The Tartan Army’s American Reality Check

America isn't expensive: Scotland is getting poorer

When thousands of Scots travel to the United States for the World Cup, many will come back with more than memories of football. They will also return with fresh eyes. And that may matter more than we think.

I have spent much of my career working with American firms. At the height of the internet boom in the late 1990s, I consulted at Sun Microsystems, which had built a sophisticated manufacturing site in Linlithgow. Sun arrived in Scotland on the back of this country’s reputation for producing silicon chips, and it exposed many Scottish managers to the demands of global logistics and world-class industrial ambition.

Sun was one of the companies that powered the early internet era. It was successful, confident and generous too: it helped equip Napier University with an advanced computing lab, where I did my postgraduate work. That period opened doors for me professionally and shaped my view of what serious economic dynamism looks like.

I saw something similar years later when I worked with J.P. Morgan during the 2008 banking crisis, helping the bank integrate Bear Stearns in the aftermath of its collapse. Since then, my company has continued to support Fortune 500 firms with software Made in Scotland. I still speak regularly with Americans, meet them at conferences, and spend time with them on holiday. Recently, one conclusion has become harder to avoid: Scotland has fallen behind the United States in living standards.

Many Scots visit America and assume everything is simply more expensive. In part, that is true. But the deeper truth is less comfortable: we are becoming relatively poorer. World Cup fans will notice it for themselves. They will compare homes, cars, phones, wages, energy costs and public space with what they see in America. In many cases, Scotland will not compare well.

That matters because travel changes expectations. People who see how others live begin to ask why standards at home feel lower than they should be. A joiner, builder or electrician from Scotland may look at the life enjoyed by his American equivalent and wonder why a wealthy country like ours cannot offer more to working people.

That is why this World Cup could have political consequences. Exposure broadens horizons. It forces comparison. And comparison breeds impatience with managed decline.

What worries me is that too much of Scottish politics now seems focused on coping with stagnation rather than reversing it. The recent SNP talk of intervening in the price of supermarket staples is a good example. Price controls are what governments reach for when they want to treat the symptoms of economic failure rather than its causes. They may sound compassionate, but they are usually a sign that policymakers have run out of ideas for growth.

The better answer is not to micromanage prices but to make Scotland richer: cut the cost of government, back enterprise, raise productivity, and put more money into the pockets of working people. Scots do not need managed scarcity. We need a government prepared to pursue higher living standards.

The World Cup will give many Scottish fans a glimpse of a different scale of prosperity. The real question is what they do with that knowledge when they come home. I hope the Tartan Army starts a political riot.