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Excellent. More to come?
Let’s see…
Odd, the BBC and others have been pushing this comment by Owen Paterson…
“This government is spending more than any previous government on flood defences; 165,000 properties will be protected by 2015.”
I suppose that could be true if you ignore as part of the coalition’s austerity measures Defra and Environment Agency budget cuts of up to 29 per cent, from £2.3bn in 2010 to £1.8bn in 2014-15 — the third highest reduction in percentage terms of any government department. This included a cut in capital spending, mostly on flood defences, from £600m in 2010 to £400m each year, the 300 odd flood defence projects that were in line to receive funding which never began due to budget cuts and yesterday the announcement The Environment Agency is planning to cut 1,600 staff by October — 557 of whom are directly involved in flood risk management .. due to more cuts, with rumours of more cuts to come!
As you say Rod, the truth, as opposed to the lies put out by the government, is that the government’s austerity program has not only cut back the amount of work done on flood protection, but is going to massively reduce this even further, just as the current extreme weather shows how urgent the need for such investment is.
So yet again we see how the interests of the country as a whole are sacrificed on the alter of austerity, brought about by the “need” to cut the deficit, which as RM has pointed out many times hasn’t worked, and will do enormous long term damage to our society.
I heard at the weekend that a large number of councils, over half of them Conservative led, are saying they have to raise council taxes because of the shortfall in their finances caused by the governments cuts. Needless to say, the response was that they were being ‘irresponsible’. And then, to cap it all, Eric Pickles waded in saying councils should go back to weekly rubbish collections!
So now even ‘responsible’ prudently run Tory councils are getting it in the neck from the deficit fetishists. One can only hope that the numerous disasters waiting to happen as a result of these cuts come back to haunt this government, and its supporters.
Plus of course you could print the necessary money, build the necessary defences, then tax the extra money out of the system. Or make it subject to demurrage, same difference. Either way you get the wealth without the inflation. Mind, since we use fiat money anyway, I doubt there’d be any need to rid ourselves of the new money as it would be backed by proportionate wealth. Again, there’d be no inflation over the long term.
Interesting that you mention the concept of ‘demurrage’ which was originally a shipping term but taken up by Silvio Gessel and put into practice in a small german town:
The velocity of money is a badly neglected aspect of monetary theory. It is far more important than people realize and both in past and in the present depression, sluggish circulation played a major and negative role. The most obvious way of increasing the velocity of money is Silvio Gesell’s demurrage, a negative interest rate, in effect a tax on holding money. This is not just theory. There is a famous case in which it was implemented. The Wörgl experiment showed truly extraordinary results and is legendary in Interest-Free Economics.
It’s relevant today too, with the Danish Central Bank this week setting a negative interest rate for the first time in history.
Very interesting man, Gesell. He also advocated full land value taxation in order to obliterate capital land values – so that the state could then ‘buy up’/nationalise land and rent out for public benefit.