From the blog post: [...] [...] (I wonder how much of this is true?)
From the blog post:
I used to wonder: why is France so rich? Despite its famously restrictive labour market regulations and high taxes, postwar France has consistently been about as rich as the UK, or richer. And it is significantly more productive [...]
[....] Ben Southwood has convinced me that France is rich because it gets the big things basically right. Housing supply there is freer: the overall geographic extent of Paris’s metropolitan area roughly tripled between 1945 and today, whereas London’s has grown only a few percent. Infrastructure is better: 29 French cities have trams, versus 11 here (likely one reason its second-tier cities are much more productive than Britain’s). It has nearly 12,000km of motorways versus around 4,000km here – and French motorways tend to be smoother and better kept (and three quarters are tolled, making congestion much less of a problem). Childcare is cheaper: about half the price per month, in part because they require half the staff. Energy is more abundant, as shown above. Because it gets those big four things right, it can afford to get a lot of other things wrong.
[...]
[A] general cause of these things being too expensive is that the UK has become a vetocracy, where a few people can wield a veto on new supply. This is formally the case when it comes to stuff like onshore wind, which we say is “banned” but, in actual fact, is permitted – unless a single local resident objects. It is de facto the case for housing and other property, where local groups influence both local and central government to stop new houses being built near them. I won’t get into the problems with housing again, but note as well that the cost of office space in Birmingham is 44% higher than it is in Manhattan, and that UK cities are desperately short on lab space: London has 90,000 square feet of available lab space, and Manchester 360,000 sq ft, whereas New York has 1.36 million sq ft, and Boston 14.6 million sq ft of lab space.
[...]
[...] I think the solution is to let small groups of people most directly affected by a new development vote on the development. I think this would make it possible to buy them off, and win the support or compliance of the most motivated opponents of the things we need to build.
Prior to France's current nuclear woes, their energy abundance was hugely impactful for both the domestic economy and political might. You can compare to Spain which has also become more...
Prior to France's current nuclear woes, their energy abundance was hugely impactful for both the domestic economy and political might. You can compare to Spain which has also become more influential in Europe since they have a much higher share of renewables that aren't affected by the war.
Energy abundance is a great thing. More countries should be looking to not just increase efficiency and switch to renewables but create an oversupply of cheap energy. Projects like desalination in California become a no-brainer if the energy requirements are negligible.
It sounds like a big company with major operations, but I think we'd need to know a lot more about shipping to know whether their profit margins were excessive. Apparently they were acquired for...
It sounds like a big company with major operations, but I think we'd need to know a lot more about shipping to know whether their profit margins were excessive.
Apparently they were acquired for $6.1 billion in 2022. By comparison, the GNP of France about $3 trillion. (In US dollars.) It doesn't sound like it's nearly big enough to make France rich?
This seems like such a sensible plan: it allows developers to densify an area without displacing residents. I wonder if this approach is attempted much in the US. I was once headhunted for a tech...
The housing association proposing the scheme put the proposals to a vote of existing residents, which would have guaranteed everyone who was displaced a new home in the redeveloped estate, plus cash compensating them for their trouble. With 91% turnout, 93% of voting residents voted in favour of the plan.
This seems like such a sensible plan: it allows developers to densify an area without displacing residents. I wonder if this approach is attempted much in the US.
So why does the UK get these things so badly wrong?
...
Childcare is another case – the number of registered childminders in the UK has fallen by 80% since the 1990s (and is still falling), probably driven by increasing requirements for qualifications and “death by a thousand cuts” mini-regulations, like the fact that a childminder today has to register with the Food Standards Agency and keep a legally-required “food diary” recording what food products you have bought, who you bought them from, the quantity and date, and log incidents like having “found a pack of sliced ham out of date in the fridge”.
But a general cause of these things being too expensive is that the UK has become a vetocracy, where a few people can wield a veto on new supply. This is formally the case when it comes to stuff like onshore wind, which we say is “banned” but, in actual fact, is permitted – unless a single local resident objects.... that UK cities are desperately short on lab space: London has 90,000 square feet of available lab space, and Manchester 360,000sq ft, whereas New York has 1.36 million sq ft, and Boston 14.6 million sq ft of lab space.
I was once headhunted for a tech job in the UK. When I crunched the numbers, I was gobsmacked by how poor the salaries were relative to the US and mainland Europe and how high cost of living was! I then felt that there was something fundamentally inefficient about the UK's economy.
Thanks for looking into this. The blog post says that “postwar France has consistently been about as rich as the UK, or richer. And it is significantly more productive.” I think he’s writing...
Thanks for looking into this. The blog post says that “postwar France has consistently been about as rich as the UK, or richer. And it is significantly more productive.” I think he’s writing pretty loosely there, in that the GDP/pop figures are roughly similar?
For productivity he cites this article by Thomas Piketty. Productivity is GDP per hour worked. Piketty warns that this is simplistic. It looks like the difference is mostly due to lower hours worked in France.
So it seems like the question is why GDP/pop is similar in France, despite working significantly less. Or, putting it the opposite way, why doesn’t the UK benefit from more hours worked?
From the blog post:
[...]
[...]
(I wonder how much of this is true?)
Prior to France's current nuclear woes, their energy abundance was hugely impactful for both the domestic economy and political might. You can compare to Spain which has also become more influential in Europe since they have a much higher share of renewables that aren't affected by the war.
Energy abundance is a great thing. More countries should be looking to not just increase efficiency and switch to renewables but create an oversupply of cheap energy. Projects like desalination in California become a no-brainer if the energy requirements are negligible.
It sounds like a big company with major operations, but I think we'd need to know a lot more about shipping to know whether their profit margins were excessive.
Apparently they were acquired for $6.1 billion in 2022. By comparison, the GNP of France about $3 trillion. (In US dollars.) It doesn't sound like it's nearly big enough to make France rich?
This seems like such a sensible plan: it allows developers to densify an area without displacing residents. I wonder if this approach is attempted much in the US.
I was once headhunted for a tech job in the UK. When I crunched the numbers, I was gobsmacked by how poor the salaries were relative to the US and mainland Europe and how high cost of living was! I then felt that there was something fundamentally inefficient about the UK's economy.
Thanks for looking into this. The blog post says that “postwar France has consistently been about as rich as the UK, or richer. And it is significantly more productive.” I think he’s writing pretty loosely there, in that the GDP/pop figures are roughly similar?
For productivity he cites this article by Thomas Piketty. Productivity is GDP per hour worked. Piketty warns that this is simplistic. It looks like the difference is mostly due to lower hours worked in France.
So it seems like the question is why GDP/pop is similar in France, despite working significantly less. Or, putting it the opposite way, why doesn’t the UK benefit from more hours worked?