Why is Britain poor? With Rory Sutherland

The Bank of England is no longer independent. The global banks run the western world.

They make sure the national debt keeps rising and rising and thus the interest repayments keep rising and rising until we go bankrupt.

Our true masters are those who own these globalist banks.

Read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and then decide for yourself how much things have really changed in over 120 years.

Sadly the NHS barely measure outcomes outside of death. Instead they measure targets and waiting lists.
Patient experience is tracked but in totally ridiculous ways.(Our patient experience score was an average of 3.6 last year down from 3.7 the year before... except 'this year' is referring to the year before 9 months ago!)

A middle aged New Yorker having a heart attack while going through divorce is fantastic for the economy

Did Trump watch this or something??

GDP is a poor metric of progress. GDP per capita is far more useful. But yes the sum of human happiness does not come from GDP.

You are so right... UK Health and Safety is based on "As Low as Reasonably Practicable" - this is not "as low as possible" but it is easier for dumb people to define as low as possible and we end up spending disproportionate money fixing almost insignificant/hypothetical problems.

nothing happens unless a sale is made!!!!frederick sutherland

Love Rory but the interviewer interrupted him and tried to look clever rather than let him speak. Ridiculous way to talk to a respected person as a complete nobody.

The poor man is carrying the whole show. Kate Andrews is useless.

It's not rocket science.
GB has been "encouraged " by the US to put legal eagles in politics with little to no experience of the real world to mirror them.
Add to that the mass importation under Blair of french style bureaucracy. Stagnant by nature and definition as new layers are created each year of BS jobs to clogg up the system.
The whole system needs purging to free up the systems of decades of created constipation.

"Green energy" does not work! End of!

FDR took the US population from rags to riches, but the hyper-rich suffered. So, the first chance they got, they rebelled which culminated in Reagan and neoliberalism.

What a load of cobblers. It's energy policy specifically oil and gas.

After reading most of the comments, I have come to the conclusion that everyone wants to blame everyone else. They want to blame the landlords, those on the dole, the 1%ers, the illegal migrants, the pensioners, the farmers, the Oxbridge crowd., etc. Look in the mirror, you are, and only you, are responsible for your happiness, wealth and other value added life events. When you blame everyone else you personally do not take responsibility. If you really want to make change, reach out to your neighbors and find the 70% of things you agree on ,. then be a force to reckon with in your local councils, counties, and federal government.

Because you imported 3d world people and are becoming a 3d world poor country. And a woke one at that. But only rich people are woke. The poor have other priorities. So being woke will provoke woke extinction. Have fun.

Green energy will never be cheaper they will find a way to make it expensive

It isn't. If it were poor people would be streaming out of the UK to France, Spain or North Africa

Im sorry this idea that Britain is poor is bollox.
Having moved to NZ 14 years ago I have realised just how much tosh the ordinary people of the UK are fed.
In all the years I have been here I have never heard the word “austerity “.
My friends back in the UK are always talking about it, it’s a big worry to most, but it keeps them in line.
When your constantly worried about loosing your job and not being able to pay the massive mortgages that most are forced to have it tends to keep people from asking for wage rises or asking to many questions about who gets most of the cake.
Now don’t get me wrong, we in NZ are facing similar issues however if you get into Google earth and just have a virtual drive through most NZ towns and cities you will notice that every community has nice play areas for the kids.
Lovely climbing frames, swings, generally skate board parks.
In Bristol when we lived there it was incredibly difficult to find a nice playground for our son to enjoy.
Now if you look at the GDP of the UK against that of NZ it’s massive in comparison.
Without a doubt Brexit has hit the UK financially but the idea that Britain is poor is ludicrous.
I recommend that anyone who doubts this takes a trip into the City of London, go to one of there nice posh bars and just ease drop on the city boys that throw money over the bar like confetti.
And these aren’t really the mega rich, there just the grunts.
The super rich have been super rich for generations and have always treated the general British public like shit.
I recommend that you get your kids to travel, they will see that the world is a big place and the United Kingdom is not actually the centre of the earth.

WARREN CLAIM2D, FALSELY, TO BE OF INDIAN LINAGE TO SECURE HER POSITION AT THE UNIVERSITY, NOT TRUE PATHOLOGICAL LIAR,

Rory is spot on here. He also inadvertently described the corporate sector in terms of lack of innovation and imagination. Everything has been boiled down to 'data and analysis', and have the time it's all made up but packaged in a way to make it look scientific.

I nearly disliked and left don't put your own magazine ad such terrible places

GDP means nothing and does not equate to higher wages or quality of life. Canada have gotten their GDP to rise for the past decade or so by simply importing as many people as possible. House prices have risen to unaffordable levels, wages have stagnated and the people have just figured that out. She is completely wrong and demonstrates the problem with economists.

When you help elect madmen best to say that madmen are good - insane

GDP is important to an extent but its also per capita + what the cost of basic necessities are (food & housing etc). Some countries with lower GDP per capita incomes than britain have higher disposable incomes and quality of life & leisure time because of these factors.

Most people in cities sleep at 11pm because most people in cities have real jobs and get up for their commutes at 6am or 7am. This guy is intellectually challenged.

Love just about everything that Rory talks about, and he is truly a visionary. As I write this, a CEO of an American health care insurance company was recently assassinated in the streets of New York, and the extraordinary response in support of the assassin was telling. Is this what we have come to where we treat a murderer as a hero? The shareholder value movement has to be curtailed for the misery it spreads.

Welcome to a government dominated by beauocrats and "experts".

Why the mobile phone signal on the Edinburgh and Glasgow train is "patchy" you wonder wtf the Scottish government is investing in for business. (you can have radio signals in tunnels). I understand it is impossible to run the trains reliably (I don't really but that is another problem) but why exacerbate it?

He’s correct. The only possible move that will enable some form of survival in the United Kingdom, is a U.S. style ‘New Deal’

Get a group of clever and willing people and sit them down to decide the best course for the country, not the Party

Self Righteous elites are destroying us .

folks bills are so high so some people can't live without overtime or a extra job. so how will 4 days week going to turn out ? Feels like we got people in power that shouldn't be in power. Get the smartest people in power not the upperclass that is utterly clueless.

WTF are on his ears?

100 % wrong... the REAL issue is that all "economist" in government are Marxist keynesian... which are just brainless idiots... put a real economist liberal or Austria school and you will see the difference

The experiences I've had in my career tell me that British organizations (tech companies in my case, but I know that government is far worse) are utter shite because there's no meritocracy. All the people at the top failed upwards through corruption, malfeasance and greed.

share holding. Thats why.

The main reason for the increase in the cost of housing in the last couple of decades was the decision of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to reduce regulation of the banking sector. Low interest rates and the fact that banks and building societies started to give mortgages based on 5 or 6 times annual earnings instead of 2.5 times led to people entering into bidding wars. That in turn created a housing price bubble and trapped some people in negative equity for a while. Housing prices have continued to rise to the point where young couples can’t get on the housing ladder and interest rates remain low hurting savers. There is now a catch 22 where saving money is hardly worth while and raising interest rates would severely damage those with mortgages. That all started with allowing people to over borrow.

Who is this goddess?

Tax breaks for retired people? Wow! Dangerous stuff! Allowing people to keep some of their own money....Phew!

I so agree with him.

Rory has a blind spot about house prices. He never mentions the fact that the population of the UK has exploded. 1980 it was 56M, today it is 69M . An increase of 13M which explains why house prices have gone up so much. A simple matter of supply and demand.

Horrible vocal fry, Miss !

Yup. 100%. This whole phenomenon is due to de - ndustrialisation.

I have been working on a large scale power project to connect our grid to another European country - a £1.5 billion project that will bring huge benefits to U.K. households — since 2017. here we are at the end of 2024 with several million spent on huge reports and paperwork but no progress. The investors are now abandoning this project. It’s just too damned hard. Investing now into the USA instead.

my first old and wise boss said we should start the graduates on 200k per year and finish them on 40k, with everything tuned to getting family home done and paid off by 40. zero pressure at home. single income family possible. would stay with us until they retired..

Wow, that was a terse and abrupt ending to the interview. The host obviously got offended and was made to feel stupid. Quite funny.

GDP is the most awful and flawed measure. It does not discriminate between the addition of wealth into the pot and the movement of money around the pot. If one can't see that then one hasn't thought enough about it.

I never heard so much rubbish in my life.

I like Spectator TV, but I find the whiny nasal voice of the host most annoying.

How do we address housing affordability without creating adversarial relationships between existing homeowners and their communities? I think the following proposal offers a potential partial solution that aligns with your focus on behavioral economics while addressing the core issues of property value capture and community development.

I've been thinking about how we might be approaching housing supply from the wrong angle. In markets where houses sell for significantly more than their construction costs, there's an opportunity to create value even while reducing market prices. The key is finding a way to let existing homeowners capture some of this value while increasing housing supply. Rather than seeing new development as pure competition, homeowners could profit from participating in it.

Local governments offer existing homeowners a transformative opportunity: a 0% mortgage on their current home to finance new housing development in their community. In markets where housing scarcity has pushed prices well above construction costs, this creates immediate value. A home that sells for $500,000 might only cost $300,000 to build (including builder profit). While both the new and existing homes may see their market value decrease (say from $500,000 to $450,000) due to increased supply, the homeowner still profits significantly. They can sell the new house for $450,000, repay the $300,000 mortgage, and be left with $150,000 - more than offsetting the $50,000 decrease in their original home's value. By providing builders with immediate payment rather than speculative risk, we make them partners in community growth rather than adversaries. Their expertise and ability to create housing at below-market costs becomes the crucial link in transforming static property value into community development.