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punk rebel ecks posted:Margret Thatcher isn't looked too kindly here on these boards. But from what I have heard from some people in the United Kingdom is that prior to Thatcher the country was a bureaucratic nightmare. The unions would regularly shutdown the cities over strikes. Nationalization of many key industries severely underperformed. The country was way behind in innovation. And taxes were insanely high. It's too late for an effort post, but broadly speaking the key historical facts taken in isolation are correct. Nationalised industries were uncompetitive and lossmaking. There were significant strikes during the 70s compared to previous decades (although more days lost to strike in individual years after Thatcher's election). Investment was low and income taxes were higher in the 70s than in the 80s (although overall tax take as a % of GDP was higher under Thatcher.) The UK had to go to the IMF for a loan in the late 70s which was something of a knock to our national prestige. There are a ton of reasons for why each of these things was true and blaming it on the unions or bureaucracy is too simplistic. quote:Essentially the country was a basketcase and the privatizations Thatcher did, while some going too far, were mostly necessary. This is far more controversial for a short post and I'll leave it for someone else to talk about it properly. My one sentence summary is that just because the UK economy was messed up in the 70s doesn't mean that Thatcherism, a fixation on money supply, privatisation and de-industrialisation was the optimal strategy for dealing with it - the human cost was enormous (e.g. doubling of unemployment and long-term devastation of mining regions) and it potentially didn't need to be.
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Mar 24, 2016 01:07
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Coohoolin posted:She stole milk from schoolchildren. This is a bit incorrect - the treasury were driving the abolition of free school milk from all schoolchildren in a climate of "cuts must be made" and Thatcher argued against this in cabinet. There was an existing trend of cutting free school milk entitlement that started under Labour abolishing it for secondary school kids. In the end, the compromise was removing it from children between seven and secondary school age (but not if they had medical need etc., or were in special needs schools). The money saved was used to fund a primary school building programme. I can't say how effective it was, but I do see that she apparently established more comprehensive schools than any other secretary of state for education, so she must have been building something with the money. Definitely 'household budget' economics though. Prince John fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 11:53
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