How the British Broke Their Own Economy
英国是如何破坏自己经济的

What’s the matter with the United Kingdom? Great Britain is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in an era of energy super-production and launched an epoch of productivity advancements that made many life essentials, such as clothes and food, more affordable. Today, the country suffers from the converse of these achievements: a profound energy shortage and a deep affordability crisis. In February, the Bank of England reported an ongoing productivity slump so mysterious that its own economists “cannot account fully” for it. Real wages have barely grown for 16 years. British politics seems stuck in a cycle of disappointment followed by dramatic promises of growth, followed by yet more disappointment.
英国怎么了？大不列颠是工业革命的发源地，这场革命开启了能源超级生产的时代，推动了生产力的进步，使诸如衣物和食物等生活必需品变得更加负担得起。如今，这个国家正遭受这些成就的反面：深刻的能源短缺和深重的负担危机。今年二月，英国银行报告了一种持续的生产力衰退，令人困惑，以至于其经济学家“无法完全解释”这一现象。真实工资已经停滞了 16 年。英国政治似乎陷入一种失望的循环，随后是戏剧性的增长承诺，接着又是更多的失望。

A new report, titled “Foundations,” captures the country’s economic malaise in detail. The U.K. desperately needs more houses, more energy, and more transportation infrastructure. “No system can be fixed by people who do not know why it is broken,” write the report’s authors, Sam Bowman, Samuel Hughes, and Ben Southwood. They argue that the source of the country’s woes as well as “the most important economic fact about modern Britain [is] that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere.” The nation is gripped by laws and customs that make essentials unacceptably scarce and drive up the cost of construction across the board.
一份名为“基础”的新报告详细描绘了该国的经济困境。英国迫切需要更多的住房、更多的能源和更多的交通基础设施。“没有人可以修复一个他们不知道为什么会坏掉的系统，”报告的作者萨姆·鲍曼、塞缪尔·休斯和本·索斯伍德写道。他们认为，国家困境的根源以及“关于现代英国最重要的经济事实是，在几乎任何地方建造几乎任何东西都是困难的。”国家受到法律和习俗的制约，这使得基本必需品变得不可接受地稀缺，并推高了整体建设成本。

Housing is an especially alarming case in point. The homeownership rate for the typical British worker aged 25 to 34 declined by more than half from the 1990s to the 2010s. In that same time, average housing prices more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
住房问题尤其令人担忧。根据财政研究所的数据，典型的 25 至 34 岁英国工人的住房拥有率从 1990 年代到 2010 年代下降了超过一半。在同一时期，平均房价翻了一番还多，即使经过通货膨胀调整。

Read: How the U.K. became one of the poorest countries in Western Europe
阅读：英国如何成为西欧最贫穷的国家之一

The housing shortage traces back to the postwar period, when a frenzy of nationalization swept the country. The U.K. created the National Health Service, brought hundreds of coal mines under state control, and centralized many of the country’s railways and trucking and electricity providers. In 1947, the U.K. passed the Town and Country Planning Act, which forms the basis of modern housing policy. The TCPA effectively prohibited new development without special permission from the state; “green belts” were established to restrict sprawl into the countryside. Rates of private-home building never returned to their typical prewar levels. With some spikes and troughs, new homes built as a share of the total housing stock have generally declined over the past 60 years.
住房短缺可追溯至战后时期，当时一股国有化的热潮席卷全国。英国建立了国民医疗服务体系，将数百个煤矿纳入国家控制，并集中管理了许多国家的铁路、公路和电力供应商。1947 年，英国通过了《城镇与乡村规划法》，该法成为现代住房政策的基础。该法有效禁止未经国家特别许可的新开发；设立了“绿色带”以限制向乡村的扩张。私宅建设的比例从未恢复到战前的典型水平。在过去 60 年中，尽管有些波动，新建住房作为总住宅存量的比例总体上是下降的。

The TCPA was considered reasonable and even wise at the time. Postwar Britain had been swept up by the theory that nationalization created economies of scale that gave citizens better outcomes than pure capitalism. “There was an idea that if we could rationalize the planning system … then we could build things in the right way—considered, and planned, and environmentally friendly,” Bowman told me.
TCPA 在当时被认为是合理乃至明智的。战后英国被认为国有化能够创造规模经济，从而为公民提供比纯资本主义更好的结果的理论所吸引。博曼告诉我：“有一个想法，如果我们能够合理化规划系统……那么我们就能够以正确的方式建设——经过考虑、规划且环保的方式。”

But the costs of nationalization became clear within a few decades. With more choke points for permitting, construction languished from the 1950s through the ’70s. Under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives rolled back nationalization in several areas, such as electricity and gas production. But their efforts to loosen housing policy from the grip of government control was a tremendous failure, especially once it was revealed that Thatcher’s head of housing policy himself opposed new housing developments near his home.
但国有化的成本在几十年内变得明显。从 20 世纪 50 年代到 70 年代，由于许可环节增加，建设停滞不前。在首相玛格丽特·撒切尔的领导下，保守党在多个领域如电力和天然气生产中逆转了国有化。然而，他们试图摆脱政府控制的住房政策的努力是巨大的失败，特别是在撒切尔的住房政策负责人反对在他家附近进行新的住房开发被揭露之后。

Housing is, as I’ve written, the quantum field of urban policy, touching every station of urban life. Broken housing policies have a ripple effect. In London, Bowman said, the most common options are subsidized flats for the low-income and luxury units for the rich, creating a dearth of middle-class housing. As a result, the city is bifurcated between the über-wealthy and the subsidized poor. “I think housing policy is a major driver of a lot of anti-foreigner, white-supremacist, anti-Black, anti-Muslim attitudes among young people who are frustrated that so-called these people get free houses while they have to live in a bedsit or move somewhere an hour outside the city and commute in,” Bowman said.
住房正如我所写，是城市政策的量子领域，触及城市生活的每一个角落。失效的住房政策产生连锁反应。在伦敦，博曼表示，最常见的选择是为低收入者提供的补贴公寓和为富人提供的豪华住宅，从而导致中产阶级住房的短缺。因此，这座城市在超级富裕和获得补贴的贫困人群之间出现了分裂。“我认为住房政策是许多针对外国人、白人至上主义者、反黑人、反穆斯林情绪的主要驱动力，这些年轻人对所谓的这些人获得免费住房感到沮丧，而他们却只能住在单间公寓或搬到城外一个小时的地方通勤，”博曼说。

Read: The urban family exodus is a warning for progressives
阅读：城市家庭外流是对进步主义者的警示

Constrictive housing policy in Britain has also arguably prevented other great cities from being born. If the University of Cambridge’s breakthroughs in biotech had happened in the 19th century, Bowman said, the city of Cambridge might have bloomed to accommodate new companies and residents, the same way Glasgow grew by an order of magnitude around shipbuilding in the 1800s. Instead Cambridge remains a small city of fewer than 150,000 people, its potential stymied by rules all but prohibiting its growth.
英国的限制性住房政策也可以说阻止了其他伟大城市的诞生。博曼表示，如果剑桥大学在生物技术方面的突破发生在 19 世纪，那么剑桥市可能会像 19 世纪格拉斯哥在船舶制造业周围发展那样，繁荣发展以容纳新公司和居民。然而，剑桥仍然是一个人口不足 15 万的小城市，其潜力被几乎完全禁止增长的规定所扼制。

The story for transit and energy is similar: Rules and attitudes that make it difficult to build things in the world have made life worse for the British. “On a per-mile basis, Britain now faces some of the highest railway costs in the world,” Bowman, Hughes, and Southwood write. “This has led to some profoundly dissatisfying outcomes. Leeds is now the largest city in Europe without a metro system.” Despite Thatcher’s embrace of North Sea gas, and more recent attempts to loosen fracking regulations, Britain’s energy markets are still an omnishambles. Per capita electricity generation in the U.K. is now roughly one-third that of the United States, and energy use per unit of GDP is the lowest in the G7. By these measures, at least, Britain may be the most energy-starved nation in the developed world.
交通和能源的故事类似：使得在全球建造东西变得困难的规则和态度使英国人生活更加艰难。“按每英里的成本计算，英国现在面临着全球最高的铁路费用之一，”博尔曼、休斯和索思伍德写道。“这导致了一些极其令人失望的结果。利兹现在是欧洲最大的没有地铁系统的城市。”尽管撒切尔政府对北海天然气的拥护，以及最近放宽水力压裂法规的尝试，英国的能源市场仍然一片混乱。英国人均电力生产现在约为美国的三分之一，而按 GDP 单位计算的能源使用则是 G7 国家中最低的。从这些指标来看，至少在发达国家中，英国可能是能源最匮乏的国家。

Scarcity is a policy choice. This is as true in energy as it is in housing. In the 1960s, Britain was home to about half of the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors. Today, the U.K. has extraordinarily high nuclear-construction costs compared with Asia, and it’s behind much of Europe in the share of its electricity generated from nuclear power—not only France but also Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and Romania.
稀缺是一个政策选择。在能源领域，这一点与住房领域同样适用。20 世纪 60 年代，英国拥有世界上约一半的核反应堆。然而，今天的英国与亚洲相比，核电建设成本 extraordinarily 高，并且在核电占其电力来源的比例上落后于欧洲的大部分国家——不仅是法国，还有芬兰、瑞士、瑞典、西班牙和罗马尼亚。

What happened to British nuclear power? After North Sea oil and gas production ramped up in the 1970s and ’80s, Britain redirected its energy production away from nuclear power. Even this shift has had its own complications. In the past few years, the U.K. has passed several measures to reduce shale-gas extraction, citing earthquake risks, environmental costs, and public opposition. As a result, gas production in the U.K. has declined 70 percent since 2000. Although the country’s renewable-energy market has grown, solar and wind power haven’t increased nearly enough to make up the gap.
英国的核能发生了什么？在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代，北海的石油和天然气生产增产后，英国将其能源生产从核能转向其他来源。即便这一转变也面临着自己的复杂情况。在过去几年中，英国通过了几项措施以减少页岩气的开采，理由是地震风险、环境成本和公众反对。因此，自 2000 年以来，英国的天然气生产下降了 70％。尽管该国的可再生能源市场有所增长，但太阳能和风能的增长远远不足以填补这一缺口。

The comparison with France makes clear Britain’s policy error: In 2003, very large businesses in both countries paid about the same price for electricity. But by 2024, after decades of self-imposed scarcity and the supply shock of the war in Ukraine, electricity in the U.K. was more than twice as expensive as in France.
与法国的比较清楚地显示了英国的政策错误：在 2003 年，两个国家的大型企业支付的电价大致相同。但到 2024 年，在几十年的自我施加短缺以及乌克兰战争带来的供应冲击后，英国的电价超过了法国的两倍。

There is an inconvenient subcurrent to the U.K.’s scarcity crisis—and ours. Sixty years ago, the environmentalist revolution transformed the way governments, courts, and individuals thought about their relationship to the natural world. This revolution was not only successful but, in many ways, enormously beneficial. In the U.S., the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act brought about exactly that. But over time, American environmental rules, such as those in the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act, have been used to stop new housing developments and, ironically, even clean-energy additions. Similarly, in the U.K., any individual who sues to stop a new project on environmental grounds—say, to oppose a new road or airport—generally has their legal damages capped at £5,000, if they lose in court. “Once you’ve done that,” Bowman said, “you’ve created a one-way system, where people have little incentive to not bring spurious cases to challenge any new development.” Last year, Britain’s high-speed-rail initiative was compelled to spend an additional £100 million on a shield to protect bats in the woods of Buckinghamshire. Finding private investment is generally difficult for infrastructure developers when the path to completion is strewn with nine-figure surprise fees.
英国的稀缺危机以及我们的稀缺危机中存在着一个不便的潜流。六十年前，环保革命改变了政府、法院和个人对自然界关系的看法。这场革命不仅取得了成功，而且在许多方面带来了巨大的好处。在美国，《清洁空气法》和《清洁水法》正是实现了这一目标。但随着时间的推移，美国的环境规则，如《国家环境政策法》和《加利福尼亚环境质量法》，被用来阻止新的住房开发，讽刺的是，甚至是清洁能源的新增项目也是如此。类似地，在英国，任何因环境原因起诉阻止新项目的个人——比如反对新建道路或机场——通常在法院败诉后，其法律损害赔偿额会被上限为 5000 英镑。“一旦你这样做了，”鲍曼说，“你就创建了一个单向系统，人们对于提出虚假案件挑战任何新开发的动力很小。”去年，英国的高速铁路计划被迫额外花费 1 亿英镑用于保护白金汉郡森林中的蝙蝠。 对于基础设施开发者来说，寻找私营投资通常是困难的，因为完成的道路上布满了九位数的意外费用。

Some of Britain’s problems echo across the European continent, including slow growth and high energy prices. More than a decade ago, Germany began to phase out nuclear power while failing to ramp up other energy production. The result has been catastrophic for citizens and for the ruling government. In the first half of 2024, Germans paid the highest electricity prices in the European Union. This month, Social Democrats were punished at the polls with their worst defeat since World War II. Bowman offered a droll summary: “Europe has an energy problem; the Anglosphere has a housing problem; Britain has both.”
英国的一些问题在整个欧洲大陆上回荡，包括增长缓慢和高能源价格。十多年前，德国开始逐步淘汰核电，但未能提高其他能源的生产。这对公民和执政政府造成了灾难性的后果。在 2024 年上半年，德国人支付了欧盟中最高的电价。本月，社会民主党在选举中遭受了自第二次世界大战以来最糟糕的失败。鲍曼提供了幽默的总结：“欧洲面临能源问题；英语圈面临住房问题；英国则两者兼而有之。”

These problems are obvious to many British politicians. Leaders in the Conservative and Labour Parties often comment on expensive energy and scarce housing. But their goals haven’t been translated into priorities and policies that lead to growth. “Few leaders in the U.K. have thought seriously about the scale of change that we need,” Bowman said. Comprehensive reform is necessary to unlock private investment in housing and energy—including overhauling the TCPA, reducing incentives for anti-growth lawsuits, and directly encouraging nuclear and gas production to build a bridge to a low-carbon-energy economy.
这些问题对许多英国政治家来说显而易见。保守党和工党领导人常常评论能源昂贵和住房稀缺。但他们的目标并没有转化为推动增长的优先事项和政策。鲍曼表示：“英国很少有领导人认真思考我们所需的变化规模。”全面改革有必要解锁住房和能源领域的私人投资，包括全面修订 TCPA，减少反增长诉讼的激励，并直接鼓励核能和天然气生产，以建立通往低碳能源经济的桥梁。

Effective 21st-century governance requires something more than the ability to win elections by decrying the establishment and bemoaning sclerotic institutions. Progress requires a positive vision of the future, a deep understanding of the bottlenecks in the way of building that future, and a plan to add or remove policies to overcome those blockages. In a U.S. context, that might mean making it easier to build advanced semiconductors, or removing bureaucratic kludge for scientists while adding staff at the FDA to accelerate drug approval.
21 世纪有效治理需要的不仅仅是通过抨击现有体制和抱怨僵化机构来赢得选举的能力。进步需要对未来的积极愿景，深入理解构建未来过程中的瓶颈，并制定计划以增加或删除政策，以克服这些障碍。在美国的背景下，这可能意味着让先进半导体的建设变得更容易，或是在加快药物批准的同时，减少科学家的官僚主义障碍，并在 FDA 增加人员。

Read: A simple plan to solve all of America’s problems
阅读：一个解决美国所有问题的简单计划

In the U.K., the bottlenecks are all too clear: Decades-old rules make it too easy for the state to block housing developments or for frivolous lawsuits to freeze out energy and infrastructure investment. In their conclusion, Bowman and his co-authors strike a similar tone. “Britain can enjoy such a renewal once more,” they write. “To do so, it need simply remove the barriers that stop the private sector from doing what it already wants to do.”
在英国，瓶颈非常明显：几十年前的规则使得国家可以轻易地阻止住房开发，或者让无谓的诉讼冻结能源和基础设施投资。在他们的结论中，鲍曼和他的合著者们表达了类似的观点。“英国可以再次享受这种复兴，”他们写道。“为此，它只需消除阻碍私营部门做其已经想做的事情的障碍。”