There is an elephant in the room at the next election that no one will name. It's not austerity, although it is closely related to it. The elephant is the question that floored Natalie Bennett of the Greens this week, and is the automatic response of any questioner to any proposal that any politician makes, which is:
How are you going to pay for it?
It' not just Natalie Bennett who has a problem with this. So too has Ed Balls, In fact even George Osborne and Danny Alexander should face it because the chance that either of them will stick to austerity in the face of outright public opposition and a massive QE programme in much of Europe is less than the square root of zero.
Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood might rightly ignore the question saying, correctly, that at present it is Westminster's problem, but that's a diversion of an answer to a question that has skilfully been written to be unanswerable unless one of three responses George Osborne thinks no one will dare give is proffered.
The first, and most obvious of those alternative answers is one that I have long suggested. This is to suggest that collecting only a part of the £120 billion tax gap is a way to do this. Such solutions do not, admittedly, happen overnight but I have not a shadow of a doubt this option is available. Money that should be used in accordance with the will of government is not being so at present: the aim of this policy is to reverse that. At present some of that money lost will be saved - and so not be put to any productive use - and some will most likely be spent on consumer goods, many of which will be imported into the UK and so create little productive new activity in the UK on which very much tax will be paid, whilst at the same time undermining the balance of payments.
So, collecting tax that is owed can help rebalance the economy and pay for what is needed because it is glaringly obvious that there are things that need to be done in the UK that are not happening, precisely because the money to pay for them is being stolen at present. But I make clear that in saying this you have to believe that, in the first instance, the rule of law should be upheld, and secondly that the government knows how to use this money better than those who are currently stealing it. All parties acknowledged the first of these suggestions, but I have a very strong suspicion that many on the right do not agree with the second suggestion and this is precisely why tax avoidance and tax evasion are not being tackled with the vigour that they should be.
There is, then, a second option available when seeking to answer the question "how are you going to pay for it". That is a very simple one, but is that you have no intention of doing so. In other words, you're going to borrow. And that makes a lot of sense when at present the government can borrow at interest rates that are in real terms, around 1%. People are, effectively, queueing up to give the government money to spend because they have no idea what to do with it themselves, and aren't even asking for any real interest in return. It would be almost criminal not to use the money in that case to pay for what is needed in the economy, but no one has the courage to do so.
The third option is to ignore the market altogether, and to simply print the money. This, of course, is Green Quantitative Easing where money is created, in exactly the same way that it was to bail out the banks to the tune of £375 billion, but this money is instead used to finance investment in the UK economy. This might be investment in infrastructure such as transport, hospitals, schools and new energy systems, or investment through a Green Investment Bank in partnering British business in creating new opportunities in this country for the benefit of our economy. This is not money that will, in that case, leave the UK economy: the whole purpose of this activity is to invest as much as possible of the money in this country, and for the long-term to make a return for us all.
The return for borrowed or printed money is broadly similar. In either case it is critical that the money is used for what will largely be investment purposes: frittering money away, as those who propose simply giving quantitative easing money to individuals suggest appropriate, is a ludicrous course of action. If that is done all that you do is create a short-term consumer boom, and when that's happened people remain in as much debt as they are now, the balance of payments is worse, and the cash has no further useful purpose to play. Investing creates a wholly different opportunity.
First, you would expect an investment return. Imagine that the money was used to build houses, as an example: of course there should in that case be a return built into the future rental income. This would be true of many other projects where it is, for example, already required that public sector institutions pay a return on the capital that they use.
Secondly, and at least as importantly, you make a return by putting people into jobs where they can make a reasonable income. The aim of doing so is to, firstly, to give people a reasonable standard of living and secondly to get them to a situation where they pay a reasonable amount of tax and reduce claims on the state. Creating low paid jobs, which is what we're doing, does none of those things and so is a complete failure in economic terms, even if the social consequences are ignored. I demonstrated this in 2010 when I looked at the cost of putting a person on £25,000 a year out of work, and suggested that it was at least £23,000 in cost to the state.
Of course, the reverse holds true: putting a person into work has the reverse effect: there is almost no cost to the state from creating such jobs because of the savings made, but the net effect on the economy is extraordinary because getting a person into a decently paid job as a massive economic boost in its own right because of the extra spending power they have, which more than makes up the difference each and every year of the (net) £2,000 cost of creating the employment for them. And that, in turn, then pays for the cost of the programme.
There is, in other words, a way to pay for almost anything that we need to spend money on in the UK economy if it is investment expenditure. The fact is, almost any investment can make 1% rate of return to cover the cost of government borrowing, whilst putting people to work in the resulting new economic activity in more highly paid jobs than they can currently find will, in itself, provide a fairly rapid payback that will significantly increase government revenues and cut government costs.
In that case the truth is that there is no elephant in the room: there is just a lack of willing to state the glaringly obvious in economic terms, which is that investment pays for itself at current interest rates but despite that fact we are not willing to do it. That is the crisis that our country now faces: we are presented with politicians who do not know how to make the business case for the spending that they know they must incur when one is so obviously available. No wonder we are in a mess.
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It makes you wonder where all the money Osborne’s already borrowed, alleged to be more than all Labour governments added together have done, has gone to.
Dear oh dear, you should know the answer to that. The answer is “straight into the pockets of his banking chums”.
I haven’t listened to Natalie Bennett’s LBC interview because I find Nick Ferrari unbearable – in fact I find most political interviewers unbearable. She herself has described the interview as a disaster, which is a refreshing dose of honesty from a political leader, and I’d much rather see that than this display of robotic “soundbitis” from the leader of HM Opposition.
My advice to Natalie when responding to questions about funding for social housing policy would always be, in the first instance: Green QE. That’s what it’s intended for: a major programme of investment. And if we can afford to create £375bn of cash just to prop up property prices via conventional QE, we can sure as hell afford a few billion extra for housing.
Agreed Howard
For some reason my Ed Miliband “these strikes are wrong” link didn’t work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlTggc0uBA8
Bravo Richard – poorly or not, this blog hits the spot on so many fundamentals of a well-functioning econonomy. It reconnects macro economics with micro outcomes.
Could the elephant in the room (or one of them) be that politicians have fought each other on the basis of promising voters low taxes (or no taxes) for so long to the point where they are both at standstill policy wise? The politicians have literally backed themselves into a corner with the taxpayer.
Any Government who wants to borrow now will just have the individual tax payer feeling that they will be actually paying the bill. There’s no room for manouvre.
Debt is now such a toxic word even if it has positive aims and objectives. Many voters have swallowed this whole unfortunately. It’ll take a courageous politician to thwart this and I hope to see one soon.
Another option, I believe, is to tax land. At least you can’t hide land and the tax can be progressive and fair. Read Henry George c 1860. Lloyd George did.
It was sad that Natalie Bennett whose party supports LVT couldn’t make the connection in the interview between building homes and tax. She was stumped to explain how homes could be built for just £60k. If the land element were removed by taxation this is perfectly feasible.
Agreed
That was the answer
So your solutions are: 1. £120bn (i.e. the size of another NHS) will come from closing the tax gap, 2. we’ll borrow, and 3. we’ll print money.
Forgive me, but voters are deeply suspicious of stuff like this. And this is the Greens’ problem – credibility. Very few wavering voters seriously believe that these 3 solutions will solve all or even most of our problems. If it was as easy and as popular as that, it would have been done now.
1) This not an issue for the Greens – it’s for all parties
2) We did it for banks; wy can’t we do it for something real?
3) We will borrow £90bn this year at record low costs
4) The BoE is now ooking at it
Looks like it’s being done to me
1. Only you say the tax gap is 120bn. Everyone else says it is closer to 35bn.
2. Banks didn’t get free money as you are saying. They got short term loans which were repaid, and QE doesn’t gift money to banks.
3. And when bond yields go up because of massive issuance or monetary tightening?
4. BoE is not looking at Green QE. They are looking at climate change as one of their research topics falling under “fundamental change” along with various other topics. Nowhere do they mention that they are looking at Green QE.
If you wish to keep your head in the sand, please feel free
Likewise.
1. Show me an independent piece of research agreeing with your tax gap figures. Work you have done for TUC/Unite etc doesn’t count.
2. Please check BoE and Government figures for disbursements to banks. Most of the money has been repaid, and the balance is essentially tied up in the RBS bailout.
3. Record lows now, but won’t be as CPI, rates and issuance forces bond yields higher.
4. Please give us some hard evidence for the BoE discussing Green QE. Discussing climate change is not the same thing.
1) Irrelevant
2) Wrong issue: that’s not QE
3) Of course, one day inflation will be higher. But not because gov’t money creation made good the shortfall i private sector bank creation of money
4) Disagreed
1. Why is it irrelevant? You claim your number is correct, and HMRC’s number is wrong but there is no 3rd party which seems to agree with you (whilst the OECD and EU roughly agree with HMRC). In that case, why should people take your work seriously, other than accepting your claims of accuracy?
Your work is simply not verified by anyone other than yourself, yet you are trying to determine policy using it.
2. OK. Let’s see what the BoE have to say on the matter themselves:
“QE does not, as is sometimes suggested, involve printing more banknotes. And QE is not about giving money to banks. Rather, the policy was designed to help businesses raise finance without needing to borrow from banks. And also to lower interest rates for all households and businesses.”
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetarypolicy/Pages/qe/qe_faqs.aspx
I refer you to your original statement:
“We did it for banks; wy can’t we do it for something real?”
Looks like they don’t agree with you.
3. So unlimited government money printing through monetarism…I mean Green QE….won’t affect inflation?
4. Disagreed? With What? That you won’t provide any information as to the BoE discussing your proposals for Green QE? Or that you can’t, because they haven’t?
I’m going to be honest
I have not got up yet today because I feel grotty
I have not got the energy to argue with a pedant
Tyler ignores that yields are at record lows now despite Osborne getting blown £200bn off course on his own borrowing plans.
For rightwingers it seems extra borrowing by rightwing governments good, by leftwing ones baaaad – leading to Weimar levels of hyperinflation.
I mean really? They expect us to still believe this stuff?
They do expect us to believe it
What’s really weird is that I think some of them do
Answer [2] isn’t “we’ll borrow”. It is “we’ll invest” – and the investments will pay for themselves.
Tyler
You are stating what the intent of QE was; how it ACTUALLY WORKED was that QE was still given to private banks to distribute (remember that the State does not have bank with branches around the country in order to give out money).
These private banks then used their own policies to make that money available to the market. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that take up was poor because of (1) a lack of confidence in the market because we have been told over and over by Osbourne that the country was in a mess; (2) the Banks themselves were adding interest to their loan rates to cover heightened percieved risk because of the down-talking by Osbourne(I know of 3 people who wanted to set up businesses in 2010-11 at that time but did not do so because interest rates were too high) and (3) the QE was used by banks to prop up exisitng loan/mortgages which had problems – a report on Banking in 2010/11 praised Banks for their ‘forebearance’ (having a tolerant attitude to loan repayment defaults/overdrafts etc) – which was nice since it was QE that was helping them to do this!!!!
So, instead of looking at intent, please be a little more scienfific and OBSERVE what actually happened.
My view is that QE would have been better if given directly to consumers/wage earners (where it would have stimulated demand in the economy) and also used as Richard has suggested to start green intiatives in energy etc.
Mark
The intention of QE was to create liquidity in the economy when banks were not lending and so there was a potential shortage of cash availability. Money was created by the Bank of England buying government gilts.
The obvious intention was that this should move into the real economy. The reality was that it was used to create asset bubbles through financial market trading from which the banks benefited enormously, which is precisely how they captured QE for their benefit.
I remain extremely dubious about ‘ helicopter money’ precisely because all it would create would be an import boom
Richard
Richard, hope you’re improving, and many congratulation on winning your “Stirrers’ Nobel Prize”.
I agree with all the above, only throwing in the one further suggestion that it really is time the right to “create” money was given back to, and reserved to, the Bank of England, with all other money “creators” having to pay the Bank of England a pro rata sum for the credit created by those moneylenders. Seignourage is not a massive component in the solution, as is e.g. Green QE, but it does have a role to play in a reformed economy which such never have allowed the current cowboys to gain such domination over it.
All the best, go well, and continue withcypur valuable work.
Andrew
Apparently Sheils McKechnie’s mother said she could start an argument in an empty room
Sounds like my sort of person
Richard
Spot on. The first argument against ‘printing money’ used to be that it would lead to inflation: we hardly need to worry about that just now. I’m not an economist (just O Level 1969), but reckon that fundamentally an economy is just money going round and round. So increasing the money supply is not a problem — provided that the extra be used for productive investment.
I think it is fairly obvious that QE hasn’t led to real inflation because it has simply bought treasuries off pension funds who have then needed to invest in something else: shares and property most obviously but also some gilts. It is hardly going to affect the wages that are paid or the price of food or energy.
It may in fact be that, with increased automation, a huge service economy and open borders, inflation may not happen again for a generation, and instead we will see wages pretty much stagnate and prices fluctuate according to market prices but without a specific trend.
Off topic, yesterday there was news that for the first time in 30 years the number of people owning homes outright was greater than the number with mortgages.
And the amount renting was higher…..
¨The young aren’t poor and the old rich because the old are snaffling the income and benefits from the young. The old are richer because they lived through a time when the country’s wealth was distributed more evenly, so more people had more. The inequality between generations is a symptom of the wider rise in inequality since the 1980s, the shifting balance of power in the workplace and the fall in wages over the last decade. The average youngster will have a smaller share of wealth than the average oldster did because they are living through times that are less generous for the average worker¨
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/why-are-the-older-generations-richer/
Whether the “tax gap” is £20 billion or £120 billion, surely the first step is recruiting more HMRC staff for compliance and investigation work. Investment in compliance will pay back much more than it costs.
If the government can afford to pay £20 billion towards housing benefit and as you say, pay billions to bail out the banks, why can’t they divert this money into a mass house building program which would ultimately benefit the people and the economy, just as it did after World War 2.
Baffling, isn’t it?
Well, as you know far better than me ,Richard, in an era of finance capitalism based on asset bubble and rent extraction rather than social value it’s rather clear why this doesn’t happen. The public have been sold hook line and sinker on the myth of the economy being like a household, so the final frontier of neo-liberalism has been conquered.
Agreed
They’re probably waiting till after they’ve got the Infrastructure Bill through. This will mean they can build all these new homes in areas of existing development and consequently nowhere near their nice country estates.
Because a rentier society is a low-income society…..don´t think that what is good for people, is good for government. Both main parties have presided over a lowering of wages/salaries economy. Neither is going to change.
I agree that this is the (an?) elephant in the room, Richard, but it has two sides to it, and what you highlight is only one. Zoe Williams identified the other yesterday in a superb piece of analysis/comment on Bennett’s “brain-fade” incident. To quote Zoe:
‘…“We have lost faith in any of the large available understandings of how structural change takes place in history,” the philosopher Roberto Unger said in a recent lecture in London, “and as a result we fall back on a bastardised conception of political realism, namely that a proposal is realistic to the extent that it approaches what already exists.” This is the whole of British politics encapsulated in two lines: unless a policy looks exactly like what the mainstream parties are suggesting; unless it can be funded by minor tootling on existing tax instruments (and even that will be called a “raid”); unless it will leave the fundamental structures totally unperturbed — then it is the most outlandish idea that anybody has ever heard.’
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/24/natalie-bennett-shrug-off-humiliation-vision
And there you have it, unless what’s being proposed closely resembles the existing neoliberal idea, entity, proposal, structure, policy, practice, and so on, it’s either rejected out of hand and/or if someone does get a chance to try to explain it they are simply met with a wall of incredulity and/or bewilderment or disdain. In many cases I’d see that as deliberate: the person acting thus pretends they can’t comprehend the non neoliberal alternative being suggested. But on many occasions it is genuinely out of ignorance and a lack of awareness after so many years of being bombarded with neoliberal policy and thinking – as for example when public sector workers’ who own jobs are under threat from austerity parrot the “there is no alternative” trope. Your green QE proposals fall foul of both the latter and to an even greater extent the former, given many commentators know full well what QE is and how it works. But it is clearly not framed from a neoliberal perspective and thus cannot be allowed onto the table.
You may be right Ivan
But I will keep trying
Singling out Green QE wasn’t meant to suggest it’s not worth trying, Richard, simply an example of how the “mainstream” (media, politics, big business, etc) reacts to such ideas, and claims them to be ‘outlandish’, as Zoe Williams outlines. Jane’s comment about the scale of housing benefit payments compared to housebuilding and your response (‘baffling’) is another.
But in truth this is not baffling at all is it? You’ve written frequently on contemporary capitalism being built on rent seeking, and that is exactly what this is. So, to a Cameron, Osborne and the neoliberal hordes, why build houses when the state can pay out vast quantities (which are in reality a form of subsidy) to your fellow rent seekers and ideological bedfellows, which in this case are landlords big and small.
The fact is that for the past near five years now we’ve had a government that’s approach to policy making is almost exclusively driven by ideology. Indeed, as has been noted by various commentators, far more so than Thatcher’s governments ever were. Consequently, there’s very little, if any, rationality in what’s been done. With very few exceptions it isn’t evidence based – or if it is the evidence has been partial and only used where it suits/fits the ideology. But of course, the mainstream media and extremely skillful use of PR and so on have for the most part masked this. Therefore, it’s only when the most egregious examples of a mismatch between what makes sense (in terms of effectiveness and value of money, etc) and what actually gets done becomes public – like the reprivatisation of the east coast mainline – that the public actually gets a chance to take note of these things and express their anger.
Sadly, for the most part these follies and policy debacles are only now becoming evident, and mostly won’t until after the election. But they’ll undoubtedly take many years, and millions/billions of £ to rectify. That’s assuming of course we don’t have another Tory government. Because if we do, the rottenness that stems from 2010-2015 policies will simply continue to be masked, manipulated and, ultimately, tolerated – as it was in the kind of feudal society they wish to return to.
Agreed
This is why medieval courts had their jesters, to articulate what all knew needed to be said but could not for fear of offending the existing establishment or from fear of ridicule. Our contemporary political equivalent has long been the Monster Raving Loony Party. They have a history of suggesting policies which have been scoffed at but have eventually made it into legislation, this from the Wiki; “Despite its satirical nature, some of the things that have featured in Loony manifestos have become law, such as being able to vote at 18, “passports for pets”, and all-day pub openings. Similarly, the outcry following Alan Hope’s appearance on the BBC’s Nationwide current affairs programme after he was elected — during which he mentioned that butter and milk surpluses were being dumped down abandoned mine shafts under European Community rules to maintain prices (something the media of the day had failed to expose) — resulted in the distribution of such surpluses to the needy or charities instead”
In publicly scoffing at the Loonies’ policies, the press and opposing politicians have, I assume unwittingly, bought those very policies to broader public attention, into the Overton Window for those familiar with the term. Perhaps the Loonies should be approached with a view to suggesting an economics policy. I’ve actually been considering something like this for the past few weeks as I know their local candidate quite well. I’m tempted, I tell you! First, they laugh at you…
Indeed
How many years has it been since the GFC and the resulting austerity program put in place by most western democracies? How much longer does the 99% have to suffer before it is accepted that it has not worked. Sorry it has worked for the 1% as they get wealthier, pay less tax, and own more of society.
It is not working and repeating te same old line is getting old. About time to try something different that may increase demand, allow people in full time jobs to have money for housing and saving and planning for the future. It is also time to take advantage of historically low interest rates and borrow to invest in infrastructure that remains in public ownership to keep paying social and financial dividends into the futre.
It is almost 8 years since the GFC, and what has changed?
As you said, instead of borrowing or printing money to bail out the banking system that caused the problem in the first place, fund new infrastructure, a new manufacturing base and pour money into R&D.
Incidentally, the lack of a manufacturing base is, in my opinion, a huge part of the problem. What manufacturing there is left is almost all foreign owned. Even the unions fall into the trap of calling it “British industry” when it is nothing of the kind. We need a home-grown manufacturing base and start making things again.
If money isn’t saved or “hoarded”, it can provide a multiplier effect, that is, the same £20 buys several things over, meaning less money circulates more. Though much money has to be spent in order to achieve the growth we need, it doesn’t necessarily have to cost many tens or hundreds of billions of pounds.
Incidentally, what happened to all this money Tyler said was paid back? 🙂
That was not QE
And remember when a loan is repaid money is cancelled, not reused
Are you referring to the last line in my post? Though QE didn’t technically bail out the banks, it was used to keep them afloat.
I was
And in practice you are right, of course
And Tyler is wrong, of course, as a matter of fact
I’m wrong am I?
QE was never used to bail out banks, or keep them afloat. If anything, QE makes it harder for banks to hold on to enough Tier 1 assets (usually government bonds) for their capital requirements, which have increased since the crash.
Of course, if either of you bothered to look, the data for bank support is readily available.
http://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/taxpayer-support-for-uk-banks-faqs/
At it’s peak, the government provided 1029bn of guarantees and liquidity to banks, and 133bn of cash in direct bailouts. Note, not QE.
As of March 2014, the guarantees now stand at only 21bn, and the cash outlay is 101bn – which is tied up in RBS, Lloyds, Bradford and Bingley and Northern Rock. The current market cap of RBS is 44bn, Lloyds 56bn, so it looks likely the government will get most of it’s money back when those shares are sold.
Don’t forget the 17bn that the government has received in fees for this support either.
You entirely miss the point and I presume it is deliberate
Of course bank bail out funds were different from QE – no one says otherwise
But QE funds provided liquidity for trading which have resulted in asset bubble from which banks have benefitted enormously and few others have
Your literal approach seeks to deny this and makes you either a fool or a dissembler
Please do not waste my time again
No problem with the Tax argument. And I have always found the Green QE idea interesting. But with many new ideas, how about testing it on a trial basis?
So far, I have not seen it work anywhere in the world. Have you? If you have, I suggest you use the example(s) as model(s). Otherwise you seem to be promoting a
Shangri La that cannot be proved one way or another.
Someone has to be first
Why not the UK?
There’s a big flaw in the idea that because government can currently borrow at 1%, ergo stimulus should take the form of public sector investments that yield just over 1%. The flaw is that the state can pay any rate of interest it likes on it’s debt. Put another way, the central bank controls interest rates. And that sort of artificial juggling with interest rates, while it is a way of adjusting demand, means that the 1% may very well not be a realistic free market rate.
Indeed Milton Friedman advocated that government should incur no interest yielding debt at all: i.e. that the only liability issued by governments should be base money, which normally yields 0% and I have no objections that “zero debt” scenario. But I WOULD OBJECT to the state in that scenario making investments with a near zero yield.
The appropriate rate rate of interest can only be obtained by looking at the nearest private sector equivalent. E.g. in the case of a motorway, what does a private sector motorway builder / operator have to pay for borrowed money?
Also I don’t agree with Richard Murphy’s objections to “simply giving quantitative easing money to individuals”. I suggest Richard has forgotton what the BASIC PURPOSE of the economy is: it’s to provide Mr and Mrs Average with what they want. And if they want foreign holidays, that’s OK by me.
Westminister is full of worthy serious people who can’t bear the idea of spending power being put into the hands of people on council estates in Northumberland. Those “Very Serious People” as Dean Baker calls them (most of whom couldn’t pass an economics GCSE exam if they tried) think they know better when it comes to allocating new money. For example George Osborn allocates money straight into the pockets of his banking chums, which is clearly a good use of money. And then there are those fiendishly clever people in the Bank of England who allocate billions to QE, the only effect of which is to enrich the asset rich (i.e. boost the FTSE index).
Stuff the people on council estates in Northumberland, that’s what I say.
With the greatest of respect you do seem to be rather confused
A brilliantly detailed and articulate answer.
I agree
It was
The tax gap, acknowledged by Civil Servants, may have something to do with the most complicated tax system in the world, which tries to winkle tax out of every nook and cranny of the working economy instead of taxing land. Recurring annual property taxes (formerly domestic rates), based on up-to-date values and collected locally, are used in every other developed country including the British Commonwealth. They were abolished by Mrs. Thatcher in 1991 to avoid the possibility of a Trotskyist rebellion in Liverpool. Her absurd tax system endures because national politicians have grown to like having total control of tax revenue in what is now the most centralised government in the world. Fortunately the entire Local Government structure and IT support still exists. It was mothballed, never reformed and now only collects a tiny amount of Council Tax. I put the financial cost of this centralisation at £100bn a year, but the democratic deficit is incalculable.
Bigger Pachyderm arriving….
https://speye.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/the-tory-plan-to-hit-515000-social-housing-pensioners-with-the-bedroom-tax/