This is what happens when you have a country trying to become more American over time. We want European public services with American tax rates. What we’ve ended up with is American public services, and American tax rates, but with none of the political or economic power of America. The economy is hampered by the privatisation of necessities.
However, I also think comparing with America is disingenuous. I’d much rather live in a country where my government is semi-competent, versus one where it is totally incompetent. You couldn’t pay me to live in America.
The way I see it, living here in the US, is that since the 1970s corporate America has been in the business of extracting wealth from the great middle class that came out of WW2 spending, and US hegemony over the world:
Cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cutting social spending in order to commercialize and tax social infrastructure that used to be free such as childcare, healthcare, elderly care, education and so forth. De-industrializing sending blue collar jobs overseas so that corps can extract even more wealth faster.
In many poorer areas, this vein of wealth has been tapped out and local communities are desolate, misery-drug addicted holes.
Britain did not have that same post-war middle class boom to the same degree, and taking on the same wealth extractive policies will result in little to no gain, IMO because there’s little wealth to extract.
The above is purely my own uneducated uninformed drivel.
This is exactly it. The American economy is riding on a semi-permanent high of being the dominant economic power of the entire world, especially since the USSR fell. They maintain this with a combination of military power and economic power, projected globally.
Copying that simply will never garner the same results
I think one can further break down “economic power” between industrial strength, control of the largest financial (stock, bond, futures) markets, and control over the de facto global currency.
Honestly the subhead could have been the headline if prefixed with “Britain:”
A case study in self-sabotage
The US is an aggressive imperial nation that seeks dominance over nations globally, including its allies. Farage is the US’ man in Britain and will govern on their behalf, opening up the UK to US capital and complete US dominance. We are being undermined and destabilised before being subsumed and stripped of our resources. This article in the Atlantic, a neocon outlet, is simply a propaganda puff piece for Farage, the US’ man in Britain.
Farage will be a disaster, but international capital will make a killing. The US is a poor nation run by theives who have concentrated all wealth in their hands while 60% live on $40k or less. It is a cleptocracy. It’s economy is a ponzi scheme built on the dollar’s reserve currency advantage.
This article mixes small exagerated truths with bullshit.
60% live on $40k or less
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html
Median household income was $83,730 in 2024
Look up the difference between median and mean and how extreme outliers can skew a median value and mask inequality
Your statement was about 60%. Median was the correct value to cite.
I guess they’re saying if you excluded the top 10% and only considered the 90th percentile and below (most regular people), the median of that value would be living on less than $40k a year. Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a lot lower and their “60% live on less than $40k” is understating the issue. That’s a household with two parents earning minimum wage or doing gig work which is an incredibly common low income setup.
This is a really interesting article and I encourage everyone to take the time and read it. Makes me feel bad for people in England.
