I published an infographic on economic gaslighting yesterday. This seems like the obvious follow-up:
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Another top notch infographic Richard, thank you. Now:
Box 3, second bullet: “Every idea except market-based capitalism is dismissed as unrealistic”. This is surely one of the major nubs of the issues we face. Thatcher’s government forced upon us the ideology of the free market, and we were assured that growth would benefit everyone. The philosophy was a put forward as “the only alternative” to the failures of the 1970s. I was a teenager then, and well remember the endless strikes, power cuts, sugar and fuel rationing and the three day week, and the argument seemed convincing at the time.
Fifty years later, cue hollow laughter as the only possible alternative to despair. The free market is concerned primarily with extracting money from ordinary people and channelling it into the pockets of the wealthy. The rising tide has sunk all of the other boats.
But seriously: we all agree that we want housing, food, clean water and energy, education and health care. And that the country has the resources to deliver all of this, for everyone. But it demands government organisation and management of the economy to make it possible. And for many people I speak to that instantly raises the spectre of communist central planning (targets for building tractors anyone?), the supposed inefficiency of nationalised industries (the National Coal Board, British Telecom, British Gas, the British Transport Commission…) and the looming possibility of a 1970s re-run.
So, the question: how do we build confidence amongst voters that the government can take back control from the free market without precipitating an economic disaster?
Reading your post on Restore’s policy paper I was struck by another piece of political gaslighting. In that post you say of the paper, “It rarely asks what that expenditure achieves”. That seems to me to be common political gaslighting amongst the major political parties.
Government after government says we cannot afford this or that, leading to enshitification of all our public services. But they do not ask what the cost of not spending the money is. They don’t do double entry book keeping and increase the assets of the government, even if these are intangible like “good will” that sometimes appears in company accounts.
Taking a very simple and direct example, why does the government not spend more money on flood defenses? The usual answer is “we can’t afford it”. But many flood defence schemes have a return on investment up to 5:1. Any business offered 5:1 ROI would grab it eagerly. But the government say’s “we can’t afford it”. Perhaps that’s because there is no direct return on investment. Instead it avoids the cost to the economy of damage and disruption. But that damage and distraction does not show up in GDP figures because it causes economic activity as people clear up the mess.
Or take another example in education. There’s a lot of nonsense talked at the moment about over diagnosis of conditions affecting education. This is because governments are afraid of spending money. But, if pupils with differences are not taught appropriately, the costs and loss of potential is enormous. None of the benefits of better education are recorded on the plus side of the ledger, only the costs.
My point is we are being politically gaslit because governments don’t properly account for the benefits of their spending.
Such a long way to go. This morning’s Times has a suggestion that the fiscal rules may be relaxed to allow £9 billion to be invested in housing and other things. A sum that’s less than 1% of govt spending per year, and it’s not to happen till 2031. The comments are just appalling; almost all want to cut benefits. And all these people KNOW that they are right. It’s depressing.