x404.co.uk
http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/

Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=20885		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  pcernie [ Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:33 am ]
Post subject:  Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... my-by-2030

'You're trapped in an asylum.'

'Yeah, but I'm the chief lunatic...'
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Thu Dec 26, 2013 9:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
Older people might remember the claim that Japan was going to overtake the US economy at some point.
Author:  jonbwfc [ Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
Image

Possibly if the world continues to allow the financial sector to create value out of nothing, then by 2030 The City will be worth enough to make the UK's GDP the highest in Europe. But that will be a long way from making the UK 'Europe's top economy'. Unless you have a really idiotically simple idea of what 'an economy' is.
Author:  l3v1ck [ Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
We'll never overtake the Germans.
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
jonbwfc wrote:
Possibly if the world continues to allow the financial sector to create value out of nothing, then by 2030 The City will be worth enough to make the UK's GDP the highest in Europe. But that will be a long way from making the UK 'Europe's top economy'. Unless you have a really idiotically simple idea of what 'an economy' is.

I suspect that we will have had another major financial crisis in the City which will set us back even further by then. While financial services are very important they could also become a massive millstone which drags us down significantly. The real problem is that the regulations that allowed the financial sector to grow without damaging the rest of the economy have not been restored.
Author:  ShockWaffle [ Fri Dec 27, 2013 4:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
jonbwfc wrote:
Possibly if the world continues to allow the financial sector to create value out of nothing, then by 2030 The City will be worth enough to make the UK's GDP the highest in Europe. But that will be a long way from making the UK 'Europe's top economy'. Unless you have a really idiotically simple idea of what 'an economy' is.

Should you be using the phrase "idiotically simple" in the sentence that follows one where you used the phrase "if the world continues to allow the financial sector to create value out of nothing"?

You must recognize that there is value in linking savers to borrowers; providing complex insurance mechanisms to suitably sophisticated buyers; hedging risks; starting new companies; winding up failed companies, and so on.
Author:  ShockWaffle [ Fri Dec 27, 2013 4:04 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
Amnesia10 wrote:
I suspect that we will have had another major financial crisis in the City which will set us back even further by then.

You make a lot of predictions on this forum. So far, how do you feel they have gone?
Author:  ShockWaffle [ Fri Dec 27, 2013 4:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Britain 'will be Europe's top economy by 2030'
l3v1ck wrote:
We'll never overtake the Germans.

For what it's worth, I shudder to place any value on this sort of speculative nonsense because it assumes to many things on an all-other-things-being-equal basis... It kind of assumes in this case that the Euro area cannot be reformed in a sensible way, when perhaps it can and is just a bit slow to get going. And they are assuming that Germany will never compete with Britain to acquire talented immigrants, which seems unlikely too.

But if we attract more migrants than Germany our economy will be fed with a labour force of young working age people while their labor force will shrink as the population ages. At the moment our GDP per capita is a couple of thousand US$ short of Germany's, and our population is smaller too. But in theory as we approach their numbers on one front, the other would follow. We would have a larger working age population which would push up our GDP per cap, and from the other direction theirs would be pushed down by the burden of more pensioners being funded by fewer workers.

More workers does in effect guarantee more GDP because of what that figure measures. But it doesn't measure as much as people sometimes think. Consider this, if you tore down all the million pound mansions in Kensington and built filthy hovels to replace them GDP would be boosted. This is because you would pay some guys to demolish stuff, you would sell some land for 1% of its original value, and you would then pay someone a pittance to build something cheap and horrible there. But every time any money moves, it adds to GDP, even though you have destroyed incalculable amounts of value in the process. So a terrorist with a dirty bomb could do a lot of good for the UK economy...

Making our economy bigger than Germany's is one thing, making it "better than" is a value judgement that I am less comfortable with than others are.
Page 1 of 1 All times are UTC
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
https://www.phpbb.com/