Summaries - short and longer

Summaries - The Teamwork Nation

Short summary

Most people in the UK seem to live an agreeable life. But we're in trouble. We are underproductive and heavily in debt; we are overcrowded and our public services are overstretched; we have a risky dependence on imported supplies of food, energy and consumer goods. We depend on a minority of overburdened taxpayers to pay for everything. And we are heavily divided, socially, culturally and economically. We lost the national team spirit that made us prosperous, harmonious and safe. We are weaker, and on the path to collapse. 

We need to change radically, and soon. The Government can't do it: it taxes, borrows and spends more than ever, but everything is worse. They are incompetent. It's down to us. We need all able people to get skilled, industrious and productive, and to take personal responsibility for themselves and their families. We need employers to use British workers instead of cheap foreign labour at home and abroad; we need Government to stop mass immigration and let us all integrate, and we need the 'Big State' to shrink back to a regular, more affordable size. This is living by the TeamWork Nation code (see the Medium Summary, next)

But what will make us change? Maybe we will just snap out of it? Maybe a great new leader will emerge and steer us all away from disaster? Neither are likely. The status quo will persist until a point of either natural induced crisis. A taxpayers’ revolt would force a hard reappraisal of the State’s role, force reversion of its expenditure back to normal levels and catalyse productivity. There would be wild uproar, of course, but something will have to give, one way or another.

Medium Summary
Team up to win. Team up or lose.

Life in the UK for most citizens seems pretty good, relatively. 
We enjoy free education, abundant food, healthcare and welfare, peace, relative prosperity and a myriad of entertainment opportunities. No-one suffers the grinding poverty of the Third World. It’s marvellous, but there are big problems underneath. 

But we are declining, and living way beyond our means: we are overcrowded, with high debts, no savings and inadequate resources. That makes us weak.
  • State expenditure at over £1200bn p.a. is 46% of GDP - the highest level since WW2. 
  • Tax does not cover State expenditure, even though it's at its highest rate in 70 years. 
  • Just 2m richer people pay most of all Income Tax but 23m people pay none, because they are not productive enough. We have some of the worst worker productivity levels in the West. 
  • Our Governments borrowed and printed many hundreds of £billions to make up the shortfall, rather than live within our means. This trend was well entrenched even before Covid. 
  • And so national debt has increased to £2,600bn, the highest peacetime debt since WW2; the annual interest on that - £115bn - would pay over 200% of Defence costs. 
  • We are now also a heavily overcrowded country, foolishly and avoidably dependent on expensive and insecure imports of energy, food and raw materials. 
That's because we lost our national team spirit and became the Disunited Kingdom.
A very long run of peace and prosperity has caused us to become complacent, selfish, greedy and disunited:
  • We want cheap goods from cheap labour but we don’t want to work for less money.
  • We don’t want mass immigration (the working class), but we do (the employers).
  • We don’t want more tax but we want the Government to spend more on everything.
  • We want more houses but we don’t want to lose our green spaces.
  • We want more roads and vehicles but we don’t want more pollution and congestion.
  • We don’t want more debt but we can’t stop borrowing.
  • We want to be strong but we have cut our defences substantially.
  • We are obsessed with minority rights but neglect the interests of the silent majority. 
And so we have become a disunited, 'grab what you can/ dog eat dog' society.

But good teamwork is the basis of any successful nation's prosperity. 
The main human factor that makes any nation successful is its members' ability to work peacefully together for mutual benefit. No football team can win a match if half its players oppose the game plan and no-one passes the ball! Winning teams don’t fight each other, they work together.

Unless we start working as a team again, our decline will get much worse.
Our disunity makes us much more vulnerable to crises. First Covid, then Russia's attack on Ukraine, already exposed that. And such crises have become more likely, not less: global population, climate change, debt bubbles, wars, mass migration etc. 
Our huge debts will increase, our currency will become worth less; imports will cost even more, our standard of living will drop like a stone. Bankruptcy happens slowly, then very quickly.

We need to become a Reunited Kingdom - harmonious, prosperous and secure:
  • More skilled people in more productive, better-paying jobs, paying fair tax, not dependent on 'benefits'.
  • With savings and 'rainy day' reserves rather than ever-increasing debts.
  • More self-sufficiency in food and energy, and less reliance on hostile countries and the vagaries of unstable international supply chains.
  • A smaller, lower-cost government that spends your money efficiently on the things that keep us safe and enable us to prosper.
  • More strength and resilience against all the threats we face. 
  • I.e. an integrated, productive and harmonious society.
We can achieve this if you sign up to the Teamwork Nation code:
  • We each take primary responsibility for ourselves and our dependents.
  • We are each as productive as we can be and we live within our means.
  • We care about and help each other:
    • We do not unfairly exploit others just because we’re smarter.
    • We do not lean on others just because they’re smarter or more industrious.
    • We support colleagues who suffer misfortune but we do not tolerate wilful idleness.
    • We employ fellow national citizens in preference to others. 
    • We buy our compatriots' goods and services by first preference. 
    • We don’t discriminate based on race, sex, religion, class etc.
  • We willingly pay modest taxes but we demand high efficiency in their expenditure. 
  • We build and conserve social and economic prosperity for our descendants.
  • We protect and conserve the environment.
  • We help our international neighbours to achieve prosperity and avoid disaster.
  • We guard against external threats to our wellbeing and prosperity. 
  • We are willing to criticise anti-social behaviour, and willing to accept such criticism.
  • We produce only the children that we personally can afford to raise. It’s not a human right to produce children that others have to nurture.
In practice, this means a substantial change to your behaviour and your attitude:
  • Employers:  
    • Stop using cheap foreign labour instead of UK labour; invest in training; invest in automation; produce more stuff here in the UK; pay decent wages and pay fair taxes. 
  • Workers: 
    • Skill up and get a job; work hard and produce well; earn good money; pay tax and get off benefits; enjoy the pride and the valid vote of being a contributive team player. 
  • Everyone: 
    • Buy more stuff made here in the UK. Fair international trade is good and right, but artificially cheap foreign goods aren’t cheap if they cost you your jobs, your neighbours' jobs and your children's' futures. 
  • Government: 
    • Stop subsidising mass immigration and give us all a chance to integrate. Slim down, stop spending and wasting so much. Stop paying able people to do nothing. 
And it means holding government and corporations to account
  • You must know that the companies you work for and buy things from are equally committed to your ideals; that they are not exploitive people who abuse workers, disrupt society, dodge taxes, pollute our environment and care only for their own fortunes. 
  • You must know that taxes are spent efficiently on services of common benefit: like regulation of pollution, provision of infrastructure, policing, a judiciary and a defence force; that the very powerful and costly machinery of government isn’t being abused in pursuit of dangerous political ideologies, or simply wasted on fools’ errands. 
See Accountability Ratings in the main body.

Can this be achieved? I see four possibilities from this point:

1. We do nothing. 
Our society will continue to degrade until it’s busted, like Argentina. Only then will the people realise what they lost and strive to make it better (also like Argentina). 
Regrettably, this outcome seems the most likely; it's human nature. Crowds are inert and react mostly to either crises or compelling opportunities. While the State keeps papering over the cracks with funny money, they continue to suspend the inevitable crisis.

2. A great new leader emerges, one who will sober us all up and steer us away from disaster.
We're unlikely to find one amongst the current political cadre. The mucky world of politics repels people of the intelligence, vision, strength, competence and integrity we need - people unafraid to say that we’re borrowing our way into penury, and who won't make foolish, expensive promises to win votes. Maybe 'cometh the hour, cometh the man/woman'? 

3. Taxpayers revolt, and force a crisis. 
They force the State to stop overtaxing them, indebting them with irresponsible borrowing and debasing their money by printing ever more of it.
Taxpayers don't (yet) have the means to coordinate a revolution. And Parliament isn't going to help them anytime soon. As George Bernard Shaw said: 'A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul'. But, as history proves, a few determined individuals can trigger revolt. 

4. We change of our own volition, through a collective realisation that we need to. 
This would be the best option. Internal motivation is so much better than external imposition. I hope that there are enough people who wish to avoid crisis and who are willing to take action. Remember, what you don't change you accept. 

So it's up to you now: 

Our advanced, modern society was built over hundreds of years at great cost, effort and sacrifice. You were lucky enough to inherit it. But what you don't look after you lose. 

Team Up To Win. Team Up Or Lose

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