Agitation by community-based agents leading to honest people dropping out and wicked people doubling down.

Economist C. Northcote Parkinson's 1960 book "The Law and the Profits" notes the decline of Britain started in the early 20th century with the rise in the bureaucratic state and the commensurate rise in taxes.

Because a very few rich people are eating all the pies.

it's a self-isolated participant of the old world, back water of the back water so to speak

I doubt Britain's problems will ever really be solved. We only seem interested in making them worse. I blame the media, mostly. They're not interested in telling people the truth as much as getting Nigel Farage on every other week to argue about immigration. The issue with news is that you can only really report on new stuff, whereas the problems we face are chronic and old. My faith is our political system is utterly crushed, and I suspect the same is true for many other people. The ground is ripe for fascism.

It's worth keeping in mind that the same week the government cut £5B from supporting the sick and disabled they also started selling bonds bought during QE for £100B less than they paid for them.

Swings and roundabouts: life expectancy for the poor will fall, but we will have another handful of billionaires.

TL;DR: It's not by accident that Britain feels poor.

Only two major factors in play here:

- GDP Per Capita at the same level as in 2018. - Number of British Billionaires increased by 20% in the same period.

Markets are not zero sum until they are.

Was it ever rich to begin with if the colonies are removed? It's simply going back to its natural state. Although worse off because of the socialist policies that can't be sustained

Surprise, shocking surprise... Socialism doesn't work? Who could have predicted it?

The post 1970s financialization of everything [1] is probably behind most of Britains decline. The UK was just an early adopter [2].

Embracing that nonsense (including rampant neoliberalism) has really rotted the backbone out of our society.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

2. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-the-GDP-sha...