El Barbudo wrote:I think you have touched upon one of the big mistakes of the 1950's.
Post-war, countries like Germany had to rebuild and they did so using the latest technology (not just out of foresight, they were buying new). Many other countries followed suit and reduced their unit costs in the process.
In the UK, however, there were government initiatives to bring in cheap labour from the former colonies ... and manufacturers allowed themselves to believe that would solve their unit cost issues.
In the very short-term it did.
Long term however, it merely exacerbated the situation and increased the size of the pool of de-skilled unemployed labour.

In the 1980's I visited an ICI fibre factory in Germany many times, which was consistently out-performing against its UK counterparts, largely because it had better machinery.
When it came to getting more investment, the better-performing plants got the re-investment, which was of course, the German plant. The UK plants were seen as under-performing ... when really they could have been just as good if not better.

Mintball wrote:Yes dear. That's right.



Building a sewerage system and then simply leaving it for 100 years was a good shift of resources, for instance.

Dally wrote:Because if, say, we competed with the Far East, Africa, South America in producing cheap textiles we could only stay in business by matching their wage structure, working harder, or by having more modern machinery. Assumimg new entrants use state of the art machinery (not always the casew I know, but rapidly becomes so - think how Japan developed very quickly) that means we'd have to compete on unit labour cost. As they tend to work all the hours God's sends in emerging economies we couldn't really work longer for the same pay, we'd need to work for the same or less per hour.

Unless, of course, you took your view that we just mark up high production costs ......and go bust instead!

XBrettKennyX wrote:At last someone who understands economics.

Mintball wrote::lol:

XBrettKennyX wrote:Biggest issue post war was the British working class thought the world owed them a living. Strike upon strike deterred investment and spurred on the perceived gap between them and "management". Management were largely useless and driven on by the strikes and "fear" of the working class, made short term and "secure" decisions.

Other countries, unsurprisingly so, filled the gap that this created with their own products.

cod'ead wrote:The world did owe them a fooking living, they spent six bloody years fighting for it

I suggest you speak to, or at least read contemoporary accounts written by some of the "British working class", who after fighting up to six years of a war, returned to find that little had ever changed. The "old money" still ruled like Victorian mill-owners and thought that the sun would never set on "our" empire. Ex-servicemen would just drop their weapons and pick up the picks, shovels, lathes etc that they'd left in 1939. While the women who were good enough to keep factories and farming working, while looking after families, would just go back to their kitchen sinks.

A re-alignment was needed, unfortunately it never went far enough.

XBrettKennyX wrote:Haha



To suggest there ought to be some other expectation is laughable.

XBrettKennyX wrote:Another utterly brilliant post.

Are you a member of Mensa by any chance?