made in britain...

Loughton_Monkey

Radiantsoul wrote: »

This is quite simply false.

So please explain how a modern country can become richer during a prolonged spell of negative balance of payments....

fc123

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

I thought the programme was really interesting, with things I wouldn't have envisaged. It does seem that Britain is good at inventing things, and let's hope that can be fostered - and patented. Is it a huge shame that Berners-Lee gave the 'World Wide Web' to the world rather than having a royalty placed on it? Perhaps our next Berners-Lee could rather give his invention to the British people, rather than freely to the world?

I was delighted with the spirit of the programme and Evan Davis's enthusiasm and positivity (sorry, cannot think of a better word than 'positivity'). Rather unBritish, I thought.


PS - have just checked out Tim Berners-Lee and apparently he's rather rich:
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/tim-berners-lee-net-worth/

I will try to watch this on catch up over the weekend as I make in England and have now started making overseas too (as I have had quality issues and the 'good' places can't do the volumes we need now).

The only issue I have with manufacturing all going to a far away place is, often, good design ideas/solutions can come about by accident when you are mucking around with some machinery or a technique in a real life factory situation.
Small scale production is still viable in the UK and get's small businesses going with their products....then , as they grow, they move the bulk overseas.....so the small manufacturer moves onto the next small customer.

I thought we led the world in processed food manufacturing....was food mentioned in the show?

misskool

fc123 wrote: »

I thought we led the world in processed food manufacturing....was food mentioned in the show?

No food this time. It was clothes, then brompton bikes, mclaren, aircraft
It's a series so maybe next time

Thrugelmir

CLAPTON wrote: »

we are the 6th largest manufacturing country

Helps having a supply of oil and gas which falls under the classification of manufacturing for statistical purposes. This is in decline. So real manufacturing will have to work doubly as hard to fill the void.

Mr_Mumble

Sorry for the long post. I didn't have the time to make it more concise!

michaels wrote: »

But with more expensive labour will come an older population and workers who expect holidays, unemployment insurance, health care, state pensions, planning controls etc and so will end up with higher taxes and just as many regualtaions. Surely Japan,Korea and Taiwan are the correct examples to look at to see that catch up growth does slow down.

In terms of culture I'd have thought Hong Kong along with Taiwan were the examples to look at. A low tax model such as these could see China fly past western-Europe in terms of wealth before we get to 2050.

Government spending as a % of GDP can be very low in these countries.

Taiwan:

In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 18.5 percent of GDP. Privatization and deregulation have reduced the government’s role in the economy, even in strategic sectors, but the state is still active in economic management.

Hong Kong:

In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, amounted to 18.6 percent of GDP. Sound fiscal management has helped Hong Kong to weather the global downturn. Altogether, discretionary stimulus measures taken since 2008 total an estimated 5 percent of GDP. The government has tried to maintain a balanced budget.

Blighty:

Government spending has risen steadily since the 1990s. In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, climbed to 47.3 percent of GDP. Fiscal stimulus measuring 2 percent of GDP has aggravated the deficit and national debt.

Now consider the rankings of wealth on a purchasing power parity (PPP best known example: Big Mac index) GDP per capita basis:

$45,736 -- Hong Kong
$35,227 -- Taiwan
$34,585 -- Great Britain
Wikipedia link - using IMF data since it's the most recent

The Taiwanese have just surpassed the British (admittedly discounting PPP Britons are still richer). Taiwan was a country that was poorer than many African nations post-WWII and was known for its shoe manufacture into the 1980s. Now with the likes of TSMC it is fabricating computer chips for the world. Hong Kong was a tranquil backwater into the 1960s too. That's the wonder of low taxes leading to high economic growth for you

Back to China! The, relatively, easy GDP growth of shifting rice farmers to Foxconn assemblers and catching up with the developed world has to stop eventually of course. Agree that the 'luxuries' of more vocation time and societal safety nets can drag on growth they needn't do so imho, it depends on governance when China gets wealthier.

This is a slightly political point: I don't see the Chinese spending more on foreign aid than it does its own transport infrastructure (Britain will be in this category next year when you include EU payments with the foreign aid target of 0.7%). I don't see the huge disincentives to industry via energy/green taxes happening in China that has closed down Britain's aluminum industry and is threatening to do the same with steel*. On issues from trade to agricultural subsidies I see China as at least the equal of the west and often in a superior position economically. China doesn't have the same dogmatic historic interests that stifle economic growth. Yes, this is a bizarre thing to say of a notionally 'Communist' government!

Many of the drags on British industry at the moment are not from bottom up demands of the populous but grandiose designs by political elites who enforce vast costs on consumers and business.

* Note I'm not talking of general environmental pollution such as poisoned lakes or smog-filled cities, China does have a problem that is likely to be dealt with. Rather, the pie-in-the-sky carbon dioxide limits that are based on projections from the same kind of Monte Carlo simulations that were falsified during the credit crisis/Lehman collapse.

Thrugelmir

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Back to China! The, relatively, easy GDP growth of shifting rice farmers to Foxconn assemblers and catching up with the developed world has to stop eventually of course.

In some industries this is the reason that wages are rising rapidly. A lack of in demand skilled labour. Also that Chinese labour is to an extent unreliable. With many not returning to their employers after the Chinese New Year holidays. Prefering to stay at home and enjoy their new found wealth with their families.

chewmylegoff

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Helps having a supply of oil and gas which falls under the classification of manufacturing for statistical purposes. This is in decline. So real manufacturing will have to work doubly as hard to fill the void.

i am no expert, but i thought that it was only the refining of crude which contributed to "manufacturing", with the extraction of crude counting towards "mining". that said, the refining side of the industry appears to be going down the pan rather quicker than the extraction side.

sandeep111

An alternative currency was needed, one that is not controlled by central banks and the overzealous spending of governments. The world wide web caused a growing free market to emerge in transactions for goods and services. The response to this was to introduce a secure digital currency for ease of global transactions. Some of these digital currencies were backed by real reserves of precious metals (E-Gold, GoldMoney). Being free to open an account, anybody could exchange their fiat currency for gold-backed digital currency. This can then be used as a form of online digital payment for goods and services or in possible P2P transactions as a way of sending money to anybody around the world. The digital gold currency can be exchanged from fiat currency by a number of global exchange providers. Governments had difficulty regulating this because it was a global digital currency issued through secure electronic payment systems through the internet, and gold reserves (often insured) are held in numerous vaults around the world, such as in the case of Gold money.

StevieJ

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Chinese wages are going up by around 10% per annum in real terms (6% inflation, mid-teens wage increases) while British wages are falling 3% in real terms (2% wage inflation, 5% inflation). If I were Chinese I'd be pretty happy if this continues, whose children will be wealthier in a couple of decades? The Chinese!

My worry isn't that that the Chinese have a competitive advantage over Britain now (no point Rory Mcllroy doing his own gardening if the kid down the road will do it for £50 per hour) but what happens when the Chinese worker makes similar wages to those in Britain and they still have an economic advantage because of better transport infrastructure, lower taxes, less burdensome regulation, cheaper energy costs and a higher skills base.

They will have some Chinese Mr Mumble whinging about wages in the Upper Congo and how they are taking all their jobs

Radiantsoul

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

So please explain how a modern country can become richer during a prolonged spell of negative balance of payments....

Well the balance of payments is necessarily always in balance. I assume you mean a deficit in the current account which means a nation is either selling assets or building up debts.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by richer, but it seems that there are perfectly valid reasons why a company like an individual might choose to borrow. A nation that is growing rapidly compared to its trading partners is likely to find its current being negative as a result of the way imports rise in proportion to national income.