Did Thatcher Ruin or Save the UK Economy?

00:00 Intro
00:47 Monetarism and Recession
02:22 Thatcher vs The Unions
03:16 Rising Inequality
04:39 Privatisation
05:35 Right to Buy and Housing
06:40 Lawson Boom and Bust
08:20 Finance and Credit Crunch
09:54 Thatcher's Successes
10:50 Mixes Success and Evaluation

Text version.
About

[evophantom]

Privatisation is this country's single biggest issue. Selling off assets to companies with no real incentive to invest in improving or building capacity. So benefits are to shareholders only. Water firms should be the first industry brought back into public ownership. But so should rail companies and energy.

[memisemyself]

My biggest problem with Thatcher is that she was running an economy, where money was the most important element but she was elected to run a country, where people were the most important element. While governments have to keep the economy healthy for the benefit of people, she aimed to make the economy or part of it anyway, strong for the benefit of big business. The human element of the society she ran was forgotten.

[fortune-cookie-monster]

I grew up in South Wales, and in the 1980s Thatcher decimated whole communities which have still not recovered. While most people these days would agree that closing down the coal mines was a great idea, not replacing the mines with any other form of local employment was nothing short of cruel.

If Thatcher had been a good PM, she would have realised this and instead of going to war against the miners, she could have won them over with a better form of employment, which would replace the mining jobs.

This is just one of the many ways that Thatcher all but destroyed whole communities up and down the country and the economic and cultural hangover from her policies are with us to this very day.

[robincook]

i started work in 1970, because of the UK relations with Israel we got hit with huge increase in oil prices, which caused inflation.
Strange thing when I bought my first house we had 14% inflation but I had no problem paying my mortgages, (from a builing Society).
But Coal gave us a certain amount of control over our Economy.
Margaret Thatchers Arrival was based on the idea that British industry was inefficient, which it was, rather than updating it, they sent it to places which had poor quality of life,
Efficiency was based on deregulation rather than modernisation, so I think this set the road of the last 40 years, degraded everything to try and make a quick buck.
Know we have 14million people living below the poverty line, the quality of employment is terrible .
The Government is talking about the armed forces but in a conflict we would have zero way to sustain ourselves, we keep getting involved in conflicts which is making us unpopular with the greatest part of the Worlds Population.
In my life time 70 year's successive Government have failed me.

[RenegadeProH]

Huge error in judgment was not investing into a sovereign wealth fund. The same fund could have been used today to invest in renewable projects and improved infrastructure but who knows with the government we have they probably pissed it all away anyway.

[ntomenicgiorgo]

After seeing the decline in the uk, Italy, Japan, Germany The US public debt and China's ridiculous property bubble and infrastructure projects to maintain artificial gdp, I'm starting to think humans haven't learned how to maintain an economy and never will.
The whole premise of constant economic growth tied to population growth and consumption, the use of natural resources with little productivity is a fatally flawed concept anyway.

[kjquinn]

As an American working in Britain in the mid-1980's, my colleagues and I were amazed at the Thatcher government's willingness to privatize everything as quickly as possible. Rather than take an approach of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the businesses first and then selling of a share (or the whole thing), Thatcher chose outright privatization. As a result, all the benefits went to the shareholders and the government was left with the costs of unemployment and retraining of displaced workers.

Some of Thatcher's efforts seemed to be born out of spite, i.e., breaking up the Central Electricity Generating Board into three companies and allowing them to shop the world markets for coal. This seemed like a direct attack on Arthur Scargill and the miners union as payback for the miners' strike. The result was the devastation of the UK coal industry and the communities around the collieries.

The Big Bang led to London becoming one of the major financial centers of the world. The knock-on effect was the US repealing the Glass-Steagall Act which had separated retail banking from investment/merchant banking. This was done so that US banks could remain competitive with London's banks. The result, however, was that American banks took on excessive risks with the knowledge that they would be backstopped by the US government, same as in the UK.

[Kazi]

I was born in the early 90's, we're not taught any of this in School.

I am almost 30 now, and I'm only now learning about economics of the past that's lead us to where we are today.

Thanks very much for this informative video.

[fiachramaccana]

The issue with privatisation was threefold (1) they were sold cheaply allowing for windfall gains for investors at the expense of taxpayers and (2) the proceeds were mostly disappated in tax cuts for the rich and (3) oligoply private utilities replaced state owned companies and were deliberetely poorly regulated by toothless regulators.
Privatisation by itself is not necessarily a bad thing but it was deseigned to benefit private investors only.

[mazboengineer]

Gutted our MPs in Westminster didn’t copy the Norwegian model for natural resources ☹️

[injest]

I think a question we have to ask is why are British Government policies aimed at the short term? And what allows some other countries such as Norway to invest in the long term? Does it have something to do with culture and ideology, or is it the political system itself that incentivises it?

[AnnaFed]

John Desmond Heppolette's approach is pivotal for achieving success in the realm of online commerce. His management group has showcased outstanding effectiveness, and I also value the content available on his YouTube channel....

[cocoacrispy]

It's almost as though the UK political system is a game of 'capture the flag, ' where two separate parties compete for control, encouraging decisions benefiting one narrow economic class over the other, rather than the welfare of the nation as a whole. In practical terms, since the decline of the Liberal Party, Britons have been confronted with a choice between Labour and Conservatives, the former offering exclusively left socialist policies, the latter private laissez-faire alternatives. As it turns out, either set of policies is suited to a limited set of real-world situations, but when applied across-the-board, result in dysfunction. What is missing is the type of social-democratic policy that might have been on offer from the Liberals. The US, unfortunately, offers no alternative, as its Congress has been a captive of the corporate elite since the late '70s, with disastrous consequences for the working and middle classes. However, a comparison with Germany and the Scandinavian countries is helpful. Due to their systems of proportional representation, their voters have benefited from a much wider range of policy options.

[barrysnelson]

I am old but one of the surviving witnesses of pre Thatcher industrial Britain. We never hear the word "blacked" now but it was universal then. I worked in a factory in Newcastle and the management purchased a CNC lathe. The unions blacked it immediately and it stood idle for six months. When it finally got working it had to be manned by three workers. Normally, one worker could look after two or three. Amusingly, the company's biggest competitor was a German company who still exist and the site in Newcastle is now home to a big Audi dealership. Thatcher wasn't voted in in 1979 by a few Toffs but by millions of working people who could see the mindless, kamikase Trades Unions were destroying their jobs. I was there. This is how it was.

[dumptrump]

The best way to sum up the Thatcher years was "You can't build a sustainable recovery based on imported hand made Belgian chocolates & Suzuki Jeeps." But that's what happened.

[PEdulis]

How ironic that just about the only positive thing she did, leading the UK into the EU's single market, was now destroyed by her even less competent successors.

[jacobfield]

1. Thatcher inherited a recession that started in 1978, it did not start under Thatcher at all. It was the 3rd recession in the 1970's.
2. Thatcher lowered inflation from 14% to 4 %, making everyone richer. Thatcher also cut debt.
3. Thatcher kept NHS spending at 4%, it had dipped below 4% under the previous government. Inflation was lower under Thatcher so NHS spending was much higher than in the 70's.
4. Under Thatcher Car production increased from 1.2 million a year to 1.6 million a year. From 1968 to 1978 car production fell from 2.2 million to 1.2 million per year.

[s.harrisali]

40 years history summarized in such short time, which helps understand today's Uk issues so clearly now.❤well done

[Decrepit_biker]

Thatcher took a struggling Britian and broke it completely, and sold the shiny bits off to her rich mates.
I grew up in the 80s in a single parent family and was living in abject poverty due to this woman.... she is the worst thing ever to happen to the UK.

[allocated_capital]

I don’t think home ownership is a public good, but I do think it is falsely thought of as an investment when it should be characterized as a commodity. It is ridiculous that almost all other assets depreciate in value over time yet it’s almost expected that the value of your house should magically increase over the time you owned it