link or it’s unconfirmed you confrontational sod!
Pot kettle black with added insult. 🙂 How about doing some reading and checking who's right before taking the wrong side, Molgrips. Britsh agriculture was in decline pre-war but the level of land use claims are false as are the claim that it was land use in WW2 that ruined the soil for decades to come. On the contrary land that had become unproductive due to neglect was durably returned to productive use. Pre war the land was still in use but not productively. Rabbits proliferated, growing crops wasn't profitable, land drainage and irrigation weren't maintained, fertilizers were used in very low qualtities because commodity prices were so low the investment couldn't be justified. Facinating what you learn when something doesn't sound right and you do a bit of fact checking. An unfertilized, non-irrigated, undrained field used for grazing or hay isn't very productive but it's still in use.
Is that what you are proposing? Seriously?
I would. On the single issue of land ownership, that was entirely achieved by violence in the past, so I'd have no problem with an unruly mob forceably taking over an estate and banishing the incumbent landlord. That being said I'd prefer to do it peacefully, via a vote for a party which proposes to redress the inequality and imbalances of power which we experience in or society. We've tried that though and it doesn't work. 🤷♂️
I’d have no problem with an unruly mob forceably taking over an estate and banishing the incumbent landlord
I'm not sure countries thst have tried that approach have found it to be very successful. Seems to result in starvation.
I've met plenty of awful landlords when i dealt with rural estates for work, but I'd probably say they were a minority. Many seemed to actually care about the welfare of the land and their tenants, even if it was for selfish financial reasons
On the single issue of land ownership, that was entirely achieved by violence in the past
Hmm what you're proposing isn't exactly what happened. Plus that was a thousand years ago, things are a little different now. Also, even if it did happen the same that doesn't mean it was the right course of action then or now.
Pot kettle black
You asked him for a link whilst not providing one yourself. So yeah.