Oh that's easy: it's because it's poor. Why?

- Not taxing the wealthy;

- Austerity measures that do nothing but destroy government services; and

- Housing prices.

You see this kind of disconnect all the time. For example, in the Biden administration, people would point to how well the NASDAQ is doing to say "the economy is doing great", which says nothing about the job market or living standards.

These economic measures really tell you nothing about wealth and income distribution.

House prices all over the developed world have to come down. This is arguably the biggest problem. But voters will resist that because it's their nest egg. At this point, this only goes one of two ways: fascist police state or socialist revolution.

Hoarding or denying shelter or food is violence.

Taxing wealthy

> This is because average tax rates rise more quickly with income in the UK, and are already higher at the top relative to the median, than in most of the European countries that raise more revenue overall.

> Austerity

Tories spent more on government than 2000s labour as % gdp

> Not taxing the wealthy

There aren't enough wealthy to cover the shortfall. Doing this is a moral issue, not a national economy issue.

But yea, the rest I think I agree with.

The wealthy are likely paying more taxes than anyone else in absolute terms.

But more taxes alone won’t fix the problems outlined in the article—namely, the misaligned incentives across different branches of the State and the shockingly low return on each pound spent. That inefficiency is probably also a symptom of poor alignment among the individuals involved in procurement, as well as broader societal incentives.

Over the past few decades, States have grown so large that the original incentive structures they were built on are now being challenged by competing incentives emerging from individuals and various sub-organizations within the State itself.

These kinds of conflicts are far less common in the private sector. There, the company’s goal—profit—is usually well aligned with the customer’s goal—getting the best product at the lowest price. And that alignment tends to cascade through every level of management, all the way down to the last employee.