'We Are Being Levelled Down’: Why the UK’s Wealth Gap Is Widening

The unfortunate thing is that we have been governed by a party which takes that unhealthy attitude towards senior party members, they have always been more about who you know than what you know. You don't see the same proportion of Oxbridge grads in the current opposition.

Slightly anecdotal, my first job after graduating (from former polytechnic Loughborough) was in Cambridge for a company formed by a couple of Cambridge grads. There was a higher proportion of non Oxbridge grads at the company, I think we tended to have more practical experience.

Who is "We" here?

I think it would be reasonable to claim the two main parties come from very similar backgrounds. Both seem to be happy continuing with maintaining their status quo.

Without their consent, is it likely or possible to see a third option rise?

Yup. As the old joke goes ...

How do you know someone went to Oxford ? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

I've been interviewing graduates in the UK for many years now from a very broad range of universities, all focused on CS or stem degrees.

In my experience, I've yet to interview an oxbridge graduate who wasn't at least great academically, and this is speaking as someone who went to a lesser university. Clearly whatever standards they have for teaching and entry selection criteria really work.

That said, graduates from other universities are easily on par with oxbridge, just that there were some total morons amongst their peers as well.

In my opinion, the problem is not that the UK fetishes oxbridge candidates, the problem is politics is dominated by arts and ppe graduates which does not offer the problem solving skills stem degrees do. I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.

What there is is people with financial savings, and a balancing item in the national accounts because of that. That balancing item occurs naturally, costlessly and without concern as a consequence of the way double entry bookkeeping works.

Money is never stuck because it isn't a thing. It's really just an accounting record.

If you have £50 in your wallet or purse you are 'causing' the balancing item to come about because you have spent it yet.

Tax isn't there to raise money. Tax is there to stop the private sector hiring everybody - so there is somebody left for the public sector to hire to do the jobs the government needs doing to fulfil its democratic mandate.

When you think about taxation, look at the UK's tax code. Arguably one of the longest and most complex in the world.

Walk into a firm of UK accountants and ask to be shown their copy of Tolly's Tax Handbook....

You'll be led to a room with a bookshelf full of books with Orange and Yellow spines.

The "handbook" is 23,000 pages long.

Tax Avoidance is an artform in the UK.

Tax Evasion is illegal, of course, but avoidance tends to be sufficient for the majority - sufficient legal loopholes and grey-areas are provided in the tax code !

But you do not have to subscribe to MMT.

(I see MMT as wishful thinking by social democrats who have already given up their fight)

This is especially true if you follow MMT. Remember, the whole underlying premise of MMT is that the government's ability to pay for goods and services is not in any way limited by a need to collect money first, that they cannot ever be forced to default on debt denominated in their own currency, that the only actual limiting factor is the actual real resources like labour, raw materials, and so on, and that the purpose of taxation is to keep inflation under control by reducing private demand for those things. From that point of view, money sittting in offshore accounts is a red herring because it doesn't represent consumption of real resources, and wages and money being brought into the country to buy things with are exactly what does need to be taxed because they do represent actual demand which will cause consumption of those resources.

Since 2010, the UK has declared war on work and now everybody is wondering where productivity is. In the meanwhile everybody is busy talking about grand reforms, such as Scottish secession and leaving the EU.

Liz Truss can barely speak in her native language and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been allowed to become a member of Parliament, let alone a senior minister or the Prime Minister.

Government turnover in Italy has always been a nightmare since 1945. The difference between the First Republic and the Second Republic is the former basically had the same ruling party and the same electoral law, the latter has had coalitions with very different parties and a different electoral law in almost all the elections.

A lot of people said that about Brexit, before it happened. Scottish independence is a real possibility (although I think it is an equally bad idea).

Acting like the “media,” the “intelligentsia,” and the “Tories” are in any way aligned is some serious cope.

Was Labour any better at the time?

Corbyn could have campaigned as the "we'll reverse the Brexit decision" and IMHO could have had a decent chance of winning/ forming the government.

Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit?

> Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians

We have a massive shortage of competent politicians at delivering benefits to the country. They're only competent at delivering benefits to themselves. If there wasn't a shortage, Truss would never have been put in charge.

Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period. Not just herself - a hapless, content-free cipher, now discarded - but everyone who voted for her should be regarded as grossly incompetent. As should people who published positive press about her. Just as SBF got so many glowing reviews before stealing/losing several billions of dollars of customer money.

Maybe not as impressive as billionaires, but still impressive. And certainly as a family more valuable than hedge funds.

Germany works much better than the UK. Just look at salary growth or at the number of strikes that the past 12 years of idiocy unleashed on the UK.

Sunak as a chancellor is responsible for idiocies like Eat Out to Help Out, the stamp duty holiday and losing billions of pound of taxpayers’ money to fraudsters during the pandemic. As a prime minister he can’t manage the strikes and half his cabinet is under investigation (by HMRC or for violations of the ministerial code or bullying). He’s clearly not fit for the role and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And at this point I’m not even expecting a strategic vision, I’d just like somebody that doesn’t increase my tax bill by 10 % every year and loses half of the money like a toddler sent to buy milk and bread.

An NHS consultant makes 70K, that in London is not enough to send a child to nursery and pay the rent (that is: they are poor). A junior doctor makes a fraction of that. For those unaware, depending on the specialty, a junior doctor may be even 35-40 year old. A private doctor may make a lot of money, but I wrote specifically that the NHS can’t hire, not that I can’t find a doctor in Harley Street.

Finally, taxes have gone up (I would have payed £800 less a month in 2009). Sunak alone increased my tax bill by £2-300 a month, while inflation reduced my real income by more than 10%. I don’t have time to find the data, but last time I checked public capital investment as a share of GDP was lower than in 2007.

This is a very misleading statement. Here’s a Wikipedia summary of her career, which you could easily have checked:

> In 1980, she switched to studying medicine and enrolled at the Hannover Medical School, where she graduated in 1987 and acquired her medical license.[33] From 1988 to 1992, she worked as an assistant physician at the Women's Clinic of the Hannover Medical School. Upon completing her doctoral studies, she graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1991. Following the birth of twins, she was a housewife in Stanford, California, from 1992 to 1996, while her husband was a faculty member of Stanford University.[34]

> From 1998 to 2002, she taught at the Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health System Research at the Hannover Medical School.[citation needed] In 2001 she earned a Master of Public Health degree at the institution.[35][36][37]

A bit partial I think, for those interested, maybe a more complete profile from BBC (2021): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vp0r

In the US, a resident will earn somewhere in the $50k-$80k range, depending on specialty.

Once out of residency, the average junior salary jumps up to somewhere north of $150k. Although by that point, the doctor is likely almost 30 and possibly carrying $100k+ in student loans. They’re well paid, no question, but makes for non-optimal (for society) choices - harder than it should be for them to enter poor areas or lower salary specialties.

sigh what multiple of salary mortgage are you going to get on that? And what are average house prices?

What I don’t like is the current situation in the UK, where I pay more income tax than I would pay in Germany and I also have to pay for healthcare and childcare and education.

So you have 4-5 banks that emit bank notes, and the only money that is actually mandated by law to be respected is coins. (England has an extra law that makes you take Bank of England notes, but it's not a law that covers all of UK).

(+) yes, just England and Wales

This. Unfortunately the atmosphere in Europe (or at least Sweden where I live) seems to be the exact opposite: nobody's upset about our own hereditary oligarchs (which put the Russian ones to shame), but they are screaming about Elon Musk...

It isn't though.

We see these people buying news outlets, bribing politicians, outright owning politicians, owning judges, attacking organizations that protect the environment or help reduce inequality.

We see them getting away with rape and murder. We see them creating and exploiting tax loopholes. We see them running monopolies and then bribing institutions that were supposed to hold them accountable in full sight.

I'm glad you're alright Jack. That's super for you that your company is run well - though I bet if you named the company, we could all point to some skeletons. Even so - best to peek outside your bubble before defending the class that's been waging war on the planet.

That billionaire you're defending probably pays a lower tax rate than you do. That's because his class paid to make things that way, with concerted effort, over years. Not much natural about it.

Unless you're talking about going back in time and arranging things so that no one can ever borrow money from anyone. Sure, without access to credit people would have a hard time buying homes. But that's such a radically different society, from a finance perspective, that it's pretty much meaningless to contemplate. I'm sure people would find other ways to access capital in the absence of credit.

And education is awesome, which of course is why we strictly limit building around our top university towns and cities.

https://www.theglobalcity.uk/resources/asset-management : "With £11.6tn of assets under management, it is the second largest centre overall, after the USA"

If anything, 300 miles may be a bit small.

Did not mean the subsidised basic housing for the use of the most miserable to conserve their status, taking their money with market rates when they start to earn above low miserable level, prohibiting a raise in living standard or savings. Whenever you'd get a glance at breaking out of the 30k-40k kind of household income level you'd be hit with market rent which will push you right back to social housing. This serves more like an other kind of of inadequate social benefits, something to point at: 'see, we have social something!' while it's just conserving the situation for the poor, no real chance getting into a non-existent middle class. More like a life raft for those having no other choice than a community centric housing approach for the population.

The 100,000 is both inadequate number - not enought because there are more who'd need it, so it is mandated on the private sector to build more - and also too high: showing how big the poor class is...

"For Tooze, this Marx – the ‘empirical’ Marx – anticipates his own brand of grounded contemporary history" (1)

But "Ultra-Marxist" surely doesn't fit. I see him as social democrat and as devoted Keynesian.

I have not read his books, but think I should. He seems to be one of the most creative intellectuals and historians at the moment.

(1) https://renewal.org.uk/archive/vol-30-2022/toozes-marx/

This has been the problem since I was a kid; we make good inventions, but we're bad at exploiting them.

Research universities nowadays have incubators; but I think helping inventors exploit their ideas should be a function of central government.

LED lights is a blessing and a curse- instead saving energy people emit more light for the same money. Outdoor spaces are well lit throughout the night creating light pollution.

If the UK has managed to free up 25% of their energy consumption there really shouldn't be articles complaining about things not being levelled up. The country would be in a near utopian era of excess. We should be seeing articles talking about how quality of life for the poor has suddenly jumped by a massive amount.

Partly, but the UK has higher inflation than many other European countries facing the same global situation. Brexit and broader economic mismanagement are also factors.

Cuts also have a tendency to be a false economy. For example, underfunding the NHS ‘saves’ money on the balance sheet, but the long term costs to the economy of a less healthy population very likely outweigh those savings. Many of the budget items on the chopping block are really investments, not mere costs.

It's been "preferential" to "attach" to London since Roman times, ie., if your ROI is proportional to your output, then london has been "the place to spend" for 2000 years.

The industrial revolution "levelled up" parts of the north which had advantageous geography and resources, but that was a period of "growth redistribution" which acted against the tidal forces of preferential attachment.

Absent something outside the basic logic of ROI-tomorrow prop-to ROI-today (eg., ports, coal, etc.), that is what dominates.

Gov. policy here is pretty hopeless; you can make marginal improvements, but it is strictly, and quite literally, a waste of money.

Both for each £1 of gov spending, and each £1 of private spending, more impact on your goals are achieved in London (et al.).

Eg., one has to argue £10mil on some local transport for a <few hundred to use a week is worthwhile, whilst £10mil in london would enable 1000s/week.

It isnt, and in any case, makes little difference to the overall picture. "Levelling up" then means that the gov redistributes money from economically productive areas, to unproductive ones, to make marginal improvements.

There's a limited amount any gov can actually do that; too much and there's nothing left to redistribute.

I agree with your general point. There are some very poor areas in London but the index of multiple deprivation lowest ranked places are elsewhere. And if you are able to work, you have more options in London than in a small town with limited public transport.