Thursday , May 9 2024
Home / Mike Norman Economics / By Peter S. Goodman – Britain’s Big Squeeze: In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything

By Peter S. Goodman – Britain’s Big Squeeze: In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything

Summary:
This beautiful park is up for sale to developers - once it's gone, it's gone!“Everybody uses this park,” says Jackie Lewis, who raised two children in a red brick house a block away. “This is probably our last piece of community space. It’s been one after the other. You just end up despondent.”So much for the Thatcher miracle, Britain is more broke than ever. But where did the money go, maybe the banks took it all in their bail out?  But aren't these the technocrats who say they know how to run an economy? After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.r eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and

Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:

This could be interesting, too:

Stavros Mavroudeas writes Το ψηφοδέλτιο της ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ-Ανατρεπτική Συνεργασία στις ευρωεκλογές

Editor writes Real-world economists take note!

Angry Bear writes Inflation Is Hurting the Fast Food Giants

Mike Norman writes Cleveland Fed for May


By Peter S. Goodman - Britain’s Big Squeeze:  In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything

                        This beautiful park is up for sale to developers - once it's gone, it's gone!

“Everybody uses this park,” says Jackie Lewis, who raised two children in a red brick house a block away. “This is probably our last piece of community space. It’s been one after the other. You just end up despondent.”

So much for the Thatcher miracle, Britain is more broke than ever. But where did the money go, maybe the banks took it all in their bail out?  But aren't these the technocrats who say they know how to run an economy?

After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.r eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.


PRESCOT, England — A walk through this modest town in the northwest of England amounts to a tour of the casualties of Britain’s age of austerity.
The old library building has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home. The leisure center has been razed, eliminating the public swimming pool. The local museum has receded into town history. The police station has been shuttered.
Now, as the local government desperately seeks to turn assets into cash, Browns Field, a lush park in the center of town, may be doomed, too. At a meeting in November, the council included it on a list of 17 parks to sell to developers.

For a nation with a storied history of public largess, the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has delivered a monumental shift in British life. A wave of austerity has yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life.



Mike Norman
Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *