http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20138393
This article argues that the quality of life will be no greater by the end of 2020 than it was in 2000. There are several reasons that living standards will remain stagnant. As the UK is pulling out of another recession, the economy's output is still not growing. High unemployment continues to depress wages while administrative and manufacturing jobs continue to decrease. However, there are several possible solutions to this problem. Boosting low pay, raising skills, and increasing female employment could help many UK families. To prevent this recovery from only benefitting the wealthier half of the population, the Resolution Foundation recommends more subsidies for cheap childcare and cutting national insurance contributions for certain workers. If the government takes action, the UK may soon see an increase in the standard of living.
I found this post to be very interesting because I wrote my post about the UK banking system. I think it is interesting that the author is comparing where the economy was over ten years ago to where it will be going in nearly another ten years. The possible solutions given seem likely and possible for the UK, however they will take time. Raising skill sets and increasing female employment is not something that will happen instantly, but involves other aspects of the society to change such as the education programs and child care services to provide a place for children to taken care of while a woman may take a job.
ReplyDeleteI think UK already has an excellent educational system, what needs to be done is induction of activity in UK to create more jobs, which could be brought about by revising the macro economic policies there
ReplyDeleteA stagnate standard of living does seem like a big problem that should probably be talked about more in the UK. The fact that they are struggling so much to get out of the recession should worry their policy makers enough to start taking a stronger approach to getting the economy back on track. They should probably start investing money into new technologies and building up infrastructure to help boost the standard of living in the long run.
ReplyDeleteWe all know that the EU has had a lot of economic problems that they are faced with now. The UK needs to recognize the policies that they are enforcing now are showing minimal progress. In order to increase the standard of living in the UK, they need to build better institutions, invest more money for new technologies as rjrogers stated above and look into building more human capital.
ReplyDelete