I could (by god, I'm trying!), but that's taking the national microcosm back to the personal. Unless the country could get a better job, which is a possibility. Not sure who'd employ it, though. Maybe aliens who wanted to use British people to work in their QUAARGG mines and would provide us with natural gas in exchange.

Society isn't any wealthier than 'the past'. It is, however, more balanced. The excesses of the Aristocracy have been diffused and opened to the working man. Instead of sitting at a wooden table with his turnip, he now sits on his sofa with his pot noodle. We have more 'things', admittedly, but the production/marketing/sale of those things gives people more money to buy 'things'. It's a circle of perpetuity, and the only net loser or gainer is the earth, who we have to savage to find materials to make those 'things', whereas anything that pulls away from the circle has to pretend that a good is possessed of more value than it actually takes to create it.