Danny Dorling and Mary O'Hara offer a powerful analysis of the Tory's spending plans in the Guardian this morning. As they note:
There is a lot at stake if the public spending cuts proposed by the coalition for the next parliament are introduced — and not just for poorer and marginalised groups. According to the latest International Monetary Fund estimates, proposed UK cuts to public spending between 2015 and 2019 amount to 3% of GDP. If fully implemented, these would have profound repercussions. One of the less discussed of these is that the UK would join a tiny group of advanced economies — including Estonia, the Slovak Republic, and Ireland — that have shrunk the size of their states dramatically following the 2008 crash and which are all now seen as economic losers.
As they note:
European countries fall into one of four leagues when arranged by public spending. The first of these contains Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Sweden as well as France and Finland. These countries are spending at least half of their GDP on public services. The figures also include the servicing of government debts. There is of course no guarantee that publicly spent money will be spent well.
For instance, spending in Italy is high partly because it has to allocate so much in interest payments on its debts. However, in general these countries are doing well. In all of them life expectancy is higher than in the UK and in all but Italy,levels of numeracy are higher than in the UK. And let's not forget that the median family in France and Germany has a higher disposable income than the median in the UK, even before housing costs are taken into account.
But we're not in that league. In fact. We're about to fall out of league two and into league three if the Tories get their way. And as the Dorling and O'Hara note:
But, the government's plans to rapidly reduce the proportion of GDP spent on public services to 38% by 2019 mean that after 2015, the UK would leave the second division of European countries by public spending and enter the third division alongside Ireland, Estonia and the Slovak Republic. A UK in this league would become more similar to these countries. It could become a place from which the young try to emigrate and in which the old are not well cared for, in which people on average live shorter, more brutal and less valued lives.
This is what is on offer at this election: brutal lives for most or something at least a bit better.
I campaign against poverty. That is my job at the end of the day. And short, brutal lives are characteristics of poverty. So I am not being party political by pointing this out. I am saying that we need not be offered this option. We can do better for people in this country. And we should. Which is why I do not think joining the third league of European nations should be on anyone's agenda for the UK. But as it is, I think I am right to point that out and make no apology for doing so.
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Ludicrous analysis by Dorling and O’Hara. If our lives here are so brutal and short why does the UK have one of the highest levels of foreign born residents in the EU? Because it’s a great place to work, that’s why, not because people come here for a brutal and short life.
Why do so many French, Spanish and Italian graduates etc come to the UK to look for work? Because the future of their economies is so bleak. Would you rather be a fresh faced graduate looking to start your career in France, Spain or Italy, or would you rather the UK? It’s a no brainer.
No it’s not a no-brainer
The authors are looking forward
You are recalling the benefits of Labour spending with affection
Agreed, Richard. Besides,Mr Todd overlooks the attraction of non-dom status in the case of some of those foreign residents, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the French, Spanish and Italian GRADUATES are already several rungs up the ladder by being graduates.
The people Danny Dorling and Mary O’Hara have in mind are those already crushed and immiserated by this most deceitful, dishonest, cruel, incompetent and corrupt Government in 200 years, who will, if they retain power, thrust this country back to 1815, rather than 1915, when Trade Unionists could be punished by transportation for the”crime” of coming together to better their lot, to help one another, and to be free.
Dorling and O’Hara speak nothing less than the truth and reality.
Agreed, entirely
Danny is our formnost social geographer in the UK
Ignore him by all means, but he is proving himself right, often
The authors put France in league 1, so Douglas’s observation that French graduates currently flock to London even though we are in league 2 is certainly valid.
I take any article that suggests state spending comprising nearly 40% of GDP would result in our citizens having “shorter and more brutal lives” to be partisan in the extreme.
So fact does not come into it?
The comparison with Estonia is apposite. Together with Latvia these countries have become ‘laboratories’ of neo-liberal austerity causing large scale emigration (a good method of reducing unemployment!). The Tories claim they’ve reduced unemployment by the use of sanctions, spurious self employment and zero hour jobs-some ‘achievement.’
Austerity creates ‘surplus population’ and a process of ‘eliminationism’ if the yoke of financialisation is resisted.