
‘Austerity, That’s What I Know’: The Making of a Young U.K. Socialist - tivert
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/world/europe/britain-austerity-socialism.html
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santmos
So the UK is facing a potential economic crisis and an exodus of businesses
due to Brexit, and yet they want an expansion of the welfare state?

Where are they going to get the money? The deficit is already 2% of GDP and
they're £1.7 trillion in debt.

Source:
[https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxe...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/june2018)

~~~
alimw
Corner shop economics is not a model for a nation. I take it you are still
working from Reinhart and Rogoff.

> The deficit is already 2% of GDP and they're £1.7 trillion in debt.

This after ten years of austerity. It's not what they promised.

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switch007
The selection of photos (or effects) really seem designed to portray Brighton
as some kind of grim slum where the sun never shines. Brighton has high levels
of sunshine and a beach. It is also close to the South Downs National Park
(with some very nice villages), and close to some stunning cliffs. It's not as
grim as the dark moody pictures would make you believe.

~~~
chippy
Brighton's also got one of the highest suicide rates in the country too which
was surprising to me as I grew up very close to there and love the place.

[https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/16885281.brighton-has-
third-...](https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/16885281.brighton-has-third-
highest-suicide-rate-in-the-country/)

~~~
Aromasin
I also love Brighton, but honestly it doesn't surprise me hugely. There's a
lot of common variables that coincide high suicide rates. It has nearly the
highest population density in the South East, and a very large student
demographic, both which are linked to high suicide rates. You could probably
pick out some other variables too, like the fact it's a commuter town, or it
has a large demographic of LGBT+ people, or it has a lot of artistic
'creative' types, who also all have high suicide rates compared to the average
population.

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Nursie
Is this sort of thing news to people in the US? Brighton and Bristol are
places people go to drop out (a little), and spend their youth getting
involved in fringe politics.

I'm sure there are cities in the US with that sort of scene too.

The irony is that both of these cities have also gentrified, massively, over
the last ten or so years. He is now railing at having trouble making ends meet
when working a bar kitchen, in about the lowest-end of chain pub we have in
the UK, and one of the most expensive towns (outside London). Not that there
is anything wrong with Wetherspoons, and everyone should have somewhere decent
to live. But...

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aries1980
> The panic eased when he found a job as a kitchen assistant at a J.D.
> Wetherspoon pub.

This is the same everywhere where people get a degree of a hobby subject. As a
renter myself, I have not been allowed to do fixed on the property I rent, so
I had to hire semi-professionals (gives you an invoice, but had a weekend
course) to fix some piping, painting, electricity issues, etc. I used to be
charged between £65-£75 per hour (10x the national minimum wage) and I had to
wait for weeks to arrange an appointment. I assume this is the same in every
developed country, where people go and get masters in “marketing” or
“international communication” but there is a huge demand for people who get
things done, even in questionable quality.

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kingraoul3
There is a spectre haunting Europe...

~~~
foolrush
Oh you are going down the historically inaccurate “S” in Nazisim?

~~~
natechols
Wrong context - it's a line from the Communist Manifesto.

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jakecopp
I'm sure it's designed to manipulate, but the photography is beautiful.

The last photo of the bus is absolutely gorgeous, almost looks like an oil
painting.

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krona
The UK tax burden is set to reach a 40 year high by 2025. It's currently at
~37% of GDP, which hasn't been seen in the past 30 years.

~~~
cmdkeen
The problem is that spending is at 38.95%, down from 43.75% in 2010. UK
Government spending in real terms is best described at a plateau for the past
10 years rather than slashed. The Government and Opposition were both happy
(for different political reasons) to portray what we experienced as mass cuts.
They weren't compared to what happened when the IMF imposed greater cuts in a
single year back in the 70s.

The credit crunch destroyed government revenues, in response the Government
ballooned the deficit rather than impose massive cuts. They've spent the past
decade not growing spending so that GDP growth has caught up - in the process
massively increasing the national debt.

It's great that young people are getting involved in politics. One can't but
help think of the much attributed quote: if a man is not a socialist by the
time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is
40, he has no brain.

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isoskeles
Does anyone have links to actual numbers on the austerity policy in the UK?

Every time an article like this pops up, I look and stupidly fail to find any
numbers specific to what years had what funding reduction in what program and
what the total funding of the program was before. So it's "austerity" but I
don't know what that means beyond spending cuts and tax increases.

~~~
icebraining
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2010_United_Kingdom_budge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2010_United_Kingdom_budget#Measures_introduced)
has some numbers, as does the main article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_aust...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_austerity_programme)

~~~
isoskeles
Sure although I found these and none of this is digestible in a meaningful
way. The best figure on the second link is a graph on disposable income, which
says nothing about the claims of spending reduction. Similarly, the first
page, which I also found, has "numbers" on it but nothing to give context to
relative spending, as in, to prior years.

The closest thing to what I am looking for is apparently here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_Kingdom).
To find it, you have to search for UK budget without mention of "austerity".

I assume this gets to the heart of why anyone would 'downvote' me here for
asking for simple information, there's a strict anti-intellectual force on HN
that has a problem with anyone digging in to what "austerity" actually means.
When you search for anything specifically related to "austerity" in the UK,
unsurprisingly, you're met with articles containing photographs, but no real
numbers to give you an idea of what "austerity" means in terms of relative
changes to the government's budget.

What would be REALLY nice is a chart like this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:US_Federal_Budget_Comparison_2016_vs._2015.png)
(but for the UK, and with more years to compare, or remove the comparison
aspect and just give me raw numbers, year by year). Presumably, I could find
this on some UK government website in PDF form, but why didn't NYT do this
instead of some puff piece about a kewl, hip young socialist.

~~~
yesenadam
>I assume this gets to the heart of why anyone would 'downvote' me here for
asking for simple information, there's a strict anti-intellectual force on HN
that has a problem with anyone digging in to what "austerity" actually means.

Yes, I found your downvotes disappointing too! Chin up, the votes often seem
to get better over time, as remedial voting is done - i.e. voting up of
greyed-out things when you wouldn't bother usually etc. Who cares anyway.
You're asking uncommon questions on here perhaps, and surprised they're
downvoted? Complaining about voting gets you more downvotes, rightly so.

The only reason I can think of is that you wrote 'stupidly', and read very
quickly your comment looks like a complaint about the article. Maybe if you'd
put more of this detail in the initial comment.

p.s. Be very careful of nursing political conspiracy theories on here.
("there's a strict anti-intellectual force on HN that ..") People are
convinced HN is right wing, left wing, and everything in between, and are
totally certain of that. The political topics do tend to be more..careless and
loose on here, perhaps unsurprisingly.

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panzerboy
These people, they love to play communists, they don’t have a fucking clue how
it actually is to live in a communist country, where there is no freedom of
speech, or going on strikes.

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richliss
Apparently, socialism for all is the answer when he...

1\. Chooses to study to be a doctor in one of the most expensive places in the
UK rather than staying at home and studying locally or moving up north where
rents are significantly cheaper.

2\. Gets a place to stay that is more expensive than he ca n afford in an
expensive town. Everything else, of course, will be expensive as a
consequence.

3\. Has to work to pay rent, chooses a job with anti-social hours which will,
of course, make his ability to concentrate and therefore study a very
difficult subject even harder.

4\. Whilst supposedly being in debt, they cover their body in tattoos which
are not cheap or necessary to survive.

5\. Drops out, which is a worse decision that borrowing your course fees and
putting them all on black in the casino as you've guaranteed lost your money,
also months of your life and others around will almost certainly consider it a
sign of poor decision making.

Everyone should watch the Yuri Bezmenov video on YouTube to show just how
effective the KGB subversion in the west was - these kids will give up
capitalism without even realising or believing they've been manipulated.

