I was on LBC radio yesterday, talking about this week's budget .
At 9 am this morning I will be on Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio 5 discussing the same theme. I suspect I will be on a number of times between nine and 10 .
I am already booked to do my usual immediate post-budget commentary at about 1:30 pm on the Jeremy Vine programme on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday .
Who knows, other things might also happen .
What we do know is that until Jeremy Hunt ends his speech on Wednesday, anything that can be said will be speculation. Much of that will also, because of the focus of the mainstream media, be on things that really do not matter.
When doing a pre-interview this morning, I suggested that tax cuts, whether to income tax or national insurance, might come at about 78th on my list of priorities with regards to this budget . The things that I said that were more important included, the fact that our economy is in a mess, public services are crumbling, our national infrastructure is literally falling apart, and that maybe 5 million people in the UK missed a meal in the last month because of poverty. We also have millions of people out of work because they are too unwell to take a job. Simultaneously, the NHS is crying out for more people, whilst social care is in peril because of a lack of funding and local authorities going bankrupt. In that situation to think that tax cuts, most of the benefit of which will always goes to those who are best off, are what this country needs is to grossly misread this country's priorities at this moment.
The reality is that this country needs three things.
The first is more government spending because nothing else will create growth.
The second is more investment.
The third is more taxation of wealth to correct for the inflationary impact that these first two proposals might create and to tackle inequality.
If I was to highlight where the money was to go, it would be on the NHS, social care, supporting local authorities, settling public sector pay claims, and removing the deliberate poverty created by successive government over the last 14 years, whether that be by the creation of the two-child benefit co, or by restrictions on disability benefits, or the bedroom tax, and so much else.
What I would add is that all of this is possible. The Taxing Wealth Report shows how.
It is time for a rethink on our economy. Unless we do that we will forever be stuck in the dire space that we find ourselves in.
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Spot on Richard. Plenty of national issues for the government to address. Good luck this week.
Good luck indeed Richard. Even Radio 4 Today managed a couple of minutes squeezed in before the pre 8am weather forecasts to allow Mazzucato to make many of the same points and ‘do we really need these fiscal rules ?’- – in a ‘discussion’ with Andrew Sentance.
But of course the presenter cut it off pretty quickly, obviously worrying that the logic was beginning to cut through.
They later had a sprawling endless discussion about Rwanda – which is what the government wants.
At least radio 5 dares to have you on – but why do they try to ghettoise this economic discussion which clearly should have been centre stage for weeks.
We need a new breed of journalists and broadcasters who are NOT credelous about government finances. Who ask – and keep on asking – the simplest question of them all: Why does the UK govt ‘borrow’ £s when it manufactures the £ in the 1st place?
So please keep on planting that self-questiong seed Richard when you get interviewed by these guys – Their subsequent lack of incredulity when interviewing politicians is so part of the problem.
A glimmer of hope as the vanguard of that new breed is the BBC’s Andy Verity. I’d love it if Andy was a fellow guest on a panel with you and each backed the other up regarding the TRUTH about government finances. Jaws would drop wide open.
Thank you, both.
@ Stephen: If journalists emulated Verity, they would not be invited to the likes of the Spectator’s Christmas and summer receptions, festivals at Hay, Cornbury and Kenwood House, invited to moderate or present corporate panels, voice over corporate broadcasts and be hired in PR.
Also, many, if not most, hacks lack Verity’s technical knowledge. It’s easier to reheat a press release or corporate talking points. When a full-time lobbyist, 2008 – 14, I drafted a lot. For hacks, it beats working hard to master a subject.
@Colonel Smithers FYI Andy Verity is one of the speakers at the upcoming Scotonomics ‘Festival of Economics’ conference, being held in Dundee later this month. So that’s something :).
I sincerely hope more economics journalists follow in Andy’s footetps. I’m heartily sick of the Fiasal Islam-school of economic reporting that always, but always, accepts the ‘we can’t afford it’ myth. Perhaps ‘celebrity’ economics editors, such as Fiasal, are just too addicted to the drama of reporting ‘there’s no money left’ / ‘the cost of borrowing has gone throught the roof’ etc. etc.
Indeed and have on more experts like Mazzucato, Wren-Lewis ? and Verity with enough time to explain their views, and fewer writers for the Spectator, politicians and people from obscurely funded think tanks.
And High Pay, Low Pay, Inadequate social payments, strengthen Trades Union, UBI….
Maxwell Marlow’s most illuminating contribution was the nervous laugh when Liz Truss’s name was raised; it was instantly revealing. It seemed from Marlow’s shambling contribution that neoliberalism’s key disciples are now haplessly reduced to rationalising its total failure, and the failure of the Adam Smith Institute Lobby Group’s thinking; to one problem centred on the planning laws. Once you disappear into that form of oblique rationalisation you really have completely lost the plot.
I can understand why Glasgow University would feel entitled to name its Business School after Adam Smith; but I have no idea what outrageous hubris made the ASI, which is effectively just a branded Public Relations operation for Neoliberalism; ever felt gratuitously entitled to claim, and use Smith’s name for purposes far removed from Smith’s ideas. Frankly, it remains a standing insult to Adam Smith’s philosophical legacy.
I wish Campbell had just once come to me first
What experience of the real world or depth of knowledge can you expect from a 24 year old
LSE graduate? Almost insulting that the Adam Smith Institute puts someone like him up for a national radio gig like this. Good of the BBC to offer some live media training, but he needs to work on his response when asked about his employer’s opaque funding.
His age is not his fault, but his failure to engage critically with the neoliberal nonsense he has learned and repeats most certainly is. The UK has the largest social housing sector in Europe? The UK should emulate an autocratic city state like Singapore? Nonsense.
Do you know which neoliberal ideologue you’ll have to engage with on Wednesday, Richard, now that Mr (still not Lord) Littlewood has left the IEA to become a proper right-wing populist?
I was slightly annoyed to ask to debate with someone so inexperienced
I do not know if I am on with Mark Littlewood on Wednesday
Almost spat into my coffee recently reading a letter to the Sunday Herald from Ronald MacDonald of the aforesaid Adam Smith Business School, actually supporting a major public investment programme in Keynesian mould.
I wish I could find the actual text..
If the Adam Smith Institute free market zealots had ever read the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, instead of relying on Chicago School dogma, the organisation might be a little more respectful of the man.
“It is time for a rethink on our economy.”
The most important way to do that is to make our leaders understand that the monetary system no longer operates under gold standard rules and has not done so for 50 years (if, indeed, it really ever did).
I was hoping that the House of Lords inquiry into the sustainabiliity of the national debt might move things along, but I have been monitoring it and so far none of the submissions by the public (including, of course Richard) has been published to it. I see that Stiglitz is addressing them tomorrow at 3.00 pm so I will watch that with interest.
I am having a cataract operation on Thursday so I’m not sure whether my eyesight will then be better or worse. Hopefully the former, and I will be able to continue to read and comment on this blog etc.
Good luck with that.
My submission was accepted by them.
Hunt has actually admitted that he understands the concept of the multiplier. He was being asked about the child care porposals and the likely cost. he actually replied that the expenditure would be repaid because of the value of childcare to allow parents to work! Sorry, I can’t remember what programme he was on.
(including my surname: to be clear, I’m not the same as ‘Colin’ nosurname)
Hunt may understand a simplistic multiplier like ‘improved childcare supports more women back into work, which grows GDP’ – something Gordon Brown seemed keen on, way back when – but the issue is the same as ‘tax cuts will incentivise entrepreneurship and hard work’. And completely fails to recognise the social welfare, well-being aspects of unpaid care work: better for someone to get in their (household’s second) car that they can just afford, take their child to a commercial nursery and head off to a job, and not see their child until 5 or 6 pm, rather than be with them at home, out in the community (maybe including some kindergarten activities) and similar.
The multiplier is so much bigger, per Richard’s work and other posts here; and of course back to J M Keynes. Especially the multiplier on what starts off as government spending/investment funded by fiat money.
Back in 2017 West Mids radio morning presenter had a phone-in on the economy, featuring some twerp from the ASI. After he’d asserted some stuff about totally free markets, I phoned in from a big traffic jam and asked why he spouted stuff totally contradicting the great man in ‘Moral Sentiments’, and had he actually read any Adam Smith? There was a pause, and then the presenter said ‘I don’t think our listeners will know the book in question’ and cut me off.
Great stuff but what about the impact of climate change?
This work is intimately linked to the funding of a Green New Deal.
Sadly, climate change and ecological breakdown issues aren’t sufficiently pressing for most of the public (yet: in a few years’ time, with some more severe weather, unexpected food shortages or dramatic price increases… maybe people will wake up). So a package of measures like this has to highlight the immediate voter concerns: dilapidated public infrastructure, services degraded and delayed (NHS, social care, railways, buses…) and an increasing sense of injustice and unfairness; with ‘just transition’ aspects highlighting positives such as training for ‘green jobs’ and improving housing for lower energy bills. Sales of umbrellas only go up when it starts raining! Only the wise but one ahead of that time…
Agreed
There’s a little discussion here about your ideas for funding the future
https://timworstall.substack.com/p/sorry-yes-professor-richard-j-murphy
Utterly appalling, and no-one has jumped to defend the proposal which effectively means we get to have more conservative government
spending power.
How do progressives advance from here? I despair because I really don’t know.
It’s fair to say that Tim Worstall has an obsession with me which seems, to be candid, just a little weird, whilst also acknowledging that he thinks I am a very serious threat, or he would have stopped paying attention a long time ago. He is, I think a fellow at the Adam Smoth Institute. Most amusingly he is a former UKIP senior official who lives in Portugal, at one time no doubt because the EU let him do so.
I am aware that a lot of trolling here is inspired by him. I also don’t butcher to read what he says, including this one. His prior assumptions make it a waste of time.
While his language is vulgar, he probably does have a point – people invest in the run up to retirement and then divest thereafter, so there m]needs to be an efficient mechanism for doing so.
Which is exactly what equity markets provide.
Except they clearly don’t…..
Surely it’s not really an obsession, more like a public duty to highlight your lies, hypocrisy and ignorance on the multiple matters that you like to comment on.
Which is why you won’t debate him in public and won’t toleratate anyone on here who dares to highlight your lack of knowledge / flawed proposals.
As far as you are concerned, you know more than everyone and can never admit to making a mistake. So rather than rationally set out a counter argument you simply resort to abuse and censor people.
Which is why it seems you are as unpopular in real life as you are on this blog.
But I could be wrong.
I thought I would post this to show such a typcial, and hyperblolic reaction.
What you claim is nonsense. First, being attacked by someone who supports the Tufton Street / Liz Truss agenda is amusing, but really not worth engaging with. You do realise that no one takes those lines seriously anymore? So why engage with them when they are so obviously a waste of time?
Second, I admit to making nistakes here often – when someone genuinely points out I have. That’s very different to being told I’m an idiot by someone using a false name and email address, as no doubt you are.
Third. I debated with the the ASI yesterday and what a waste of time it was.
And fourth, I am curious to know how you are so sure of my unpopularity in real life because I seem to know a heck of a lot of people who don’t evidence that. But as I would also always acknowkedge, I have upset some people on the way, including in NGOs that I have fallen out of love with because it seems that they made their own job preservatiion a higher priority than effecting real change. You’ve heard that story about not being able to make scrambled eggs without cracking some on the way? It’s true.
“You’ve heard that story about not being able to make scrambled eggs without cracking some on the way? It’s true.”
Richard you would have an argument with your own reflection. You have the reputation as an intolerable crank and your popularity seems to be limited to a few stalwarts on this echo chamber.. what else can you point to to show anything different?
This is quite amusing.
You have multiple identities submitted here this morning. Which one would you like me to think is the one identifying me as the unpopular crank, or have you have discussion with yourselves to agree on this?
Found you and your site today, so you may have addressed this. But I do worry about tax rises as this only affects the middle classes (which are shrinking for various reason) as they are still on PAYE and easy targets, whereas the asset-rich people have far more tax breaks and shift money. The tax-free allowance has shrunk with inflation too. Dividend tax and capital gains tax cheaper than income tax. Sounds great to tell people: tax the rich, but in fact you are just taxing the doctors, engineers, professionals; the investment bankers, family wealth funds, etc. escape such tax rises.
OKAY, so when I get paid I pay tax on my income (income tax / National Insurance). Then I pay another tax to purchase a product (VAT). With this post-tax money, I have to pay council tax. This system is a mess. I have not yet read your 2024 tax report yet, so I will add this to my reading list. Perhaps we lower income tax and increase VAT (tax consumption)? I am not well read on this (reduce income tax and increase VAT) so perhaps I will go off and do a little research.
I look forward to your post budget analysis.
Thanks
I am not sure I agree with your analysis that the system is a mess, per se. It is not running well.
You raise too many broad questions for me to answer them.