可惜的穷人英国 - 并注意到全球笑声的旅程有多迅速。在利兹·特鲁斯（Liz Truss）狂热的自由主义的震惊和敬畏之后，散发撞车并打动了经济，尽管仅持续了45天，但有一个新的下午：Rishi Sunak。Sunak inherits a poisoned chalice, though he might not know it. Who can fix Britain? The answer to that question goes like this.

对于英国来说，最糟糕的情况尚未到来。

最后，有人说了。“亿万富翁商人Guy Hands…the founder and chair of the private equity firm Terra Firma, a longtime Tory supporter, called for the government to renegotiate Brexit, stating that otherwise the British economy was ‘frankly doomed.’ Hands said that without a renegotiation of Brexit, Britain would face ‘steadily increasing taxes, steadily reducing benefits and social services, higher interest rates and eventually the need for a bailout from the IMF like we were in the 70s.’”

Hands is exactlycorrect。他指出，英国现在已被称为“厄运循环”。I’m going to explain exactly why, but let me put the point up front. Britain has no future as things stand now. And it doesn’t matter, really, who the PM is. Some, like Sunak, will be more competent — at managing the inevitable decline that Hands describes, slowing it down here and there, delaying the inevitable by a month or two here and there. Some, like Truss, will be totally incompetent, and just accelerate the decline to the brink from the beginning of taking office. But in the end,你不能击败经济学。无论谁是谁，他们的工作都将保持不变 - 试图付出英国脱欧的代价，事实证明，这是如此陡峭，以至于毁了它。

Why is Hands describing what financial markets and economists call a “doom loop”? Why is he correct to point it out? Let me try and explain the inner logic of his point. Britain is a nation that runs what are known as “twin deficits” — that is, it进口超过其出口，及其政府借用to keep the nation functioning. Now, for a rich, developed country, that’s not inherently bad, though if you do it forever, it’s surely unwise. You can go on doing that, with two conditions.

第一，您将借入的东西投入到社会实际需要的东西上，并助长增长，以便两个人明天可以偿还债务。这意味着医院，学校，大学，研究，工厂等。很简单，对吗？这或多或少是通往现代繁荣的道路，但是不幸的是，政治。If it were that simple, the world would be rich, but it isn’t, precisely because politics interferes, like it does in say, Latin America, or Africa, or Asia — and instead of sense prevailing, nations do foolish things like borrowing to give the President’s friends loans they’ll never repay, or, worse cut essential public services when people need them to grow their productivity and trust and efficiency, or worst of all…

像英国脱欧一样犯了一个愚蠢的错误。英国脱欧对英国做了什么？它缩水了经济。Not as in “insta-recession,” but as in Britain stagnated. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England put it best: “in 2016 the British economy was 90 per cent the size of Germany’s. Now it is less than 70 per cent.” That’s a ruinous amount for an economy to effectively shrink — not to grow, to stagnate —几年来。

英国脱欧成为英国贫穷。Much poorer.快速地。自魏玛共和国以来，现代世界实际上还没有看到类似的东西。现在成为PM的人必须处理这个事实。并在政治上进行管理。这意味着，无论新PM是谁，他们都会面临一系列鲜明的选择 - 这些选择都不好。

想象一下，您今晚Rishi Sunak。您该怎么办，修复生病的国家？您可以借更多的钱，试图维持活着的人的标准，以习惯于进口更多的进口，以资助公共服务。但是市场已经为您收取巨大的溢价 - 您做的越多，您越接近违约债务，并与IMF拿着帽子，因为最终，Sky High Provest Breaks Breaks Breaks Breaks Breaks Breaks Breaks Breaks theeveryone。Or you can tell people that you’re going to cut those public services, some of which Britain is famed for — the NHS, the BBC — down to public transport and pensions and so forth, because, well, you’ve got to reduce borrowing, because remember, you’re running twin deficits. But people arealreadystruggling. Can you really just leave them in the lurch?

或者，您可以提高税收 - 对人说，听，我们所有人都需要这些机构和服务来保持生产力，健康，高效，现代社会，因此我们所有人都必须支付更多百分之几的税款。但是，再次，人们已经处于边缘，在财务上被推到墙上。祝你好运。

那“富人征税”呢？你当然可以。这是一种选择。从长远来看，由于问题更大，因此没有太多解决经济的解决方案。您可以将富人征税至零 - 但是如果您的经济缩水为结构原因像英国脱欧一样，流血永远不会停止。馅饼仍在收缩。

There are no good options.

没有好的选择，因为这是一个变得贫穷的国家是。In Britain, there seems to be no recognition of this basic fact, the one that Hands is trying to point out — this is what booming a poorer country is, means, feels like, involves. Now you have less “fiscal space,” meaning that because the economy is smaller, there’s less to fund public services with — meanwhile, expecting more stagnation in the future, markets charge you more for debt, because now there’s more risk attached to you.And all of those fuel the vicious cycle of poverty.

贫穷国家如何stay较差的？为什么很少有国家变得富有 - 也许只是台湾和韩国？因为，就像我说的那样政治干扰。在大多数贫穷国家，每个人都明智地知道该怎么做 - 不是火箭科学：如果您要借钱，将其投资于人们需要的东西，从医院到大学到研究实验室到工厂的道路。人们变得更加生产力，高效，受过教育，嘿普雷斯托（Hey Presto），您的经济增长，您变得越来越丰富。重复五十年，您进入富裕国家的精英俱乐部。但是几乎没有人拥有 - 正是因为大多数已经贫穷的国家最终都poverty traps。

这意味着市场向他们收取太多的借款费用，以至于他们永远努力偿还这笔钱 - 当他们借钱时，这不是一个充分的理由，而是愚蠢的，这需要明年，一个月，十年，因此需要一个恶毒的紧缩计划。重复此过程十年或三年，而不是致富，而是你保持贫穷。许多左派主义者想象的方式不需要殖民主义的阴谋，而是裙带关系，贪婪，愚蠢和无知，这是历史上最强大的力量。

我为什么要提出这一切？这么少的国家从穷人变成富人？因为英国是现代历史上的第一个国家，从富人到较差的。And it is going that way for the same reasons that keep poor nations poor: they create huge barriers to trade, they make enemies instead of friends, they borrow for foolish reasons, not good ones, which necessitates austerity, and markets charge them huge premiums, which means they can’t afford the very public services which modernize a nation and lift it into higher levels of productivity, efficiency, trust, investment, growth, which means they保持贫穷。简而言之，这是手的厄运循环。

英国是现代历史上第一个陷入一系列贫困陷阱的富裕国家。同样的贫困陷阱actually可怜的国家面对：毁灭性贸易障碍，，，，a暴跌货币，，，，高利率， 永动的deficits，由此产生的在ability to invest，因此需要不断gut public services只是为了通过自己吃自己的种子玉米来保持“经济发展”。这就是一个贫穷的国家是，就像手所说的那样。

这些都不是丝毫夸张的。90％的学校将在年底之前用完钱。那有什么意思，一个朋友问我。我非常简单地解释了：您成为一个如此贫穷的国家，以至于无法负担教育孩子在同一级别。您可以查看任何疯狂的图表指标：人们等待几个小时for ambulances, backlogs ofmonths or years对于医疗服务，有70％的人预计无法为了支付账单，老年人在不加热的情况下发抖，孩子在学校不吃午餐的孩子。

The Neo-Dickensian poverty Britain has plunged into is真实的。这就是成为一个贫穷国家的原因，突然，快速，是。And this is what Brexit did。

It’s crucial for Brits to understand that. Right about now, they groan, and sulk, like little spoiled children. But they need to face up to their mistake. Because, as Hands says, there is only one way out of this mess, and that is to fix the mess Brexit left behind. Everyone understand this, except Britain. America does, which is why Joe Biden’s government won’t deal with any of Britain’s revolving door series of PMs — Europe does, too, laughing sadly and shaking its head.

It didn’t have to be like this. Even despite Brexit, there didn’t have to be such a hard one — so hard that trade barriers rose, that simply moving goods back and forth was so difficult scores of businesses went bankrupt, that people couldn’t move back and forth. All of this made Britain poorer — this hardest of hard Brexits — by creating everything from labour shortages to a lack of investment to a lack of trade, and英国人现在正在付出代价。

但是就像我说的the worst is yet to come。摆脱这种混乱的唯一明智的方法是回到桌子上，并重新谈判一项交易doesn’t leave Britain poor。Rejoining the single market, so that goods flow, is a simple enough example. But given Tory ideology — that isn’t possible. So that leaves only choice, for whoever’s PM.

他们将不得不切。记住，英国现在更贫穷。因为它越来越差，所以从食物到啤酒再到公共服务都无法负担曾经曾经的任何水平。因此，在没有真正解决问题的情况下，谈判不那么鲁ck的愚蠢的英国脱欧交易，下一个下午将完全有三个选择。第一，借更多的钱，检查，是的，您必须这样做，只是为了使事情保持漂浮 - 即使它通过提高速度越来越高的利率来加速贫困周期。二，税收的税收，以某种政治上可口的方式，您得到了奖励，并将其提高，在人们疲倦和殴打的地方，以使金融毁灭的音乐椅子持续一段时间。三，紧缩 - 您必须降低公共支出水平，因为现在，你贫穷。

And that is going to accelerate the vicious cycle of poverty, for obvious reasons.人们已经挣扎的人对一个人的支持将减少。下一代将无法在同一水平上接受教育，这是一个更大的教育。家庭将无法在更高的学位上负担相同水平的生活水平。天空高利率和永久贬值的货币将使双胞胎缺陷变得更糟 - 进口变得更加昂贵，债务也变得更加昂贵。

这完全是使贫穷国家贫穷的贫困螺旋形成的。令人惊讶的是，这是第一个在现代历史上走错路的国家 - 从富人到贫穷。

这是英国退欧的价格。Let me make it concrete enough so everyone can understand. What will the final price of Brexit really be? It’ll probably be the NHS. The BBC. Kids being educated like they used to. Households affording the very same things they once took for granted.Inflation. A devalued currency. Higher levels of debt, for people and the nation. It was the biggest mistake in modern history, in post-war history, by a rich nation, by a very long way.

不过，您仍然无法真正谈论它。这就是为什么我想，双手，扔他的……等待它……双手……愤怒终于做到了。这是英国脱欧的价格，the worst is yet to come。PM Sunak的简单笑容比震惊和震惊的Robotruss更能做得更好。但这不会阻止它。

Umair
2022年10月