YouGov have not got modern monetary theory as yet, so they’re asking the public all the wrong questions on the recession to come

Posted on June 29 2020

This is depressing:

What's depressing is that the wrong questions were asked.

It does not seem as if the option to 'spend to stimulate the economy to get us out of the crisis' was on the agenda.

And nor was 'The deficit does not matter: jobs do'.

That's what's really depressing: that as yet we have not even got the required narrative before the public so that they can choose it.

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14 Responses

  1. We do not need tax increases or spending cuts: what we need is a commitment to full employment come what may, which is an option the government could choose, but won’t says:
    June 29 2020 at 8:03 am

    […] is why you get the question asked, for The Times I believe, as to whether the government deficit that the recession will give rise to […]

  2. Pilgrim Slight Return says:
    June 29 2020 at 9:19 am

    We’ve been lied to – now we’re fuzzy (Grant Lee Buffalo, 1990’s) – I hope the link works.

    https://youtu.be/qAi9-LRtYSU

  3. The Forgotten Man says:
    June 29 2020 at 9:34 am

    […] friends A and the Tory party funders B, now who is C? That's all the people who can be persuaded via the media that they must suffer tax increases or spending cuts because of the cost of […]

  4. Steve says:
    June 29 2020 at 9:35 am

    And George Osborne is about to be given a slot on the inaugural day’s broadcasting of Times Radio at 11am this morning.

    They’ll pretend they are an impartial news outlet, incidentally owned by Murdoch, and he’ll pretend he speaks as a caring former Chancellor, incidentally paid £650k p.a. by BlackRock.

    Bang, bang shall come
    The clang from the austerity drum

  5. Peter May says:
    June 29 2020 at 9:44 am

    Quite – the ‘Don’t Knows’ are You Gov themselves – but then they are simply being true to their Conservative roots.

  6. CathyS says:
    June 29 2020 at 9:45 am

    Even more depressing that the framing reinforces and reproduces the budget deficit narrative. A great theme for Foucauldian discourse analysis: what role do opinion polls plays in sustaining discourse and practice that sustain inequitable power relationships in society?

  7. Simon C says:
    June 29 2020 at 11:29 am

    Even if we accept the premise of the question, it doesn’t take into account that sectoral balances show us that the government deficit is equal to the non-government surplus, so if we did want to reduce the deficit then the correct options would be mainly reduce household savings, mainly reduce business savings, or mainly reduce the trade deficit. Perhaps you could contact YouGov and explain sectoral balances to them, complete with graph, and why it means they should reframe their question.

  8. Richard Kirby says:
    June 29 2020 at 11:53 am

    Wake Up to Money on BBC radio 5 this morning had a Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management on, and he talked what sounded like MMT, even pointing out that the Government is paying over £15bn in interest to itself! He pointed out that the UK, since it has it’s own currency, can issue new money, and as long as everyone (in the World) is confident that interest will keep being paid, then there is no problem, as lots of people want to buy UK gilts, etc.

    He was mainly making the case that money is needed now for local investment and the Government should setup regional hubs with the power to attract local investors to invest in local businesses now, since the likely Boris announcement tomorrow of Infrastructure investment is more long term than the likely immediate need for investment in small companies.

    (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kh1x 35:26 minutes in)

  9. Rob F says:
    June 29 2020 at 4:00 pm

    BBC Reel editor Dan John is promoting ‘The Deficit Myth’ and Stephanie Kelton on Twitter and here’s the piece on its website:
    ‘Why We Need to Debunk the Deficit Myth’
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p08jbbry/why-we-need-to-debunk-the-deficit-myth-

  10. Charles Adams says:
    June 29 2020 at 6:20 pm

    Nearly all problems are distributional. Some people have more assets than they can usefully deploy and some do not have enough to be useful.

    An appropriate tax system would address these distributional imbalances and enable everyone to fulfil their potential. If people are thinking about tax rises in this way they could be correct. But I agree that was probably not the aim of the question.