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I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

(samj.substack.com)
395 points url | 12 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.919s | source | bottom
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jdietrich ◴[26 Apr 25 03:50 UTC] No.43800782[source]▶
Twenty years ago, I think there was still a sense that we were collectively laughing with each other about the dullness of small towns. We all had the same shops - Woolworths, Dixons, Our Price, BHS. We all had a leisure centre that looked like everyone else's leisure centre. Some towns were better off than others, some towns had parts that you were better off avoiding after dark, but the majority of towns belonged to the same broad spectrum of bland mediocrity.

Today, I think it's clear who would be being laughed at by whom. The fates of places have so radically diverged that we no longer have a sense of collective identity. All of the places listed in Crap Towns are now unrecognisable, for better or worse. Those familiar shops are now gone; in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all. Half the leisure centres have shut and we all know which half.

The upper middle class might have become more humourless and puritanical, but I think that's a subconscious self-defence mechanism, a manifestation of noblesse oblige without real obligation. The working class are too angry to laugh and certainly aren't willing to be laughed at. We all know that we're teetering on the brink of a populist wave, but no-one in a position of power seems willing or able to do anything about it.

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parpfish ◴[26 Apr 25 04:22 UTC] No.43800919[source]▶
Well put.

A few decades of compounding inequality transforms what used to be good natured ribbing amongst chums into bullying.

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arrowsmith ◴[26 Apr 25 04:39 UTC] No.43800990[source]▶
What compounding inequality? The UK's Gini coefficient has been trending downwards since the global financial crisis.

14 years of Conservative government made this country more equal, not less, because they flattened the income distribution by making everybody poorer.

The big pattern among rich people in the UK nowadays is not that they're getting richer, it's that they're leaving.

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1. rhubarbtree ◴[26 Apr 25 06:06 UTC] No.43801322[source]▶
You’re looking at the wrong numbers. Wealth, not income. Wealth inequality is through the roof. Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts.

If you think the problem with the UK is that rich people are leaving, then you have no idea about the reality of living in the UK. Visiting some of the towns in this book would be a starting point.

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2. arrowsmith ◴[26 Apr 25 06:20 UTC] No.43801361[source]▶
> Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts.

Is that supposed to prove me wrong? I said that everybody is getting poorer.

> Wealth inequality is through the roof.

Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007. (Source: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/)

> If you think the problem with the UK is that rich people are leaving

I said it's a problem, not the problem. And it's not just the ultra-rich who are leaving, but vast swathes of the middle classes. Many poor people would leave too if they had the means.

You and the other replier seem to think I'm defending the status quo. How on earth did I imply that? You think I think it's a good thing for the entire country to get poorer?

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3. a_dabbler ◴[26 Apr 25 08:04 UTC] No.43801765[source]▶
"Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007"

This is not whats represented in the source you cited?

In the graph titled "Top 10% and Bottom 50% Wealth Shares in The UK 1900-2020" you can clearly see the wealth owned by the top 10% increased from 54.4% in 2007 to 57% in 2020 and likely even higher now 5 years later.

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4. arrowsmith ◴[26 Apr 25 08:20 UTC] No.43801825{3}[source]▶
Yes, that's only a 2.6% increase. I don't think it's unfair to call that "roughly where it was".

In fact, according to that chart wealth inequality today is much lower than it was in the 1970s, although it increased throughout the 1990s.

The same link shows that the UK has unremarkable wealth inequality by the standards of developed countries: we're bang in the middle of the OECD, with lower levels of wealth inequality than Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Norway. (That's funny, I thought the Nordics were egalitarian utopias?)

I'm not saying that wealth inequality is low, or that it's not a problem. I'm merely responding to the claim that "wealth inequality is through the roof", which I take to mean that wealth inequality has increased substantially in recent years. As far as I can tell that's not true.

Personally I think we need more economic growth, not more taxes. We already have the highest taxes since WWII, soon to be the highest taxes in the entire history of the UK, and all it's doing is strangling the economy and making productive people flee.

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5. stavros ◴[26 Apr 25 08:20 UTC] No.43801828{3}[source]▶
Right, but the maximum is 92.7% and the minimum is 46%. A 3% difference seems small enough to be noise.
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6. chgs ◴[26 Apr 25 08:47 UTC] No.43801948[source]▶
The problem in the U.K. is the availability of housing.
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7. arrowsmith ◴[26 Apr 25 08:49 UTC] No.43801958[source]▶
If only our problems could be reduced to a single "the".
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8. 93po ◴[26 Apr 25 13:57 UTC] No.43803668[source]▶
The statistics they provide are the result of self-reporting by people they interview, and they themselves talk at length about the challenges and errors that may exist in their data and sampling: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

I think this is inherently going to be a poor way to get an accurate representation of wealth inequality, because if you ask a bunch of really wealthy people worth $100mm+ how much money and assets they have, and especailly when these are very privacy focused people, they're going to either:

1. decline to respond in any way

2. if they do respond, they are very likely to misrepresent and downplay their wealth

3. very likely to have wealth that isn't UK based and therefore wouldn't disclose it to anyone for any reason

4. have a lot of very valuable things, like owning a private businesses, that may not necessarily have a price tag attached to them, and so therefore hard to represent when asked "how much money do you have?"

even though reports throughout years would always have this same issue, i think the problem is that as wealth for the 0.1% rises, that rise is not going to get well represented or collected

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9. ◴[26 Apr 25 14:06 UTC] No.43803749{3}[source]▶
10. chownie ◴[26 Apr 25 14:29 UTC] No.43803951{4}[source]▶
If the floor is 46% and the ceiling is 92.7% that 3% is much less likely to be noise.
11. chgs ◴[26 Apr 25 22:33 UTC] No.43807810{3}[source]▶
Pretty much all other problems stem from that.

Well there’s the weather I guess.

12. disgruntledphd2 ◴[27 Apr 25 08:05 UTC] No.43810282{4}[source]▶
Look, I'm not gonna dispute that the tax system is messed up in the UK (Student loans, the cutting off of credits at 100k and the lack of a real property tax) but fundamentally as a society ye blew mineral wealth on tax cuts then removed yourselves from a giant trading bloc, so the lack of services and higher tax rates are unsurprising.

Ultimately though, tax on income should be lowered and tax on property should be proportionately increased, given that property is the source of much wealth and is very difficult to hide or move.