quantinghome
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,265
I have heard it put differently- Britains problem is, it won the second word war!
moderator note - split from here.
Yes - although the problem is largely psychological. The whole "Germany was bombed to smithereens which enabled them to start with a fresh slate" argument seems philosophically unsound to me.
Winning the war (or more accurately being the junior partner on the winning team) made us think we were still top dog. Our industrial and transport infrastructure was in dire need of modernisation, but it was at least functioning and that should have given us a head start. If industry and government had invested properly, we would have been at the forefront of the post-war economic boom. Unfortunately the British make-do approach to investment, combined with a hubristic view of our performance in the war, meant we were complacent and failed to modernise. Instead we poured resources into holding onto the empire in a vain attempt to maintain our status as a 'world power' and kept our factories chugging away - in many places virtually unchanged from the Victorian era.
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