In the early 1950s the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Richard Austin Butler (arguably the best conservative prime minister we never had) told us that if the British economy grew at an annual rate of 3% we would double our standard of living in 25 years. In other words, be twice as rich.
Butler didn't spell it out, but if we continued that rate for another 25 we would double it again, thus becoming four times as rich as in the early 50s.
Well, we never quite made a steady rate of 3%. Other countries did, some by much more, and that is why we have fallen behind in the world league tables - 27th in a world of nearly 200 countries (some of those ahead of us on that list are very small, such as Macau, and San Marino and some such as the Isle of Man would not normally be counted as countries.)
So we're still holding our own in the "big league."
Just to spell it out, inn 1948, the year the NHS was founded, our per capital income was £228.43. In 2023, the latest year for which figures for both years were available on the chart I consulted, it was ££39,315.08.
Adjusting for inflation, I calculate that, 70+ years later we are indeed just a whisker short of being four times as rich as we were then,
The evidence is not just in the figures but all around us.
Then most houses didn't have an indoor lavatory of bath: now all but a few do, and central heating to boot.
Then only a tiny minority of families had cars: now a majority do, and many of them several.
Then the standard holiday was a week at Blackpool if you were lucky: now not one but several holidays abroad (the Grand Tour?) are common.
Then secondary education for all had just been introduced and the school leaving age was fifteen: now it is effectively 18, and more than half go on to further or higher education.
Then the expectation life was 66 for men and 71 for women: today's new- born can expect to live into their 80s.
If in those post war years you had asked the average family how they would feel if they were twice as rich they wold have been delighted. Four times as rich would be beyond the dreams of average.
Yet here we are: mosst of us wallowing in affluence, and with the resources to make that almost everybody if we shred more equitably
And it is high time we recognised it.
The comment by my anonymous interlocutor in the previous post:
"The idea that Britain is an affluent country is definitely 'fake news'. Britain hasn't been a rich country for a while, and is rapidly slipping down the global ladder towards abject poverty."
is obvious nonsense.
In the much more e difficult circumstance of the 1940s and fifties our government created the NHS, introduced universals secondary eduction, family allowances and attempted to provide care "from the cradle to the grave" in order to abolish poverty.
To claim that we can't afford that same aim now is an obvious con: "fake news" indeed disseminated by the "haves" in order for them to have yet more.
It is high time our political leaders had the guts to tell us the truth, and our voters (on the Finnish model described in the previous post) had the sense to recognise it.
I really don't understand what point is supposed to be being made here?
ReplyDeleteOur income, inflation-adjusted, is higher than in 1948. Well, yes.
Our living standards have gone up since 1948. Again, well, yes. That's what will happen if you get richer.
The question is, have our incomes gone up enough that we could afford the kind of public spending you advocate, where every lazy benefits scrounger is given a luxury standard of living? Where we could afford to invite every single person in the world who is looking for a better life to our shores, and give them all free healthcare?
And the answer to that is, obviously not. Yes, our incomes are more than in 1948 — that's why we live better lives now than we did then. But our incomes are still limited. And whereas once we were a rich country, we are now getting poorer and poorer as we are overtaken by others due to the fact that the productive parts of our economy are strangled by bureaucracy, regulations, burdensome planning obstructionism, and hugely high tax levels that hit in multiple indirect ways by discouraging hiring, by reducing incentives to work hard and innovate and take risks, and directly by removing investment from the bits of the economy that could actually make us richer (and so raise our living standards) and are instead spaffed up the wall on benefits.
in order to abolish poverty.
ReplyDeleteOh, and poverty has been abolished in Britain. There is no real poverty in Britain. There is only 'relative poverty' which is made-up nonsense.