can't believe it ! well it is in the Sun but if it's true then what the 'you know what' is happening to Britain ? www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... ain-0.html even the froggies are ahead of Britain who are one above Italy !!!

can't believe it ! well it is in the Sun but if it's true then what the 'you know what' is happening to Britain ? www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... ain-0.html even the froggies are ahead of Britain who are one above Italy !!!

Not just in The Sun.

Inevitable really. If they had got their act together earlier, they would be way ahead of us by now.

India is in 9th place and growing quickly.

Russia will overtake us soon too.

Mind you these country's have much bigger populations than us, so per capita they aren't as well off.

Again? That's at least twice in the last six months.

Call me when they pass us in GDP per capita.

true enough - Germany is obviously bigger now but France is about the same population as the UK and enjoys a better overall standard of living than the UK IMO of course

Only because they are all peasants, heavily subsidised via the EU to keep their peasant lifestyles intact.

please !

love your sense of humour mate

Spot the most intelligent nation in Europe and the least (by clicking on the % of income button)! news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe ... .stm#start

Spot the most intelligent nation in Europe and the least (by clicking on the % of income button)! news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe ... .stm#start

Just wait till they get as good as us at football.

So this'll be countries that make stuff, will it?

This news is out of date by a month, maybe 2.

Brazil?

Nuts.

ohmygod !!!!!

you mean the UK has now been overtaken by Italy ?

Aren't countries like Brazil and India simply catching up with the civilised world, rather than us going boobs up?

Their sheer sizes should make them bigger than us, its just that they have been badly run for donkey's years means they have lagged behind upto now.

Saying that, standard of living wise, they are still a long way behind.....A person in the UK earning £25k would earn just 7 or 8 grand doing the equivalent work in Brazil or India....So basically, the population are being seriously shafted in order to build this growth.

How do you work that out? People with those sort of jobs are way better off than most of their compatriots and previous generations.

They probably are, but compared to the similar worker in a similar job here in the UK, they lag behind standard of living wise.

Its why we ship all that call centre work to India isn't it??....Millions of desperate job seekers prepared to work for peanuts....No wonder all these unscrupulous big businesses use them so much.

unfortunately in every 'civilised' country in the world the gap between rich and poor is getting wider but maybe in the developing nations the gap is narrowing ?
For example the average chinese person (in china) enjoys a better quality of life than say, 20 years ago - the majority may still live in relative poverty but their standards are improving whereas in somewhere like the UK or France or example the overall quality of life is better though the gap between rich and poor is widening

We've given them £14,000,000 since 1989?

It's like Bill Gates' Mum still giving him pocket money

What these right wing papers won't point out of course is that Brazil's economic miracle over the past decade came largely under the 7 year presidency of the socialist President Lula, the ex trade union official.

There are a lot of problems in Brazil particularly crime, corruption, and the tax and regulation rules there are massively complicated for anyone trying to set up a business, but their economy is improving, they have got good potential to exploit oil, and out of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that are usually cited as the most influential emerging economies, I think Brazil has the most optimistic future.

The Brazilian football league has got some huge sponsorship in the last couple of years and with the strengthening of its currency I think we might see quite a lot of top players heading to play in Brazil, where it used to be a breeding ground for talent that would go to Europe.

They have got the World Cup in 2014 and Rio hosts the Olympic in 2016, it will be interesting to see what state Brazil's rapid development is in by 2016.

Given the now critical status of many of the world's finite resources the LAST thing we need to see is populous nations such as Brazil, India etc. attempting to emulate our colossal feats of consumption.

Well, the cost of living in those countries is less than it is here, so multi and trans-national companies can therefore get labour at lower costs. They can pay more to a qualified doctor to sit in a call centre answering the phone than a hospital can , but that's still far less than they'd pay over here.

But all this growth is on the basis of making things – things that are often sold to the 'developed' world; us. Think of just how many things you buy that are made in China, India etc. All this was partly the aim of neo-liberalism: the developed economies were so developed that they could stop producing things, de-indusatrialise and live off service economies (and still grow).

For that to work, we all had to be encouraged to buy, buy, buy and consume in ways that our parents (well, certainly of my generation and older) would not have dreamt of doing. If that's the case, it makes sense that things are cheaper to encourage consumerism – which also means that they are not of the same quality as more expensive goods might have been some years ago. And that's without mentioning how obsolescence is now built into goods. So the washing machine (as I found out this week) does not last anywhere near the time that it once did and you have to shell out for a new one more frequently. So even if you don't buy into the cult of 'aspirationalism' (because consumption is what that is all about), you still have to buy things more than you once would have.

That 'aspirational' thing is funny: we'd once have called it 'keeping up with the Jonses' and laughed at those who did it. Now so many people do it – they want their homes to look like the pages of a design magazine, for instance. And of course, the rise in all those 'lifestyle' magazines and programmes and exhibitions etc etc etc help to maintain and develop that readiness to consume – and, of course, provide jobs.

Altogether, really quite depressing.

What Mintball neglected to mention about China - where stereotypically multi-national companies make things on the back of cheap labour - is that their government is deperately trying to keep "growth" going by printing money. China will almost invetitably go bust within a few short years unless something changes. That will be catastrophic for it's people and probably us as well. The government supports a banking system that lends to a myriad of broke manufacturers and the banking system does not recognise potential bad debts. These were estimated a few years ago as a huge 30% of China's GDP (and one suspects are growing). At some point, probably quite soon, the Chinese credit bubble will burst with catastrophic results.

In other news, I also forgot to say that the sky is going to fall in.

Sometime next week.

Probably.

Have you mentioned this to Wen Jiabao? I think he should be told.

Who lent them the money? I personally wouldn't fancy going over there stamping my feet and demanding repayments.

The Chinese. They apprarently managed to get a report by Ernsy & Yound retracted a while back.

The momement their high growth rate stalls will probably be the moment the chickens come home to roost (to keep with Mintball's considered line of thought).

Dally is not far off about China actually. I read a report in a Chinese magazine last time I was there (not in Chinese obviously). The Chinese government fuels growth to a large degree by borrowing from it's own citizens. They rely heavily on ordinary Chinese saving to supply money. If they stop saving then there are going to be consequences. Also, at some point they are going to have to engage with the rest of the world over patents, intellectual property and float their currency. The Yuan would be worth absolutely f*** all if it was traded. My hotel for next week is rediculously expensive compared to my last trip (in fact it's expensive full stop).
I don't imagine catastrophe there because if their economy stops growing you don't get people complaining that the bins don't get collected anymore and as they spent 5 times more on the Olympics than they do on healthcare a year nobody's going to notice longer queues at hospitals.