70 years: A kingdom between two economies

Royal burdens

Despite all this, enthusiasm over the coronation ceremony has not diminished, although King Charles is less popular than his mother.

But Buckingham Palace has not been spared from criticism over the high bill of the coronation ceremony (which could reach £100m), at a time of grinding austerity which has forced a growing number of Britons to rely on food banks to save on their expenses. 

However, it is estimated that the economy will receive a generous long-term boost on the heels of the festive occasion which could exceed £1 billion this past weekend, figures show.

This is offset by estimates that the British economy may lose more than $1bn due to output loss for each official holiday, according to PwC. The Daily Mirror reported that consumers will spend an additional £1.76 billion during the holiday (£87 per person).

The British monarchy has increasingly come under scrutiny over the burden it has posed on the economy in exchange for limited returns. A study by the consultancy firm Brand Finance in 2017 estimated the contribution of the royal family to the GDP at $1.7 billion annually.

This has prompted King Charles to announce that he plans to cut back on the expenses of the royal family and its entourage in the coming months and years, according to Andrew Roberts, a historian and professor at King's College London. The goal is to reduce costs and take into account the economic conditions of the country.

The king of the environment 

The present royal era may share similarities with the past. When Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, the United Kingdom was healing from the effects of World War II, inflation was high under the surge in world commodity prices at the time, while the food system was faltering, with key staples such as meat and dairy products still subject to wartime rationing.

The high costs of energy, transport, hospitalisation, and taxes, together with the lack of employment and heavy prices of basic goods may not be less burdensome than in wartime. Today price inflation is about 20 percent higher than it was last year, and the simple English breakfast has almost become a luxury.

Once a place that burned coal to power trains and heating, with about a quarter of a million coal miners employed, Britain has, for decades, abandoned coal in favour of oil and renewable energy. But in the face of Russia's halt in oil supplies which has prompted a serious energy crisis, the UK has returned to coal.

This is a major challenge for the new king, who is known for his absolute stewardship of climate and environmental protection issues.

The economies in numbers

There is no doubt that King Charles III inherited a struggling economy, in which industry is less than a third of what it was in 1952, when it accounted for about a third of GDP.

The pound has fallen to its lowest levels last year, equalling the dollar before regaining some of its superiority. He inherits a complex social situation that puts him in charge of a role in instilling confidence in the British entity, as his mother did in the past 70 years. 

However, what followed the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth II in the early 1950s is not quite like the reality of the United Kingdom with the coronation of the old king (73 years).

The kingdom was young where about half of the population were under the age of 30 (about 22 million out of about 50 million people, the population at the time).

This bracket now makes up only about 35 percent (about 24 million out of a total of 68 million); the number is in steady decline, accompanied by a rise in life expectancy with improved healthcare and nutrition techniques and the advancement of medicines and pharmaceutical products.

This makes for a heftier social, health and retirement bill for the British citizen. It also means lower productivity and more global economic pressure. 

Today, Britain is more liberal across the board — especially in terms of the employment of women, who make up about half of the workforce, compared to only a third in the early 1950s.

The same applies to personal and sexual freedoms. The stock market has become more open, moving from a focus on domestic companies in the 1950s to more than 80 percent of the shares traded belonging to multinational companies.

The UK may be more open to religions and races today, and much richer than it was in the 1950s, with per capita GDP having quadrupled in real terms.

Wealth distribution has become fairer than before, with one percent of the wealthy owning nearly 50 percent of national wealth in 1950s, the latter now owned by 20 percent of the wealthy.

But today we see Britain grappling with double-digit inflation and widespread persistent labour unrest; it sees its economy shrinking from one quarter or lockdown to another.

According to the IMF, the kingdom's GDP is expected to shrink by 0.3 percent this year, marking the worst performance of one of the world's developed and leading economies.

While tax revenues are higher today than they were in 1953, they fall short of covering the hefty costs, including healthcare, employment, and fair wages for some sectors.

With the property market developing over the past 70 years and prices skyrocketing by 130 percent, buying a home in Britain is no longer as easy as it used to be.

The British seem somewhat aware of the challenges they could face in the future if interest rates keep rising.

Nonetheless, hope remains that the reverberations of confidence spread by King Charles III's coronation will extend for more than one weekend.