Problem with being the victor I guess makes it easier to ignore faults in the system.
Better British Economy post 1979?
- Thread starter Hood
- Start date
The problem went way back from the Late Victorian era, actually. World War 1 should have been the catalyst for change, but it did not in the end.
A major issues is that, at that time, British economic policies were laissez-faire (and free trade), which proved ineffective during World War 1. Since 1918, especially since the 1930s, economic policies were increasingly interventionist and statist.
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Would the 20s be a better time to go back to? Or is that to early? I mean one thing if that was the case would probably be avoiding the gold standard in some way.
Post WW2 seems to be the best era to get things rolling but you're talking 1950 as the starting pistol it seems.
Ireland has a very different starting point from Britain in the 80s, much of the groundwork for what was achieved began in the late 1950s and 60s.
A small note, he mentioned the government in 1957 as being O'Kellys, perhaps technically true, really was De Valera and then Lemass after 59, the president has little power.
Ireland benefitted from corporate tax and no longer having all its eggs in one market, that being Britains, having joined the EEC, along with going full neoliberal which worked great until it didn't, social partnership, property boom and the likes.
Lower corporate tax and encouraging innovation are probably the best takes from the irish model.
something something bono tax evasion
POD is 79, have to work with the cards given.
Would probably be better since it was a period of growth in some regards in particular I think the aerospace sector was doing quite well.
The NHS' biggest problem is that every party has a plan to "save" it so every five years they go through some kind of re-organisation. Just as they get everything bedded in and starting to work there's an election, a new government comes in and their next re-organisation starts again.
That and being starved of cash and having areas hived off and contracted out to the likes of Branson, obviously.
Not certain how you get that Social Partnership was Neoliberal, it gave massive increases in public spending to both public service and social welfare spending along with the massive capital spending program from the 90s onwards, along with bringing in substantial improvements in HR area regulation. The Property boom is an entirely separate issue that I could go into depth with but it would totally derail the thread. A big area you seem to be ignoring is the massive work of the IDA from the 50's onwards as well.
To clarify, social partnership was not so much neoliberal (followed more along the lines of the corporatism FF has been kinda following since the 60s?) that, along with the likes of the IDA are mentioned under 'the groundwork for what was achieved began in the late 1950s and 60s.'
Property boom was facilitated by haphazardly implemented neoliberal policy, but as you say, this kind of thing could have a thread of its own. (Perhaps it should?)
The property boom was more about lowing interest rates to match that on the rest of the eurozone when the Irish interest rate needed to be higher.
This flooded the Irish economy with cheap credit and fuelled the housing boom.
Eurozone had low-interest-rate due to low growth. Ireland hand high growth so need higher interest rates to reduce borrowing and increase saving.
The euro gave Ireland stable currency to trade with the eurozone but at the price of creating a credit bubble.
The UK joining the eurozone I do not think would be a good idea.
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Add in the construction sector going nuts for many reasons (internally the housing sector of the CIF was identified as the likely crisis point in the early 90s), and the desperation of FF to keep things going till after the mid '00s election (from the Finance minister no less, thanks Biffo), and the epic level of abject failure of oversight across the finance sector and you got a totally predictable outcome. Add in the historic issue Ireland has with Home ownership and the labour boom from the Eastern Expansion and ultimately top off at the same time the global economy took a massive recession and it was always going to end badly.
Tightening credit was recommended and ignored as we're all aware, but lax (and often corrupt) zoning, along with broad tax incentives for rural renewal (examples such as building housing estates in leitrim while the population there declined) were also significant reasons behind it. I think something like 30,000 houses were built in the rural renewal scheme and in the same timescale the population in the region only increased by about 18,000.
Property and Housing became a speculative asset.
Indeed, but for a different thread perhaps. Should I set something up along the lines of no property bubble in Ireland? far enough in the past yet?
Perhaps best to really, I mean its been over a decade and yet its impact still shape pretty much all the issues we have currently in Ireland so it might be worth it, as imo theres a lot more to discuss than the headlines of the day.
The tripartite system is an interesting possibility, in our timeline the technical schools weren't funded sufficiently and Labour was opposed to the idea so discouraged them post-1964. If properly funded from the start and apprenticeships organised then I think it could only have helped. That is very much a pre-1979 issue though.
I'm guessing they were worried that it would see shipyard closures and redundancies due to work on cruise ships likely being concentrated in only one or two locations?
There were a whole host of problems with shipbuilding. Being old and established the yards were laid out wrong for newer post-war construction methods, and with rail lines or buildings having often been built just outside the property boundaries it made it difficult to expand or reorientate the footprint of them. They were slow to introduce new technology both in the design and planning stages and when actually building the vessels. There could be a half-dozen or more craft unions representing different parts of the workforce that fiercely defended their demarcated areas so negotiations could be a nightmare.
Immediately after World War II there was more than enough work to go around building replacement ships and then new ones during the post-war economic boom that these issues weren't a major problem so things just carried on as was. When things began to slow down and new competitors in the Far East started appearing it meant it was the worst time to start having to make major changes in the industry. In an ideal world they would have started making then in the second half of the 1950s or the 1960s so that they could weather the storm but that's with hindsight.
IIRC that's something of a myth, the Conservatives having started to recover and the polls turning back toward them prior to the Falklands conflict.
I can remember reading that another cause of this was North Sea oil and gas pushing the pound up against other currencies. Not sure what you could do to try and combat this. One option is what the Swiss did for several years from 2011 to 2014 to try and manage the franc when it got too strong – have the central bank start printing new money and use it to buy foreign currency whilst announcing unlimited support for the programme. Whether you could keep it going long enough to get through the worst period would be a question though, and other countries might take a dim view.
Yes, take your point, but one could say that Thatcher was lucky in having Foot as Leader of the Opposition...🙂
Thatcher can't be replaced. Without her there would have been no change whatsoever. The same old failure to to address problems would have continued, because the same old attitudes would persist on the part of the ruling political class, management and unions.
In reality, Thatcher was not a Tory, but a Radical and that's why the Tory hierarchy hated her...she upset their comfort zone.
To make a difference without Thatcher, the POD needs to be earlier. Possibly Clause IV is abolished in 1957, as Gaitskell wanted, and Gaitskell becomes PM in 1959.
Nah, if anything Clause IV needs to be strengthened and strong police action taken against wreckers or saboteurs. Leave NATO, the UN, the IMF while we're at it too.