Keir Starmer’s big mistake: confusing money with capital?

Keir Starmer is desperate for foreign money to fund British investment, but it makes no sense at all.

This is the audio version of this video:

And this is the transcript:

---

Keir Starmer doesn’t understand what capital is.

He is not alone. Many people seem to confuse capital with money.

Money is not capital. Money may make organizing capital easier, but capital consists of two things: people and physical resources. There is nothing more to it, because if you don’t have people and physical resources capable of handling a task like building a new infrastructure project like a bridge or whatever we need, then, frankly, how a lot whatever If you have the money you have, you won’t get a bridge, a school, a new power grid or whatever your plan may be.

So money cannot be the capital we need to create the country we want here in the UK. No, money is just the tool that brings these things together.

In this case, why did Keir Starmer hold an entire conference and make a big fuss about trying to attract so-called foreign direct investment to the UK?

By the way, foreign direct investment is simply a financial flow. These foreign direct investors will bring remarkably few people with them, and they will bring remarkably few physical resources. Instead, Keir Starmer hopes, these foreign direct investors will bring some money into the UK.

And we know this because of the people he spoke to. He spoke to very large technology companies. that are overloaded with cash. In most cases, their balance sheets contain trillions of dollars of cash.

Private equity funds are also often loaded with cash from investors who don’t know what to do with their money.

All of these organizations will bring money into the UK, but the ability to create the capital we need to fund these people already exists here in this country. Unless we actually see these companies recruiting boatloads of people, it’s the people already in this country who are going to build everything we need. And they will do so with the physical resources we can command, that is, with those we can afford to buy.

So does your money really make a difference? Or could government money do the job of assembling these capital resources in the way we need as well as these foreign companies?

What is Keir Starmer really saying when he decides to give the job to foreign companies instead of British officials?

Is he saying we are not up to the task?

Is he saying that British contractors are not up to the task?

Is he saying that these foreigners are so much smarter than us that they must be tasked with organizing our economy?

Or is he simply making a simple and incredibly fundamental mistake by confusing money with capital, because if he makes that mistake – and I believe he does – then he is actually selling this country very short?

And there is a very good reason for this when we have foreign direct investment. Eventually we will have outflows of the benefits of this investment abroad. These companies will make the profits. You will reap the profits if these investments work. And we won’t.

Nor will we see all taxes on these profits, because some of them will inevitably flow out of this country and some will be taxed elsewhere.

And if profits are to be made, you can be sure that they will not be generated in this country or subject to tax here.

In other words, its fundamental flaw is incredibly costly.

We have all the capital we need in the UK to do these things. If these companies believe they can actually deliver, they couldn’t deliver if it weren’t for the people and physical resources to do the projects they’re talking about. Therefore, the only missing component is money. And this missing part of the money could very easily be created in this country in two ways.

Any government could approach the Bank of England and ask if we can borrow the money in question and there is nothing stopping them from doing so.

Or they can spend the money invested and, if desired, issue bonds to cover the costs.

And ultimately, if we wish, we could even raise some additional taxes, especially on the rich.

But my point is that not only do we have the manpower and physical resources here to implement these projects, otherwise they could not be implemented at all, but we also have the capital here in the form of money. So is there something else we are missing, namely management?

I don’t think so, because the vast majority of managers used to build UK projects will also be British. This makes Keir Starmer’s decision even more absurd.

Why are we looking for foreign direct investment when we don’t actually need it?

---