Poor deluded British still think they are wealthy. By John Hinderaker at Powerline.
The United Kingdom [has fallen] behind America’s poorest state, Mississippi, in per capita GDP. But evidently not many Brits got the message: when free market think tank Institute of Economic Affairs polled the question, most Brits thought that their country would rank with America’s most prosperous states:
Confronted with the right answer, almost all Brits were shocked and dismayed …
What is the cause of Britain’s decline? Its government. It spends too much and taxes too much. It cares about “equity,” not growth. …
Decline is a choice. Sadly, that is the choice the United Kingdom has made, and there is no sign on the horizon of a reversal.
If [Britons] take just a brief gander at the new Institute of Economic Affairs report on the comparative wealth between Britain, American states, and Britons’ sad delusions about where they stand. According to the IEA, ask the typical Brit where his country ranks, income-wise, if it were a state. And the typical answer is “Seventh place.”
Not quite, old chap. The sad fact is that if Britain were a state, it would rank at the very bottom, below Mississippi.
It’s one of those ego-crushing studies because it’s words and delusions of worth that tell the story, not the dry economic figures …
30 years ago, Britain would have ranked fifth among U.S. states, just behind Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Those Northeastern states dominated per-capita income rankings in 1996, driven by finance, insurance, and other high-earning professions.
By the early 2000s, Britain slipped out of the Top 10 American states, and its relative decline only accelerated….
What happened? Not to put too fine a point on it, but Britain — just like the rest of Western Europe — essentially outlawed innovation and growth. Importing endless numbers of Third World “migrants” who are net drags on the economy isn’t helping, either.
British economic growth was unlocked by Margaret Thatcher and her Tories starting in 1979, and successive governments (including Tony Blair’s New Labour) didn’t muck up her success formula very much.
After the economy flat-lined during the 2008 global financial crisis, both Labour and Conservatives kept it stamped down with growth-killing policies like “net zero.”
There is a huge price being paid by the West for the refusal of our ruling classes to due diligence on the carbon dioxide theory of global warming. The more a country works towards net zero, the poorer it becomes. Elite status games by your ruling class — like net zero — are a wealth hazard.
To those who obsess about equity: it matters not to me that Elon Musk is richer than me, because his wealth does not make me poorer. (In fact, as it happens he makes me richer, by offering me the option of Telsas, Starlink, etc. etc.).