Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

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I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but the UK economy in the 1970's was a complete disaster - much, much worse than it is today.

For example a combination of very high inflation (above 15% pa for the 4 years between 1974 and 1977[1]) combined with huge strikes by unions led to incidents like the "three day week"[2] (where the conservative UK government rationed electricity to businesses: they could only use it 3 days per week) and the "Winter of Discontent"[3] (where the Labour government failed to reach a wage control agreement with unions, leading to more strikes and the Thatcher government).

Official unemployment figures throughout the 1970's look much better than today (eg, 5-6% unemployment rather than ~7.5% now), but that doesn't take into account the fact that many were not being paid because of strike action, and also that the high inflation meant people were chronically underpaid (hence the strikes).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6729683.stm is worth reading to get some idea of just how bad it was.

[1] http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conve...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

This is certainly the standard story.

It's not at all clear to me that it was Thatcher's amazing economic policies that turned the economy around rather than the boom years of North Sea oil.

Even if Thatcher's policies did stimulate the economy at the time, from where we're sitting now, what is clear is that that stimulus was not sustainable, and that all that privatisation and the Big Bang did was borrow from the future to splash the cash in the then-present.

Yep, I'm not arguing it was Thatcher that fixed it. Just making the point that the 1970's truly were bad in the UK.

That is exactly what I wanted to point out. Oftentimes such privatization is buying short time benefits from the future. In my opinion, Britain has sold to much of its assets and is carrying a huge burden today.

Saying that without also acknowledging the problems of the 1970's is just as bad as saying "the 1980's were great for Britain - look how profitable companies became".

Many things Thatcher did were terrible, but at the same time (for example) it's difficult to argue that a national government should be in the business of running road transport for the country[1]. There's a reasonable argument that some utilities work best in state ownership in some cases, but many of the other things that were run by the government prior to Thatcher were complete disasters.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Transport_Commission

Have a look at my answer to "refurb".

I also don't want to say that everything was good before Thatcher or that a socialistic approach is always better or even good. But what I wanted to say, that many of the long term results of Thatcherism are hurting the country till today, even when it was brought out of economic decline.

I think, that neither socialism nor pure thinking that capitalism and market will "just make it all right" work in the long run.

The results of "market makes it alright" are visible in the sweat shops of the 3rd world countries. In the western countries we have a long tradition of market regulation and that is our luck -- but it seems we are running out of luck.

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