Consider the good fortune of a country far richer than the UK. Its economy is more than £300bn bigger and its workers are almost a quarter more productive than Britain’s, enjoying wages that are typically £7,000 higher. Households are flush enough to spend thousands more on consumption, just as public services are far better resourced. This economy still faces deep challenges — including entrenched inequality, regional imbalances and climate change — but prosperity generally makes life just that bit easier.
If this imaginary nation sounds both foreign and familiar, well, it should. It’s a sketch of the economy the UK might have today if it hadn’t just lost a decade of economic progress following the financial crisis.
As a dismal decade draws to a close, it’s worth conjuring up this counterfactual — not to torment ourselves with what might have been, nor to re-litigate the rights and wrongs of economic austerity. Rather, it is a timely moment to ponder how we would feel if things had turned out differently: would richer have meant happier?