Sam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that Britain does not lack talented people, capital or ideas; it has created a centralised political and regulatory system that makes building, investing, hiring and experimentation increasingly difficult.At the centre of Sam’s argument is his “housing theory of everything”. Britain’s refusal to build enough homes in its most productive cities has made housing unaffor...
Sam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that Britain does not lack talented people, capital or ideas; it has created a centralised political and regulatory system that makes building, investing, hiring and experimentation increasingly difficult.
At the centre of Sam’s argument is his “housing theory of everything”. Britain’s refusal to build enough homes in its most productive cities has made housing unaffordable, delayed family formation, reduced social mobility, weakened productivity and transformed property from somewhere to live into a scarce financial asset. We discuss why stamp duty locks people in place, how planning applications can cost hundreds of millions of pounds and why almost everyone has been given the power to veto growth.
We also discuss why inflation destroys social trust, how zero growth turns politics into a fight over a shrinking pie, why the civil service rewards legislation and risk avoidance, and how Britain’s “vetocracy” prevents almost anything from being built. Finally, we explore whether AI could release a new wave of productivity—or expose Britain’s inability to build the energy, infrastructure and institutions the technology requires.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Britain Has Stopped Building
00:00:53 - Britain’s Centralised State
00:05:20 - How Post-War Centralisation Broke Growth
00:08:25 - Two Lost Decades of Wage Stagnation
00:20:15 - Inflation Destroys Trust
00:22:03 - Zero Growth Makes Politics Zero-Sum
00:26:56 - The Housing Theory of Everything
00:30:30 - London’s Housing Misallocation
00:34:31 - Housing and Falling Birth Rates
00:38:05 - Why Homes Became Financial Assets
00:45:30 - Stamp Duty Is Britain’s Worst Tax
00:51:42 - Britain’s Broken Planning System
00:55:30 - The £297 Million Planning Application
01:00:00 - Give Local Government the Upside
01:04:23 - Can Britain Still Recover?
01:11:33 - How Quickly the Energy Debate Changed
01:29:37 - Government Rewards Risk Avoidance
01:37:03 - The Vetocracy
01:54:44 - Growth Unlocks Everything Else
01:56:02 - AI and Britain’s Future
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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH SAM BOWMAN
› Works in Progress – https://worksinprogress.co/
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SPONSORS
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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04
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