#196 - Sam Bowman - The U.K. Is Becoming a Poor Country - The Peter McCormack Show

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