I find it so weird that UK citizens have often just sort of passively chosen to be poor. Like they still had food rationing for years after WW2. Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?
I find it weird that medical bankruptcies are a thing, or people involved in car crashes demanding they don't get an ambulance and critical emergency care, because they know they'll be billed thousands or hundreds of thousands for being out-of-network.
Is there some sort of cultural blind-spot?
Or maybe each country has their own ups and downs, and we can accept that even if there is objectively a "better way" to do things, and a country's government can be convinced to try this better way, it stil has to bring the people along with it, and those millions of people all have all kinds of hangups and incentives that get in the way; politics are hard.
With regard to post-war food rationing, much of it was due to crop failure or stockpiles being ruined by terrible weather, and obviously the rest of Europe was ravaged and destroyed. But it was also political. Labour liked rationing and the Tories didn't, and the Tories stoked public anger at it. Clearly the UK citizens didn't like it, it was the main fight of the 1950 general election.... which Labour narrowly won. Then Labour called a snap election in 1951, won a record high voteshare, but narrowly lost to the Tories.
The UK is completely broken by corruption disguised as incompetence, with everyone in power to change things profiting off the status-quo and thus having no incentive to make the change. Add in a steady stream of distractions where the media sows race/xenophobia warfare so the people are too busy fighting between themselves to realize who their real enemy is.
> Is there some sort of cultural blind spot which prevents them from understanding that there are better ways to do things?
Yes, but it's not specifically British: most nations (and many companies) I've looked at in any depth seem to have this blind spot — "not invented here" is one of several kinds of in-group favoritism.
I guess there are some examples of self sabotage, such as Brexit, but no, on the whole people in the UK do not choose to be poor. Like any nation we are at the mercy of the outcomes of the decisions of our politicians and larger global effects that are out of our control.
Also, there are plenty of wealthy people in the UK. You do know that right? The UK is still around 6th in the nominal GDP rankings, so not quite an economic basket case (yet).
The UK has many policies in place that are designed to limit output. These policies are not only not unpopular, they are wildly popular and are basically impossible to change.
Housing is one, infrastructure is another. Like people say we aren't choosing to poor...HS2 is the most expensive rail project ever per mile, double the cost of the outrageously expensive one in California. Why? Because our system gives unlimited power to lawyers, consultants...we were building bat tunnels (literally tunnels for bats) that cost £100m.
And it isn't limited to this. Look at the last Budget: we are in the middle of fiscal collapse. Tens of billions for green energy projects that add to the cost of bills, huge pay rises for the public sector (where productivity is at the same level as 1997), on and on.
How can you not think this stuff is intentional? There is no reason for almost everything we are doing, it makes absolutely no sense but we are being driven off the cliff by politicians, civil servants, lawyers, media/PR, consultants who control this country...to rephrase that: you are saying that there was no reason 11th century Britain couldn't become very rich when it was funnelling all the money to monasteries that were producing nothing but fat monks? The intention of the system isn't to make Britain rich, it is make people inside the system rich...which it is doing (again, HS2 cost £1bn for a railway that didn't get built...where do you think that money goes? there is no railway but there were tens of thousands of consultants...).
you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor
This is such a weird take. I have no idea where you are getting your ideas from, but I don't know if you've heard of this thing we have in the UK called 'the class system'. Poor people are definitely not worshipped in the UK. And the wealthy do generally like to demonstrate their wealth in the usual ways (cars, homes, holidays, schooling, etc), so I'm wondering where you've got this idea that people in the UK somehow romanticise poverty.
I'm not english at all. Just pointing out that no American should ever be criticizing anyone for how their government and society is setup. The only reasons Americans need to be "rich" is because health insurance is a scam, a car accident can bankrupt you, the tax code is entirely for the wealthy, and social services are poor at best. It's a fake wealth, one where you can have 3M in investments and not be able to retire because the system is set up so poorly.
> The only reasons Americans need to be "rich" is because health insurance is a scam, a car accident can bankrupt you,
92% of Americans have health insurance. About a third have insurance through the government. Rather than being a scam, most Americans don't understand just how much it costs because of the employer subsidies. At any rate, given the existence of both auto and health insurance, it is hard to go bankrupt from a car accident. Medical bankruptcy gets a lot of attention because it should never happen, not because it is common.
> the tax code is entirely for the wealthy
This makes no sense coming from the UK. The US taxation system is remarkably progressive. Marginal tax brackets, a large standard deduction, and CTC/EITC mean about ~40% of American households pay no federal income tax, or even pay a negative tax (eg., they get paid.) Meanwhile, the UK has the insanely regressive 18% VAT. This would never pass muster in the US because of its regressiveness.
Health insurance that covers nothing and people celebrate murder healthcare CEOs because their family members are dying. What a fantastic system.
People definitely understand how screwed they are, and being patronizing and trotting out lots of useless stats does nothing for people struggling to get coverage.
I have a HDHP. I think most people would describe that as "health insurance that covers nothing." Most people, however, do not have HDHPs. Medicare and Medicaid have incredible coverage. Most PPO plans have great coverage. As a general rule, US health insurance covers too much, including quackery like chiropractery.
There are definitely edge cases and horrible things that happen and should not, but they are not the norm.
One major thing I do see is people demanding unlimited care of whatever kind they want for no cost. That doesn't exist at all in other countries, which are very restrictive in comparison. In a sensible country, we would not allow millions of people to get on extremely expensive (>1k per dose) off-label diabetes medication to lose weight. This is a fantastic example of spending billions of dollars of insurance premiums on something that for almost all its users is totally superfluous when cheaper and healthier options (but not as convenient) are readily available.
In the US, this happens all the time. The fundamental tension in US healthcare is not that "insurance is too expensive" (it is), "insurance denies claims" (it does), providers are too expensive (they are), the system is too complex (it is.) The fundamental tension is that people want everything, and they want it for nothing. At the end of the day, the only solutions are a) people pay what they can afford or b) you have rationing. Either path has problems. The US currently is trying to have everything for nothing, and the show can only go on for so long. Either people don't get care because they can't afford it, or they don't get care because bureaucrats determined it's not worth it. But they cannot get whatever care they want and can find a doctor to provide, for free.
It's a cultural difference I observed between Europeans and Americans: Americans hate it being called unsuccessful/poor, but don't mind being called dumb. Europeans hate being called stupid, but don't mind being called unsuccessful/poor. Obviously, it's not a binary thing, but there's some fundamental difference in attitude.
Not for long I suspect. There has been a rather marked exodus of millionaires from Britain since July as a result of a range of fiscal changes promised by the government. Some significant businesses have decided to relocate. Unrelated to this: now it's been found that a majority of Brits receive more in benefits than they contribute in taxes. Not a good outlook. Meanwhile it's estimated that the richest 1% of earners already pay 29% of the country’s income tax.
