This is a confusing post. You're suggesting:

1. buy British to decrease national debt

2. Canyon (and other 'closed' systems) are overpriced

3. Canyon's raw supplier has poor factory control

4. therefore we should buy cheaper 'open' components

 

In summary, buy using these criteria:

- British components

- well made

- in good factory conditions

- 'open' systems design

- cheaper

 

That's just a more complex version of:

"British, high quality, cheap - pick any two."

 

As an aside, whilst the Japanese make very reliable vehicles, their debt (as a percentage of GDP) is more than double ours:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/september2021

4th graph down.

 

Why not consider other measures of how successful a country is:

https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

 

And some recent figures (slide to just 2017 and select table heading to sort):

https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index

 

First of all I'm not saying buy British there isn't necessarily a British option except you could use a British importer I was really making the point that excessively expensive products with poor reliability and excessive repair costs is hugely damaging to the country. A lot of people drive premium German cars and cars are the most damaging import of all. These German cars have poor reliability made worse with very high repair costs. They are often scrapped early as they become uneconomic to repair and its hugely damaging to our economy.

 

It is pointless comparing Japan to the UK like that because Japan is asset rich. They have invested hugely in assets abroad so their overall NIIP rating is very high. Where as the UK NIIP rating is exceptionally poor. Overall wealth is shown by a trading surplus compared to trading deficit, debt vs assets (NIIP). If someone buys a house they are in huge debt but they have a major asset. Someone borrowing to pay the bills because not enough income is coming in is completely different.

 

Here is a link to the NIIP rating that is all assets vs liabilities and you can see Japan is no. 1 and the UK is fourth from bottom with Spain, France and US. Lets not forget US has $30 trillion of debt. You may have to click on the NIIP position to get it to put them in the right order from asset rich to huge liabilities.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_position

 

There is no confusion about the UK's exceptionally poor financial health. Everyone realises that if every working person is paying close to £3k per year just to pay the interest on our debt we are in a serious bad way. There is no brighter side by trying to manipulate statistics and taking a figure in isolation. You have to look at NIIP for overall financial health and our trading surplus or deficit to see if we are improving or still acquiring more debt. It's grim reading which is why I try to encourage people to be sensible and buy products that create less damage to our economy i.e. cheaper and can be easily repaired and maintained to maximise their lifespan before replacement.

 

I realise I'm a lone voice in this and probably come across as an eccentric but its important that people have an understanding of why their incomes will reduce and services like the NHS and Police will get worse and worse as more tax revenue is used for interest charges than actual services.

 

We have to come to our senses as a country but even when we do we will have decades of hardship because we have so much debt to pay back. The economy has been so politicised that the actual reality of it cannot be seen by many people.

Careful. You will get me started on the subject of Mrs T closing down British industry and buying everything from abroad instead of investing in our industries.

Careful. You will get me started on the subject of Mrs T closing down British industry and buying everything from abroad instead of investing in our industries.

I'm not going to defend Margaret Thatcher she was one of the worst prime ministers we have had but there are also many other factors at play. Also I'm not one to try to blame politicians for everything the British public were also a major factor too. It's a tsunami of economic stupidity.

... I was really making the point that excessively expensive products with poor reliability and excessive repair costs is hugely damaging to the country.

Agreed - and to the purchaser.

 

I'm not happy with measuring a country by NIIP only.

However, the last column - NIPP as a % of GDP - is a more realistic measure if just looking at finance, and we're not in a good shape there either.

Agreed - and to the purchaser.

 

I'm not happy with measuring a country by NIIP only.

However, the last column - NIPP as a % of GDP - is a more realistic measure if just looking at finance, and we're not in a good shape there either.

 

GDP often includes house prices and I feel that is unrealistic. All the borrowing the government has done has created a falsely high GDP and using house price inflation also factors into that. GDP is often based on how much money is swilling about in the economy as well which again is inflated by borrowing. So high borrowing will create a falsely high GDP. If we have a huge trade deficit and huge borrowing to pay for it that will create a high GDP but that doesn't really reflect the real economy. NIIP is all the assets vs all the liabilities its simpler perhaps too simple but much more realistic than factoring in GDP. Remember the government has done a lot of quantitive easing which is printing extra money which just ends up in the hands of other countries to pay for the imports which is why our liabilities are so high but this dilutes the value of the currency but this isn't always reflected in sterling vs other currencies which is more about confidence in a currency rather than mathematical analysis. Obviously huge amounts of sterling are now owned by Japan, China, Germany etc and they own a significant amount of our economy because they hold a significant amount of sterling. Sterling is shares in UK Plc. Then of course you have the international banks we owe all the debt too.

 

It's going to take decades of a well managed economy to correct this and cause huge hardship for many people in the UK. The number one priority is to return to a trading surplus and live within our means.