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

(samj.substack.com)
395 points url | 13 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.013s | 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 Those familiar shops are now gone; in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all.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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JimDabell ◴[26 Apr 25 05:23 UTC] No.43801155[source]▶
This is what I was going to say. Back then, a book like this would have been perceived as the UK making fun of itself. Now it’s perceived as being cruel to those less fortunate.

I think it’s worth putting into context that the economy was doing great in the era this book was first published and huge progress was being made with things like homelessness, inequality, and poverty. It felt like the country had turned a corner from the lows of the 80s.

Since then, we’ve had the global financial crisis, local councils being bankrupted, and a huge rise in homelessness and inequality. The rich have more and the poor have less.

If you published that book today, the contents might be the same, but the story it tells would be quite different.

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jl6 ◴[26 Apr 25 06:35 UTC] No.43801414[source]▶
The Gini coefficient of the UK is about the same now as it was then:

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed/

What has actually changed? A whole bunch of other economic malaise, but also perceptions, amplified to your personal taste by social media.

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1. teamonkey ◴[26 Apr 25 08:04 UTC] No.43801766[source]▶
Gini coefficient usually only measures income inequality. Wealth inequality is hard to measure for various reasons but…

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

“for the UK as a whole, the WID found that the top 0.1% had share of total wealth double between 1984 and 2013, reaching 9%.”

“If the wealth of the super rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.”

Etc.

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2. chgs ◴[26 Apr 25 08:44 UTC] No.43801936[source]▶
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_...

Very little change in U.K. over 20 years

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3. dmurray ◴[26 Apr 25 09:11 UTC] No.43802042[source]▶
> by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP

Those things are measured in different units, which automatically throws doubt on the ability of the source to be statistically rigorous in any other way.

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4. anovikov ◴[26 Apr 25 09:19 UTC] No.43802084[source]▶
Highly unlikely because the rich are now just running away from UK pulling all their cash with them; it's likely that leftists will get what they want - reduction of wealth inequality - just not in the way that pleases them: with the cash being simply gone.
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5. ferbivore ◴[26 Apr 25 09:26 UTC] No.43802115[source]▶
It looks to me like Equality Trust put a fair amount of thought and research into their website, did their best to paint a picture of what's going on in the UK by using multiple reputable sources, and tried to explain why that picture is dire, not just for those with a net worth that rounds to £0 but for the nation at large, with several dozen citations to back that up.

Thank God we have this one number from some Credit Suisse marketing material to invalidate all of that.

6. teamonkey ◴[26 Apr 25 09:27 UTC] No.43802120[source]▶
Gini is a very rough tool. It’s trying to describe the shape of a curve with a single number. It describes the average inequality between any two people.

The curve can be skewed without the Gini number changing significantly if, say, the bottom 99% became increasingly more equal in income/wealth by becoming poorer overall, transferring income/wealth to the upper 1%.

7. ferbivore ◴[26 Apr 25 09:30 UTC] No.43802140[source]▶
Sounds good to me. The problem is the rich don't actually take their money and fuck off, they just keep owning wealth here forever. I expect that won't change until the UK gets an actual leftist government, which seems unlikely to happen in the next 10 years.
8. nickdothutton ◴[26 Apr 25 09:38 UTC] No.43802167[source]▶
I the numbers maybe not, but in the public perception? In society?
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9. amenhotep ◴[26 Apr 25 12:01 UTC] No.43802847[source]▶
One is measured in pounds. The other is measured in pounds. Seems pretty comparable.

If you're being deliberately stupid you could pretend it's a comparison between pounds and pounds per year, but everyone who is at least minimally literate in the subject understands that "GDP" here means "the amount of value produced in a year".

10. Earw0rm ◴[26 Apr 25 18:04 UTC] No.43805777[source]▶
The super rich aren't the problem. 200 families is too few to have any meaningful effect on the housing market.

By all means tax them til their eyes bleed, but it'll mostly just make people feel better rather than being a useful contribution to public finances.

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11. chgs ◴[26 Apr 25 22:36 UTC] No.43807835{3}[source]▶
Perception in solicit is we should take people in £200k or £800k a year a lot more and leaver those with £100m in assets alone.

We’re up in arms when people block roads to highlight problems with climate change, but when millionaires get worried they’ll have less of a loophole with tax, we’re supporting it in droves.

12. teamonkey ◴[27 Apr 25 12:05 UTC] No.43811332[source]▶
They own a lot of UK property and land, both directly and through trusts. And given the statistic that the top 50 families control half of the UK’s total wealth, I’m not sure how you can say it wouldn’t have an impact on either tax revenues or property prices. A land tax of 0.1% would have a staggering impact on tax revenues.
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13. Earw0rm ◴[27 Apr 25 16:00 UTC] No.43812833{3}[source]▶
It might affect agricultural land prices. Indeed that's at the heart of the farming IHT controversy (farming land is effectively overpriced relative to its business or utility value, because of its previously far too generous IHT treatment). It won't affect the price of houses, because it's not 200 rich families hogging the supply.

50 families controlling half the country's wealth is a bit of a stretch. The top 50 individuals have an average net worth of maybe $4-5Bn, giving a total wealth of $250Bn. Half the country's _land_ seems more likely?

Meanwhile there are literally millions of £1M+ houses owned by relatively ordinary people, millions of Boomers and some older GenX with at least £0.5m in their pension funds, and so on.

Land tax of 0.1% would be a good thing, but it'd be equivalent to putting about a third on council tax (£1k/year on a £1m home, currently council tax is about £3k in that bracket I think?). A useful step certainly but not revolutionary.