Thatcherism 40 years On.

[The Brain]

For a fair assessment I think you have to consider what the alternatives were. 1980s Labour for instance wouldn't have been great for the material wellbeing of the UK, is my impression.

[viper37]

Poison chalice leading to the financialization of the economy, the atomization of society, and the immiseration of the Britons.

how is that different than any other democracy, more to the left, or more to the right?
The US had Reagan, ok, it was, maybe, similar.
Canada had Trudeau and Mulroney for the same time, and only at the beginning of the 90s did fighting deficits became a priority.
Most of Europe underwent some pretty big changes, without going all Thatcher, and yet, they have economic situation very similar to the UK right now.  Except for having a bunch of affiliated semi-autonomous fiscal paradise, maybe.

[Josquius]

My thoughts on the bitch are known. I hope someone kicks over her tombstone today.
Though she does have a clear challenger now in the worst PM of modern history contest.
But then the whole current mess can ultimately be traced back to Thatcher so....

On the flipside, I think social housing would need to be radically re-designed. At least in what I've seen inside and out in London and Manchester, council housing/former council housing feels a bit soulless and oppressive*. Not that it isn't better to have a home than not but many of the buildings seem they weren't designed with how people actually want to live vs. more how councils/architects aspired for people to want to live.

*and unsafe when you consider some of those ones that had scores of 'skywalks'

It was built on the cheap and often shows that; but we are a far richer country now so theoretically should be able to produce 200k good quality council houses per annum.

There was also the problem with the "streets in the sky" movement that you refer to; any future push for increased housing has to allow for the fact that British people like houses rather than flats , in the past this has been treated as almost a moral failing.

The trouble there is they went in for mega constructions that put cars first and completely lost touch with people actually having to live in them.
High rise tower blocks as built in the 60s don't actually have much different density to the low rise buildings they replaced due to the large grassy areas around the blocks.

What they should do instead is build medium rise as you see across much of Europe.
Indeed you do see a lot of privately built flats increasingly following this pattern. It is flats that we have a shortage of I'd say. Build more of those and get more single people moving out of shared houses and flats in converted houses, thus freeing those up for families.
Problem is most of the construction at the moment is led by shifty private companies with very dodgy leaseholds around them.

But that's also something that can be said of most major cities (that people want to live in ). Close to my own personal experience, rent has also skyrocketed in SF and NYC.

In the UK however its not just a London thing. You see it similarly, though not quite so pronounced, all across the country. In the UK you just generally don't find people in their 20s who can afford to live alone.

The UK was the 5th biggest economy until the referendum and despite what people with their heads still up the Empire's arse might think that doesn't come as default to any country.

What she seems to be blamed for, ie de-industrialisation and the decline of no-skill jobs has happened everywhere around the world, so thinking that without her things would be like the 60s just with today's standards of living is silly.

Nobody with half an ounce of sense thinks that. We all know it has been a global problem too.
However, compare the UK to Germany for example. They have handled the shift away from traditional heavy industry in a far smarter way than Thatcher's ideologically driven "Kill it as quickly as possible" approach.

[Admiral Yi]

Germany has traditionally been more focused on higher value-added, technically advanced production, as opposed to commodified production characteristic of rust belt industries.

[Maladict]

Germany has traditionally been more focused on higher value-added, technically advanced production, as opposed to commodified production characteristic of rust belt industries.

The Ruhr area will disagree with you there.

[Josquius]

Heavy industry is pretty much Germany's (traditional) defining thing. Remember the origins of the EU?

[dps]

Germany kept its manufacturing base somehow. It may be the case that the US and UK saw a similar pattern of deindustrialization/financialization/movement toward a service economy because they were governed by roughly the same ideology during the same time period.

Or Germany is the exception due to its size, strengths, and location.

Or Germany had the benefit of much of its industrial base being relatively new, having been rebuilt by the US via the Marshall Plan.

It also may not be a coincidence that Britain, where the industrial base is the oldest, seems to have had more problems relating to deindustrialization than the US (at least that's my perception, which may be incorrect).

[Zanza]

Britain got more than twice as much help as West Germany from the Marshall Plan, so I doubt that this is a major factor in explaining the industrial structures of both countries 30-70 years after the fact.

[Josquius]

Britain got more than twice as much help as West Germany from the Marshall Plan, so I doubt that this is a major factor in explaining the industrial structures of both countries 30-70 years after the fact.

Germany spent its Marshall Plan money on rebuilding its industry.
Britain wasted its Marshall Plan money trying to save the empire.

[Tamas]

I'd also dismiss the fact (well, I assume it's a fact!) that Germany is bigger and has more natural resources than Empire-less GB.

[grumbler]

Germany also has a much healthier relationship between labor and ownership than the UK (or the US).

[Zanza]

As far as I know, Germany has much more state intervention and redistribution of wealth than Britain. That's a policy choice that can be partially attributed to Thatcherism and also Blair's Third Way compared to Germany's more statist Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. German conservatives, with some exceptions, are not radically market liberal and see a role for the state in the economy.

To give an example: Germany put so much money into Eastern Germany that it is now richer than the poorest parts of France or the UK, despite the decades of communism. Germany also put massive amounts of state subsidies into its own rust belt areas, even if cities in the Ruhr and Saar area are still depressed due to the end of the coal and steel industry there, but it helped to alleviate the effects of deindustrialisation there.