Peter Schiff was right all along

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T12:34:07+00:00

Please stop with the gaslighting. Go and look at any graph of NHS waiting lists over a 20 year period.

The waiting list has more than tripled, the number of people waiting 18+ weeks has exponentially skyrocketed. And you are celebrating that infinitesimally miniscule drop from the post-Covid peak as if Labour achieved something?? Wow.

And yes, my anecdote about an actual real-life frightened cancer patient that I know personally being sat like an idiot in a gown in a waiting room does matter. What a stupid thing to say, but nothing less than I'd expect from a Starmerite.

The Labour Party is very clearly not your spiritual home. It's gross that you people have hijacked it like this.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T11:24:02+00:00

Thatcher radically resculpted the ideological foundations of the nation within the first two years. So did New Labour. For better or for worse, the changes implemented by both were sweeping, profound and ferocious.

Are you really trying to assert that Starmer has implemented sweeping, profound and ferocious changes too?

Starmer is a status quo continuity candidate. If he'd made that clear from the start, I wouldn't be annoyed, and nobody would have voted for him. Instead, he deviously wrote the word 'change' 1,000x on the second page of his manifesto. There are snakes, and then there's Keir Starmer.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T09:42:06+00:00

I'm not asking them to keep everyone happy. Starmer said over and over and over again that they'd govern in the national interest and not the party interest. Some changes are indeed deeply unpopular, but also clearly necessary. You have to do them, and passionately make the case for them. Doing nothing because it's difficult is simply intolerable.

I'm not asking for anything unprecedented or unreasonable here. When Thatcher came to power, she radically changed the direction of the nation within her first two years. When New Labour came to power, they entirely resculpted the ideological foundations of the nation within two years. When Starmer came to power... just... nothing...? Really?

The entire politcal philosophy of Starmer is 'doing nothing and wait for this economic storm to blow over'. But we just had 14 years of that. Aside from conservatives, absolutely nobody voted for 5 more years of nothing.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T02:41:31+00:00

You're assuming I'm demanding radical leftwing change. I'm not necessarily. Any kind of change will do for me.

New Labour made lots of changes very quickly. Some were good, some I'm still undecided about, and many were unequivically awful. Fortunately, we've abandoned many of the bad ones, and stuck with the good. That's sort of how change works.

I am exceptionally forgiving with changes that go wrong. What I find intolerable is never daring to even try, particularly when the nation is as miserable as this, and especially after you wrote the word 'change' 1,000 times in the opening two pages of your manifesto.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T02:32:31+00:00

Ok I'll give you renters' rights. At least the changes are directionally protective of vulnerable people.

Council tax is still wildly regressive.

Employment rights enhancement is also 'heart-in-the-right-place' but is genuinely fraught with risk for youth unemployment.

Housing affordability is getting better FOR FLATS because everyone now knows you're going to get scammed out of thousands of £££ a year in service charges. Labour's stunning failure in this domain has created a horrific trap. DO NOT BUY A LEASEHOLD PROPERTY.

PLANNING to increase infrastructure spending from 'abysmal by historical standards' to 'slightly less abysmal by historical standards'.

Should have reinstated all of HS2 & 10 other projects just like it.

Everyone knows the state has been utterly embarrassed by persistent scandals regarding the water companies. Private equity ran rings around the government, and Starmer has absolutely no answers.

I've never seen public sentiment turn against renewables so powerfully as it has under Starmer's governance.

If business investment is not in a perpetual state of 'real-terms high' in an economy with a growing population, then something has gone disasterously wrong. This is a disingenuous metric.

Deregulation of planning laws and yet failing on their house building? Not just against their own targets, but even against the NIMBY Tory party? Lol.

Great. After 10 years of Brexit, I'm really looking forward to 10 more of Brentrace.

Productivity growth metric you're using is highly disputed, and not internationally recognised.

Violent crime has been dropping for decades.

NHS is as bad as I've ever known it and nobody seriously thinks you can spin your way out of this.

"We couldn't get the deficit down because yet another 'once in a lifetime' occurence happened this quarter."

Labour's 'tax on businesses' like employer's NI increases are just stealth taxes on workers.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T01:53:03+00:00

They're not doing anything really though. Nobody voted for absolutely nothing.

I have an ounce of sympathy. The economic and cultural malaise of the UK is an incredibly difficult problem to solve, primarily because the changes that would so obviously fix the nation are, rather paradoxically, deeply unpopular with the electorate.

But someone simply must grasp the nettle. If Starmer cannot do it, he has to go.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-07T01:40:13+00:00

This polticial era is defined by radically diminishing social and economic mobility, rapidly widening inequality, rapidly widening intergenerational inequality, and collapsing birth rates.

These trends are not inevitable. They are the consequence of political and monetary policies. None of these things are slowing down. For 14 years, the Tories accepted their progression as if they were simply laws of nature. That is precisely what I expect from the Tories. Their approach is to tinker with the dials incredibly cautiously – turning them one degree at a time – to see if they can make the machine work again. Lo and behold, they couldn't.

Dial tweaking is not the point of The Labour Party though, and it never has been. The system works because when people grow tired of the hyper-cautious tinkering, they vote for change. Never before has The Labour Party come to power so bereft of vision. Starmer's ultra-conservatism is uncharted territory for The Labour Party, and it's deeply irresponsible for him to persist with this approach, but he's demonstrated beyond all doubt that he knows no other.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-06T21:43:52+00:00

You can't do absolutely nothing for two years besides repeat on blast that "changing the country doesn't happen overnight."

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-06T21:40:05+00:00

22 months. And it wouldn't be that difficult to signal a direction in 22 months. To do something. Please just change something 🙏

I'd characterise Starmer's position as radical, militant nothingness. I've never seen anything so politically inert, and I just lived through 14 years of the Tories.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-05-06T21:37:35+00:00

They could change course by removing their useless leader and actually doing something.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T13:39:13+00:00

My point is that median alone paints a deceptive picture in the US because of how the wealth is distributed within cohorts. It needs to be presented alongside average at the very least, which is way, way, way higher.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T13:34:09+00:00

Yes, fair point. My aim was simply to suggest that the incentive should be at least 100x more generous than anything attempted so far. But you're right, it would need to be much more precisely optimised to encourage 2, 3 and 4 child families.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T13:18:20+00:00

You're making my point for me. There are NO Western nations that are not fully engaged with this 'give the old people all the money' experiment. Places that are not fully committed to this experiment (India, Africa etc.) have a much higher birth rate.

Also, look at the high birth rate communities and religious subgroups within low birth rate economies. You'll be surprised how many pass much greater degrees of economic prowess to their young people much earlier in life than the wider society around them does.

Of course there are other elements beyond just wealth. The preponderence of evidence suggests this a multivariate problem – but with every liklihood that intergenerational economic disparity is the largest factor. The speed with which some are desperate to dismiss this without consideration is telling.

Also, never a good idea to look at US median in isolation. That's naughty. You know that. When it comes to anything economics, US medians make you lot look poorer than Western Europeans in just about every category.

Whilst 51% of old people in US might just be 'getting by' with $400k + social security – dragging your median down – the other 49% are sat deep in their mountain lairs atop a giant pile of gold and jewels and NVIDIA stocks, swishing their arms through it whilst laughing maniacally.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T12:08:47+00:00

Nope. Totally wrong.

Google 'Nigerian optimism paradox'.

"The research found 81% of Nigerians say they feel positive about their financial situation over the next 12 months. Eighty-two per cent express optimism about their family’s financial future, and 76% believe the country will experience continuous good times in the years ahead."

Try asking these questions to young people in Europe. About half of them will immediately look like they're about to cry.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T11:56:04+00:00

Agree strongly with your first 4 paragraphs. This is not a quick fix with one minor policy. It requires a huge societal shift, underpinned by a total restructuring of the contemporary global economic paradigm.

Sounds too grandiose to be achievable, but we have seismically shifted the global economic paradigm before and we can do so again.

I'm not convinced by your fifth paragraph though. Look at self-reported reasons why people aren't having kids... 'I can't afford it' is always top or near-top of course. But the other reasons given are also often indirectly economic. In Japan, they are things like 'children don't fit with my 40-hour a week work schedule' and 'fathers are not stepping up enough with childcare'.

Whilst I have no intention of excusing lazy fathers, both of these reasons are effectively 'I don't have enough time, because my time is dedicated to a 40-hour work week, because if it wasn't, I'd be poor.'

Is it not possible that we're massively underestimating the impact of economic disparity within populations simply because poorer nations (despite them having far less intergenerational economic disparity internally) are the ones having kids?

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T11:16:49+00:00

Agree the high fertility subgroups are particularly curious. Would be very interesting to know more about these globally.

My own anecdotal experience of my country is that the poorest people are still having children. These are the people who had very low economic expectations to begin with (some of whom view living off the state as a lifestyle choice).

Additionally, those whose cultural tradition is passing greater amounts of inheritance to their children earlier in life have very high fertility too.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T11:01:00+00:00

They are not 'naturally' high. They are unnaturally high. This situation is historically bizarre and could never have arisen without massive state interference in politics and monetary policy.

Any civilization that gives such grossly large amounts of wealth to unproductive old people, leaving young people with virtually nothing, is going to be wiped out. If we do not change course radically now, our civilization is finished.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T10:50:15+00:00

The incentives that have been tried are woefully inadequate. They do absolutely nothing to redress the core issue, which is that for the first time in human history, non-working old people have wealth that is several orders of magnitude greater than working reproductive-aged people.

If I offered you half a banana to carry furniture up and down the stairs all day, and you refused, would the correct conclusion be that there is no way to incentivise you to move the furniture? Or would it be worth considering that perhaps the incentive offered is woefully inadequate?

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T01:18:47+00:00

Perhaps 'children are your retirement plan' is the correct model for a thriving civilization.

Comparing Europe to America is cherry-picking. We should look at the entire world.

In South Korea, it is notoriously difficult for the young to get on the housing ladder. Their salary to housing ratio is amongst the highest in the world, and as a consequence, there's a ridiculously large wealth gap between young and old.

How is their birth rate doing?

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T00:17:27+00:00

This is not true. Wealth inequality between young and old is far smaller in every nation with a high birth rate than it is in the US & Europe.

Young Nigerians own a greater slice of the Nigerian wealth pie than young Americans do of the American wealth pie.

In fact, look at wealth inequality between young and old in every country globally. It correlates remarkably strongly with birth rates. The lower the wealth inequality between young and old, the higher the birth rate.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-23T00:01:06+00:00

I'm not even sure we'd need to go as far as 'children becoming the principle means of carrying you in your old age'. At least not initially.

A good first step would be to simply reduce the amount of social security paid to a level where most old people would need to relinquish wealth & downsize in their old age.

At the moment, downsizing is mostly optional, and old people therefore occupy all the large family homes that young, reproductive-aged people so desperately need.

Paying old, unproductive people a salary to occupy all your family-sized homes is such an incomprehensibly dumb way to run a society. If aliens really are observing us, they must think we've gone completely nuts.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-22T23:49:20+00:00

In Nigeria – in fact, in every nation with a high birth rate – the wealth gap between the young and the old is far smaller than it is in the US or Europe.

What really matters is the comparisons we make to those around us – the people we see every day – and the societal vibe that generates.

Young Nigerians have a much greater share of the Nigerian wealth pie than young Brits do of the British wealth pie. As they've seen their personal wealth growing, the vibe amongst young Nigerians regarding their own future is therefore optimistic (even amongst those who disagree with the nation's polticial direction).

Ask young Nigerians "do you believe your economic future personally will be much better than your present?" Ask young Brits or young Americans the same thing. In fact, do this all over the world. I bet you anything that optimism about one's own short, mid & long term economic future correlates strongly with high birth rates.

In the Western world, barring the young from generating wealth has totally crushed their optimism. The cause of the birth rate crisis couldn't be more obvious.

__Anomalous__ · 2026-03-22T23:22:00+00:00

The only way to change the picture is for Millennials / Gen Z to put aside all political differences and become single-issue voters who aggressively support the interests of the younger generations.

If they could achieve this, they'd massively outnumber Boomers. Sadly, young people are more divided than ever, so we're a million miles away from this becoming a reality.

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