My colleague, Danny Blanchflower, has an article in the Guardian today on some of the ideas that we are putting forward with regard to economic reform.
I admit that I read and commented on this article before it went for publication.
I see little point in reiterating what Danny has to say here: it would be best to go to the Guardian site to read it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
If only there were more articles like this. I see that the BBC has this published in the last few hours:
“Is there a £22bn ‘black hole’ in the UK’s public finances?” (BBC News Verify)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e12j4gz0o
It’s based on information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies who still claim “Most UK government revenue is from tax”.
See: “Where does the government get its money?”
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/where-does-government-get-its-money
They’ve never replied to my inquiries.
I sa that BBC piece
It is pathetic
The BBC IS pathetic.
And before we know which way is up we’ll have their flagship Strictly nonsense again.
The monkshood is all gone now, it’ll have to be paracetamol.
In fairness to the BBC they do offer a brief glimpse of the truth in that linked article:
“it is basing the decisions on needing to meet the fiscal rules that it imposed on itself, but it could have changed the rules”
Easy to miss though.
I’ll say it once and never again.
As someone from the North of Ireland, the name Danny Blanchflower is a glorious one
I saw it, read it and my heart was gladdened.
Well done, both.
But some of us may have already used up our 20 free Guardian articles this month!
I thought all Guardian articles are free?
On a laptop/PC the Guardian is free on a Phone via the app there are limits but if you use your browser and access it that way, it seems not
So did I. Maybe I can’t find twenty I want to read.
Not much ‘maybe’ about that thum to kink of it.
Good stuff. I think David Aaronovich on Radio 4 Briefing room tomorrow may have something about understanding the economy.
But even it there is some probing – on this ‘specialist’ programme it will never be done on main stream news interviews.
Thought crime.
The chilling thing is , BBC never ask Reeves and Co – ‘but couldnt we have got the money from somewhere else – other than pensioners?’. They always just regurgitate whatever ‘no choice’ reason is put forward.
The Briefing Room.
Mainstream unquestioning neoliberalism from the usual suspects .. FT, Times and IFS
About as Tory as you can get
The thing that most staggered me in that article was the explanation of the Excel error that created the supposed theoretical justification for austerity: “over the period 1946–2009, countries with public debt/GDP ratios above 90% averaged 2.2% real annual GDP growth, not −0.1% as published”.
Not, I think, the first case of a simple cock-up becoming the basis for received wisdom that persists for decades.
Correct
There’s an illuminating juxtapositon in that article, which refers to Attlee’s state-driven approach leading to re-election in 1950, whereas Osborne’s budget-slashing approach was “disastrous” but then the Tories were re-elected multiple times after that. Clearly a case of the public shooting themselves in the foot but perhaps one indicator of why Labour are currently pursuing their draconian approach.
Richard, thank for this! Does he share your view on interest on reserves
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/07/05/70731/
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/08/10/the-uk-governments-bung-to-our-commerical-banks-additional-data/
Enough for us to work tohether
I never expect unity of thinking with colleagues and can never remember enjoying it
I am a paying subscriber to the Guardian electronic issue and could not find the Blanchflower article, no matter how I accessed the site. If you had not provided a link, I would still be unaware that the article existed. I will be contacting the Guardian to complain about how articles like this are banished to some inaccessible corner of their website.
Weird
It was on the opinion page for abut 24 hours
I would be curious to know why he thinks that making the Bank of England independent “resulted in the lowered cost of government borrowing. It also reassured the markets that the new government was economically serious.”
Seems like a very questionable view to me.
At the time it was PR
Now it is failed PR
It’s considerably worse than ‘failed PR”.
Isn’t it?