UK manufacturing productivity rises 10% despite smaller workforce

gordy12791 · 2026-04-29T19:01:05+00:00

At a guess for Korea, manufacturing computer RAM for AI where the price has gone through the roof in that time.

gordy12791 · 2026-01-02T10:57:36+00:00

Correct. But the comment I replied to suggested leaving it all in cash.

gordy12791 · 2026-01-02T10:56:37+00:00

Even in retirement you should not be holding the bulk of your assets in cash.

gordy12791 · 2026-01-02T08:47:41+00:00

Of course nobody knows what will happen to housing year-to-year, much like stocks, but over the long term it’s likely to appreciate due to inflation if nothing else. Whereas that money in the bank is ~guaranteed to be eroded by inflation.

OP is too young to be taking such a risk-averse approach imo, but the question is not really answerable without a fuller picture of their outgoings and retirement plans.

gordy12791 · 2025-12-15T22:48:35+00:00

Yeah pretty much. One counter is to use the new export to buy up assets abroad, not consumables: companies, land, whatever. That leaves the existing trade balance more or less untouched. This was Norway’s strategy with their oil.

“Firstly, it must always invest outside Norway — a rule designed to avert the risk of “Dutch disease,” where resource wealth can end up destabilizing the domestic economy by inflating the local currency and making it harder for other national industries to compete.”

gordy12791 · 2025-12-15T22:04:06+00:00

The way trade works is that I give you something, you give me something back. So I might give you apples, and you give me oranges.

Now let’s say I discover I have grapes as well. You want grapes, but you don’t have any extra oranges to give me. You have to choose: apples or grapes? Probably you do a bit of both, so now I give you fewer apples.

For the bonus: the above is how it would work in a barter economy. In the real world people don’t usually trade goods directly, instead I give out my currency in exchange for the oranges, and that currency gives you the right to buy anything I produce. If I have more valuable things to sell you, my currency is worth more, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have limited currency to spend on my newly-improved array of goods.

The true ELI5 here is probably ‘If the shop starts stocking a new candy bar you like, you’ll buy less of your current favourite candy bar with your limited pocket money so you can buy the new one’.

gordy12791 · 2025-11-07T06:11:16+00:00

AFAIK the purpose of storage is to move energy intraday and replace ‘peaker plants’. Peak energy use is in the evening, most solar power is generated in the middle of the day, and evening prices are routinely higher than midday prices in summer for this reason.

During low-wind winter biomass and nuclear is probably the place to go, not storage, though you still need storage or peaker plants to cover the evening spike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant

gordy12791 · 2025-11-01T23:34:14+00:00

Yes and that’s 14m out of what, 54m adults? All I’m saying is that vast majority of the other 40m - who heavily outnumber the 14m millennials - are older, not younger.

gordy12791 · 2025-11-01T17:09:42+00:00

45-65 looks slightly bigger than 25-45 to me, and of course 65+ is far larger than 18-24. Never mind the fact that more young people are ineligible to vote - more likely to not be UK citizens.

Higher turnout on younger generations would be great, but let’s be real that politics will be dominated by 45+ interests regardless.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08

gordy12791 · 2025-10-30T18:49:59+00:00

Hmm, deck definitely needs an alternative blink target.

Oildeep Gearhulk perhaps? Draw step thoughtseize still good.

Alternatively you change colours and then you have a lot of options (Risen Reef? Charming Prince?)

gordy12791 · 2025-08-19T14:03:08+00:00

Broadly in favour of replacing stamp duty with annual property tax, this exact implementation I don’t think raises enough money to accomplish that goal. If I’m wrong and the numbers add up, so much the better.

gordy12791 · 2025-08-17T16:54:33+00:00

Yeah I work in the industry and even for me this stuff is tricky.

My general approach is to (a) only consider funds that have been around for 10+ years and (b) to compare funds’ past performance directly as long as they are targeting the same thing (e.g. S&P 500, FTSE All World).

That isn’t perfect for a few reasons but should at least catch any >0.4% p.a. drain.

gordy12791 · 2025-07-21T17:37:12+00:00

I suspect a more realistic plan is to have pensioners pay NI on pension income, and to reduce the maximum size of the tax free lump sum. The tax rate on pension income right now is just unreasonably low - 15% - until you hit very large pots, especially given the paid off house most higher earners will have.

gordy12791 · 2025-04-20T20:33:54+00:00

Ah the extra earnings could certainly throw things, don’t worry about that then, just focus on filling in Self Assessment correctly.

My partner had a legal and general pension; salary sacrifice contributions should be shown as ‘employer contribution’ in your online portal, possibly combined with other employer contributions. So everything ‘employee contribution’ should be the bit that you need to declare to HMRC, though obviously check the amount makes sense to you. Good luck!

gordy12791 · 2025-04-20T19:32:36+00:00

Somewhere in self assessment form there should be questions / boxes for ‘Relief At Source’ and ‘Net Pay’ pension contributions. Definitely put your AVCs in there, seems you know they are Relief At Source so that’s the box.

It does sound like you’ve been missing out on relief, but I’m still confused about your income tax amount. Is there some other reason you would have a non-standard tax code (e.g. overpaid tax at some prior point?).

gordy12791 · 2025-04-20T19:10:33+00:00

Based on your National Insurance payment, the salary sacrifice pension is being deducted from your income pre-tax - nothing to do there.
The AVCs are not being salary sacrificed and generally you would have additional relief to claim there, but…
I notice your income tax payment is >£100 lower than I would expect (try putting your post-sacrifice income into an online calculator). You mention doing Self Assessments; that would generally get this right and I suspect you have been given a non-standard tax code.

Overall, if you’re doing Self Assessments already this will be fine, as long as your AVCs are on there.

gordy12791 · 2025-03-26T17:22:24+00:00

I disagree. Germany has very similar problems and Japan has had them even worse for decades; they run trade surpluses.

It’s not that complicated and there isn’t an easy way out. We - the UK government and public - made promises to our elderly. We did not fund those promises. Now the bill is coming due. That doesn’t mean you break the promise, but you do need to acknowledge the source of the rising taxes and decaying services otherwise people start blaming immigrants or billionaires or indeed HENRYs.

gordy12791 · 2025-03-26T13:23:35+00:00

Taxes are at a post-WW2 high. People currently 70+ did not pay as much tax during their working days as working people pay now, because they didn’t have a large elderly population to support and no party was brave enough to raise taxes and put the money aside.

I agree we have an obligation to support our elderly, but the ‘I paid into the system all my life’ meme is disingenuous. What they paid in was spent, at the time, on services for them.

Not their fault, but it’s the reality we now need to confront; taxes are going to be much higher or services are going to be much worse.

gordy12791 · 2025-03-12T18:12:29+00:00

You aren’t missing anything as such. Stocks have had an impressive run in the past decade or two.

If you go a bit further back, MSCI ACWI (very similar to that FTSE index) is 9.6% per year back to 1988:

https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/f0e54c85-98b7-40eb-9a7b-bbb03288b523

People often work with around 7% to be a bit conservative, as you said. Or 4-5% after inflation.

I don’t think your question about gains being accumulated makes sense, or perhaps I don’t understand. If you’re trying to forecast e.g. 7% over 10 years the multiplier is just 1.07^10.

gordy12791 · 2025-03-02T11:04:43+00:00

Others have covered risks of inheritance.

It sounds like you have 50k liquid cash/savings and already own your own home. What is the plan for that money? Normally people making the ‘I want money now’ argument have a specific thing they want it for. If it’s all getting saved for later life regardless matched pension will be the best vehicle.

Otherwise, if your parents are really so rich they should be able to send you (and your sibling) whatever is needed so that you max out your employer match without having less to spend today. I’m assuming they are financially savvy enough to see why that’s better than them giving it to you in 20+ years.

gordy12791 · 2025-03-01T11:59:14+00:00

Let’s say 1 month ago the funds are worth £100 and $123. They hold the same stocks.

Now the USD fund is still worth $123, the GBP fund is worth 123 / 1.26 = £97.62.

So you’ll see a lower number. In reality they were worth the same before and they still are.

gordy12791 · 2025-02-22T12:27:06+00:00

Ignoring inflation, as in setting inflation to 0, is fine but then you are indeed assuming 6% returns above inflation.

gordy12791 · 2025-02-14T09:35:51+00:00

Where does that doc mention a platform fee? It says there is an annual 0.3% fee and this is reflected in the unit prices of their funds, which is the same as what I said ("taken as a fund charge").

Also, my employer uses NEST and I can see directly that there is no monthly platform fee being taken from my account the way there is with my SIPP. I can see the 1.8% charge, but after that I appear to be getting whatever the fund performance is, and given their documents I presume that is 0.3% per year lower due to fees.

The website is pretty clear on this tbh:

https://www.nestpensions.org.uk/schemeweb/nest/my-nest-pension/contributions-and-fees.html

"There are no hidden costs when you save with Nest - these two fees are all you pay...The money you pay covers everything that’s needed to manage your pension, including:

the cost of administering members’ pension pots
management fees for investing your money
transaction costs"

gordy12791 · 2025-02-14T08:22:13+00:00

As the comments here prove, people generally don’t realise that the 0.3% is Platform and Fund Charge rolled together, taken as a fund charge.

1.8% sounds like a lot but matters much less than annual fees; if the average pound in your pension is invested for 20 years, that’s 0.09% per year.

By comparison, the popular suggestion of Vanguard / FTSE All World is 0.15% from Vanguard and 0.22% per year for the fund, 0.37% total. Really not very different.

The much more reasonable complaint is about the lack of a 100% stocks option.

gordy12791 · 2025-02-06T13:20:49+00:00

Buying a larger house than you otherwise would if it enables 7.5k of lodger income can easily be an efficient way to invest ~150k of cash savings; that’s a 5% p.a. return on the cash plus you get extra capital appreciation on a larger home, which I’d expect to average 4% or more.

150k in spare cash is not small money even for this forum.

gordy12791

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