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CONDITION: Historical Echoes of A34e Spanish Civil War:

Perhaps the most useful to have heard in 2022:

W.H. Auden: Spain: a€~And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city

"O no, I am not the mover;

Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the

"Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.

I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

"What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for

I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spaina€Da€!

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FOCUS: Thinking About Adam Toozea€™s Take on A%e Absolute Decline of Britain:

The extremely sharp and learned Adam Toozea€”who has read and thought about everything, turns over 
his must-read Chartbook newsletter this week toa€! himself.

He has a very nice piece about British declinea€”and about how, this time, it really is very 
different, and pretending that this is the same sort of a€cedeclinea€D that Britons have been 
worrying about since Kiplinga€™ s Recessional is to miss the mark pretty much completely:

Adam Tooze: Nostalgia for decline in deconvergent Britain: a€™ The austerity squeeze of the 
Tory-led coalition in 2010 was not the first of its kind. Buta€l the British economy in 2010 was no 
longer in the state of earlier decades. The 2008 shock was unprecedented and as Burn-Murdoch 
emphasizes the shocks that lay ahead were more dangerousa€!. This is indeed a new era. Declinist 
discourse always had an element of temporal
confusion about it, but to continue to indulge in that shadow-boxing, in the face of 
discontinuities that register on the scale not of decades but of hundreds of years, is to reduce 
political and economic debate to national pantomimea€!

Evolution of real annual average wages

$’000, constant 2020 PPPs


80

70                              Peer countries*

60

50

40

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010                 2015 2020

Let me note two more of Adama€™ s points. The first is that the extremely sharp (but I would argue 
not-wise) Perry Anderson especially misses the mark. He continues to claim that the particular 
interpretation of British relative decline that he has been pushing since the early 1960sa€”that 
Britain a€oemodernizeda€n too early and not enougha€”still have (if, indeed, they ever had) 
relevance:

Perry Anderson: Ukania Perpetua?: a€~Agrarian capitalism, controlled by large landownersa€!. 
Trade-unionisma€! timorously respectable and largely apoliticala€!. Nora€! any disestablished 
intelligentsia.... Labour... administered the British statea€! contenting itself with provision of 
welfare... and nationalization of loss-making industries, without... structural encroachment on... 
capital  Economic declinea€! traceable back to its

early low-tech manufacturing basea€! the blows of two world warsa€! nominal victory in each case 
preserving rather than destroying accumulated archaismsa€!

Tooze is right and Anderson is simply wrong, as best as I can see. Whatever merits Anderson may or 
may not have had as an explanation of British relative decline from Benjamin da€™ Israeli through 
John Major, it does not apply to today.

The second is that Nicholas Crafts (I am really sorry we were never able to assemble a coalition to 
make an attractive offer for him to coe to Berkeley) and Terence Mills play Hamlet without the 
Prince, in that they neglect to focus on the role played by Tories in producing the last fifteen 
disastrous years:

Nicholas Crafts and Terence C. Mills: Is the UK productivity slowdown unprecedented?: a€~The 
current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7% below the pre-2008 trend 
path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity shortfall ten years after the 
start of a downturn. On this criterion the slowdown is unprecedented in the last 250 years. We 
conjecture that this reflects a combination of
adverse circumstances, namely, a financial crisis, a weakening impact of ICT and impending 
Brexita€l

I concur with Adama€™ s judgment of Crafts and Mills: the financial crisis and the weakening impact 
on economic growth of Information and Communications Technologies hit everywhere. Fear of Brexit 
was not a thing until 2016. Certainly Brexit has been an additional catastrophe, but the sharp 
divergence from the growth path of the other Dover-Circle-Plus economies started in the late 2000s, 
and started even though Britain was not caught in the
catastrophic euro straitjacket of continental Europe. You cannot explain what was different about 
2010-2016 Britain by pointing to things that hit the Dover-Circle-Plus entire.

Its Tories what done it, as Adam cites John Burn-Murdoch saying:

John Burn-Murdoch: Britaina€™ s winter of discontent is the inevitable result of austerity: a€~A 
decade of Tory spending cuts left the country vulnerable to the external shocks of the past two 
yearsa€!

And, of course, Nick Clegg done it, in giving the baton to the Tories without imposing any 
conditions whatsoever on their policies.

My viewa€”which may be wronga€”has been that Britaina€™ s long relative economic decline since the 
heights of 1870 has been due to its persistent refusal to invest in its people and in its 
technology-driving industries. You can say that the first of these has 
cultural-ideological-political rootsa€”Tories fearing that if people get over-educated they will 
not respect their betters, and Labour fearing that if people get over-educated they will not 
respect their
parentsa€”and you could be right. You can blame the second on the British Empire making it just too 
easy to to invest abroad and count on the power of the gunboats to make foreign investments safe. 
You can then say that those institutional habits persist to this day, and you could be right as 
well. Perhaps. Other things were surely at work as well. One of the good points in Andersona€™ s 
a€oeUkania Perpetuaa€D is this one:

Markets were not self-redressing: centralized direction of one kind or another was needed to 
correct them. But of the four variants at work elsewherea€”dirigiste planning in France, industrial 
banks in Germany, state-keiretsu coordination in Japan, corporatist concertation in Austria or 
Swedena€”the necessary social agents were all lacking in Britain: neither its bureaucracy, nor its 
finance, nor its labour movement was equipped for the
taska€!

Historically, the most successful of thea€! North Atlantica€”the Global Northa€”what I have decided 
the Dover-Circle-Plus economiesa€! managed to figure out how to deal with the second-greatest 
market failure of capitalist economies. That is the complete and total failure of the market to 
recognize and properly promote the key economic treasure that is a countrya€™ s community of 
engineering practice. (Parenthetically, the absence from Andersona€™ s
list of Americaa€™ s combination of Hamiltonian government and continental market-scale isa€! 
rather odd.) The obvious way to try to reverse what Tooze correctly identifies as Britaina€™ s no 
longer relative but now absolute decline is to essentially reverse everthing that has been done 
since the Tories took power:


Plus:

• Reverse austerity;

• Re-progressivize taxes;

• Prioritize education;

• Rejoin the European Union;

• Triple-down on government support for high-tech and engineering;

• Support Greater London;

• Tax the rich of Greater London and the various Tory gentry of the shires to build the 
infrastructure that Britain ex-London so desperately needs.

In short, the growth agenda. But for real. Rishi Sunak could do that: He has 356 Tories versus 290 
others in the Commons. Tell them its his way or the highwaya€”that either they back him in a 
complete policy reversal, or he pulls the pin on the grenade and gets an immediate snap election 
from King Charles III, in which case they lose their seats. Tell them that sensible pro-growth 
policies might turn things around in time for the January 2025 election, but that
every day radical pro-growth policy reform is delayed the window narrows.

Sunak wona€™t, of course. Instead, it will be Tory business-as-usual for the economy coupled with 
culture-war attempts to create a base of Handmaida€™ s-Tale counties outside of Greater London. 
That, of course, will be as poisonous to prospects for growth in Britain ex-Greater London as the 
similar Republican-Party culture-war creation of Handmaida€™ s-Tale red states in the United States.
Starmer might get his chance come 2025.

My only disappointment at Adama€™ s newsletter post was that I was hoping to get a preview of what 
the Resolution Foundationa€™ s own policy recommendations are going to be. But, alas!, that is 
absent.
And you should really, really subscribe to Adam Toozea€™ s Chartbook:

AT

Chartbook

A newsletter on economics, geopolitics and history from Adam Tooze. More substantial than the 
twitter feed. More freewheeling than what you might read from me in FT, Foreign Policy, New 
Statesman.
By Adam Tooze

Type your emaila€|       Subscribe

Median household income per personf

Annual $'000 at PPP*, 2019 prices

45

j US

.        40

Canada---------

Australia
Germany


France

30

Britain

25

2000       05        10        15        20

*At purchasing-power parity + After taxes and transfers

The Economist

The Tories’ austerity programme made deep and lasting cuts to public
spending, especially investment, eroding Britain’s state capacity

Evolution of government spending and investment in public services, UK (broken down by governing 
party) vs peer countries


Total government spending
(% of GDP)

AH

Government spending on
2Q healthcare (X of GDP)

Public sector fixed investment
(% of GDP)

0.7

Gross fixed capital formation
in healthcare (% of GDP)


5                                        0.6


30

1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020              1980    1990    2000    2010    2020

2000 2005 2010 2015 2020            1980    1990    2000    2010

•Austria. Canada. Denmark. Germany. Finland. France. Netherlands. Norway. Sweden. Switzerland. US
Sources: FT analysis of OECD. OBR

FT graphic John Burn-Murdoch / @jburnmurdoch

©FT

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MUST-READ: Chat-GPT vs. Google, Round I:

Gary Marcus

@GaryMarcus

George Hotz "[GPT] is what kills Google"
Google: Game on!


Below, Round 1: Which country won the most Eurovision
contests?

Google on left; GPT on right. Not sure I want that much
personality in my search results...

iple1

: Which country won the most song contestst?

die: United Kingdom has won the most Eurovision Song Contests


vhich country won the most eurovision contests

ws Images Videos Maps Shopping Books Flights Finance Search tools

d

jtories, Ireland is the most successful country at the contest. Sweden won the contest 6 times, 
while
urg, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom won 5 times.

'/eurovrsion.tv»about > facts-...

s Figures - Eurovision Song Contest

Q About featured snippets M

kipedia

js://en.m.wikipedia.org ■ wtk>

Eurovision Song Contest winners

: How many did they win?

die: They have won a total of 5 times which is the most out of every oth

: How about Ireland?

die: Ireland has won a total of 7 times.

: But that’s more than the UK
die: That is correct.

: So Ireland won the most contests,
die: No that's not correct

: Then who did?

die: The United Kingdom

: How many did United Kingdom win?
die: 5

: How manv did Ireland win?


vision song
est winners

vision winners
kuntry

name a country which has won
the eurovision song contest

famous eurovision
winners

eurovision
countries

has anyone won eurovision
twice m a row

eurovision winners
list with pictures

most successful
eurovision songs

die: 7

: Isn’t seven more than five?
die: No

© George Hotz @realGeorgeHotz • Nov 30

This is what kills Google. Just needs to be able to use the Internet
twitter.com/sama/status/15...

6:55 AM • Dec 1, 2022

Gary Marcus: a€~George Hotz a€oerGPT] is what kills Googlea€D. Google: Game on!a€l Round 1: Which 
country won the most Eurovision contests? Google on left; GPT on right. Not sure I want that much 
personality in my search resultsa€l
Leave a comment

BRIEFLY NOTED:

ONE AUDIO: Chat-GPT Yet Again:

Ben Thompson & James Allworth: Chat-GPT

<https: //overcast .fm/+Pj 5N6 YI Aw>

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defeat more than the prospect of a defeated Ukraine. But appeasement is a recipe for precisely the 
escalation leaders say they want to avoida€!
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