This is just out from the Treasury:
This is the data on which Osborne hopes to fight the election. Growth, he hopes will follow these 25 forecasts and be up in 2014 to nearly 3% - at or above long term trend rate.
He'll ignore the fact that the same people think it will fall in 2015.
He'll claim inflation is under control based on his preferred measure, which is CPI.
He'll ignore the fact that RPI - which impacts most of us more obviously as it measures what we buy - will be higher and way above wage settlements so that growth will not in any way "trickle down".
He'll ignore the inevitability as a result that the forecast new jobs will have to be on poverty wages, or the equations do not work.
And he'll try to sweep under the carpet the fact that he has not addressed borrowing: his austerity simply has not worked, as some of us said it never could.
The narrative for the election is now set. What's very clear, from the perspective of this blog with its focus on those outside the economic elite, is that forecasts show there is no hope of change for them when that hope is needed.
The issue is how hope for most can be provided and what is apparent is that the status quo will not deliver it.
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When an economy, like most of the world is debt driven, i.e, money is debt, debt is money, then contracting the economy so that there is less borrowing in the public sector is only going to have one effect.
In fact, shrinking GDP by cutting public spending to the bone and throwing tens of thousands onto the dole usually increases, not decreeases the debt.
There has hardly been any instances where cutting spending has actually worked. Even where it has appeared to have worked, it is usually because of cuts to interest rates or the expansion and/or some other country’s economy creating a demand for your goods.
Osborne has made sure there will be growth with his despicable (no other word will do) “help to sell your house at an inflated price” scheme.
The worst person isn’t Osborne, or Clegg, but Vince. Vince knows this is a disaster in the making, he previously complained about high house prices &, the natural corollary, high personal debt, leading to disaster.
Say something, Vince!
Another person with the intelligence to understand the forthcoming disaster is Ken Clarke. Is he too captured or simply too plastered to tell the truth???
The sad thing is people are being brainwashed into thinking there is no other way and the main political parties sustain this -as Michael Hudson puts it:
‘Largely through the educational system. I’ve met people in Latvia, Iceland and other countries who honestly believe the neoliberal line, because that’s the only economics they’ve been exposed to. The neoliberals realize that the way to make sure that There Is No Alternative is to make sure that people don’t know that there is one. What you have is Junk history, teaching Junk economics so that people think that the world has always been this way, and that there isn’t any other way of doing things. Of course, that’s crazy — but that’s what’s happening!’
The narrative for the next election was set in part when Brown’s bust materialised, in part when the labour electoral college got the wrong Miliband, and finally when Clegg stood up at the televised hustings and made his pitch. It would be more accurate to say that nothing has changed since!
I beg to differ on the Miliband’s
David was a disaster
At least he stood for something.
Neoliberalism
I’m sure these figures are wrong. We have, supposedly, more people employed than ever, producing less than ever. I would love that to be explained by someone as more part-timers or more disabled workers, but my supposition is that more & more people are simply being bullied out of “looking for work” into “self-employed relying on benefits”. I.e you wander the streets saying you’re a window cleaner.
Alistair Harris: you don’t play a part in the murdering of 700,000 Iraquis & just walk away from that. What part of war crime do you not understand?
I am sure you are right re the self employed status: the numbers keep rising
The job centres push people into self employment, and their tame attached private companies.
In many cases, using HMRC “rules”, they cannot be classed as self employed. There are loads of self employed van drivers, driving vans for large companies. There are also loads of agency workers. The lord alone knows who their employers are!
Construction is still a hotbed of self employed who aren’t.